William Perry: Thank you very much Jane. I never realized that I was so in so many different things. I think Jane Harman had just arrived at this conclusion I cannot hold the job. I want to welcome all of you to the World Affairs Council 61st can you believe it 61st Annual Asilomar Conference. It started in 1946, the first year after the Second World War. I am delighted to see this crowd hall full tonight. This large attendance is a really a tribute to the World Affairs Council and to Jane Wales leadership of it. Year after year, we have attracted this great audience to this wonderful symposium. It's something about this conference that always struck me as the best and the brightest. We had the best and the brightest speakers for example. You will have a spectacular panel of experts and the policy makers. But it also refers to the audience, you bring your intelligence and your curiosity and your desire to come better informed on the big issues of the day. We also have a great group of young people here tonight. Students from the schools and universities in the bay area. And let's all give them round of applause of welcome. They are they are our future. Now I hope you all take your opportunity to continue at your exploration on what you hear in the conferences here and the seminars and the talks here - beyond the talks, to pursued them over lunch, over dinner, on walks, and receptions and ultimately pursue them after you leave this lovely session. Tonight, Saturday and Sunday morning we are going to discuss, "The War on Terror." It is a most appropriate topic, indeed I believe that terror represents the greatest danger that we all face today. Having said that, I must confess that I do not like the phrase "War on Terror" that I would much prefer it I would much prefer the term a long struggle with terrorists. War can mislead people into thinking that we can only deal with this threat through military actions. You will of course be hearing this weekend of many other dimensions of the struggle. Some of them at least is important, some being more important than military actions. We also might mislead people into thinking that after a few battles we would have a victory parade down Fifth Avenue and declare the war is over. Instead I believe we are going for a long struggle with no sharply defined end. We can also lead the public to expect and to accept a drastic suspension of the civil liberties, that's happened in World War II. On the contrary, I think we all must be vigilant, whatever we call it, whether we call it a war struggle, we must be vigilant to protect our civil liberties as we continue to carry out the struggle. One specific dimension of the terror threat does have some aspect of the war. And that is the nuclear terrors which is one of the items we are discussing this weekend. I have long belief that world would be far better, if the nuclear bomb had never been invented. But it has been and it cannot be disinvented, so we must learn how to deal with it. All during the cold war, for better or worse, we dealt with it through deterrence. That was to those of us who lived through it particularly clearer it was the most dangerous, the most dangerous period in history. I want to give you one personal anecdote to just remind you of how dangerous that period was. I was at the time the under secretary of defense since the late 70s and Lee and I were soundly sleeping, I got a telephone call at 3AM, the call was from the General of American Air Defense Command who informed me that his computers were showing 200 missiles on the way from Soviet Union to the United States. I immediately woke up - this was of course a false alarm but the general had only ten to fifteen minutes to determine that, and that emblazoned in my memory and you know what I will never forget, the ultimate danger of the cold war. Somehow we avoided a nuclear holocaust although I must tell you I think it was as much by luck as it was by good management. Now the cold war thankfully is over but we still have a deadly legacy in the cold war, we have - still have thousands of nuclear weapons installed now, and we still have cold war attitudes, both of these the left over from the cold war. In trying to deal with this danger, its dangerous combination of nuclear weapons and terrorists were doing many things one of the most important of something called Nunn-Lugar program. Indeed when I was secretary of defense this is my top priority, trying to deal with the danger of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War era through the Nunn-Lugar program. With that program we were able to during just my term in office, to dismantle about 10,000 nuclear weapons secured 1000s of others in the former Soviet Union and have three nations Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan go entirely non-nuclear and to put that in perspective at the time we started this program Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in the world. They had more nuclear weapons than England and France and China combined. The Nunn-Lugar program still continues but with far less emphasis and indeed there are powerful countervailing forces that actually increase our risk today, North Korea going nuclear