The U.S. House Intelligence Committee - with Ranking Member Congressman Jim Himes

Andrew Hammond: Welcome to "SpyCast," the official podcast of the International Spy Museum. I'm your host, Dr. Andrew Hammond, the museum's historian and curator. Every week we explore some aspect of the past, present, or future of intelligence and espionage. If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving us a five star review so other listeners can find us. It really does make a difference. Coming up next on "SpyCast."

Jim Himes: So I spent a lot of time thinking about what's the bullet we don't see. It's the bullet that you don't see that kills you. And so that's hard. Right? That's really, really hard. [ Music ]

Andrew Hammond: This week I was joined by United States congressman Jim Himes. He serves Connecticut's fourth district in the house of representatives and is the ranking member of the house permanent select committee on intelligence. You may remember his voice from a recent panel we held at the International Spy Museum where he was joined on stage by former CIA director Leon Panetta. We had such a great conversation I was eager to invite him back to Spy to join me on the podcast to discuss the role of the house permanent select committee on intelligence also known as HPSCI. In this week's episode you'll learn about the house permanent select committee on intelligence, what it is, how it operates, the importance of bipartisan collaboration. In particular on this committee insights from congressman Himes on transparency and accountability in intelligence and congressman Himes' personal experience during 9/11, its impact on his career, and the way that he thinks about intelligence. The original podcast on intelligence since 2006, we are "SpyCast." Now sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. Well, thanks for joining me, Congressman Himes. It's a real pleasure to speak to you.

Jim Himes: Great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Andrew Hammond: You bet. Before we get going on the more substantive questions on intelligence I'm just conscious that today is September the 12th and I know that 9/11 is a big part of your story. So I just wondered if you could very briefly tell us your experience. I used to work at the 9/11 museum so I'm also personally interested in your story. So yeah. Sorry.

Jim Himes: Yeah. Thanks for asking. Yeah. I know it's a personally very difficult day. I was working in lower Manhattan at the time about two blocks from the World Trade Center and I was actually on the subway underneath the World Trade Center at Church Street which is just a block over when the -- when the first plane hit at 8:46. And it was chaos on the subway. Everybody. And of course none of us knew what had occurred. And I remember coming up out of Church Street and, you know, just you can see that you're a block away from the World Trade Center there. And I remember seeing, oh my God, you know, there's been some sort of accident there. There's a fire on board. On the -- in the airplanes. And now that I think about it maybe it was later because here's the story. It may not have been 8:46. In fact it probably wasn't because I wasn't typically arriving at work at nine in the morning. But so I walked down Church Street toward my office and as I -- you know, as the parallax of the two buildings changed I could see that the second building was also on fire. And that's when everything changed. You know, that wasn't just a -- anyway in that moment I knew that something was terribly wrong. And, to make a long story short, about two blocks away where I worked, you know, the buildings came down. And they had a shelter in place. They shut down all the HVAC because of course there was so much debris in the air. And, you know, it was just a terrifying and panicked moment. I had in a former life been an emergency medical technician so I actually joined. And there's an interesting intelligence story associated with this. I joined a bunch of volunteers down there who were hoping perhaps to help with wounded. Of course in the end we learned towards the end of the day that there really were no wounded. You were either in or you were out. But nonetheless a bunch of us gathered at the Staten Island ferry, helped to collect medical gear. There were an awful lot of ambulances stuck around the pile because of course first responders had gone in and had not come out. The interesting intelligence story about this is I climbed into the back of an ambulance and we were just gathering gear at the pile there and taking it down to the Staten Island ferry and there's this young guy in the ambulance. And we get talking. He's a volunteer as well, works at a consultancy in New York City, and his name is Marcel Letra [assumed spelling] and I don't know if that name rings a bell, but Marcel because of that day got into national security and ultimately was under secretary of defense foreign intelligence I believe and actually spent years working on the house permanent select committee of intelligence staff and he remains to this day a very close friend.

Andrew Hammond: Wow. And one of the reasons I also asked this question is 9/11. So you're there personally on that day. And later on you're the ranking member on the house permanent select committee on intelligence. But 9/11 intelligence failure, 9/11 commission report, ODNI, Department of Homeland Security, I mean it really changes the whole architecture of national security and intelligence and now you get to see it from the other side. So the question is is there anything that you've learned since you went on to the committee that's helped you place your own personal experience on that day in deeper context or helped you understand that experience more? Or just maybe a moment where you're like, "Oh. Okay. This is something I never thought about when, you know, I was in another career."

