John O. Brennan on Life in the CIA | Conversations with Tyler

Today I am here with John O'Brennan, who is former director of the CIA. John has a new book out called Undaunted: My Fight Against America's Enemies at Home and Abroad. Many public sector memoirs are rather blah. This I found interesting, entertaining, and substantive on every page. John, welcome.

Thank you, Tyler. It's good to be with you.

What truths about human nature or human behavior do you think intelligence officials appreciate but few others do?

Well, I guess those who are involved in the conduct of espionage, um, really understand that individuals will have vulnerabilities as well as areas of particular interest that they want to either pursue or protect. And so, again, case officers in the CIA parlance, the ones that go out and actually recruit spies to conduct espionage against their countries, I think really seek out those areas that could be in fact exploited, vulnerabilities or otherwise. Or people have, again, certain lifelong ambitions, goals, and for a lot of people who live overseas, it's getting to the United States and bringing their families to the United States. And so I think when you're in CIA and you have a lot of interactions with people overseas, I think you appreciate some of those similarities as well as those, I guess, unique qualities that people bring to the fore.

Now, your background is from the blue-collar county Hudson County in northern New Jersey. How do you feel that influences your views on human behavior or temperament?

Well, there are a number of things about my upbringing in Hudson County. The son of an immigrant, my father emigrated from Ireland in 1948 when he was 28 years old and always impressed upon my siblings and myself just how special it was to be an American citizen and never to take advantage or take for granted the fact that we were by dint of our birth. Because my father used to complain that it was usually the people who were born here that took it for granted, not those who struggle for their, you know, good part of their lives to get here. Growing up in a blue-collar, working-class neighborhood really allowed me to appreciate some of the challenges, difficulties that average Americans face on a daily basis, and how a lot of people are just struggling to make sure that their families are fed, that their children are educated, and that they can, again, enjoy what life has to offer here in the United States. So I didn't grow up in a privileged environment by any means. A lot of times that sometimes my father was out of work and he had to pick up part-time jobs just to make sure that there was money for my mother and father to be able to buy groceries for us to eat. So I just, I felt as though it really gave me a good perspective on what life for, quite frankly, for most Americans is like.

How many CIA agents might have once entered the priesthood?

Well, CIA agents, first of all, refers to those foreign citizens who are recruited by CIA case officers to spy against their countries. And so it's referred to as CIA officers or CIA case officers.

The broader notion.

So CIA employees, yeah, there are similarities between those who decide to go into the priesthood and those who decide to go into the work of Intelligence community. And as I said in my book, I was planning to become a priest and the first American Pope, but then decided to go on a different path. But I met a number of people throughout my CIA career who had similar types of, at least early, ambitions and goals.

And how do you think having been raised Catholic affects your worldview on intelligence gathering and human nature and how people will behave?

Well, I was raised in a very religious household, Catholic faith. We would go to church certainly every Sunday, and I would go serve as an altar boy, you know, many days throughout the week. But there was a real emphasis on doing what is right and understanding the distinction between right and wrong and a premium put on honesty. And when you go into the intelligence profession, there also is a premium put on honesty, which sounds a bit maybe ironic to some, given that CIA officers sometimes have to adopt false personas when they go overseas to recruit spies. But inside of the CIA family, there is a real need to make sure that people don't stray from the truth because national security really hangs in the balance. So I just found that my early religious upbringing gave me a good grounding in morality and values. And those principles and what I think are the ethics of life that, although I have quite frankly lost my Catholic faith over the years, I'm a practicing agnostic now, I guess. I never lost though that deeply rooted and instilled sense of right and wrong that was taught to me by my parents, by my teachers, by the clergy.

I'm sure you know the Chris Whipple book about CIA directors, and he says about you, and I quote, "No one was better than Brennan at sifting through and interpreting raw material from disparate sources." What are your secrets for being good at this?

Well, first of all, Chris engages in hyperbole there. CIA has a lot of people who are just so, so skilled in that. I started out in the operations side of CIA and had a real feel, I think, for clandestinely acquired intelligence, both human intelligence as well as technical intelligence, and then also had a good sense of the different types of other sources of information that come into the agency for the analyst to, to go through. I served as a State Department political officer in Saudi Arabia early in my career, and so I was quite familiar with Department of State capabilities and cables, also open source information. So I think it was my exposure to a lot of these areas of sources and acquisition that I think allowed me to put into context the worth, as well as to allow me to very rigorously scrutinize the reliability, the accuracy, as well as the access of the individuals or the systems that are actually obtaining the intelligence.

So let's say we take a concrete issue. The Navy has reported that a lot of its pilots have seen unidentified flying objects. And if you're tackling that as a CIA director or someone who works there, what is it you would sift through and interpret? How would that go?

Well, I've seen some of those videos from Navy pilots, and I must tell you that they are quite eyebrow-raising when you look at them and you try to ensure that you have as much data as possible in terms of, you know, visuals, also different types of maybe technical collection of sensors that you have at the time. But then you also— I believe it's important to reach out into other environments and find out, well, were there any type of weather phenomena at that time that might have in fact created the appearance of the phenomenon that you're looking at? Were there some things that were happening sort of on the ground or other types of phenomena that again could help explain what seems to be, you know, quite a mystery as far as what it is there. But I think the important thing for analysts to do is not to go into this type of challenge either discounting certain types of possibilities or believing in advance that it is likely X, Y, or Z. You really have to approach it with an open mind, but get as much data as possible and get as much expertise as possible brought to bear.

