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Senate Intel Chiefs Speak after Acting FBI Director Testifies; White House Explanation on Comey Firing Unraveling; White House Daily Briefing. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired May 11, 2017 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:30:00] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The chiefs of the Senate Intelligence Committee, they've met now with the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, the man the White House says recommended Comey's firing. We heard from them a little while ago on Capitol Hills.

Let's go to our senior congressional reporter, Manu Raju.

Manu, what did he learn about this meeting? Do we know if other lawmakers are also wanting to hear directly from Rosenstein?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: At this meeting, roughly about 45 minutes, Chairman Richard Burr, of the Intelligence Committee, and the vice chairman, Mark Warner, did meet behind closed doors, but not just Rod Rosenstein, but also, Dana Boente, a senior official at the Justice Department, talking about the Russia investigation. This meeting was scheduled before the firing of James Comey. It just happened to come right after Rod Rosenstein has been in the center of controversy after writing that memo about raising the concerns about Comey's handling of the e-mail investigation and also being pointed to by White House officials as the person who kind of led to the firing of James Comey. Of course, now the president and White House's story has changed on that front.

But we're told that at this meeting that just occurred that Comey firing did not come up with great detail. At least that is according to Chairman Richard Burr and Mark Warner. They said that they didn't really discuss the firing. It was not really the purpose of the meeting. I asked whether or not Mr. Rosenstein had any concerns at all about the way the firing happened. We know that from our reporting that may be the case. The members, Burr and Warner, sidestepped that question saying that this was not actually the point of the meeting. The point being that they wanted to talk about how to make sure that their investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee, does not conflict with what the FBI is doing, its own probe over Russia and those ties that may have occurred with the Trump campaign. Both Warner and Burr emerged from this meeting, Wolf, feeling confident that they're not conflicting with one another and they can move forward.

And one other point, both Burr and Warner took strong exception to the criticism the president just leveled against Director Comey, both saying that he's praising his service, and Mark Warner even saying he was offended by the president's remarks. But it sounds like Rod Rosenstein at least is continuing in this role as the deputy attorney general, even if there is some reports that he may have been thinking about quitting. It sounds like he's at least pressing forward and alleviates some concerns that their investigation will not conflict with the Senate Intelligence Committee -- Wolf?

BLITZER: Fair to say it's still a very fluid situation.

Manu Raju, thanks very much.

As we learn new details about what led up to the decision to fire the FBI Director James Comey, the White House continues to shift its story, including today. Here's what was said on Wednesday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Mr. Vice president, did the president ask the deputy attorney general to conduct a review of Director Comey?

MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He brought that recommendation to the president. The attorney general concurred with that recommendation.

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: He did have a conversation with the deputy attorney general on Monday where they had come to him to express their concerns. The president asked that they put those concerns and their recommendation in writing, which is the letter that you guys have received.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: So did the White House assertion that Rod Rosenstein decided on his own after being confirmed to review Comey's performance?

HUCKABEE SANDERS: Absolutely.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: That was yesterday. But this morning, the deputy White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HUCKABEE SANDERS: He asked for their feedback, they gave that to him orally. And he asked them to put that recommendation, which was a very strong recommendation and very clear reasons why they also felt that the director should no longer be in that position.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: And of course, as we just showed you, the president now telling NBC News he was going to fire Comey irrespective of what any of his advisers were recommending. He wanted him out.

CNN's Tom Foreman is joining us with a deeper dive into the Trump/Comey timeline.

Tom, walk us through what you're learning. TOM FOREMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's looking more like a time tangle, Wolf, because it's hard to reconcile all these positions with what we saw.

Go back to July 5th, the campaign was raging. This was when Comey came out and said Hillary Clinton had badly handled these e-mails but he wasn't going to charge her with a crime. That infuriated Democrats. It didn't make Republicans too happy, but they knew it helped Donald Trump. He went on and testified for the House Oversight Committee. Late in October is when he came out and said there were new e-mails. Again a few days later he said nothing there to change his opinion. Bottom line is, though, many Democrats believe that was helping Donald Trump the whole way. And Donald Trump was not saying James Comey should go away during this process. Indeed, as we got into January here, that's when he went to the White House. He met with Donald Trump. The president shook his hand and said, I think you're more famous than I am right now. Arguably during this entire period of time, there wasn't a word out of Donald Trump saying that James Comey really had to go, that he wasn't doing a good job. This was all just fine.