Jim Himes: Yeah. Yeah. Great question. So I mean I can think of two examples. And yes. It's always sort of there in the background. You know, any traumatic event like that is going to inform at least your motivations going forward. And I'll give you two examples. You know, if you read the 9/11 commission report the answer is that we probably had the information necessary to piece together the plot that was underway, but because we had stove piped information in particular between the CIA and the FBI we didn't put two and two together or connect the dots or whatever metaphor you want to use. And so rare is the hearing in which I do not ask whether this particularly exquisite technology or this information is being shared across the 17 agencies of the IC or the DOD. Information sharing is the policy failure of 9/11 and of course, like I said, rare is the hearing when I don't ask if information is being stove piped. Obviously we've made tremendous progress since 9/11 in terms of information sharing, in terms of melding the cultures. You know there was always a cultural issue between FBI and CIA for generations. A lot of that has gone away. And then at a more philosophical level my second example for you would be, you know, I guess the military would say avoid fighting the last war. You know, national security, like it or not, believe it or not, people are always addressing the last national security incident and not being terribly creative about thinking what might actually be the real threat to national security. Prior to 9/11 of course there had been an intelligence report presented to the president that Al-Qaeda was plotting these attacks. Nonetheless it sort of wasn't front and center for most people. I also use the example of course of the pandemic. You know if I had told you 10 years ago that there will be a national security disaster that results in the death of 1.2 million Americans you would have said, "You're crazy. There is no such thing." And if I then had gone on to say it will be because of a virus, you know at that point, you know, you've seen the movies. But my point is of course that there's a dangerous tendency in the national security apparatus as I say in the pentagon to fight the last war and to not be open minded about where the real next threat could emerge.

Andrew Hammond: As part of the preparation for this interview I listened to the one that you'd done with Mike Morell in December 2020. And it's just quite interesting because then the figure is 300,000 that you mentioned to him with the deaths of the coronavirus, but you know now we're at 1.2 million. So it's kind of incredible what's happened.

Jim Himes: Yeah. No. And it's a little I know oblique to the conversation that we're having today, but my god are there lessons to be learned. Right? About leadership at the time. And by the way though I will say that Donald Trump's suggestion of drinking bleach and all that stuff that we talk about in the political realm is not a good idea, his administration also deserves great credit for accelerating the creation of a vaccine. Oddly he doesn't take that credit, but nonetheless. So there's all sorts of lessons including, you know, of that 1.2 million American dead there are estimates that there may be as many as a couple hundred thousand who don't need to be dead because this thing got politicized and because the vaccine got caught up in the political insanity and an awful lot of people who are dead today are dead because they refused to take the vaccine because they believed conspiracy theories. There's an awful lot that I suspect we're not going with the Chinese right now to really get to the bottom of what occurred. So I think there's a whole lot of lessons learned. And, you know, I'm not in the business of making comparative analyzes of risk, but you know I would say that the possibility of the emergence of another pandemic is not zero and it's something we should be taking a great deal more seriously than we are.

Andrew Hammond: And I'd like to go on to the house permanent select committee on intelligence now. So imagine someone in your district. A delivery driver is out and, you know, "Oh. I heard that Congressman Himes was on this intelligence podcast." If you were to address them, what is the house permanent select committee on intelligence? Just to the average voter on the street like how would you define it?

Jim Himes: Yeah. I guess the easy way to define the -- both the house and the senate select committees on intelligence is that we are the people's eyes and ears on some very potentially controversial activities. That's who we are. The newspapers don't get to crawl all over CIA. You know, there are -- yes. There are inspector generals, but inspector generals inside the CIA don't get to go to the newspapers or get to go to the public. And so we are the eyes and ears of the people on some very dangerous sometimes controversial activities. Why is that important? Philosophically speaking, the whole idea of a democracy of course is that the people and the people's representatives decide. Well, what if by definition the people can't know what's happening? You know to give you a 1960s example what if the United States intelligence agencies are trying to kill, you know, a foreign leader? We don't do that anymore, but you know if you look at the storied histories of the 1950s and the 1960s Cold War, you know, the people don't get to opine, you know. People who are repositories of values and ethics don't get to opine on that. I am the connection. Not me, but the committee is the connection. It's also -- and the good news is that this -- that the intelligence community has come to realize too in the context of the activities that led to the creation of the committees in the 1970s have come to realize that it's really smart to have political leaders aware of what they're doing because when something goes wrong, and things do go wrong always even with the best of intentions, they can say, "Hey, we briefed the representatives of the people." That's actually a very powerful thing and it gives confidence to the activities of the intelligence community to know that they won't be hung out to dry if something goes wrong because they briefed the congress. So that's probably my two minute version of why these committees are really important.