So at the end of all that sifting and interpreting, what do you think is the most likely hypothesis?

I don't know. You know, when people talk about, you know, is there life, other life besides what's in the States, in the world, the globe, you know, life is defined in many different ways. I think it's a bit presumptuous, if not arrogant, for us to believe that there's no other form of life anywhere in the entire universe. What that might you know, be is, I think, subject to a lot of different views. But I think some of the phenomena we may be seeing continues to be unexplained and might in fact be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something that we don't yet understand and that could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life.

But being an agnostic, you don't think it's something supernatural?

Well, supernatural— again, it's in the eye of the beholder.

I—

again, I'm not going to discount things. That's why I'm an agnostic as opposed to an atheist. I just want to leave my mind open as to what something might might be, but who knows what these things might be.

Now, as I understand how the CIA works, inside the CIA buildings, you in essence have a workplace without smartphones for security reasons. As a manager, what have you learned about the effect of smartphones on our workplace?

Well, it's a relatively recent technological development as far as smartphones and, you know, Fitbits and other types of things. I just, even though I grew up in an era when we when we didn't have all of this technology at our fingertips. I have come to understand just the power of technology and how it can be used to advance one's objectives, but also can be used by adversaries to exploit, to gain access in certain areas to certain types of environments or conversations or whatever that can really defeat physical security obstacles and perimeters. And so I fully understand why certain types of technologies could compromise the secrecy or the needed protection of source and methods in certain environments. Now you can do things to defeat those types of exploitations, but again, the CIA, NSA, FBI, and others are always mindful that technology that is used for our purposes can be reverse engineered for the purpose of others.

But my question is much more mundane. When you have all the workers with no smartphones, do they get more done? Or is there no benefit?

Well, I think there are certainly benefits to it. And, you know, the CIA officers leave the phones in their car or whatever so they can go out and, you know, be able to talk to family or whatever else. And they— there are ways to communicate outside, but yeah, I think that there are a lot of distractions that come with phones. You know, you go off on, you know, a pursuit of various tangents as you get more and more curious about certain things. Now agency officers have access to, you know, computers and, you know, the internet, but even there we've had to take steps to make sure that people don't get, you know, go down wrong paths.

How accurate is personality testing for workers? Accurate?

It is one of the tools. All these types of tools are useful, but none of them should be seen as dispositive in any way that's going to, you know, discount all the other sort of factors that are brought into bear. But, you know, when people are hired in the agency or, you know, in their security reviews, as well as people who want to work for the agency overseas, who offer their services, You need to go through a series of vetting and tests that try to give you a better sense of where the truth might lie.

But say I measure as conscientious on one of these tests, does that mean I'm actually likely to be conscientious?

I think it's a good question. I think just because someone tests in a certain way doesn't mean that they're going to actually follow through and be that way. Depends, I think, on the rigor and the strength of the test, but I'm not going to stand behind any particular test and say that it is a clear, clear indicator. I think there are some tests that are better indicators than others. And so, for example, in the agency we use the polygraph. The polygraph itself, you know, can be accurate or not, but we have found that in the polygraph sessions a lot of things come out from a person because they are concerned that the polygraph machine will register falsehood if they tell it. So again, it is used as a tool. It needs to be a part of a group of things that are going to be used in order to determine whether or not somebody is worthy of employment or telling the truth or not.

In your book, you seem to treat polygraph evidence as very reliable. Our legal system usually treats it as not so reliable. The research literature is somewhat skeptical. From randomized control trials. How reliable do you think it is?

I don't agree with the characterization that I considered it— in my book, I portrayed it as very reliable. I thought that my Catholic guilt was going to just totally undermine any effort, if I had one, to try to deceive the polygrapher and the polygraph machine. So I was not going to take that chance because I wanted to be hired by the agency. And so again, I think that there It can be a very reliable indicator, but people have perfected some techniques to defeat polygraph machines. And it's as much dependent on not just the polygraph machine, but the polygrapher. The polygraphers go through extensive training, and a lot of their assessment is done by looking at the individual and how they react and how they shift and how they move and the way they respond to certain questions, and they come back to questions later on and whether or not there's consistency in the answers that are provided. So, again, the polygraph is a process and is designed to try to uncover anything that maybe an employee or a spy is trying to hide.

Are CIA agents more punctual than average?

Well, some certainly are, and many of them need to be, because if you're going to have a rendezvous, a clandestine rendezvous, with a spy from overseas, one of your assets or agents, and you have worked for hours to get clean so that you make sure that the local security services are not onto you and surveilling you, and your agent has done the same thing so that when you meet at the designated place at a designated hour, you can quickly then have either a brush pass or a quick meeting or whatever. And if you're not punctual, you can put that agent's life in danger. And so I think it's instilled in CIA certainly case officers, that, you know, time is of the essence and you need to be able to follow the clock. Also, I remember when I was CIA Director and I would go down to the White House for a National Security Council meeting or a Principals Committee meeting, Jim Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, and myself would always be the first ones there because we wanted to, we were always very punctual, but I think sometimes the policymakers, you know, would look at the clock as not as carefully as we would.