[13:35:01] And then a big change happens right about here. In March, Comey confirms the FBI's investigating the Trump team and these ties to Russia. He then testified not along ago before the Senate Judiciary Committee. And there's a sense that maybe he overstated some of the things he said about Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin and the e-mails. And there's this claim that he asked for more resources. The Justice Department said he did not do it. But suddenly, after all this time of seemingly having no problem with James Comey, now it leads right up to the firing right here.

The White House, as you know, is now trying to say all of this time, the plain-spoken candidate who also said who always said what he spoke never really liked James Comey, always thought he was doing a bad job this whole time. But if you listen to some of the skeptics out there, they're saying, no, this is the issue, right in here, this period of time. What was on the table then? Russia. The Russia investigation. That's why it's so hard to sort out a timeline here because all these conflicting events are colliding with each other and suggesting really separate versions of reality.

BLITZER: Tom Foreman, thanks very much.

Let's talk about all of this and more. Once again, as we're standing by for the White House press briefing.

Gloria, she's going to have a tough time, the deputy White House press secretary, explaining all of the contradictions, the changing stories over the past 48 hours, why the FBI director was fired.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: In fact, she was asked yesterday directly, isn't it true that the president had already decided to fire James Comey and her answer was no. So now she's got to reverse course. I would have to say this is a pattern of the staff being the shovel brigade that we have seen time and time again. Whether it started from his first full day in office when he was tweeting about the crowd size at the inauguration or voter fraud or being wire tapped by Barack Obama. This is just another instance of it. He gets mad. He sees this on TV. James Comey angers him. He decides he wants to fire him because he can. Keeps it in a close circle. Gets a rational for it. Perhaps from Rod Rosenstein. I don't know whether Rosenstein knew that it was going to be deposed or not. Handed it to the president. The White House then says, oh, here's our reason and puts it out there. Then the president comes out. They change their story. And now they're stuck holding the bag here.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: There's a word for the White House account of the Comey firing on Tuesday. That's false.

BORGER: Yeah. Totally.

SCIUTTO: As simple as that. It was false. And that's not an opinion. That's based on statements from the podium on Tuesday and now from the president today.

BLITZER: You confirm today all that earlier the discussion was false.

SCIUTTO: President said it was not the letter, he'd already decided. The White House story on Tuesday was false. Now, you heard Sarah Huckabee this morning trying to change the words a little bit. She said, well, we asked for feedback from the FBI.

(CROSSTALK)

SCIUTTO: That's not true. They asked for a recommendation. Two, she said, whether the FBI also thought that he'd lost the confidence. Not -- remember the original story was the FBI came to us and said you fire him and we followed that. This is -- as you said, this is not the first time the White House has reversed course. It gets to the essential credibility for the spokespeople for the president of the United States. And that is a really problem. It's a real problem.

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: It's as if the FBI didn't get the spin-control memo or he did but got angry and said I'm going to say what I think. We've seen this time and time again where --I've had senior administration officials try to explain to me oh, well you see the president goes out and puts the left and right limits of what our new policy is going to be in a tweet or interview and then we roll out the actual policy. But more often, it's they find out what the left and right limits are going to be and then they have to respond and dig out. Here they are again. I'm going to have a real hard time trusting the next time somebody tells me this is what the president thinks. Are you sure? I don't know.

(CROSSTALK)

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: It's a problem.

(CROSSTALK)

FUENTES: False stories could be true. Trump could have decided he's got to go, and just been, you know, wanting more, wanting more. Then the final straw was when the deputy attorney general say, OK, we've lost confidence in --

(CROSSTALK)

SCIUTTO: That's not what the White House said.

(CROSSTALK)

SCIUTTO: The White House said it came from the deputy attorney general.

(CROSSTALK)

FUENTES: That recommendation may have been the last straw. Now we're going to do it.

BORGER: What if the president asked for a memo.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: You don't believe what the president just told NBC News, the he had decided a while ago he would be fired?

