[00:00:00.17] PREET: Jeremy Bash, thanks for being on the show.

[00:00:03.05] JEREMY: Great to be here, Preet.

[00:00:04.15] PREET: So I’m feeling a little bit nostalgic, people may not realize that this whole podcasting I’m doing, started right here, in this office building, in Washington DC last September, when I interviewed, in this very space, my first guest, Leon Panetta, which you helped arrange. So thank you for that.

[00:00:21.11] JEREMY: My pleasure. He’s a great American, and it was a great way to kick off an amazing podcast.

[00:00:25.04] PREET: That is a double suck up in one sentence.

[00:00:27.22] JEREMY: (Laughs)

[00:00:27.12] PREET: Wow, that was really good.  You’ve learned a lot from that media training, Jeremy. I will say that I was much more nervous then, than now, no offense to you.

[00:00:35.06] JEREMY: None taken.

[00:00:35.27] PREET: But now I’ve got this podcasting thing down, pretty well. So thanks for joining us. So here’s the problem, we are taping this on Monday afternoon, and so many things have happened in the last week that are in your wheelhouse and your expertise, as someone who’s done so many things in the intelligence community. I don’t know what to talk about. Could you first save me the effort of having to describe your bio at length? And could you tell us all the different things you’ve done in the intel world?

[00:01:02.11] JEREMY: Sure, well you and I had a chance to work together when you were serving as US Attorney at the time. I was Chief of Staff to the Director of the CIA, Leon Panetta. And after I served there for a couple of years, I went with Secretary Panetta to the Pentagon where I served as Chief of Staff to the Department of Defense. My background really was, I was a lawyer, I worked in private practice for a while after 9/11. I went to Capitol Hill, Preet where I first met you, you were working for Senator Schumer, and I was serving as Chief Counsel for the House Intelligence Committee. And that was a time in the mid 2000s you may remember, when intel was all the rage. It was on the front pages it was about the IRAQ WMD intelligence failure, it was about the 9/11 commission recommendations, which came out in 2004, it was about enhanced interrogation techniques and about NSA surveillance, and about all the issues that kinda thrust intelligence onto the front pages, for almost the first time since probably, Iran-Contra.

[00:01:52.20] PREET: It’s back on the front pages again.

[00:01:53.22] JEREMY: It is. I’ll just say though, after I finished a federal clerkship after law school, I was gonna try my hand at practicing law but I decided to work on a presidential campaign, this was for Gore in 2000, and at the end of the campaign, even though I was a foreign policy advisor for the campaign, you may recall that the election night ended in kind of a tie, and so I went down to Florida for what was promised to be 3 days, but it ended up being 36 days and the recount in Florida went twice to the Supreme Court and, the very first lawsuit I ever filed in my own hands in the Leon County Courthouse was the first contest of a presidential election in US history. So after that Preet…

[00:02:29.16] PREET: How’d that go? Who won that one?

[00:02:31.22] JEREMY: (Laughs) We lost that election 5:4.

[00:02:34.10] PREET: Is that why you hung up your shoes as a practicing lawyer?

[00:02:37.04] JEREMY: Yeah I, I tried for a while but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to—it was only going to be downhill from there.

[00:02:41.14] PREET: Do you still have nightmares about hanging chads?

[00:02:42.27] JEREMY: We’ve moved on.

[00:02:44.00] PREET: Okay, really?

[00:02:44.21] JEREMY: Yeah.

[00:02:45.10] PREET: You seem a little tense about this topic.

[00:02:47.09] JEREMY: No I mean, think about all the different things that would have happened if the Supreme Court had decided that case in the other direction.

[00:02:55.27] PREET: Really? What would have happened? Are you gonna do that counterfactual for us?

[00:02:57.07] JEREMY: I don’t know. But, it’s…it’s sometimes interesting to contemplate.

[00:03:02.23] PREET: It is. So, more recent history. Lots of things have gone on. I’ll tick off a few of them, and let’s see what you want to talk about. There are too many to cover in the time we have, but over the past weekend, the Carter Page FISA affidavit was released, which was a bit of, you know, controversial wrangling back and forth between the Democrats and Republicans on the intel committee, and also just generally, in the news. We have President Trump in Helsinki, meeting with President Putin, alone, then looking like he wasn’t standing up for his intel agency, and credited Putin more. Then Donald Trump reversed himself and said, he meant to say, “wouldn’t” when he said “would.” Then he invited Putin to come to the United States in the fall. We have the business of Michael McFaul, the former ambassador to Russia, and a former podcast guest here, seeming like Trump was open to letting him be interrogated by our adversaries in Russia. [00:03:59.27] We also have the indictment by special counsel Mueller’s office of 12 military intelligence officers, who engage in all manner of hacking to interfere in the election in favor of Donald Trump. Which of those do we talk about among those very topics? Why don’t you pick one, and I’ll ask the questions.

[00:04:18.10] JEREMY: Well let’s start with Helsinki. Preet, we have a foreign policy vis a vis Russia, that makes no sense. We have a policy that in essence embraces Putin, that defers to a large degree on Putin’s worldview. You know, for many many years now, the basic standoff in policy, vis a vis Russia has been the United States works with Allies, works with the posse, works with our partners, principally with NATO, including alliances with the European Union. And Russia tries to break up those alliances. And so what we had in Helsinki was sort of I think the culmination of a month of foreign policy decision making which the Russian foreign policy objective of breaking up those alliances succeeded. Why do I say that? First obviously the month started with the G7 Summit in which President Trump on the way to that summit said, “I want Russia to be part of the G7.” [00:05:07.08] And then when of course, Trump left town, and left the meetings with Trudeau and others, he said, in essence, that the alliance was over. That’s something that Putin has long wanted to see. You also saw the NATO meeting, which the President went there, and although at the end he tried to declare that it was a success, that NATO was stronger, I think everybody who was following this knows well and understands that in fact the alliance has been severely weakened by the attitude that President Trump took. And then of course it was capped by the Helsinki summit, in which the President said, “We have a great relationship with Russia,” and when asked point-blank by Jonathan Lemire of the AP, you know, “Who do you believe, your own intelligence services or the Russian intelligence services?” He said, quote, “I have confidence in both sides.”