If you're hiring for punctuality, and obviously you would expect employees to show an extreme degree of loyalty, Do you worry that you're not hiring for enough what's called disagreeability in the personality literature? People who will contradict their superiors, people who will pick fights, they're a pain to work with, but at the end of the day, they bring up points that other people are afraid to say or won't even see.

Well, when we're not looking to, you know, hire just a bunch of yes people, to me, I don't think punctuality means that you're looking to, you know, instill discipline in an organization. You're trying to ensure that you're take advantage of, you know.

But that and loyalty, right? It would seem to select against disagreeability.

Well, you know, there's loyalty to the Constitution, there's loyalty to the oath of office. To me, there's not— there shouldn't be loyalty to any individuals, including inside the CIA. So, you know, I would like to think that CIA recruiters would be looking for individuals who are intellectually curious, have critical thinking skills, and may have also, you know, I think some degree of contrarian-ness, because you don't want people just to accept as gospel what it is that they are being told, especially if they're going to be interacting with spies overseas. And so, you know, you don't want someone who's going to argue everything just for the sake of argumentation, but I know that certainly when I was at the agency and Director of CIA, I wanted people to challenge what I was saying. I wanted to be I had no monopoly on wisdom or knowledge or insights. And so you want people to be willing to speak up. And I think in my book, I talk about how I was reluctant to do that earlier on. And I learned the importance of doing that as I went through my career.

It costs more than ever before to live in or near McLean. Many jobs, including presumably CIA jobs, require greater knowledge of tech. Which means there's a higher foregone wage outside of the agency. What's the CIA going to do to meet the next generation of recruiting challenges? I mean, if talent is your real asset, aren't you in a somewhat unfavorable position looking forward?

Sure, if you just look at the financial remuneration that comes with a job, yeah, we cannot compete with either Wall Street or the, you know, Silicon Valley or whatever. But there are a lot of individuals who want to give back to this great country of ours and also like the idea of working for the the CIA, you know, my recruiters would tell me that, you know, with millennials and Gen Xers, you know, they really had a tough time because those younger Americans would bounce around from job to job and that they were going to come to the CIA for 2 or 3 years and be able to put CIA on their resume and then be able to go off and make their millions. And I said, well, don't look at it as a problem, look at it as an opportunity that these individuals who could be hired by the, you know, Silicon Valleys and others and big banks are willing to give us 2 or 3 years, and that gives us 2 or 3 years to convince them that This is the absolute best place to work because there's such exceptionally talented people here and there's, you know, technology at your fingertips and you're really doing something to keep their families and fellow Americans safe. And our attrition rate is very, very low. So even if individuals come into the agency with the eye to just staying for a couple, 3 years, you'd be amazed at how many decide to stay just because the type of work that they're doing is really quite thrilling.

If I want to know who will win the Super Bowl, I look at the betting markets. Why doesn't the CIA use prediction markets more? Even just internal markets. You could do them with chits, you could do it with real money, vouchers in the cafeteria. The winner gets a place in the CIA museum, whatever you want to do.

Well, there's different types of quantitative models that are used at the CIA to see if they could, you know, forecast certain outcomes of certain situations, but we're not going to get involved in the sort of the betting environment. But I think that what the CIA has always tried to do is to explore any type of new techniques or approaches or practices that are going to provide, again, just one more insight or perspective into, you know, trying to understand this world of ours and how events are going to evolve.

You're familiar with Philip Tetlock's Superforecasters project?

Not familiar, not quite, no.

Philip, he's an academic at the University of Pennsylvania. He trains people and measures their predictive performance over time. And he's kept a running tally on predictors for decades, actually. And very often his best superforecasters, he calls them, they're housewives. They're people who don't have very high formal status. I was gonna ask you, how do you think the CIA does against Tetlock superforecasters?

That's a good question. I wouldn't dispute. His bottom line at all. You know, it's— I am really impressed with people who have a good sense of reality in the world and common sense approaches to it, and that frequently wisdom is derived from the ability to absorb information and then process it and then see relationships and also have almost an intuitive sense of past experiences and then apply that to future situations. So I think I'm interested now, I'm going to take a look at the forecasting sort of approach, but I would never tell CIA analysts to put their eggs in one type of basket as far as forecasting. And we don't— People think, you know, what's the prediction of something, and I hate the term, in fact, prediction. It's looking at what are those variables, what are those factors that are going to come into play, and if certain things evolve in a certain way, in a certain sequence, that the interaction between these variables are likely to produce certain outcomes that have certain implications, which is what the intelligence officers, analysts do when they talk to policymakers, because again, there are so many different variables. And frequently when you look at, you know, events around the world, what the US decides to do on the policy front is frequently quite determinative of what the future course is going to be. So I think it's having the appreciation of that range of variables that come in and how that ecosystem is evolving. It just, I think, gives people a good sense, and a lot of times it is rather intuitive It seems that offense should very often be easier than defense when it comes to terrorism.

There are just many disruptive, destructive things you can do. So I know America has taken many, many, many steps since 9/11 to limit terror attacks. But it still seems to me, just as an outside observer, that we should be observing more attacks than in fact we do, that it should be impossible to stop so many of them. At the deepest conceptual reason, what do you think are the defects in the attackers that have led to so few major terror attacks in this country since 9/11?