Iran wanting to go nuclear and that whole cascade of proliferation that can follow from those actions so then I feel we will be maybe approaching a tipping point. Graham Allison in his book "Nuclear Terrorism" estimated a 50 percent probability of a nuclear bomb going off in one of our cities this decade from nuclear terrorists. I have no way of validating that numbers but I do not think Graham was being alarmist. Indeed if that happens this would not be of course the same nuclear holocaust we faced during the cold it still be the greatest catastrophe this country has ever had. It would be hundreds of thousands of deaths. Beyond that the political, the economic, and the social dislocation would absolutely change irrevocably our way of life. So we need a major change. We need somehow to change what we are doing to minimize the probability that would happen. With this in mind, three of my colleagues, George Schulz, Sam Nunn, and Henry Kissinger wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal just a few weeks ago in which we called for the total elimination of nuclear weapons and laid out a series of eight steps by which we might get to that elimination. Now the idea of eliminating nuclear weapons is not new. Many people have been calling for it for decades. What is new about this is first of all eight very concrete steps being laid out about which we will spend more time and effort, and the fact that it was being called for by four cold warriors who had helped build up the nuclear weapons during the cold war. I want to sum up my comment about nuclear weapons by quoting Elie Wiesel. He said "Peace, peace is not God's gift to his children. Peace is our gift to each other." That is if we want to deal with this terrible danger of nuclear weapons, we should not wait for divine intervention. We ourselves should take the actions necessary to deal with this. I hope you keep that in mind as you listen to the seminars and discussions you will hear in the next few days. Because when I say we ourselves, I mean myself and yourself collectively, need to start taking serious action to try to deal with these problems. Now we're going to hear many different talks and many different discussions on this whole range of problems. First we're going to hear a keynote address by congresswoman Jane Harman, followed by, immediately after Jane's talk there's going to be a plenary "Understanding the Post-9/11 World". In this session we will examine the international situation, American foreign policy, and the war on terror in the post 9/11 world. Tomorrow morning we're going to hear another keynote speaker, Larry Wilkerson, on Defending Against Terrorists: Why the Military Is a Valuable Instrument, but not "the" Instrument. The second plenary is Military Solutions-question mark. The third plenary is Political Solutions-question mark. We will also then go into the subject of social and economic solutions. Through all of these discussions we hope to reframe our ideas about the sources of terrorism, and identify the most effective strategies and policies to confront potential and real threats posed by terrorist activities. After the fourth plenary we will embark on two sets of break out sessions, Consequences of the War onTerror which will include a discussion on civil liberties and values, international legal norms, and the reputation of the united states abroad. Afterwards the second grouping of breakout sessions entitled Threats to National Security, will include talks on proliferation and nuclear threats, and off the radar, neglected U.S. interests around the world, and finally Homeland Security. On Sunday morning we will conclude our conference with the fifth and final plenary, New Strategic Priorities in the Long War. Now, we have an impressive array of speakers and I want to personally thank each of them for coming here and contributing your time and energies to our program tonight. But most importantly I want not only to thank but to introduce our keynote speaker tonight, Congresswoman Jane Harman. She has been congresswoman in California's 36th congressional district since 15 years ago with her congressional expertise in Homeland security, foreign affairs, and terrorism, she is the senior member of the homeland security committee. In 2006 congresswoman Harman's safe port act was passed to create a security strategy for America's ports and funding for long term security projects. Prior to her election to congress she served as deputy secretary to the cabinet in the Carter white house where I first got to know Jane and special counsel to the department of defense. Those are all objective facts. Now let me give you a few subjective factors about Jane Harman. I've known and worked with hundreds of congressmen and congresswomen. Many of them I must say have disappointed me. Some however are remarkable public servants. Some names you may recognize, Doug Bereuter who is here tonight, Sam Nunn, Dick Lugar, are all exemplary examples of public servants who serve all of us in service very well. I am happy to report that of all the state delegations I have been aware of, the California delegation I think is the most impressive. I am always proud to be associated with them. But of all the stars in the California delegation no star shines brighter than that of Congresswoman Jane Harman, and we are privileged to have her tonight as our speaker. Now please join me in welcoming my dear friend and our keynote speaker, Jane Harman.