[00:05:50.00] PREET: So he’s with both sides.

[00:05:50.26] JEREMY: Exactly. It’s the moral equivalence between in effect the CIA and the KGB. Successful organizations, which to a CIA officer, to the intelligence community professional who’s out there, you know working hard to protect the country, risking his or her own life, risking the lives of his or her own assets in some very austere difficult corners of the world, that is about as grave as an insult as you can hurl at an intelligence professional.

[00:06:13.23] PREET: I agree with you on all of that, but do you have a theory as to why, the President keeps seeming to take Putin’s side over his own people? It doesn’t seem to be the way to endear himself to any constituency he has, unlike some other things he does when he blows the whistle, some people say, on the confederate flag, or on immigration or any of those kinds of things, he at least gets some benefit from his base. I don’t think his base is clamoring for him to be embracing Vladimir Putin, so why is he doing it?

[00:06:39.20] JEREMY: Well, I agree, it doesn’t make sense, and I started with this, that we have a foreign policy against Russia that makes no sense. I think one idea is that Trump is a genius of international relations, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Henry Kissinger in that he has figured out something about international relations that none of us believes or understands. Let’s just put that, to be generous, at 2 percent probability. OKay? Then I think there is a small chance worth keeping in the back of our mind, though I kinda discount it, that Vladimir Putin has some no kidding derogatory information on Donald Trump. Whatever is discussed in the dossier that, what happened on the midnight shift in Moscow. But I’ll discount that and put that at 2 percent.

[00:07:19.12] PREET: Are you doing that for argument’s sake? Or do you really think it’s at 2 percent?

[00:07:22.11] JEREMY: I’m doing that for argument’s sake because I don’t know, and I don’t know how to credit it, so I’m just gonna put it at a very low probability. In part ’cause the implications of it being true are obviously, so stark. But so, I think there’s a 96 percent chance that the reason why Donald Trump has taken this very pro-Russia position, pro-Putin position, is because of money. Because o f the long standing financial ties that have existed between the Trump organization and people around the Russian government. To include Russian oligarchs. And the Trump organization obviously, is largely a real estate enterprise, and then ultimately a branding enterprise, needed capital for expansion, and so they sought cheaper forms of capital more ready forms of capital and that was largely coming out of the old Soviet Union. And there was a concomitant need on the other side, on the Russian side, where they had to have a place for their capital, so the oligarchs who really took over the Russian state and were able to reap billions of dollars needed to have capital leave the country, [00:08:19.09] in part to ensure it wouldn’t be accessed by a new regime that would come to power and try to seize it, but in part because they needed in effect to launder it. And so there was kind of a marriage of interests, and you’ve seen quotes from people like Eric Trump in which he has said, “We got a lot of our money from Russia.”

[00:08:32.24] PREET: Do you think that these entanglements cause Trump to be favorable towards Putin, because A) it’s a thank you, for all these business opportunities he’s gotten, B) insurance policy against it being revealed that there was nefarious activity, as you suggest potential money laundering, or C) a down payment on having future relationships once he leaves the presidency, for him and his family. Or is it some combination of those?

[00:08:57.17] JEREMY: I weight A) and B) more, you know the word “leverage” I think is exactly the right word here because “leverage” has a financial connotation, in which Donald Trump is sort of overly leveraged and the person who holds the loans, or who call the loans, are people who in effect Putin control. And that gives them not just financial leverage, but not because there are now two leaders of the countries, actual political leverage over Donald Trump. SO I think Trump is worried that the revelations of these financial arrangements will be harmful to Donald Trump, and also I think he worries that no kidding, Putin’s people could actually call the loans, and that could wipe out Donald Trump and the Trump Organization financially. I think people need to remember that long before DOnald Trump was a politician, even long before he was a reality star, he was associated with sort of, wealth. His brand was the rich guy.

[00:09:48.23] PREET: Not wealth, but you know associated with wealth.

[00:09:50.26] JEREMY: Yes. Yes exactly.

[00:09:51.14] PREET: Especially because he in fact was wealthy.

[00:09:52.18] JEREMY: Well that’s the thing is he’s an actor. He acted as the wealthy man. He was sort of like the cartoon Richie Rich. He kind of, he wanted to be portrayed as the guy with the airplane and the gold plated chandelier, and the person who was sort of the quintessential billionaire. He thought that that would give him a lot of stature. And when you have someone who could actually wipe that out and actually reveal publicly that you are not as wealthy as you think, and actually take out some of your wealth, then you know you sort of live in fear of those people. I also think it’s possible that, just over time because there were so many relationships between Trump and Russians that it’s possible that their efforts to manipulate his thinking, you know whether that has had an effect over time, and through osmosis, he’s kind of adopted the Russian line. In effect, Preet, he is doing the work of the KGB. Now, that’s not to say that he works for the KGB, it’s not to say that he is kind of a witting asset of the KGB successful organizations, but in effect he is doing their bidding.

[00:10:51.24] PREET: So I want to talk about this meeting, that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump had, that was about 2 hours or more than 2 hours. Where there was nobody except interpreters for both sides, and there was no Chief of Staff, there was no press person, there was no staff member on the American side. Do you have a theory about what was discussed there? I know it’s speculation, but you know you seem to have theories, so….

[00:11:14.19] JEREMY: Yeah, so in my experience, and I think probably in your experience as well, having looked at activity where you’re trying to define the motive, what would cause someone to clear the room? I kind of harken back to the oval office event where Trump wanted to have a chat with Jim Comey…

[00:11:31.12] PREET: Right, you clear the room. And you’re gonna say something that you know maybe doesn’t put you in a good light.