So you want me to give the enemies the reasons why they're not as successful as they have been? Well, I think sometimes it's because they continue to go back to the tried and true methods. When I look at terrorist acts especially those that are international, transnational terrorism directed against the United States. Al Qaeda and other types of terrorist organizations continue to go after that which is going to go boom and bang, trying to secret an improvised explosive device onto an airplane, try to bring down that air carrier over the United States, as opposed to really looking at new and ingenious and innovative ways to really cause havoc. But they continue to want to have things blow up, and the defenses that have been put in place really have guarded against and made it much more difficult for the terrorists to surmount the various obstacles and security checks that are in place. So, but they continue to focus on that. I'm glad they do in some respects, because that's where we're best prepared to defeat their efforts. But I still shudder when I think about all the availability of weapons in the United States, different types of assault weapons, and how much carnage could be created and has been in instances. But rarely has it been as a result of an international terrorist group, a transnational terrorist group. You don't hear about an al-Qaeda member who picks up an assault weapon and, you know, just, you know, mow people down at a mall. Occasionally, attempts are made, and sometimes it actually happens, but they still go after that IED that is going to blow up something and create the type of footage that they want.

So, in your model, is it that they're good bureaucratic managers, but they're simply bureaucratic and so predictable, sort of like the old IBM, or are they just flat-out right bad managers? They couldn't run a candy store.

It really varies, just like, you know, any organizations. Sometimes individual leaders are quite cunning and quite innovative, and also they're able to use the resources available to them, and they're able to recruit the right type of people, and they're able to maintain the secrecy that is needed for this, while others are just wannabe terrorists and they trip over themselves, thankfully. There are a lot of very, very bad terrorists that are out there that thankfully have been caught. And terrorists are caught anywhere along that operational, you know, cycle, from their efforts to recruit or gain financing, whatever. Fortunately, the FBI, CIA, NSA have insights into what they're doing. But as they progress, they get further along and they recruit the operatives, and then they get the the explosives and they start to, you know, surveil and case and even do dry runs, then they're closer to execution of the attack, but also they run into more of the sensors, if you will, both human and technical, that uncover their activities.

As you know, there's a CIA museum inside the CIA. Who or what should be shown greater honor or respect in the CIA museum?

Oh, you know, so many CIA officers who come into the organization undercover, which means that they cannot acknowledge except to their immediate family members that they're actually working with the CIA. They know that they're going to live a life in secrecy and that their accomplishments, achievements will not be known outside of maybe a small circle within CIA. And the reason why that CIA museum is in CIA and not somewhere else is that there are some things that still remain classified because they reveal different types of sources and methods that could in fact compromise ongoing activities or future operations. So I really think it should honor those faceless and frequently nameless women and men of CIA who over the years put themselves at great danger and undertook great sacrifices, and their families. And probably if any component of CIA demands, I think, more attention and more appreciation, it's those family members of CIA officers, the spouses, the sons and daughters and parents who keep the home fires burning and allow their CIA officers to go overseas at a moment's notice or to go into a war zone and put, you know, their their family's future at risk. Those are the really the unsung heroes of CIA, those family members of CIA officers.

How do you talk about your work with a spouse or partner without revealing classified information?

You do it carefully. Thankfully, during the course of my career, you know, I was— my wife, we were married for 42 years, and early on it was tough. And I talk about in the book that after, you know, less than a year with CIA, my wife and I separated for a year because I got into that CIA environment and then I started to, you know, keep things from her and she sensed a growing distance between us and there was a distance between us and thankfully we got back together and we came to an understanding that I would try to explain as much as I could without going into classified information and she was willing to give me that latitude and so I Whenever I would administer the oath of office to a new group of CIA officers every month at CIA headquarters, I tell them to not neglect the home front because, first of all, we want happy employees at CIA. They're better employees. But also, they need to remember their responsibilities and obligations at home to spouses, to children, to siblings or parents or whatever. And it is important, but like the bin Laden raid, Cathy, my wife, didn't know about our plans for that raid until after it happened. And after we knew that we got bin Laden, we brought his remains back to Afghanistan, I gave her a call and said, "Cathy, we may have just had a great counterterrorism success, and turn on the television because President Obama is going to be speaking to the nation and the world in a few minutes." And I think she sensed what it might be based on the excitement of my voice, but I didn't want to burden her with that type of information that she couldn't reveal to anybody else. So it is, it is tough. It's a balance, but it's one that CIA officers, I think, take very seriously.

Which spycraft norms have frayed the most over the last 20 years, or maybe just disappeared?

Well, because of the advancements in technology, the spy business has changed profoundly. Years ago, CIA would be able to fabricate a passport as well as a visa and go across a border and, as the CIA offices would say, with a fistful of 50s, be able to operate rather, you know, well even in denied areas because you didn't have all of the, you know, closed-circuit televisions, you didn't have the machine-readable passport machines at airports, passport-readable machines, you didn't have the digital dust that we all leave whether it be with a credit card or with our iPhone or whatever else. And so operating clandestinely in heavily digitized, you know, sensor-rife environments is really difficult. And so that traditional spycraft really has had to just be transformed so that you're able to operate in a very busy digital environment and one where the The local services have so many opportunities to pick up on your every move. And so, you know, being able to go dark and be able to operate covertly and clandestinely overseas is much more challenging. But thankfully, I think CIA officers have done a tremendous job of operating in that digital noise.