Jane Harman: I think Sidney Harman would tell me to sit down. Just wanted to savor that introduction, as for you my friend, Jane Wales named all the former in present jobs she of course forgot to mention the most important thing about you which is that you had the wisdom to marry Lee. But she also did not mention it and it will become clear to anyone who has not dealt extensively with you. How much you have done with those jobs. Why it is Bill that any time I ask who was the most impressive secretary of defense in recent memory and I don't mean right this minute memory when it's not hard, your name comes up every single time there is not a security issue Will Perry hasn't doesn't touched and helped and he is a role model I am sure for many of you and I mentor to me I have served on every security committee in the United States Congress since 1992 my district in Los Angeles is the Aero Space Center in California and so it is seemed important to me to learn the issues and then too make certain that my voice was heard and I have had a little luck and a lot of good teachers along the way, and I I am very sorry that I am going to miss the panels tomorrow because some of the smartest people on these subjects are hearing this conference and that's a great tribute to the other Jane and we worked together in the Carter White House, she was five and I was eight there aren't many people named Jane any more is that is there is any other Jane in the room, see told you. And so we have a little thing going but I have watched with enormous pride as she has taken over this kind of organization and and built this behemoth I mean its spectacular and I am sure many of you are here really because you know, in my heart its also good that you are here because a fragile world needs more important people and that will be my last plug no I got one plug to follow. I created in the last congress something called Secure U.S. which is a Political Action Committee no I am not going to hit you up, but I will tell you why it matters and why it is a huge deal to meet that Will Perry and Graham Allison and Gary Heart and Richard Holbrooke and several others are are on my board of advisors. What this group does is to train challengers for congress and how to think about and talk about security issues. And why I want to do this was and is this organization still exists, because I think we need members of congress who know a lot more about this. The issues are enormously complex, military answer may work sometimes but often as we are seeing in Iraq, it doesn't work and we need people who come to congress much more knowledgeable and and many of the people who are still in congress are about this issue. So if we can built a single core of people knowledgeable about security I think people make wiser decisions on a bipartisan basis and that's my last plug. I do want to say something about Doug Bereuter. A new resident to California Doug and I served together on the House Intelligence Committee in the golden years and what I mean by that was years went the committee was operating on a bipartisan basis, which is sadly no longer true. Of all the times when we need intelligence that is not the partisan and not politicized it is right now and Douglas there and trying to help, I hope I trying to help too, and left congress with a very good sense of timing on on his own wheels because he thought there were other things to doing might but I do want to salute Doug and Louise and its great to have them as citizens of the great State of California. So let me depressed you okay ready. I am fresh from the stale debate in Washington about the Iraq supplemental bill, there is a danger that the debate misses the point entirely and that while we dither on Iraq policy, now Al Qaeda and its friends are successfully extending and adapting in ways that are long term global and enormously dangerous. And in retrospect we had warning about Sudan and East Africa in the 1990's, we had plenty of warnings about Afghanistan before 9/11 we knew Bin Laden was and we knew that he had a strong connection to the Taliban and Afghanistan. We also had warning signs about how Al Qaeda the organization he founded was evolving. I worried that we are missing those warning signs of again today in many parts of world. Two alarming development at least to me suggest that we need to focus on North Africa. First some of you may have read or note that there has been a string of attacks in North Africa recently in Algeria and in Morocco in recent weeks. Sidney and I were in morocco two weeks ago when the most recent attacks occurred, two suicide bombers blew themselves up outside US consulate in Casablanca. And there the latest you know, series of attacks this year mostly involving suicide bombings. Second, there is evidence that a radicalizing North Africa has become a fertile recruiting ground for global attacks. At New York, a university researcher found recently that one little town in