[00:11:35.16] JEREMY: Right, where you don’t want any other witnesses or you don’t want any other people to hear. So I kind of go into the, this analysis and the assumption that there were things that Donald Trump wanted said that he didn’t think he wanted anyone else to hear. Now before I unpack that a little bit, what’s an alternative? An alternative is that he had such a large ego that he thought to himself, “I can do this better than anybody else, I don’t really need anybody. Pompeo and John Kelly….”

[00:12:02.04] PREET: I can charm Putin, I can look into his eyes like, prior presidents have said that they did, and I will bond with him and all will be well.

[00:12:08.28] JEREMY: Right exactly, and that I want to have a better relationship with him and the best way to do it is in a one-on-one setting. Now, in my experience, having kind of set up many meetings of senior government officials, bilateral meetings, there is a role for a kind of one-on-one private meeting. But let me tell you how I’ve seen it work. Occasionally you’ll have sort of the senior principal, you know the, either a president or a cabinet secretary, spend a little time one-on-one with the person, sometimes a little warm up get to know you, or you know, occasionally a foreign leader will want to raise something like, something very personal like, “I’m gonna be leaving this job in 6 months, and you know I want you to know that my successor is either A) a great guy, or B) someone you can’t trust.” I mean there’s some things you don’t want written down as part of the official record.

[00:12:54.20] PREET: And that’s perfectly normal and appropriate and not nefarious?

[00:12:57.13] JEREMY: Totally. And I”ve also seen for example sometimes where you set up a one-on-one conversation, as the two are walking through a touring of a facility, or touring a historical event, so they can kind of have a little personal time, and they can have conversation along the lines of you know, “What got you interested in this? What do you care about?” you know, “How’s your family? WHat’s motivating you?” But I’ve never seen, and I think it’s suspicious, where the main event in a senior bilateral meeting between two leaders, particularly one with an adversary nation, is a one-on-one meeting. And that’s why I come back to the issue which is what is it that Donald Trump didn’t want others to hear about? ANd so, you know I’m concerned, I have to say this is not based on anything other than just deep concern as a patriotic American who’s worked in national security, that part of the discussion was something along the following, and this I’m speculating here, which is….

[00:13:47.27] PREET: Are you gonna put this above 2 percent? ‘Cause you like the 2 percent…

[00:13:50.09] JEREMY: I’ll put this above 2 percent.

[00:13:52.00] PREET: Is that the kind of milk you drink?

[00:13:52.19] JEREMY: Yeah, it is. But I don’t know exactly how high to rate this. But it was something along the lines of the following, which is, “Vladimir, I want to have a better relationship with you, I’ve known you and the people around you for many many years. WE’ve done good business together, we’ve had good relationships. But there are a lot of forces in my country that don’t want me to have a good relationship with you, but I gotta tell you, you know because of all these issues about what happened during the election, that’s given my enemies kind of at home, and the fake news media, etcetera, reason to doubt me, but I don’t think they’re right about what they say you did, and I just want to ask you what do you have on me? Is there anything that you have on me that is, that I should know about?” And I know that sounds like kind of an abrupt screeching halt on an otherwise normal part of a conversation…

[00:14:34.27] PREET: Sounds kind of crazy, Jeremy, I will tell you.

[00:14:36.28] JEREMY: It does, but I’ve talked to several senior, former senior officials who, and I actually get this idea myself a few people who I trust, gave me this notion, that in essence, the way Trump would approach it wouldn’t be, you know, “I want to do these deals with you and here’s all the deals,” and kind of coming with a big agenda. It’s more an effort to show Putin that you have my attention, and I need to know and I need to understand what it is that I’m facing when I’m dealing with you in the future.

[00:15:08.05] PREET: That seems like a weak way to address that issue….

[00:15:11.02] JEREMY: It does.

[00:15:11.26] PREET: …of someone else having some leverage over you. And, will you further theorize that a smart guy like Putin would have said? I assume, in predicting what you might say, is that PUtin wants to keep that vague, but would want to and again, very hypothetical scenario that you have suggested, want Trump to be worried but be unspecific because that increases worry, doesn’t it?

[00:15:32.20] JEREMY: Yes, and I think, again theorizing, Putin would probably lean towards not addressing it. Trump has sort of a directness about him in case you’ve missed this…

[00:15:44.16] PREET: He does??

[00:15:44.20] JEREMY: (Laughs) Yes, and in some sense I think some people believe that that’s part of his appeal to a certain part of the electorate that, you know he doesn’t kind of sand off the edges of conversations, he doesn’t sort of engage in niceties, he’s pretty direct so….

[00:15:56.27] PREET: Not a lot of subtlety.

[00:15:57.23] JEREMY: Exactly so I can kind of see him kind of slamming in there and saying, you know, “I got this problem on my hands, I need you to help me solve it, but I can’t solve it until you tell me what you got on me.” Whereas Putin I see as the opposite, as having all the subtlety, and understanding all the diplomatic nuance and all the ways to manipulate a conversation, so I presume what he would say is, you know, “I assure you I can see no reason why I would ever bring up those things that happened in the past. And so let’s talk about the future because I’m sure that if our futures are bound together, there’ll be no reason to ever come address things from the past.”

[00:16:28.12] PREET: But Putin also, and this seems clear from some of the subsequent conversations and disclosures made by the Russian side, made some asks. Talked about questioning Bill Browder and Michael McFaul. DO you have concerns about other asks that were made that have not been revealed yet?