The final stage of turning a complex bundle of information into a simple briefing for politicians say a president. What's the best way to avoid biases when you do that, and what kind of skill do you need to be good at that?

Well, CIA officers are expected to be and must remain apolitical, policy-neutral when it comes to any type of issue that policymakers may be grappling with. And I also think it's a very good thing for agency officers to do when they, you know, brief somebody like, you know, incoming President-elect Biden about a particular issue is to state clearly what is it that we know from sources, the reliability, the accuracy of that information, what is it that we don't know as far as gaps in our knowledge are concerned, and what are our capabilities to be able to address those gaps. Because if you don't nest within that broader sort of environment of of what is knowable, then I think you can give your listener the wrong impression about the extent and depth of your knowledge. And so it's important, I think, again, to put that knowledge, that assessment, that analysis into a context that the policymaker then can appreciate.

This wasn't the CIA, but it came out recently that sources had not been telling the president how many troops we actually have in Syria. Is that ever justified, that you have a loyalty to the Constitution, you think the president will make a mistake or is going to remain misinformed, and so you give a briefing that is not the best literally absolute correct Bayesian estimate of the truth?

Well, when you say sources, sources again in the lexicon of the intelligence world, these are individuals overseas, foreigners, who give information to US officers. But there never should be a reason, occasion for U.S. government officials to provide misinformation or disinformation to a president. Absolutely not. It's critically important that a president and the National Security Council team have as accurate an understanding as possible about it, and I hadn't heard about any— anybody not reporting what they believe was accurate statistics about you know, what's going on inside of Syria. The sources that provide CIA officers the information might be misinformed, might be misleading, but, you know, that's part of the business of intelligence. You need to try to weed out the, you know, the wheat from the chaff.

Now, as you know, and in your book, you've spoken out against USG use of torture on detainees. Do you think that torture works in getting people to tell the truth?

Well, also, as I say in my book, I don't refer to CIA's detention interrogation program as torture because that program was duly authorized by the President of the United States and it was deemed lawful by the Department of Justice. And therefore, since it was deemed lawful, it was not torture at the time. Now, people can disagree with those Department of Justice memos, and I do, but CIA officers were doing their obligation the best that they could. From a standpoint of efficacy of the use of those techniques, up to and including waterboarding, I do not believe, first of all, that they are consistent with American values, and I don't think the CIA should have been asked to do that. First of all, they had no experience in a detention program nor in an interrogation program. Um, and so, again, from a, just a moral standpoint, an ethics and principles standpoint, I don't think that they should have been authorized. Secondly, though, I do not believe that they were the best means to elicit information, reliable information from individuals. Yes, some of the individuals who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques subsequently provided information that was true and accurate and reliable. They also provided a lot of information that was disinformation as a way to mislead CIA officers., and even when they provided reliable information, there's no way to know whether or not they would have provided that information sooner or later, had they not been subjected to those EITs, enhanced interrogation techniques. So, I do not believe one can make the case, either from a morality standpoint or from an efficacy standpoint, that those types of techniques should be employed.

Where in the world did they speak the most beautiful Arabic?

You know, I've studied and forgotten Arabic so many times. I used to be pretty good in the 1980s because when I lived in Saudi Arabia the first time for a couple years, I also studied in Cairo and then also had a 6-month one-on-one tutorial before I went out to Saudi Arabia the first time. So I was pretty good, but I have long since, you know, lost a lot of the capability that I had. There are different types of Arabic. When I was in Egypt, that was the first time I learned Arabic, and I really enjoyed the Egyptian Arabic. It has a certain dialect and a lot of colloquialisms that I became familiar with. But then in Saudi Arabia, in the Gulf, it's a purer form of Arabic. But if you learn the standard Arabic, then you usually can you know, just get by in other countries. But when you start going over to North Africa where there's just a lot of, you know, French that is woven into the Arabic, it becomes much more difficult. And also their dialect is much more difficult to understand. So I never did well in North Africa, but in the Gulf and in Egypt, as well as in the Levant area, I could get by.

What's your favorite site in Cairo?

Oh, uh—

For me it's the Grand Mosque, but most people would say the pyramids.

Well, the Citadel also is beautiful. Tahrir Square, when I was going to school at the American University in Cairo back in the mid-'70s, the AUC campus was downtown Cairo by Tahrir Square, and Tahrir Square was where, was the locus of all the anti-Mubarak activities in terms of the Arab Spring. There's something really, really beautiful and attractive about the streets and smells and sounds of Cairo and the people of of downtown Cairo. So whether it's, you know, going to Khan Khaleeli, which is the gold market, or just roaming around Zamalek or Bablook and other areas, I just, I love Cairo, the architecture, again, the people. But, you know, so I can't put my finger on one place except just saying downtown where, you know, American University in Cairo was located.

What do you like best in Arabic music?

Well, when I was learning Arabic and I was listening to Arabic music over there, I mean, it's different certainly than our music, but it's very heartfelt. And then there usually are stories. And listening to Umm Khatun, who was the famous Egyptian singer, there was such passion that she brought to it that would make men cry. But there's, you know, Lebanese music too, which is, you know, very, very good and popular. And so I spent— my wife and I spent over 5 years in Saudi Arabia and got a fair amount of time listening to Arabic music, both traditional as well as new wave Arabic.