Andrew Hammond: And how as one chosen to be on it are you elected? Do you volunteer? Is there some kind of process? Help that person understand that as well.

Jim Himes: Yeah. Yeah. That's a little bit of an uncomfortable question of course because of course you know we all love democracy and I would love to tell you that the members of the committee are, you know, popularly elected by the republican or the democratic caucus. I'm very happy to report that that is not the case.

Andrew Hammond: It's like a patronage system.

Jim Himes: Yeah. It's not patronage. No. Here's what I think it is. And actually I know it is. Look. The leaders, the republican and the democratic leaders who appoint the members, understand that this is a position of great trust. We are given access to the nation's most sensitive secrets. And as a consequence I think they look for people that they believe that they can trust who have a seriousness of purpose. You know, my guess is they probably have a bias against those who, you know -- I have certain colleagues who are here to transmit on a pretty much 24/7 basis. That's not consistent with the work that we have to do in intelligence. So that's a long winded way of saying I think the leaders have almost always been very serious about appointing people who will take this job with the seriousness that it needs to be taken.

Andrew Hammond: So you're appointed basically.

Jim Himes: That's exactly right. Yeah. No. The leaders of -- the democratic and the republican leaders appoint the members of this committee. That's why it's a select committee. It's not, you know, elected by the caucus or the conference.

Andrew Hammond: And to be the chair or the ranking member like your position you become the ranking member if you've just been there long enough. Is it seniority or is that also an appointment?

Jim Himes: Again that's purely at the choice of the speaker in the case of the majority or the minority leader in the case of the minority. And yes. I do think seniority has something to do with it, but the -- neither of the political leaders are required to appoint the most senior person. I think traditionally it's sort of been by seniority, but no. That's entirely at the election of the party leaders inside the house and the senate.

Andrew Hammond: And how is business transacted? Are there regular meetings? Like how -- how does it all come together? Is it more ad hoc?

Jim Himes: No. It's not at all ad hoc. So and it's a big job. I mean your normal congressional committee might have, you know, maybe two meetings a week maximum, hearing and perhaps a mark up. You know I'm in the intelligence committee spaces and the spaces are worth spending a moment on because of course they're highly secure. They're what's known as a SCIF, secure compartmented information facility deep in the bowels of the capital. And so I'm there at least once a day and it's I mean yesterday's a pretty good example. We had a formal hearing on some intelligence activities. We had an allied intelligence chief in for an informal round table. And so it's like any other congressional committee except that I think it meets considerably more often and it meets behind blast proof doors that most people can't go through.

Andrew Hammond: And there's quite a lot of responsibility there. So I guess it's not really a committee that you can skirt your responsibilities on or not take seriously. The potential consequences are quite serious. So I guess that you have to put the work in and put the time in.

Jim Himes: Oh. Absolutely. No. And I think the leaders have traditionally been -- have been very careful about selecting people. You know we say in the congress that there are workhorses and show horses and I think they've been really good about selecting the workhorses. The truth is, and you know this given what you do, oversight of intelligence is enormously, enormously challenging. Why? Because you're talking about technologies that are hard to understand. Artificial intelligence. Quantum computing. All of these gizmos and technologies are used for collection. So if you're not a technologist that's hard. I'm not a lawyer. The legal aspects of oversight are very challenging. Where precisely are the lines on, you know, the ability of the community to collect and surveil? So there's technical, legal, ethical issues, you know, from time to time. The intelligence committee like any other intelligence agency out there will consider or take lethal action. I mean there are profound ethical implications in that. And so yes. It's a lot of work in that regard. And then you also there's a natural tension with any member of congress. We get elected because we go out there and, you know, shout to the -- shout from the rooftops what we do. And take credit for what we do and what we don't do. And, you know, that is obviously antithetical to work on the intelligence committee. If you're inside the intelligence -- if you're a young officer at the Central Intelligence Agency or NSA you get immense amounts of training on information protection and keeping classified information confidential. Candidly and, you know, perhaps if I'm chairman at some point I might work to change this, members of congress get a perfunctory, you know, hey sign this and don't disclose classified information. So there's always a little bit of nervousness there about it. And I know that the intelligence community worries about that too.