[00:16:42.28] JEREMY: Yeah so I mean let’s, let’s unpack exactly what the overall dynamic of the summit was, which was in essence, as far as we know, Trump went into the summit with no agenda other than to, quote, “Have a better relationship.” I mean that’s what he said publicly in his interviews. So we went in, President Trump went in with a very weak stance, it was basically just to have a meeting to have a meeting, a relationship and maybe to ask some of these questions that I referenced about what Putin might have on Trump. Whereas on the Russian side they clearly had an agenda, they clearly had specific things that they wanted to discuss. They wanted to discuss Syria, they wanted to discuss Crimea, they wanted to discuss the issue of the Magnitsky Act and sanctions on Russia. And in conjunction with Magnitsky Act, they clearly wanted to ask about the idea of undercutting the claims of Bill Browder and Michael McFaul and others. And the way Putin prepared for the meeting, by anticipating that Trump would raise the election [00:17:39.20] hacking issue, even though he probably did it in the most weak way possible, Putin was ready with his jiu jitsu move of posing a, quote, “cyber security investigation” on both sides which Trump described in the press conference as, quote, “an incredible offer.” When of course, you know, asking for a cyber security working group with the Russians is kind of like asking ISIS to do a working group on beheadings. It makes no sense from the perspective of US policy objectives to work with Russia on cyber security. So I do think that the whole Helsinki Summit was incredibly lopsided, Putin had a specific agenda, Trump did not. Putin had certain things he wanted to say were outcomes of the summit, Trump did not. And one of the main issues that I think will be discussed in the future also will be arms control. [00:18:31.21] So I think the Russians have a strong interest in extending some of the arms control agreements under a new start, and it’s unclear yet what the US policy position is on Nuclear weapons and arms control.

[00:18:43.09] PREET: I want to ask you another question, the last question on this meeting, the private meeting between the president of our country, and Vladimir Putin. Do you have any doubt given your deep experience in intel work, do you have any doubt, that the Russians at least, have both a recording and a transcript of that meeting?

[00:18:58.08] JEREMY: I do have some doubt. I don’t know for certain whether they would have the ability to or the need to record it.

[00:19:07.15] PREET: Couldn’t their interpreter or Putin himself just have….

[00:19:10.28] JEREMY: Worn a wire?

[00:19:12.03] PREET: Worn a wire, yeah. I’m guessing they weren’t being checked.

[00:19:14.01] JEREMY: Yes, I suppose that that’s a possibility, but, my mind would have to go to a very dark place in order to conclude that they would record in order to hold that over DOnald Trump in the future, and I’m just…

[00:19:25.06] PREET: You’re not prepared to go that dark? With Vladimir Putin?

[00:19:27.06] JEREMY: I’m not ready to go that dark. I’m not ready to go that dark just yet. But….

[00:19:31.24] PREET: They go polonium, but they don’t go recording?

[00:19:33.14] JEREMY: (Laughs) I think, it’s possible, Preet, but…

[00:19:36.23] PREET: But, you’d put it over 2 percent.

[00:19:37.04] JEREMY: Around 2 percent.

[00:19:38.13] PREET: Alright. I’ll put it at 96 percent.

[00:19:39.01] JEREMY: Okay (laughs).

[00:19:41.00] PREET: Do you think it’s possible some other nation’s intelligence agency sought to and succeeded in recording that conversation?

[00:19:47.15] JEREMY: I think several nations’ intelligence agencies sought to understand what happened in the meeting and they could have done it through technical means, they could have done it through human sources, they could have done it through a wide variety of means. I think for example, many intelligence agencies probably have Donald Trump’s personal phone tapped. And I think to the extent that he is communicating with anybody about what happened during the meeting on his phone, that that’s in the hands of foreign intelligence services.

[00:20:14.26] PREET: That’s comforting. So what’s the likelihood then—we’re dealing with lots of likelihoods on the show, I doubt you have this many predictions—what’s the likelihood that we will come to understand pretty thoroughly or not, what happened in that meeting, ultimately?

[00:20:26.21] JEREMY: I think it’s, I think it’s a low likelihood honestly, I think actually Trump doesn’t retain a lot of information and detail about policy, and I think it’s possible that Putin was talking in a lot of specificity about ideas and concepts and Trump was just sort of thinking that this was a bonding time. I’m not even sure, I know this sounds weird in saying, I’m not even sure that Donald Trump knows what happened in that meeting…

[00:20:51.02] PREET: (Laughs)

[00:20:51.09] JEREMY:…for the most part.

[00:20:52.18] PREET: I mean, he was there.

[00:20:54.08] JEREMY: I know but, but I think….I think he wanted to be able to signal to Vladimir Putin you know, we’re gonna work together, and we’re gonna be pals.

[00:21:04.13] PREET: Yeah for Trump it’s often, it’s often it’s about signaling, and it’s about impressionism, and the flavor and sentiment, as opposed to particular hard, concrete things. Even though he’s supposed to be the master of the deal it seems to be all wrapped up in an aura of deal making, as opposed to actual deal terms.

[00:21:21.25] JEREMY: That’s right, and I would actually go even one step further which is, when Trump describes what’s gonna happen at a summit he often says, “I’m gonna do well,” or, “I did well,” as if he was the contestant in the Miss Universe Pageant. Strutting around and being observed and being judged as opposed to really any substance of diplomacy.

[00:21:42.03] PREET: I was talking to someone smart, like you, formally in the intelligence community recently, and the question we were discussing, I want to put the question to you, is: how do you explain to an average person in the United States, who has to deal with you know lower wages, and healthcare, and education burdens, and all sorts of thing that you deal with as a busy working person in America, why they should care about Vladimir Putin and what he does? I mean in the old days, during the Cold War, a lot of this back and forth and the antagonism, was understood to be based on the fact that the Russians in the Soviet Union was really trying to export communism to the United States, and undermine our way of life in that very particular way. No capitalism, communism, no democracy, communism. That’s not part of the rhetoric in the adversarial nature, of relations between our countries now, so in the absence of that, how do you explain in the clearest way that you can, why they should be concerned?