Now, as you know, President Trump put his son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of a Middle Eastern peace deal. This was mocked mercilessly for a long time, yet it seems he came up with something when other people had not before. Should we view that as a sign of the bankruptcy of our foreign policy elites, that just some guy determined to do something can cut a deal? It's far from complete, but it does seem better than nothing, right?

Well, I'm glad that there has been an improvement in relations between some key Arab states, the United Arab Emirates United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan on the Arab side, and Israel on the other side. I think this was an effort by the Emiratis and the Bahrainis in particular, with the agreement of Saudi Arabia, to give Donald Trump a victory before his— before the election, as a way to help him out. But it formalized some of the ties, relationships that had already existed for a number of years between the UAE in particular, and Israel, and it brought it up into the, you know, the public view and surface. Now, I do not believe that it is something that has helped the cause of peace in terms of settling the Palestinian problem. The Palestinians got absolutely nothing out of this. Bibi Netanyahu threatened to annex the the territories, the West Bank, and then agreed to suspend his planned annexation in exchange for this, the relationship between some of those Arab states and Israel. Bibi Netanyahu, I think, has been long opposed to a two-state solution, and I just think that the Palestinian people have been deprived of the very basic human rights and dignity that they deserve for so long, and And now we have, you know, Arab leaders who are just basically, you know, turning a blind eye to Palestinian problem, and I think that is very unfortunate. And the fact that the United States has moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, it has undermined the United States' traditional role of playing honest broker between the Arab states and Israel. And so I think, yes, looking at it just in isolation, it's good that the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan have relations with Israel, but at the same time, I don't know whether or not it's now going to be more difficult or harder to address the Palestinian problem, which is long, long overdue for some type of resolution that again does justice to the Palestinian people.

How much do you think about the much earlier history of the CIA? So for instance, it came out some while ago that the CIA supported modern art and abstract expressionism. This was seen as a counterweight to the more communist tradition of mural paintings. Do you look back and you think like, gee, that was crazy, we would never do anything like that, or do you look back and think, well, that, that made sense for the time, but you know, times change? How do you view the earlier CIA?

Well, you pointed out one aspect of the early CIA. There's a lot of other aspects of the early CIA in terms of toppling regimes and actually shaping developments overseas during the Cold War when I think Washington really felt we were in an existential challenge and competition with the Soviet Union. I think United States culture is one of its strongest calling cards around the world, and I do believe that we need to enhance the propagation of our culture— political, social, other— and unfortunately, I don't think we have leveraged it enough, because even places like Iran and China and Russia So many, you know, American entertainers and so many aspects of culture really are very much admired and embraced by the populace. And so to the extent that the CIA and the State Department and other organizations can help to extend that culture worldwide, you know, I think all for the better. I think we should be doing more of that rather than trying to, you know, conduct these different types of covert operations to change, you know, the course of events overseas in ways that usually do not, you know, lead to the outcome that we want.

There's a famous Haitian proverb which goes, "The Constitution is paper, the bayonet is steel." Agree or disagree?

Well, just from a physical standpoint, I think, you know, if you're talking about the Constitution as the document. Yes, it's paper, but I think it's— the paper embodies what, what is America, what this great democracy republic is all about. And I think the Constitution is, you know, the strength of this, of this country, not just because it allows us to continue to grow and prosper as a, as a society, as a nation, but also it sends, I think, a clear signal to countries around the world, at least when it's adhered to, that the liberal democratic order and the fact that we are a country and a government anchored in law and the Constitution, I think that's a very powerful signal that we've used over the course, certainly the last 75 years. Unfortunately, the bayonet sometimes has been necessary, certainly World War II and some other times. And the bayonet frequently is used in order to deal with an urgent crisis, one that I think the bayonet should be used only when it cannot be— problem cannot be addressed in other ways. Sometimes the bayonet is opted for too quickly when there are other means to address problems.

Why did Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald?

That's a good question. Well, I don't know. I mean, I've read different books. I'm reading the new JFK book by Frederick Lovegal, or Logball. That was during the earlier Kennedy years, but there are some things that I think are going to remain mysteries. You know, why does somebody— why did Lee Harvey Oswald shoot John F. Kennedy. We can speculate, and there are things that have been written and said about it, but, you know, who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

But if you just view it in Bayesian terms, it seems to me, well, that was a long time ago, and there's been no deathbed confession for any conspiracy. So isn't the rational view that it wasn't much of a conspiracy at all, or does that reasoning not carry much weight with you?

Well, I think the reasoning is, is, carries some weight, certainly. I don't believe Ruby was part of a conspiracy. I have read and heard and talked about things that what might have led Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot Kennedy that may have involved other antagonists, but I don't believe Ruby was part, knowingly part of a conspiracy to try to snuff out Lee Harvey so he wouldn't spill the beans. I do think he was just reacting, but that's just my assessment.

Now, before this most recent presidential election, the national security experts I know all spoke to me about how worried they were about foreign interference. In our election. Yet we held the election, and as far as we can tell, or as far as I can tell, it seems foreign interference has been absolutely minimal, arguably even zero. So what happened, or what changed? Why did all the experts get this wrong? I read hundreds of mainstream media articles about forthcoming foreign interference. They all cited experts. Where is it? No one's talking about it.