Andrew Hammond: From that as well let's compare people inside intelligence community to representatives and senators. Is there any kind of vetting of senators and congressmen or is it they've got a privileged position because they're elected by the citizenry so therefore, you know, the citizenry have done this sort of oversight and the newspapers might have done a bit of digging, but there's no sort of formal vetting process? Is that fair?

Jim Himes: Yeah. No. That is fair. And it's that way. That may sound uncomfortable that there's no formal vetting, but it's for an obvious constitutional reason. Right? I often get asked, you know, as a member of the gang of eight I think I get to see it all. And I often get asked, "So what's your security clearance?" And I have to answer I don't have a security clearance. The security clearance of course is an executive branch designation. And because of the separation of powers what you asked, is there a vetting process where the FBI checks us out, the FBI of course is an executive branch agency. We can't have a system where the executive says, "No, Mr. Himes cannot be appointed to our oversight board." That would be an obvious conflict in the separation of powers. So again it has a little bit of a fly by the seat of your pants quality to it because there isn't a vetting process. So we rely on the diligence of the democratic and republican leaders of the two houses to select people who will be, you know, worthy of the trust.

Andrew Hammond: At the International Spy Museum we have a letter written by George Washington in 1777 to set up America's first spy network. "The advantage of obtaining the earliest and best intelligence of the designs of the enemy," he wrote to merchant Nathaniel Sackett, "have induced me to entrust the management of this business to your care." Sackett was replaced by the more capable Benjamin Tallmadge, a fellow New Yorker, but the target remained the same. British forces in and around New York City. Washington would pay Sackett $50 per month, around $1,000 today, and $500 per month to pay quote, "Those whom you may find necessary to employ in the transaction of this business." "An account of the disbursements," Washington goes on, "you're to render to me." Now imagine this compared to today, almost 250 years later. Washington personally oversaw how this money was spent. In 2023 meanwhile the intelligence budget was estimated at almost $100 billion. Imagine the difficulty of overseeing a budget of this size. Imagine going from one spy ring in 1777 to 18 agencies that are involved in artificial intelligence, quantum cryptography, edge computing, and that you have to deal with gargantuan quantities of data and personnel. All of this is to say that I don't think you'll ever hear or you certainly shouldn't hear a member of the house permanent select committee on intelligence like Jim Himes say that they are bored. [ Music ] [ Static and a beep ] [ Typing ] Just a couple of questions that someone that was say skeptical, say the skeptical voter in your district -- can this committee actually hold intelligence agencies accountable? Is there not -- can the intelligence agencies just pull the wool over their eyes? So I remember I'd done some archival research on the Reagan administration. And I was in some congressional papers and one of the congressmen said, "Bill Casey treats us like mushrooms. He keeps us in the dark and feeds us," you know, "S-H-I-T." Is that possible or are you pretty confident that that's not the case?

Jim Himes: I'm pretty confident that there's not Casey like direct obstruction. But the citizen who might be skeptical is right to be skeptical. And I feel this every day. So I would be surprised if an affirmative decision was taken by an IC leader to deny information to the committees. That, by the way, is a felony. Among other reasons it's a bad idea. And, as I said before, you know, there's real comfort on the part of CIA or NSA to know that congress is aware of their activities in case they go wrong. Now why is it difficult? Does that system work perfectly? Of course it doesn't. It's difficult because -- and in fact I just yesterday -- I can't obviously get into the details, but I barked pretty hard at an element of the intelligence committee because they came to us with a bad situation, shall we say, but they came to us five months later. And the law says that they must fully and currently inform us. So I said -- I said, you know, "Tell me about the tension in your decisions between fully and currently." Because they had dotted every I and crossed every T and as a result we found out five months later. That's not okay. And I made that very clear. The other thing that happens, we're human beings. Right? And this is probably more a boy problem than a girl problem, but the intelligence committee is pretty smart. You know they come in for a hearing and they bring video. And oh my god. You run these videos and I mean I'm not going to say that it's the Bourne identity or James Bond, but they run these videos and we're like, "Oh my god. This is amazing. I can't believe what you can do." And they take up 20 minutes while we're all, you know, a bunch of boys, you know, watching a James Bond movie. And then, you know, it's usually me. I have to raise my hand and say, "Look, guys. That was a lot of fun, but now tell me how you screwed up." You know, because our job is oversight, not to cheer on Jason Bourne. Right? And again they don't do that out of obviously, you know, malice or whatever, but you know they're human too. And right? There's a tendency to want to, you know, emphasize the positive.