[00:22:37.25] JEREMY: I think all Americans need to trust their government and need to know that their government is being candid and forthright and truthful about their objectives. I also think the first role of government is to protect the country. So I think in both of those realms, taking a tough line on Russia is in the interest of all the American people. Now, the problem that we have with Trump’s approach towards Russia is two fold: number one is it’s clear he’s not being forthright and candid about the true nature of the relationship, that the Trump organization is having with the Russian federation. And also he’s doing things to advance American foreign policy objectives that are manifestly against our interests, like undermining NATO. Now to get back to your question, Preet, about why should an American care, [00:23:28.21] I think all American families do care whether or not America is going to be a leader in the world, gonna be strong, gonna have strong alliances, gonna protect our interests, whether it’s because it’s to protect our economic interests around the world, or to protect our national security interests, and they also want to know that the attributes of the highest office of the land are those of truth and justice and they don’t’ want to have a secret agenda, a secret deal emanating from the oval office. And you know overall I think my concern about the Helsinki Summit, and the follow on summit, is that it’s clear that Donald Trump has entered into a secret deal with Vladimir Putin. A secret deal to reshape American foreign policy in the image of Putin and Russia’s theories about international relations.

[00:24:19.21] PREET: So, President Trump has this meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, and then, I think two days later it becomes know that he’s invited Putin to another meeting in DC, and I believe last week you were at a conference, were you not?

[00:24:33.15] JEREMY: Yes.

[00:24:34.01] PREET: Which conference was that?

[00:24:34.28] JEREMY: That was the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

[00:24:37.09] PREET: And at the Aspen Security Conference, there is a now much watched interview, that was occurring in real time, with Andrea Mitchell and the head of the DNI, Dan Coats, were you present for that?

[00:24:49.11] JEREMY: Yeah.

[00:24:49.26] PREET: Okay so, what happened and what was your reaction?

[00:24:51.21] JEREMY: So, Andrea Mitchell was interviewing Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, of course Dan Coats is a former Republican senator from Indiana, has a long record of public service, and was appointed by President Trump and confirmed by the senate as DNI….

[00:25:05.13] PREET: DNI is what?

[00:25:05.23] JEREMY: Director of National Intelligence. OVerseeing the 16 intelligence agencies and the office of the director of National Intelligence. And Dan Coats was being interviewed by Andrea Mitchell, and I was sitting there, Preet, in the room in the audience about 25 feet in front of the stage, so just looking directly at Coats and Andrea Mitchell.

[00:25:22.12] PREET: You couldn’t get a front row seat?

[00:25:24.04] JEREMY: I couldn’t, no. I wasn’t a heavy hitter enough of a sponsor. But I will tell you that, Coats was not looking for a way to stick it to Donald Trump. In fact, the first question Andrea asked him was, “Director Coats, earlier in the week you put out a statement clarifying that in fact the intelligence assessment that said that Putin directed an interference campaign to benefit Donald Trump, that the intelligence community stood by that assessment. Why did you do that?” And Dan Coats, the first line he said was, “I was doing my job.” And he basically in a very humble, straightforward, candid, and not, not a way full of bullsheeto, was basically saying, “The job of the intelligence professional, without fear or favor, and oftentimes having to speak truth to power, partisan consequences, you know be damned, is to call it like we see it. Is to say, if Russia directed an attack on our country, and did it to favor Donald Trump, we have to say that. [00:26:23.14] And most often we say it in private channels, most often we say it in our classified intelligence assessments, but when those intelligence assessments have been made public, and there has been great public discourse about it, and someone is trying to twist that intelligence assessment for their own political gain, we do view it as a responsibility of the intelligence leadership of our country to stand up and say, ‘no.’ And to stand up for the men and women in the intelligence community.”

[00:26:46.17] PREET: So he started good.

[00:26:47.09] JEREMY: He started very well and then he said, he said, “But Andrea, I think it’s time now to move on.” And he basically said, “I don’t really want to dwell on this, I don’t want the whole interview to be about this, because I did my job, let’s move on.”

[00:26:59.13] PREET: But then there was breaking news.

[00:27:00.16] JEREMY: Yes so, for the rest of the interview I would say Dan Coats was trying to focus on other issues, he was not trying to amp up the pressure on Trump. He was not as some people have said, trying to get fired or trying to stick it to him. It was a very, in my view, fair, respectful way to handle a very delicate and dicey situation. Well, at some point later in the interview, about 40 minutes in, Haley Talbot who is the producer for ANdrea Mitchell Reports, scribbled a note on an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper and tried to step over people in the audience and wander her way up to the right side of the stage, and she walked up to the stage while Coats was giving an answer about whatever it may have been, and handed it to Andrea, and Andrea said, “We have breaking news.” And then now everyone has seen the tape of this moment, you know, that on Twitter we have learned that President Trump has invited Vladimir Putin to Washington. And at first I think actually Coats didn’t really even hear what she was saying ’cause there was such an audible gasp in the room, and by the time she finished the description [00:27:59.02] of what the tweet said, you know people were muttering among themselves, and so he kind of amped it up a little and said, “Say that again?”

[00:28:04.27] PREET: Say that again? Yeah.

[00:28:05.28] JEREMY: He said, “Say that again?” And then he said, “Well that’s gonna be special.”

[00:28:08.29] PREET: Which sounded like he was being critical of it, A) because maybe it’s not a good idea and B) maybe he should have known about it.

[00:28:15.08] JEREMY: Right. Exactly. And so I don’t think he was attempting to be critical, and I certainly don’t think he was trying to be disrespectful in any way, but here’s the broader point, which is inviting a Russian leader to Washington for a second summit, especially so soon after the first one, is a fairly significant foreign policy decision. YOu would think that there would be a process inside the government to recommend to the president whether he do that or not. And certainly at that table of principals, cabinet secretaries, senior officials from all the departments and agencies who have an equity there, you would have the director of National Intelligence. And so what that moment revealed was that Director Coats not only wasn’t debriefed about what had happened in Helsinki, but that he was not consulted at all, not just about this particular invitation, but about what to do generally speaking with regards to follow on the summit. [00:29:06.24] And so we have sort of a president who is conducting foreign policy without the benefit of his professionals, certainly without the benefit of the intelligence community, and therefore without the benefit of facts. That’s incredibly dangerous. And moreover, Preet, I just wanna say that, the Director of National Intelligence is the one person in our government, from whom no secrets are kept. And so if the President is conducting secret diplomacy with Vladimir Putin and he doesn’t even tell his own director of National Intelligence, by definition, this is a secret deal that Donald Trump has cut with Vladimir Putin.