Morocco called Tetuan is suicide bomber central is a place where in few block area, many of the suicide bombers who get to Iraq through Europe and four or I think four or five of the participants in the Madrid train bombings, lived they raise suicide bombers in Tetuan in Morocco. As a journalist and terrorism expert Douglas Farah says, the concept of violent Jihad is now part of the political landscape and growing in it's appeal across North Africa. This means our public diplomacy has failed to counter the the ideology of terrorism. It means our friends and allies in Europe and North Africa face immediate security risks and it has unsettling consequences for us as well. Bottom line at least to me, we need to realize that our effort to fight a 21st century foe and I do agree with Will, this is not a war on terror. This is a long struggle or an era of terror. The efforts to fight a 21st century foe with 20th century tactics - is failing. 21st century terrorism has new characteristics. First, sponsorship - local groups are taking up the Al Qaeda banner and that might be called the franchising of Al Qaeda. They are not dependent on central direction from Osama Bin Laden which means they are harder to track and to stop. Second, tactics they are willing wage unspectacular attacks into ally with drug traffickers and criminal networks which is how they move people and money into the Middle East, southern Europe and beyond. In the past experts argue that Al Qaeda's Islamic value has made it unwilling to make those alliances. Not any more. Third, location North Africa gives attackers easy access to Europe as we saw with the Madrid bombings, but also opens up yet another vast region of concern at a time when our military forces are severely stressed in the Middle East. It threatens Europe to the north, troubles states and emerging democracies to the south. Not to mention some of the North African countries that has been our long time allies like Morocco. What does this mean? It means that Al Qaeda is getting stronger. It is proven in Iraq and now in North Africa that the brand is portable. And its tactics such as using smaller operations that require only a few young people willing to lose their lives are getting harder to stop. This has hugely negative consequences for our national security. It means a wider pull of possible attacks and potential attackers, threatening our interests around the world and requiring more and more effort to stop and drive back. And it becomes clear all over the world that we have not been able to stop the threat threat, the spread of a dangerous and harmful ideology in to a region that had been largely free of them. And as that becomes clear, America's leadership and global image are eroded. And this erosion in US power directly affects our safety at home. Why haven't we been attacked here? Some say terrorists were waiting to exceed the lethality of 9/11. But if the US is perceived as weaker and bogged down in Iraq, which we surely are, and if terrorists are scaling down their attacks an attack or series of more simultaneous attacks here seems inevitable. Al Qaeda's muscle could easily be home grown. In Torrance, California in my congressional district for example four members of a prison based jihadist cell await charges on we trial on charges of conspiring to wage war against the US government through terrorism, killed members of the armed forces and murder foreign nationals. It was lucky that they were apprehended what when on was a series of gas station robberies and a very good well trained local police force, the Torrance PD this is not one of our larger cities in California, thought there must be something behind this attacks its got warrant and search their apartment and found maps, weapons, target plans for synagogues and military recruiting centers. One member of this group trained in hackers and all the others were American born and radicalized in Folsom state prison and we all know that these kinds of stories can be told in other countries especially in Britain. So what should be our plan of action? I believe it requires changing course despite our five and a half year War on Terror, Al Qaeda is growing and expanding his operations, we must - we think how we fight terrorism? What do we do it wrong? I think we are we are making mistakes in three areas. We are making tactical mistakes, like focusing on baby formula in airports. We are making strategic mistakes like alienating potential allies and partners with a black and white with us or against us approaching ignoring some regions of the world altogether, and finally we are making military mistakes, like failing to recognize the gravity of the situation in Afghanistan and failing to recognize the futility of continuing the combat mission in Iraq. It is time to change course. We must divise better strategies for supporting friends and allies in the region, not just to prevent then disrupt the plans of hardcore haters who cannot be rehabilitated and I believe they cannot be rehabilitated and they do need to be captured or killed in some circumstances. But to win the argument with the thousands of would be terrorists. We must refocus our own military and diplomatic efforts to