Andrew Hammond: So I guess the next skeptical question would be how does the voter know that the house permanent select committee on intelligence has an in on the, you know, use whatever word you want. Conspiracy. Cover up. Pulling the wool over the eyes of the American public. How would you convince them?

Jim Himes: Yeah. The conspiracy theorists, and I've long since learned not to cross swords with this crowd or these crowds I should say, it is a true fact of life that, you know, in this realm government is really pretty good at what it does. But we have a hell of a hard time keeping secrets in the best of circumstances. And the more people know about a secret -- and this is just a truism. The more people know about a truism the probability is that it's going to be -- sorry. The more people know a fact. So the idea that we have these massive hidden programs to hide, you know, alien life, you know presumably that would involve a fair number of people being aware. The probability that we could keep that secret even if we wanted to is extremely low I'm sorry to say.

Andrew Hammond: Okay. So no little green men. Okay. And the gang of eight can you just briefly tell our listeners what that is?

Jim Himes: Yeah. The gang of eight --

Andrew Hammond: It sounds cool.

Jim Himes: Yeah. Yeah. It does. Cool is the right word. Right? There's nothing cool about -- anyway yeah. So I don't quite -- I can tell you where the committees came from. The committees of course came from the Church and the Pike commissions in the 1970s when congress was looking at a lot of really pretty crazy activities on the part in particular of CIA. We can get into some of those stories if you'd like because they are pretty fun. Not good, but fun. Anyway I can tell you the origin of the committees. I can't tell you exactly the origin of the gang of eight, but I know the idea. The idea was that there are certain things that are so sensitive, operations that are ongoing that could be compromised if there were a leak -- you know the committees don't leak much, but they're not perfect. And so there is this category of information that is deemed so sensitive that instead of informing the whole of the two committees they inform the gang of eight. The gang of eight of course is the political leaders of the two chambers plus the chair and the ranking member of the intelligence committees. Doesn't happen very often. It's a couple of months or so. But every once in a while we'll gather and we'll learn something that is deemed exceedingly sensitive. And again the fact that they do that is indicative of the commitment of the IC and the executive to make sure that we're informed of even the most sensitive stuff in a much smaller room.

Andrew Hammond: Okay. So the idea is the gang of eight get told, but they don't pass this information on. Right? They're not -- it's meant to just stay within the gang of eight?

Jim Himes: Exactly. And you're putting your finger on a challenge here which is -- and I get asked this a lot. What if you learn something in the gang of eight -- or more typically in the committee that causes you great concern? I can't run to the "New York Times" and say, "You won't believe what the CIA did yesterday." You know, that's obviously a violation of my oath and the law. And so, you know, the point of what we do is oversight. So what are the mechanisms we have when something concerns us? Those mechanisms are very interesting. First of all they're sort of, you know, a negotiation mechanism. And that usually works. You know, if I go to Bill Burns, director of CIA, and say, you know, "I'm concerned about this element of this program" my experience in many years on the committee is that they will engage constructively and we will look for ways to address that concern. Of course in the background we also always have the power of the purse constitutionally speaking. And so if that negotiation breaks down we can and we do say, "Okay. We're passing the budget for this agency, but we're going to -- " Ring fence is the term we use. We're going to say you can't spend any money on this activity. Obviously the agencies would rather avoid that eventuality which is why they negotiate. So that's the tools that we have to influence the activities that we oversee.