[00:29:40.01] PREET: So, that’s a powerful response, and a powerful analysis, but what does it say to you, that people like Dan Coats it appears and other folks who are not in the loop, who were supposed to be in the loop, who were supposed to provide recommendations and guidance and counsel, are being ignored? What does it tell you that they remain in government? That they don’t resign?

[00:30:01.28] JEREMY: This question about the role of senior people inside the Trump administration and whether or not they ought to hang in there, stay in their jobs, whether or not they ought to resign, has been one that’s been asked really since the beginning of the administration, from the very first moments that patriots like Jim Mattis, the Secretary of Defense, and even people like John Kelly who I knew very well when he was a Marine Four Star, when they joined the administration. And here’s my view, Preet, which is that if you look at General Joe Dunford, a four star marine who’s the chairman of the joint chiefs, if you look at Jim Mattis, who is a retired Marine Four Star who’s now Secretary of Defense, if you look at John Kelly, retired Marine Four Star who’s now Chief of Staff at the White House, they have I think an understanding among themselves, that their job is to protect the country from the gravest national security threats facing our nation. [00:30:55.19] And they believe, though they probably wouldn’t ever say it publicly, they believe that one of the gravest national security threats facing our country is a president who is not informed, and who does not have good instincts on national security, and who may not always be acting in a manner that’s in the best interest of our nation. And so in essence, they have agreed among themselves, and others as well, that the best highest use of their time, even though it may come at a cost of their personal reputations, is to stay in government and to prevent the president from doing grave harm to our country.

[00:31:30.04] PREET: So they’re there, I mean that’s an extraordinary thing to say. They’re there to protect America from the elected president.

[00:31:36.01] JEREMY: From decisions of the elected president that would harm our country.

[00:31:41.11] PREET: One thing that I mentioned in the list of items to discuss with you, we can’t get to all of it, was the news last week that the special counsel, Bob Mueller, unsealed an indictment against 12 military intelligence officials in Russia, accusing them with great, in great detail and specificity, of various crimes against the United States. Including hacking the DNC, the D triple C, and various other folks. Do you have an immediate reaction to that?

[00:32:08.25] JEREMY: Yeah, I thought it was expected in the sense that the earlier Mueller indictment from earlier this year focused on the internet research agency and those individuals in the Russian federation who had been involved in the social media campaign. Which is also likewise very detailed, very troubling, I mean, people need to read these indictments. For example in the earlier Mueller indictment there was this line about the Russians organizing a Coal Miners for Trump rally in Pennsylvania. I mean just think about that for a second, this wasn’t just things on Facebook, there were actual physical rallies that were organized by Russian agents. So that’s in the earlier Mueller indictment. And then likewise with the new indictment of 12 GRU military intelligence officials, it helped round out the story because it number one, it made clear that the officials who were responsible for this activity were Russian government officials. [00:32:57.29] Second is that they were leadership of the Russian intelligence agency that’s associated with the hacking operation. And third there was some phenomenal detail in the indictment. For example, the fact that on July 27th, 2016, Donald Trump stood up after there had been the hacking of the DNC and he said, “Russia if you’re listening, please hack into Hillary Clinton’s personal email server,” and then as the indictment lays out, “After hours, for the first time,” those are words from the indictment. “After hours, for the first time,” the Russian GRU began a hacking operation of Hillary Clinton’s personal email domain. Of course you could think that that’s a total coincidence, or it’s clear that there is a actual connection between Donald Trump’s call to do this and the action or reaction from the Russian government.

[00:33:43.07] PREET: Likely a coincidence? Less than 2 percent.

[00:33:45.08] JEREMY: Less than 2 percent, yes.

[00:33:46.24] PREET: But there’s a couple things going on here, you know, as you say I think of the upset. You and I got to know each other even better and met and spoke on a regular basis as I discussed with Leon Panetta as well, in 2010 we were taking down the 10 Russian spy rings, in New York, and we had a detailed complaint, criminal complaint, and so one purpose of a complaint or an indictment is to lay out the allegations sufficient for a grand jury to find, you know, probable cause. And also to give some notice that’s required by law to the people you’re prosecuting and make sure you cite to all the proper statutory provisions. But another purpose, sometimes in these contexts, is to send a message to the adversary, and that was part of what was going on in 2010, not the most important thing but a part of it, to what extent do you think in this charging document, this indictment against the 12 GRU people, was there a message being sent to Russian intelligence, and if so what was that message?

[00:34:39.15] JEREMY: I mean the message is that we have you penetrated, that we have been able to collect on your tactics, techniques, and procedures, that we know exactly what you did two summers ago, and that we are gonna lay out in precise detail for all the world to see the way you attack American democracy and the way you attack other democracies. And by the way I should say I don’t like to use the word “meddling,” because meddling is something that’s annoying, something your mother-in-law does, it’s something an…

[00:35:07.19] PREET: My mother-in-law never, meddles.

[00:35:10.28] JEREMY: The right word is, “attack.” Russia attacked our country, they didn’t meddle in anything. But you reference, Preet, the 2010 roll up of the Russian illegals, that you were, when you were serving as US Attorney were intimately involved with. And you and I did work quite a bit on that matter that was dubbed, “Ghost Stories” by the FBI, that was the codename for that operation. A couple of interesting kind of contemporary points about that: first, when the Russian intelligence services went to assassinate Skripal, on the streets of the UK, a lot of people don’t realize but Skripal was one of the individuals…

[00:35:46.22] PREET: Who was traded.