Well, I think we, you know, it's still unclear how much the interference was, I think the impact probably was less than a lot of people anticipated. But I think there's no doubt that, you know, Russia and China, Iran, other countries, you know, tried to use the social media environment to push out their narratives, that they wanted to influence the minds and the votes of American citizens. And, but I think this, you know, this past election, the social media environment as well as just the regular environment, information environment, was just so overloaded with so much misinformation and disinformation, it was hard to maybe distinguish what was coming from abroad that was inaccurate and disinformation and what was coming from domestic sources. And I think this is almost going to be a feature in the future. Now, I do think that the U.S. cyber experts in FBI, NSA, CIA, Department of Homeland Security did a good job of trying to ensure that there was no technical intrusions that really would be significant. And I think they learned some lessons, you know, over the last 4 years, certainly from the 2016 election. So I think we were better prepared to prevent those types of technical intrusions that we were certainly more worried about, but that the influence operations in that environment in particular, I think, were still quite evident.

I have a few questions about popular culture, movies and TV, books. Jean La Carre, what does he get right and get wrong?

Well, he's written so many books and he's gotten so many things right, but he also, you know, I think intentionally, you know, tries to change some facts and realities. He has, I think, a tremendous ability to give individuals a sense of just the meticulousness and the detailed steps that need to be taken in order to carry out espionage operations and how things usually take months, if not years sometimes, for things to develop and evolve. In intelligence, patience really is a virtue, and frequently you want to get things sooner But for example, the recruitment of sources, you know, can take years. It can be several case officers who are going to cultivate the relationship before someone is formally recruited, and then when they— those assets start to give really consequential intelligence to their handlers.

And he understands that good spies are often introverts, right? That's one thing I take away from his books.

Well, they are and they're not. One of the reasons why I got out of operations, because I think I was too much of an an introvert. I wouldn't go into a cocktail party and try to, you know, talk up people and chat them up and try to cultivate, you know, a relationship. That really requires an extroverted personality. But then, you know, you need to then go back into your cocoon of, you know, the— you adopt certain personas when you're out, but then when you get it back into the CIA station or headquarters, whatever else, you really need to shield yourself from that type of outside scrutiny or, you know, being uncovered. So it takes a person with almost a schizophrenic approach to life.

Have you ever met a spy and thought he or she is just like James Bond, or is that completely absurd, out of the picture?

I've met a lot of CIA officers over the years who have reminded me of a James Bond. Sometimes they're very calm, cool, debonairs, slick, and they really seem to fit that bill. But CIA officers, you don't want to— if you want to have a CIA case officer go out and be a successful recruiter of spies, you don't want to have someone who's going to stand out in the crowd because then they'll draw the attention of local security or intelligence officials. You want someone who's going to be able to blend in, someone who is not going to be seen as, you know, someone to be concerned about. So we hire all different types of individuals, and even though at one point my Arabic was okay, it was pretty good, I still, if I was to wander in the, you know, among the tribes of Saudi Arabia or in the souks of Damascus or in, you know, the streets of Cairo, I still look like an American, a Westerner.

From Hudson County.

So you really want to be able to have individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences so that they can in fact blend into the local environments.

Other than being overly dramatized, what does the TV show The Americans get right and wrong about Soviet spying here in the 1980s?

People have asked me a lot about The Americans as well as Homeland.

I don't—

I've never watched them. You know, I live the intelligence business, and then I heard that Homeland, in one of the episodes, they blow up CIA headquarters, so I've never But, you know, anytime I've seen like a little snippet or footage of it, a lot of times that they really exaggerate the technical capabilities of the CIA and the intelligence community, but sometimes science fiction gives birth to intelligence initiatives, and I think vice versa. So I think there— The Americans was based on a real-life story when the Russians had secreted into the United States, you know, 10 or 11 illegals, as they're called, to burrow into American society and adopt American personas. And I was at the White House at the time as President Obama's counterterrorism advisor and was intimately involved in that. And it was a really, really interesting, exciting sort of period of time. And my understanding, based on people who have watched The Americans, say it's very good and it gives a good reflection reflection of what the reality was like.

I have a few policy questions for you. Given that the risk of America having what you might call an idiosyncratic president seems to be higher as of late, and perhaps is higher for the future going forward, do you think that makes a case for the CIA being less powerful or more powerful as that risk rises? Well, CIA's power derives from its legislative authorities, its statutory authorities, But every bureaucracy has some autonomy, right?

Well, they do, and I think some of it takes on, as you, I think, are pointing out, sort of the temperament of the Commander-in-Chief, the chief executive. But all CIA covert action programs, for example, have to be authorized in writing, in very explicit writing, by a President of the United States. And so the more aggressive a president might be on the foreign front and the more that he or she would want the CIA to be involved, the CIA will be involved. But I do think that the CIA needs to sort of stick with its traditional mission, which is to acquire clandestinely acquired intelligence of— that matters to U.S. national security, whether it be human sources or technical collection. It needs to carry out the counterintelligence activities to protect our secrets from foreign interference or intrusion. It needs to engage with foreign liaison services so that we're able to benefit from their capabilities and information gathering. It needs to conduct all-source analysis so that we gain the benefit of the insights that we get from liaison, from clandestinely acquired sources, and so on. And the more the CIA is pushed into the paramilitary, the more military-like activities, I think the more trouble the CIA will get into.