Andrew Hammond: When you were talking there it almost reminded me of being the parent of a teenager or something. Right? Where they're feeling their way trying to be independent, but they're relying on you for, you know, college tuition and allowance and stuff. So they're trying to play the game with you. They don't want to completely alienate you, but you know they're still trying to do their own thing.

Jim Himes: Having raised two teenagers, I pray to God you're wrong about that.

Andrew Hammond: Okay.

Jim Himes: But, you know, some similarities.

Andrew Hammond: Okay. In this interlude I just want to remind you that accompanying each episode of "SpyCast" is a full transcript and episode notes that include suggested readings, related "SpyCasts," primary sources, and a few quirky things thrown in there for good measure. We have a back catalog of over 650 episodes and some of the conversations you will find there are rare, unique, and one of a kind. If you want to know about the secret history of history, how the world you currently inhabit is structured by silent forces that occasionally bubble forth until the year's cycle, or peer over the horizon into the future, just think of one word. "SpyCast." It's a labor of love. Every week we go on a journey with an expert guest to explore one of the most fascinating and misunderstood topics on the planet, intelligence and espionage. If you go to our page at thecyberwire.com/podcast/spycast you can find all of these goodies. This show is brought to you from the home of the world's preeminent collection of intelligence and espionage related artifacts, the International Spy Museum. [ Music ] [ Static and a beep ] [ Typing ] And the relationship between the senate and the house committees, do they meet up occasionally? Obviously the house is the power of the purse. What's the senate's kind of leverage? Is that appointments and nominations and so forth?

Jim Himes: Yeah. They had that additional -- they had that, you know, approving -- the advice and consent function of the senate is obviously an additional oversight tool that we don't have. You know it's a super interesting question. There's no institutional compulsion for the house to work with the senate. In fact there's a great old political story. I'll get the names wrong, but it's a great story. You know, in the 1970s, you know, some -- some, you know, new member of congress comes up to a committee chair and says, "I just can't believe the republicans are stopping me from passing this bill." You know, "They're my absolute enemy." And the committee chair says to the freshman, you know, "No, son. The republicans are the opposition. The senate is the enemy." So there's a tension inside the congress between the two houses as there should be frankly, especially in moments like today where one house is controlled by one party and the other. However, and I'll say this, the committees almost always have a great deal of comity. And that -- maybe it's a sort of a fraternity, fraternal type thing, because, you know, the position of confidence that we're in. So, for example, Mark Warner who's the chairman of the senate intelligence committee happens to be a very close friend of mine. I know he's got a very good relationship with Mike Turner who's the chairman of the house committee. And so we make a point to get to know each other and to work together because at the end of the day we have to pass the authorizing legislation for this enterprise. And a lot of that contact happens at the staff level because it will be detailed stuff about a particular program. But it really, really helps when the leadership of the two committees have personal relationships that allow for consultation. And in my experience that's pretty typical.

Andrew Hammond: Okay. And when -- for this committee, the house permanent select committee on intelligence, is it a committee that you think is more characterized by bipartisanship than the general political climate these days? Is it one where people sort of put their differences aside or maybe just the way in which people are appointed or, you know, they're more allocated for the people that are like less, you know, of piece so to speak?

Jim Himes: Great, great question. And it's very relevant to where we are today. The truth is that traditionally the committee has been -- there's been a lot of comity and bipartisanship on the committee partly because of the nature of the people who've been appointed, partly because what we do we do behind closed doors. And oftentimes the extreme political behavior, you know the real performances, come for the camera. And there are no cameras so traditionally the committees have really been bipartisan. Of course there was a dramatic exception to this three years ago when the committee was tasked with investigating President Trump's phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which he made that statement, you know, "But I want you to do me a favor." It was a clear attempt at extortion holding weaponry up in exchange for, as President Trump put it at the time, you know, something on the Bidens. So that of course under Adam Schiff and Devin Nunes led to a deeply divided committee. Absolute dysfunction. And it was hugely painful because the work we do is so important. And for a period of time all of the oversight work that we do at a sensitive moment was set aside in favor of this investigation. I think the lesson I learned from that is -- and I don't want to get into the individual behavior of Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff, but the lesson I learned from that is that the speaker should use the committee absolutely as a last resort to investigate politically sensitive things because I don't think there was any way to investigate Donald Trump's activities in Ukraine for which he was ultimately impeached without radically polarizing that committee. And so but I guess I'd love to close with this thought which is that's an -- that's very much an exception. You know, Mike Turner and I have crossed swords over time, but we have a very strong relationship. So the committee sees the ranking member and the chairman working very closely together. Now there are times I disagree with Mike. When I do that I do it immensely respectfully. I negotiate with him and I -- and he does this, by the way, with me too. Don't try to score political points. And we both see that as an important aspect of leading this committee.