the big pictures? How to shut off the pipelines of people, weapons, money and ideology that let Al Qaeda franchises flourish and threaten us? We must fight global terrorism with a global response and that means doing what is necessary to rebuild ties with allies and others who can help us shutdown the pipelines, counting the ideology and stop the attacks. And obvious blueprint was the Iraq Study Group report now over six months old, no doubt Will who was a valued member of the ten person bipartisan team that produce a set of unanimous recommendations we will discuss this report. His contribution one of his contributions was the section urging a change in military strategy from a combat mission to the training mission at the initial congressional briefing of the report the day of its issue. Sandra Day O'Connor who was another of the ten members pulled me aside and said Jane take this and move on, boy was she right I only wish that the past half year had being spend on implementing a range of thoughtful, careful bipartisan recommendations rather than rejecting the military recommendations. We got the surge instead and now a half hearted embrace of the need for a surge in diplomacy including the conversations with Syria and may be perhaps later with Iran. It is good news though that our secretary of states said was reported to say today that she had a meeting yesterday with a counterpart the Syrian Foreign Minister and she put it, we didn't lecture them and they didn't lecture us. It is good that there was a conversation and it is good that there is a neighbor's conference going on right now in the region to see what can be done to curb the violence in Iraq. But the mess in Iraq is not our only issue. The world changed on 9/11 excuse me and the US response fail to appreciate how difficult the challenges are, the new threats are real and one obviously place of risk is North Africa. Morocco is of our oldest friends, Morocco recognizes the new United states of America before the 19th century even began, and Morocco is surely the oldest friend we have in the Islamic world they are an important signals to the rest of the Islamic world that there isn't another way beyond fundamentalism and extremist violence to live and prosper and make some progress toward democratic government. Morocco has a democratically elected parliament, it is a monarchy but it has a democratically elected parliament, it has a quota of 30 women in that parliament and that is about 300 and in democratic elections held in 2002, 35 women were elected, I call that a good start, and they have new elections plan for September and more women are expected to win and actually you may know that in California are democratic delegation in congress is majority female, so I would only wish that from Morocco that's why Bill loves to California delegations so much so many women. Anyway Morocco is an example, such an example that we cannot afford to loose but we were beginning to loose it, in terms of geography North Africa and its deteriorating security situation are 1000s of miles away from North America. But in terms of the nature of 21st century threats they are cyber second away. So my message is really as this conference kicks off and as you learn a lot from people more qualified that I have to address these treats. My message is we have to rethink the way we are confronting a dangerous world, we have to repair enormous damage that has been done since 9/11 by mistakes that we have made but we have to recognize that the threats we confront are probably more difficult and dangerous that any treats that have ever been confronted in our past. The cold war was much easier, it was a rational linear foe. All you need is to do is learn Russian and and have a a mind set that was nuanced but nonetheless it was possible to get ones arms around who these people were and what their motivations might be. I don't think that's possible anymore, who these people are is almost anyone. What their mindset is is not rational on many cases if you prepared to take your life, I don't call that a rational act and where they are and what they will do is impossible to predict. It is important to restore and improve our intelligence capability probably that will be our best hind of what could come out us and obviously it is so much better to prevent and disrupt threats than to respond, but that may not always be possible. I think that taking on this challenge and being successful I don't know what winning means but being successful against it we will require every bit of talent and leadership we have and winning the argument with the next generation is the only way we can ultimately win. So I wish you good luck in this conference, I tell my sister Jane that she is obviously developing an army of informed people. Information is power and you are being lead this weekend by probably the brightest guy in California can field on these issues. I am grateful to be a member of congress I will keep working on these issues and I hope that this new core elected to congress in the future trained to think about security will bring more sophistication and better bipartisan policy to out government and we surely need it. Thank you very much.