What changes would you make to congressional oversight of the intelligence community?

You know, early on, after the congressional oversight committees came into existence after the Church and Pike committees in the '70s, when a lot of the atrocities that the CIA was involved in, quite frankly, were uncovered, And for the first 20 years or so, even longer, the members of the oversight committees, Republican and Democrat, would put their party affiliation outside the door when they conducted those oversight activities. Unfortunately, over the last 15 years or so, I see more and more partisanship going on inside of those committees. So if there's any way that there can be, you know, going back to a bipartisan an approach to intelligence, national security oversight, I would strongly recommend it, because right now the House Intelligence Committee is just fractured beyond any type of reasonable, you know, work that it can do. Fortunately, I think the Senate has stayed together, but there's still a lot of partisanship, and it needs to rid itself of that.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act set up courts to oversee decisions about wiretapping, right, and citizen loss of privacy. How would you change that system, if at all?

Well, when I was at CIA, I really didn't have to get involved in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA, applications, programs. This is something that the FBI was involved in, and because—

But you know a lot about it, right? I mean, how would you improve the system?

Well, I think that there have been a number of revelations as a result of the investigations that have gone on about the Russian investigation, revealing that there was not the type of rigor and the checking and double-checking of the information that goes into those FISA applications. And so without just totally overhauling the system, I think there can be a way to ensure better accuracy of information that goes into them. And when a FISA application may be approved one day and then 30 days or 60 days later it'll be re-upped. And I think it's incumbent on the Bureau, the ones that are pushing the FISA, to ensure that there is, you know, no new— any new information that's been acquired in that time or known needs to be incorporated into that FISA, as well as a review of the existing basis for that FISA needs to be scrutinized. So I just think greater rigor in ensuring that, again, accuracy prevails throughout the process.

Now, a major foreign power hacked into an OPM database in what I think 2015. Is it harder today to hack again into the OPM or to hack into Facebook? Which is better protected?

Well, that's a good question. I mean, I know OPM has done some things, but some US government systems are legacy systems, and trying to transform them and transition to new updated and less vulnerable systems takes time, effort, and lots of money. Facebook, you know, it has loads of money, but also I don't know how concerned it is about ensuring that there are no vulnerabilities in the system that can be exploited by actors, either domestic or foreign. So I think this is a challenge for the public, private, and not-for-profit sector, you know, in the coming decades. How are you going to ensure that your data is going to be protected while at the same time making sure that it's available so that you can leverage it the way it's designed to be used?

As you know, Bob Gates has argued that the Director of National Intelligence position has some problems. It creates a new bureaucracy. If you were to look at the flowchart of the post-9/11 US intelligence community, it seems to be a highly complex nightmare. Now, is that just the way things have to work? Should it actually be that way? Do we need to simplify? Are there too many positions? Are there too many chefs in the kitchen? What's your view?

Well, the intelligence community of 2020 is, you know, the legacy of many, many years, decades of intelligence agencies that have grown up and have evolved and have adapted to the new realities. And so, unfortunately, over time, there has not been as much of an effort to try to better integrate those agencies and authorities and capabilities, as well as to ensure that they are complementary as opposed to unnecessarily redundant. I disagree with Bob Gates. I, I do believe that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence needs to be looked at afresh after 16 years in existence, and some modifications need to be made. But as CIA Director, the last thing I wanted was to have to be CIA Director and the Director of the Intelligence Community writ large, 17 agencies. There's more than enough to keep the Director of CIA busy. However, I do think that that orchestration function of the Director of National Intelligence can be refined and modified to try to push the intelligence community in a direction that sheds some of those unfortunate legacy practices that are a drag on the system. And to better integrate capabilities to make the US intelligence community much more effective.

Is 17 intelligence agencies too many or too few?

Depends on who you ask.

I'm asking you.

Well, I think it's too many. There are some of those intelligence agencies that are very specific to organizations. For example, you have the— there's the Marine Intelligence, there's Navy Intelligence, you know, there's Army Intelligence, and some service their own organizations. And there's, you know, the national agencies such as NSA and CIA and the National Geospatial Agency, and I do think it would be worthwhile to see whether or not some of those individual intelligence agencies that are embedded, for example, in the State Department, INR, it's called Intelligence and Research, whether or not that intelligence requirement of the State Department can be better served served by a broader intelligence community effort. That's why I do think it's worthwhile to take a fresh look at the constellation that exists right now.

Very last question: What is it that you know about Donald Trump that the rest of us do not?

Well, if there is anything I know about him, I'm certainly not going to share it with you and your audience today. No, I think I still find it difficult to understand how so many Americans still believe what he says. I mean, his life is just one lie after another, unfortunately, and he has been masterful as far as capitalizing on this craving in the United States to believe in someone who is going to lead, you know, them, this country, sort of out of the problems that they see. But no, I think Donald Trump is pretty transparent as far as who he is and the types of things that he is, you know, holds dear. And what he holds dear is, you know, himself first and foremost. So I'm not going to share anything else that I might know or assume.

John Brennan, thank you very much. And again, John's new book is called Undaunted: My Fight Against America's Enemies at Home and Abroad. Thank you, John.

Thank you so much, Tyler. Appreciate it.