Andrew Hammond: So it sounds like you're talking about this really old fashioned concept of putting [inaudible] in front of your own career. What is that all about?

Jim Himes: Again maybe it can happen behind closed doors with no cameras.

Andrew Hammond: So tell us -- tell us about when you got on the committee. So you have this background working in the city, a nonprofit. You get into congress and then you're on the intelligence committee. Is there any -- is there anything that you see that sort of completely blows your mind? Or is there anything that's -- or is it more just okay, I didn't realize this program and this program, but it makes sense. Or okay, I thought this might be going on, but now I know the granular detail and the bigger picture. Or was it like, you know --

Jim Himes: Yeah. I'll get -- I'll get to your question, but there's a funny story associated with that. I got appointed to the committee which I had wanted to be on for a number of years and I'd asked leader Pelosi, Speaker Pelosi -- can't remember whether we were in the majority. I'd asked her for a period of time to join the committee. And then I joined the committee and literally three weeks later the Snowden crisis explodes. Now by the way I don't at that point know what NSA stands for. You know? And so now all of a sudden the president and everybody else says, you know, "What the hell's going on with these programs?" And they were so new you know I mean just it goes absolute bananas, you know, it what was ultimately a very embarrassing and very difficult moment for the IC. I don't know where the bathroom is. Right? I mean so anyway I remember that moment because when you join the committee, you know, it really takes you a year, maybe more depending on how diligent you are, to come up to speed on the agencies themselves. There's 17, you know, agencies. Much less their function and their legal authority. So there's an immense amount of work that needs to be done in order to be an effective -- an effective overseer. So yes. That's hugely, hugely challenging. And again in my own case it was quite a -- quite a crazy moment because of the Snowden disclosures. But yeah. And the leadership of the committee has always, and Mike Turner has continued this, you know they'll set aside three days to go to, you know, some offsite facility with new members so that they can hear from these agencies so they can learn about it. And to your question about, you know, what does it feel like, yeah. There are few things that are in that, you know -- I talked earlier about the Jason Bourne/James Bond kind of -- there are few things where you're like, "Wow. That's pretty amazing." But by and large -- by and large Americans have a pretty good sense and people have a pretty good sense for the activities of the intelligence community. You know, people know there are satellites up there. They can see stuff. Right? Not a surprise. Now they may not know precisely what those satellites can see. That's where things get really classified. You know, people know that it's possible for intelligence agencies out there to capture phone calls. So, you know, an awful lot of the activities that the IC does or that any other service abroad or anywhere else does are well known to the public. What's not well known are the precise capabilities, you know, of all of these collection mechanisms. And the stuff that's super secret people want to imagine that it's that alien that's being held in Roswell. It's not. It's not. It's much more understandable stuff. If we have an incredibly valuable human source placed in a capital of an enemy nation, you know, hey that's not news. This is what intelligence has been doing for thousands of years. But we sure as hell don't want the identity of that person exposed. And so that is the stuff that is extremely highly classified. It's not some laser that can bring down the death star generally speaking. The other thing I would note is I get asked all the time, "Oh my gosh. You see all the threats. You know, do you sleep at night?" And the answer is again the American people have a pretty good sense for the threats that are out there by reading the newspaper, but here's my answer to that question which is yes. I do see with particularly exquisite detail the threats against us. I also get to see the detail of the assets and the people that we deploy against those threats. And because I get to see with great detail the assets and the tools that we have to address those threats, yes. I do sleep at night. Not because we'll ever be perfect, but because these are incredibly dedicated people. The technology is amazing. And it is commensurate with the threats out there.

Andrew Hammond: So it's like the NFL season has just begun and rather than focusing on the fiercesomness of the offense you just say, "Yeah, but wait until you see the defense we've got." Okay. Okay. And just as we get towards the end of the interview tell me about some of these threats that are particularly foremost in your mind. So I imagine technology, China. I'm not putting words in your mouth. You tell me what you think they are.