FUENTES: That could be true.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: And he didn't care what his advisors were recommending.

FUENTES: That could be true. He had decided. It wasn't just --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: But that's not what the White House said. The White House said he was reacting to this memorandum from the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein.

[13:39:57] FUENTES: You also have the fact that after Director Comey's left visit to the Hill, his last testimony that he put out an inaccurate statement about the number of e-mails, and he characterized it as Huma Abedin forwarded tens of thousands of e-mails to Anthony Weiner's laptop. It turns out, it wasn't that many. It was an automatic backup. That's a big difference.

(CROSSTALK)

FUENTES: that was a big turmoil to correct that.

BLITZER: Tom, let's talk about the current acting director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe. You heard his testimony today, which certainly will not endear him to the president of the United States and others in the White House, when he said several points that this investigation's going forward. If anyone tries to hamper it, I will notify you, the Senate Intelligence Committee. There was -- that the ousted FBI director was highly regarded, there was no turmoil. Those kinds of statements will irritate the president and others in the White House who are saying the opposite.

FUENTES: The agents I talked to last summer, in July, were very upset. There was consternation. I wouldn't call it turmoil.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Is this status, do you believe, tenuous right now based on his testimony this morning?

FUENTES: I don't think so. But I think that what he was -- what McCabe was referring to recently is now the same agents I was talking to last July are saying, you know, we're busy, we're working counterterrorism, organized crime, serious crime, we just decided we're going to move on and go forward with what we're doing. No, the FBI is not currently in turmoil, but there was great frustration last year, and they look at this and go, well, it appeared to many of them that Hillary Clinton was too big to be prosecuted. They just let her off the hook.

(CROSSTAKL)

BLITZER: Tom, you cover this.

And we're told that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is about to walk out.

But when the president of the United States says that Comey was a show boat, a grandstander, and the FBI was in turmoil, that's going to anger a lot of folks inside the FBI.

SCIUTTO: What's changed since last July, if I could just remind folks, is that Russia interfered in the U.S. election. The U.S. Intelligence community called them out for it. The FBI has, beginning last summer, started an investigation as to whether there was communication and collusion between Trump advisers and Russians during that election interference. That's what's happened since then. Which involves if not the president, the president's advisers, which raises the conflict of interest issue. So whatever happened last July is an issue, no question. I agree with Tom that there were folks who were not very happy with that. But in the meantime, a foreign power intervened in the election. It's an open question as to whether Trump advisers colluded with them. The FBI is investigating that. That makes it different. When the president then fires the man --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Hold on a second. Hold on a second.

Gloria, we've covered Washington a long time. The president has now gone after law enforcement, to a certain degree, gone after the intelligence community to a certain degree, irritating those folks, big time. You know what happens. They want to get even, so the leaks, the anti-Trump leaks will be coming out. Stuff the president doesn't want to be reported. And you're going to be hearing presumably a lot more of that as a result of all of these latest comments and the way he treated Comey. BORGER: We'll see. We'll see if the president makes a trip to the

FBI, for example, the way he did to the CIA right after his inauguration, because he had taken on the CIA. Now he's taken on the FBI.

I have to say there was a couple of words that really struck me. When the president called Comey a showboat and a grandstander. In Donald Trump's constellation, there is only one star and that is Donald Trump. It seems to me that he was watching Comey on television and Comey was saying things not only that he didn't like, but he was getting an awful lot of respect there. And I think it just drove, as I reported, it kind of drove the president over the edge. Why is this guy getting so much attention and why is his Russia investigation getting so much attention? The leaks ought to be getting the attention --

(CROSSTALK)

FUENTES: And that also made a lot of people in the FBI very unhappy with the fact that Director Comey had put himself out there so often, so publicly. And going back to July, he has made the FBI in the middle of this political firestorm. Part of that had Hillary Clinton's fault. She stalled off the e-mail investigation to the point that it was coming to fruition during the campaign, but they were saying the positions that the director took, the amount of public statements he made about the investigation --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Hold on one second. Aides are walking out. That means that Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be heading over to the lectern momentarily as well. Here she comes. Let's hear her opening statement.