[00:35:47.03] JEREMY: …who we got free, trading him for the Russian illegals that we arrested inside the United States. And so, you know, one of the reasons why that action by the Russian federation was so morally offensive, almost above all else, to the US intelligence community and it’s so recent, is because it was done in effect, in a fair trade, and to go after someone who they traded away really kind of violates every single code. There truly is no honor among thieves. But second is that the individual who, early in his career, directed operations for the illegals program, he was a Line N officer in the KGB supporting Russian illegal programs, globally, was Vladimir Putin. That was his job in the KGB. So for him these illegal programs were very significant. And third very interestingly is who was the individual who ran the Ghost Stories investigation? Who knows the Russia file better than most? [00:36:41.05] Who’s the person who played a central role in wrapping up the Russian illegal activities and really sticking it to Vladimir Putin at the time? Bob Mueller.

[00:36:50.11] PREET: All true.

[00:36:51.02] JEREMY: Mhmm.

[00:36:51.29] PREET: When an indictment with this specificity is unsealed, further of what you were saying a second ago, and folks in Russia, in the intelligence agencies and specifically the GRU see how much we have, and must know that there’s even more we have that we didn’t even put in and we didn’t declassify, people get fired. What’s the reaction there?

[00:37:14.07] JEREMY: There may be some retribution inside the Russian federation but I’ll tell you, after the Russian illegals were wrapped up in 2010, Mikhail Fradkov, who was the director of the SVR, the successor to the KGB, he did not get fired. And I gotta believe…

[00:37:28.14] PREET: Wasn’t that surprising? I mean….

[00:37:29.07] JEREMY: It was surprising, it was. And I got to believe, Preet, that there was a lot of spin and just kinda cover up inside the Russian federation. Everyone’s blaming somebody else and making excuses, and there’s no real reckoning. There’s no real accountability, inside their intelligence services, which is obviously something that makes them incredibly weak.

[00:37:48.27] PREET: So, one of the reasons I’m happy to have you here, is that there’s lots of people in the country asking a lot of questions about how intelligence works, but sometimes we don’t go to basics. So let me ask you some questions about classified information. That has been in the news a lot for a long time, with respect to Hillary Clinton and other folks. How many levels of classification are there?

[00:38:08.00] JEREMY: Well, there are three main categories of classified information. There’s secret information, there’s top secret information, and then there’s what’s called, “SCI” or sensitive compartmented information, the highest level of classification.

[00:38:21.01] PREET: And is most classified information, in one of those categories?

[00:38:25.04] JEREMY: Well the vast majority of the US government’s information that’s classified is of course the lowest level at secret. But when you’re talking about the intelligence community, you’re talking about CIA or you’re talking about NSA, most all of that information is at actually the highest level, SCI.

[00:38:40.26] PREET: And even with an SCI, there are particular programs that are only known to certain folks on a need to know basis?

[00:38:48.25] JEREMY: That’s right.

[00:38:49.03] PREET: So just because you have even that clearance, SCI, which you know I used to have, it doesn’t mean you have access to everything.

[00:38:55.25] JEREMY: That’s right. The “C” in SCI is compartmented, it means there are various compartments within that category. One compartment may be information relating to signals intelligence, one compartment may be information related to covert action, one compartment may be related to human intelligence collection, and depending on your job, you have to have both access to those compartments and a need to know that information in order to be granted that clearance, that access.

[00:39:20.00] PREET: Yeah I mean, ’cause I don’t think this is clear to people, ’cause it gets elided a lot. When I was US Attorney, lots of people had secret, top secret, and SCI, but there were sometimes occasions where you only had two people in the entire office who had details about something, I’m sure the same was true in the CIA and at the DOD.

[00:39:36.19] JEREMY: That’s right, and when you’re talking about the intelligence community doing work against Russia for example, much of the work there is gonna be held in a very strict compartment, within SCI, because of course some of the information derived could be from the most sensitive sources, including potentially human sources, and so you want to limit the number of people who know about that obviously, if that secret’s out there. We’ve had penetrations by the Russian intelligence services of our own intelligence community.  Like people like, Ames and Hanson and others. When those sources become known, those sources can actually have their lives endangered and become killed. I mean Tolkachev, who was one of the most productive spies for the United States government, he was a Soviet scientist, you know he was outed by Ames, and ultimately he was killed.

[00:40:22.16] PREET: How does something come to be classified?

[00:40:24.11] JEREMY: So, the basic practice of an intelligence professional is that whenever they generate work product, a cable, or an email, or even believe it or not, “Hey do you guys want to go to lunch?” an email to office colleagues, that actually will probably have a classification on it.

[00:40:38.10] PREET: Presumptively.

[00:40:39.10] JEREMY: Yep, it does. And in fact when you generate emails inside the intelligence community, you have, there’s like kind of a drop down menu where you have to select which classification it is, and I think most people set their default to top secret.

[00:40:50.09] PREET: Right. Does that not result in over classification?

[00:40:54.02] JEREMY: This is one of the downsides of our system is that there is huge punishment for not classifying something that should be classified, or treating something as unclassified that is classified, but there’s zero punishment if you over classify things. And over classification has its own costs, there are actually literally costs of handling classified information, computer systems, and security clearances and polygraphs, and all the rest. But there’s also cost in that if everything is classified nothing is classified, meaning if you treat everything as super secret, then in effect, the specialness of a secret, gets watered down, and it’s not treated with enough sensitivity and care as it needs to be.

[00:41:30.10] PREET: So with respect to the criminal indictment against the 12 GRU Russian agents, there’s a lot of stuff in that, that’s now public. But at once upon a time, you believe was classified. Right? So, how does that process work? I mean we dealt with it all the time, but explain quickly how it can be that something is highly classified, then makes its way not only you know to a lower level of classification, but in fact be completely publicly disseminated document?

[00:41:55.19] JEREMY: Yeah, so for any classified information that needs to be in a sense declassified, revealed publicly, for governmental purpose, for example for a criminal indictment, there’s a process that goes on, and it’s up to the Justice Department, principally the national security division, that would bring the stakeholders, people who own that classified information around the table, and say, “Look, you know special counsel wants to go public with this information,” and there’s probably a dialogue and they probably get redlined….