Jim Himes: Yeah. When you talk about threats you need to -- you need to -- you need to be analytically careful. Right? There are very near term threats and that are fairly obvious. You know, I always worry about the rogue assassin or the self radicalized radical of whatever flavor who decides that they're going to walk into Grand Central terminal with a bomb. There's very little that the intelligence community can do. There are some things, but I worry a lot about that in the short term. I mean just no system is perfect and somebody who is really dedicated to undertaking a bad violent act there's a reasonable chance they'll succeed. I worry a lot less about a highly orchestrated major operation like 9/11. I do worry, but again we have really good tools to identify and disrupt that sort of thing. So that's in the short term. In the long term, you know, what do I worry about? I worry about our losing our technological edge to China. I really don't believe that China is going to roll up on Taiwan next month, but I do think that over time if we lose our innovative edge over China it won't even be a war, but all of a sudden we'll be the second rate power against a very aggressive technological leader. That's not a position we want to be in. And that's pretty unsexy. That's not about aircraft carriers and dropping seals down somebody's chimney. That's about making sure we invest in the research and development that keeps us at the technological forefront. Again I'm conscious of the fact that what killed 1.2 million Americans in the last 10 years was something that I mean I won't say nobody saw coming, but you know we arrayed hundreds of billions of dollars against the soviet and then Russian threat. We did not array nearly that kind of resource against the thing that ultimately killed 1.2 million Americans. So I spend a lot of time thinking about what's the bullet we don't see. It's the bullet that you don't see that kills you. And so that's hard. Right? That's really, really hard. But I mean just to wax on about this point over two generations we spent an immense amount of money preparing to fight the soviets and then the Russians. Immense amount. Trillions of dollars. Well, it turns out, as we learned two years ago, that you know the Rhode Island national guard could have taken it pretty badly to the Russian army as we saw how incompetent they were in northern Ukraine. I'm obviously, you know, firing for effect there, but you know we need to be smart about the resources we put up against risks because it turns out we may have overspent a little bit on the prospect of fighting the Russian army in the Fulda Gap. Whereas damn we sure as hell under spent against the thing that ultimately killed 1.2 million Americans.

Andrew Hammond: Final question. Smart, handsome, personable. Should I run for congress? I'm joking. I'm joking.

Jim Himes: You need to work on that accent. You'll need to work on that accent a little bit. But I have high hopes for you.

Andrew Hammond: I'm going to get citizenship soon. No, though, the question, that was me improvising on the question I was going to ask was could we ever see a presidential run from yourself.

Jim Himes: Oh. My god. You know, there's an interesting constitutional question about that. So the answer to the question is, you know what, I'm running for reelection in November. But there's an interesting constitutional question because I was born in Lima, Peru. And so, you know, you would -- as Ted Cruz would have done, by the way. Ted Cruz was born in Canada. You would test the question of what that word in the constitution -- because the constitution requires that the president be a natural born U.S citizen. So we might get to actually litigate that in the Supreme Court. But here's a betting tip. Not likely to happen in my case.

Andrew Hammond: Okay. Okay. A birther conspiracy surrounding Congressman Himes. Okay.

Jim Himes: It turns out he wasn't born in the United States. Yeah. That's right.

Andrew Hammond: Okay. Well, thanks ever so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

Jim Himes: Thanks so much, Andrew.

Andrew Hammond: Thanks. [ Music ] Thank you for listening to this episode of "SpyCast." Please follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, please tell your friends and loved ones. Please also consider leaving us a five star review. Coming up next week on "SpyCast."

Speaker 1: What you described before is most people's perception of what negotiation is. Two parties, adversarial, find a middle ground. It's the best outcome. We can declare victory and go home. And if that was the case things like steel would never be invented.

Andrew Hammond: If you have feedback you can reach us by email at spycast.spymuseum.org or on X at intlspycast. I'm your host Andrew Hammond and my podcast content partner is Erin Dietrick. The rest of the team involved in the show is Mike Mincey, Memphis Vaughn the Third, Emily Coletta, Emily Rens, Afua Anokwa, Ariel Samuel, Elliott Peltzman, Tre Hester, and Jen Eiben. [ Music ]