HUCKABEE SANDERS: Another light crowd today.

Good afternoon.

(LAUGHTER)

First off, before we get started, I'd like to bring up Homeland Security adviser, Tom Bossert, to tell us about an executive order on cybersecurity that the president just signed. He'll take a few of your questions and, respectfully, I ask that you keep your questions on the topic of the executive order. And don't worry, I'll come back and answer all of the rest of your pressing questions as soon as he wraps up.

With that, I'll turn it over to Tom.

[13:45:31] TOM BOSSERT, HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISOR: Thank you, Sarah.

Thank you very much for your time.

A couple things positive to report today. The first is that President Trump, about an hour ago, signed an executive order on cybersecurity. That executive order, among other things, is going to keep his promise that he has made to the American people to keep America safe, including in cyberspace.

I'd like to do a few things. I'll promise you that we distribute the executive order, but I'll preview the executive order for you, walk you through the three primary sections, and then take your questions.

Among other things, at least as an observation for me, I think the trend is going in the wrong direction in cyberspace and it's time to stop that trend and reverse it on behalf of the American people. We've seen increasing attacks from allies, adversaries, primarily nation states but also non-nation state actors. And sitting by and doing nothing is no longer an option. So President Trump's action today is a very heartening one.

There are three sections. They're in priority order, in a sense.

The first priority to the president and for our federal government is protecting our federal networks. I think it's important to start by explaining that we operate those federal networks on behalf of the American people and they often contain the American people's information and data. So not defending them is no longer an option. We've seen past hacks and past efforts that have succeeded and we need to do everything we can to prevent that from happening in the future.

So a few things on federal networks. We have practiced one thing and preached another. It's time for us now, and the president today has directed his department and agencies, to implement the NIST framework, the risk reduction framework. It is something we have asked the private sector to implement and not forced upon ourselves. From this point forward, departments and agencies shall practice what we preach and implement that same NIST framework for risk management and production.

Second of note point, in protecting our federal networks, is that we spend a lot of time and inordinate money protecting antiquated and outdated systems. We saw that with the OPM hack and other things. From this point forward, the president has issued a preference from today forward in federal procurement of federal I.T. for shared services. We're going to move to the cloud and try to protect ourselves instead of fracturing our security posture.

Third point I would make is that the executive order directs all its departments and agency heads to continue its key roles but it also centralizes risks. So we view our federal I.T. as one enterprise network. If we don't do so, we will not be able to adequately understand what risk exists and how to mitigate it.

A number of thoughts on that. Among other things, that is going to be a very difficult task. So modernizing is imperative for our security, but modernizing is going to require a lot of hard good governance. Responsible for that is the president's American Technology Council. The president's American Technology Council is going to run that effort on behalf of the president here at the White House. We have great hope that there will be efficiencies there but also security.

I would probably note to you that other countries have taken two or three years to learn what we just came up with in two or three months. So doing that together is a message that we've learned but doing it together is a message we'd like to encourage private-sector folks to adopt.

Point two in the executive order is our critical infrastructure cybersecurity effort. The president has directed the president's cabinet to begin the hard work of protecting our nation's most critical infrastructures, utilities, financial and health care systems, telecommunication networks. He's directed them to identify additional measures to defend and secure our critical infrastructure. And he's continued to promote the message that doing nothing is no longer an option. The executive order not only requires his departments and agencies to help those critical infrastructure owners and operators, the most important ones, but to do it in a proactive sense. The message is towards action.

We've seen bipartisan studies and observations over the last eight years. Both parties, have made powerful recommendations. They have not been adopted for various reasons. This executive order adopts the best and brightest of those recommendations, in my view.

I'm going to stop with those three and take questions.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Two questions. First --

BOSSETT: Actually, if I could.

UNIDENTIFIED REORTER: Brian.

BOSSETT: Brian?

[13:49:55] UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: First, was the Russian hack in any way responsible or an impetus for this? Number two, I've talked to I.T. people who say putting stuff on the cloud actually can be problematic as far as security. So what additional security measures would you apply to the cloud to make sure that it's not as risky as some of the I.T. people tell us it would be.