[00:42:21.23] PREET: Sometimes it’s a fight.

[00:42:22.16] JEREMY: Yeah sometimes it’s a knife fight and they probably you know, they’re redlining and exchanging red lines of documents back and forth and finally, ultimately the leadership of say, CIA or NSA, has to be comfortable with the fact that DOJ is going to be revealing publicly this information. And so, what does that tell us about what happened here? It tells us that, the intelligence community, felt strong enough about the importance of calling out publicly what the GRU had done, that they were willing to risk their own sources and methods to some extent, and allowing Bob Mueller to state that publicly. And you could view it through one lense of, sort of the more political lense which is, they went off the Trump reservation and they decided to kind of stick it to Donald Trump and they did it notwithstanding the fact that it would harm him politically. But I think honestly, intelligence community leadership don’t view it through that lense, they view it as sort of what’s best for the country, and what’s the right thing to do? And they thought and they believed, and I think this is the right decision, that in order to protect the national security [00:43:21.16] interests of the United States on a non political, non partisan basis, this information had to be included in a bonafide, criminal indictment.

[00:43:30.03] PREET: Yeah, and you and I both know that generally speaking, the intelligence community and whatever particular intelligence agency owns the information, does not part with it lightly.

[00:43:39.23] JEREMY: Absolutely.

[00:43:40.04] PREET: If there had been cases, you know this case was one in which they thought it was important for the reasons you suggest, but there have been other cases that you and I both know about, where literally, intelligence officials have been prepared to let a bad guy go free, rather than reveal methods of sources. That makes us kind of annoyed when that happens, but it’s understandable.

[00:43:57.17] JEREMY: No that’s right, in fact defendants in criminal cases who’ve been accused of say espionage, sometimes use what’s called grey mail, in which they basically say to the government, “If you put me on trial, I’m gonna reveal all these secrets.” It’s not exactly blackmail but it’s a form of blackmail, and the government would rather, as you noted, not prosecute somebody because they don’t want their secrets to be revealed publicly.

[00:44:17.03] PREET: I want to ask about spy recruitment. How does that work? When the Russians want to recruit someone to spy on their behalf, does that happen in a day? Does it happen in a month? Is it a long term thing? What goes into that?

[00:44:29.17] JEREMY: Well human intelligence collection, whether it’s being done by the United States or by other countries, is some of the hardest work done by any government, and it’s some of the most difficult and sensitive work, again I was not an operations officers at the CIA but I worked alongside many. I think they would say that this is, this is not the work done in a day, a week, or even sometimes a year. That this is a long term effort to spot, assess, recruit, and handle individuals who have access to information that you need for your national security. So for example, if the United States were undertaking this activity, we would try to analyze who in an adversary nation, or let’s just take a terrorist organization as an example, who number one actually has access to the information that we want.

[00:45:15.05] PREET: Right, it has to be useful.

[00:45:16.11] JEREMY: Right, it has to be useful. What would motivate that person to work with us? And…

[00:45:21.23] PREET: Motivate that person to basically, to engage in treason.

[00:45:24.14] JEREMY: Yeah exactly to engage in treason, risk their own life, and also do something that, you know here to for their own clan or own society has deemed immoral, and you know sometimes money’s a motivation, sometimes they actually have lost faith in their organization and they actually believe in what we’re doing. Sometimes they have some other aspect of their life where they are looking for an exit and they you know want to be kind of go in to, in effect a witness protection program, and work with us because they think we can protect them.

[00:45:50.18] PREET: Sometimes blackmail too?

[00:45:52.03] JEREMY: I would say that in general the United States does not use that tactic, but other countries might.

[00:45:56.15] PREET: Right, so in other words the Russians might, ’cause we’re the people who keep using a lot of compromise, the idea being that if they have embarrassing information about someone, that might be the lever that you can press to get that person to turn to your side.

[00:46:09.26] JEREMY: Yes, that’s right. And then once, once you obviously have developed a relationship, in effect a contract with that individual, where they’re gonna work for you, you know you’re the CIA and that human source is gonna work for you, then the real challenge is how do you handle that person, meet with them, communicate with that person, if the counter intelligence service of the other country is keeping close tabs on them?

[00:46:34.02] PREET: And what do you think is going on with Carter Page?

[00:46:36.02] JEREMY: I don’t know exactly. The documents that were released about Carter Page I think in some important ways undercut the claims that were made by Devin Nunes and other Republicans on Capitol Hill that somehow, the FISA application, the application to listen to his communications, was unwarranted, it was weak. No, in fact what we’ve learned is that it was very lengthy, very substantive, it was not predicated on the Steele dossier, and that it was signed off on multiple times by at least four judges, who were appointed by a Republican president. So this was no partisan hit job on Carter Page, and by the way, the Carter Page issue and the FISA on Carter Page was an important counterintelligence investigation in itself, but even if you think that Carter Page should not have been surveilled by the US government, even if you somehow conclude that, and four judges concluded that he should be surveilled, [00:47:26.09] that doesn’t mean that the intelligence community’s assessment of Vladimir Putin attacked the United States in order to benefit Donald Trump, that somehow that assessment is undermined.

[00:47:37.17] PREET: Have you ever been asset of the Russian federation?

[00:47:39.20] JEREMY: No.

[00:47:40.09] PREET: Okay. On that note, Jeremy Bash, (laughs) thanks. I hope you’re not offended by that question.

[00:47:44.28] JEREMY: I’m not at all.

[00:47:45.19] PREET: I just had to ask you.

[00:47:46.03] JEREMY: Absolutely, it’s a fair question.

[00:47:47.23] PREET: But you denied it, and so, okay. You strenuously denied it. Jeremy Bash, thank you so much for making the time.

[00:47:52.06] JEREMY: Thanks, Preet.