BOSSERT: A couple questions there. So let me say three things, first. The third section of the executive order may be the one I skipped over here a moment ago. It speaks to two halves. It speaks to not only the need to develop the norms and the interoperable open communication systems that is the Internet. The United States invented the Internet and it's time to maintain our values on it. But it also speaks to a deterrence policy, that has long been overdue. The Russians are not our only adversary on the Internet and the Russians are not only people who operate in a negative way on the Internet. The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, other states are motivated to use cyber capacity and cyber tools to attack our people and our governments and their data. That's something we can no longer abide. We have to establish the rules of the road for proper behavior on the Internet, but also deter those who don't want to abide by those rules. To answer your first question is, no, it was ant Russian- motivated issue. It was a United States of America motivated issue.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The second issue with the cloud? Security on the cloud -- (CROSSTALK)

BOSSERT: We move to shared services. We have 190 agencies that are all trying to develop their own defenses against advanced protection and collection efforts. I don't think that that's a wise approach. There's always going to be risk. So your question is, are we still at risk? Yes. I'm not here to promote for you that the president has signed an executive order and created a cyber secure world in a fortress USA. That's not the answer. But if we don't move to secured services and shared services, we're going to be behind the eight ball for a very long time.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Thank you.

BOSSERT: You're welcome.

Yes, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: You said sitting around doing nothing. Is it your contention that the Obama administration, that was its approach to cybersecurity? Sitting around and doing nothing, question number one. And, two, you talked about one enterprise network. Does that mean every system throughout the federal government, under this executive order, the admission is to make them all the same or protected in the same way?

BOSSERT: No. That's in reverse order. We need to view the federal government as an enterprise, as opposed to just viewing each department and agency as its own enterprise. The Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Kelly will play a large and leading role in effort implementing the president's executive order. That enterprise network covers 340 or so thousand employees and their contractors and so forth. They are responsible, and that secretary of each department and agency will remain responsible for securing those networks. But we need to look at the federal government as an enterprise, as well, so we no longer look at OPM and think, well, you can defend your massacre OPM network with the money commensurate for OPM responsibility. OPM, as you know, heads -- the crown jewel, so to speak, of our information and all of our background and security clearances. What we would like to do is look at that and say that is a high-risk, high cost for us to bear. Maybe we should look at this as an enterprise and put more information in collecting them than we would otherwise put into OPM looking at their relevant importance to the entire enterprise.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE QUESTION)

BOSSERT: Not just their budget, but based on what they. So each department and agency has a responsibility to protect their own networks, but they now have a responsibility to identify their risks to the White House, to the president, so we can look at what they've done, and just as importantly, what risks they know they're accepting, but not mitigating. There's a lot of unidentified risk, but also a lot of identified and not remediated risk. So that mitigation strategy is going to come from a centralized place. We've seen other countries, Israel and others, adopted a centralized view of risk management and risk acceptance decisions. That's the answer to your question.

The second question, though, maybe, is that --

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Is that the previous administration's approach from your vantage point?

BOSSERT: No, I think that the observation is that we have not done the basic block and tackle, right? Of thinking of the Internet of something that the American people benefit from. I think what we've done is focus on the federal I.T. portion of it. I think that a lot of progress was made in the last administration, but not nearly enough. I think we're going change that. And I think looking at this from the perspective of a deterrence strategy, to be honest, yes, I think the last administration should have done that, had an obligation to do it, and didn't.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: I was wondering if the administering has a view on what might constitute an act of war with regard -- you know, what kind of cyberattack might constitute an act of war?

BOSSERT: There's a whole lot that we'll talk about in terms of what constitutes a cyberattack, what's war and what's not war. The manual and other things are important. But I think the most important answer to your question is that we're not going to draw a red line on cyber war at this point today. It's not within the direct scope of the executive order, but it also would violate, I think, the president's primary mission he made to not telegraph our punches. If somebody does something to the United States of America that we cannot tolerate, we will act.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Sir --

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: You said that the goal is to secure the Internet, you talk about the Internet as something that Americans use and enjoy. Well, the technical standards for most things on the Internet are put together by many, you know, international standards organizations and engineers and things like that, that often aren't in the United States. Has there been any talk of outreach to these sorts of bodies to try to build security into the next generation of protocols?

[13:55:27] BOSSERT: Yeah, absolutely. The message here is not just protecting the people of America. We have an America First perspective, but the idea of having like-minded people with similar viewpoints, like our allies, developing with us, the open, operable Internet, is something key to figuring out how we will define what is and what is not acceptable. We can't cut off the Internet at our borders and expect it to operate in a viable way. If there are good ideas coming out of Germany, we'll take them. If there are good ideas coming out of Peoria, we'll take them, as well. (CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (INADUBIEL). We don't have much indication if there are going to be significant Silicon Valley tech leaders coming here. There are reports that the president has had a few phone calls with people like Mark Zuckerberg. Can we enlighten up a bit? And can we expect to see someone like Mark Zuckerberg working closely with the administration when it comes to that counsel?

BOSSERT: Let me go backwards a little bit. Instead of telling are you who the president did and didn't talk to, I'll tell you there's a lot to be learned from private industry. Among other things, that stuff needs to come into the White House in the appropriate way. We talk on a regular basis to leaders, some that are technical leaders, some that are business leaders. My point of calling out the American Technology Council was to point out that they're going to have a leadership role in modernizing our federal I.T. And that has a lot of reasons. There's efficiencies and cost savings that are beyond just securities. This executive order speaks to the security component of it. And I would direct you to the American Technology Council and their efforts to think about those other efficiencies is.

As an example, we've had numbers that suggest the federal government spends upwards of $40,000 per employee on their I.T. service costs, and that is so out of line with the private industry that Secretary ross and others would probably have a very easy time buying and making money off of a company that's so poorly invested their dollars. And so I think you'll see that innovation come from that group of leaders and thoughtful people.

And in terms of what you'll see over the next month, I would say, I don't know how to answer that specifically, but I would like to take the opportunity in the opening before Sarah pulls me to thank one or two people and one of them high on my list is Mayor Giuliani. I would like to thank him for the advice he's given me and the president and others as we formulate this thinking.

I would like to thank Representative McCaul. I'd like to thank a few other members of Congress, Representative Ratcliffe and Hurd, Representative Nunez, Senator Collins, Senator McCain, in particular, Senator Burr, and the White House. There's a number of people who provided well-thought leadership and taken action to pass legislation, all of those things we've liked and that has improved our cybersecurity over the last eight years. I don't want to be critical of things that have happened over the last eight years, but I want to look forward to improvement.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: As you look forward, sir, a former Obama administration official who dealt with other countries and other entities in other countries, he said that there were tens of thousands of attempts to hack into government systems daily. Can you quantify? Can you confirm or deny that?

BOSSERT: No. (CROSSTALK)

BOSSERT: The answer for no is that we see that happen and then we get into a numbers game. The better argument right now, not to cut off that question, because it's a reasonable one, but the answer is for us to figure out how we can provide a better collective defense of our federal I.T. and those networks and data we operate. If we do it based on an individual attack base, you're probably looking at it in the wrong way.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Was this person correct when they said, from entities around the world --

(CROSSTALK)

BOSSERT: I would say it this way, without numbers, the trend line is going in the wrong direction. We see it in additional attacks, additional numbers, additional volume, and occasionally, additional successes that trouble us. And that's the best way I can quantify that for you today.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Thank you.

BOSSERT: You're welcome.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Can you just say why the cybersecurity order was delayed? This was going to come out one day --

BOSSERT: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: -- early in the administration, and there had been a lot of talk about concern from Silicon Valley and tech leaders with the direction that it was going in. So are those -- do you have some sense of kind of the kind of support that this order has, support or not from the tech world?

BOSSERT: I want to answer you and reject part of your question, if I can. And I think that I'll be clarifying. So, first, I'll reject one part of your question. We did see some concerns, but I don't think they'll remain. And I look forward to their response after they read the president's executive order today. One of those concerns, for example, arose when they read the voluntary call in the president's executive order, which I applaud today, that we reduce greatly the number of botnet attacks in the United States, the denial of service defense. That's going to require voluntary cooperation among all the different owners and operators of different privately held companies, from service providers to main actors. Those things are going to have to happen voluntarily. What the president calls for --