What the Secret Neighbors Do: Look for Terrorist Threats, Share the Information to Thwart Them

Three times a day officials sit in a windowless secure video conference room in one of McLean's most secure buildings and give other high-ranking officials around the government a rundown of the most prominent terrorist threats facing the U.S.

The first briefing of the day occurs at 1 am. The biggest occurs at 8 am. The last at 3 pm. The building works like a factory with three shifts a day.

These briefings are central to the job description of the National Counterterrorism Center, one of McLean's newest secret neighbors, spawned directly from the ashes of 9-11.

Sunday we told you the story we pieced together of how the NCTC and the Director of National Intelligence became our neighbors. Today we'll tell you what they say they do.

Within the sprawling intelligence community, the National Counterterrorism Center
(NCTC) was formally established in 2004 to bring together all available information on
terrorism, analyze the information, and warn of potential attacks on the U.S.

One of the most painful findings after 9-11, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies didn't talk to each other.

What they don't do: The Center’s work excludes terror that is exclusively domestic. The FBI does that. NCTC says they don't do operations. They simply collect data, analyze and share it.

They also create the "watch lists" also called No Fly lists.

"We are one of the bright shining stars in the post-9-11 environment," said NCTC spokesman Carl Kropf.

The Washington Post reported last year that some blamed the NCTC for failing to undercover a man before he boarded a Northwest Airlines flight and attempted to blow it up as it was landing in Detroit on Christmas Day.

The NCTC and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), were created to force the 16-agency intelligence community to share information in ways that eluded it leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

As the central repository for "all-source" intelligence on international terrorism, the NCTC is supposed to find the important dots, connect the dots and advise the government on threats, the Postexplained.

"We are to connect and make sense of an unbelievable amount of information we receive about plots and threats" from foreign intelligence sources, from the military, and a myriad of other sources," Kropf explained.

"There is an unbelievable amount of data in our world and the ability to understand what is relevant and important and to make those judgements as quickly as possible," is what the agency does, he said.

The NCTC command center brings together staffers from the FBI, the Department of Defense, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Homeland Security, etc.

In a large two-story room filled with 16-20 desks arranged in pods of four, analysts watch information flowing into the three screens on their desk. The room looks like a sound stage with "movie" lights hanging from the ceiling. That's because it was designed by a set director from the Disney company, McLean Patch was told during a recent tour.

A huge TV screen dominates the front of room. When visitors come the screen shows CNN.

The folks sitting at the desks come from the "partner" agencies. "This is part of breaking down the walls . . . they are really in the same room. . . You walk to your (intelligence) colleagues 20 feet over there," said the command center administrator. "This is a real example of how the barriers have broken down on counter terror."

Who's in Charge

The director of the NCTC reports to both the President of the United States and to their next-door neighbor, the Director of National Intelligence.

Vice Adm. John Redd was the first director of the National Counterterrorism Center, in August 2005. He resigned in November 2007 because he needed replacement surgery on both knees, which would require a prolonged absence if he were to stay as director, Carl Kropf was quoted as saying.

He was succeeded by his deputy Michael Leiter, who was confirmed in 2008 and departed this summer.

Matthew G. Olsen was sworn in as the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in August following his confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

Olsen is the top attorney at the National Security Agency, which is responsible for cracking enemy communications and encrypting ours, and he’s also a law professor at Georgetown University, according to the New York Daily News. He's now our new neighbor.

James R. Clapper, Jr. was sworn in as the fourth Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on August 9, 2010. He is a retired lieutenant-general of the U.S. Air Force.

As DNI, Mr. Clapper oversees the United States Intelligence Community and serves as the principal intelligence advisor to the President.

Remembering Their Roots

The NCTC contains a permanent 9-11 Memorial.

A glass case on the first floor holds a large piece of limestone from the Pentagon. A flag that flew over the ashes of the World Trade Center. A piece of twisted stell from the World Trade Center.

"We do this for our families, our community and for our nation," said Kropf.

We pray that they succeed.

Related Topics: Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, Matthew G. Olsen, mclean VA, andnational counterterrorism center

Colin Powell’s cheap shot

By Jennifer Rubin

On “Face the Nation” yesterday, former secretary of state Colin Powell accused former vice president Dick Cheney of taking “cheap shots” in his about-to-be released memoirs. However, in taking on Cheney’s account of the Valerie Plame matter, Powell is the one who misleads and distorts.

Powell had this to say in response to Cheney’s book, which lays blame on Powell’s deputy Richard Armitage as the real leaker who revealed Plame’s identity as a CIA employee, setting off the appointment of a special prosecutor and the eventual conviction of Scooter Libby. Powell says this:

Then he goes on to talk about the Valerie Plame affair, and tries to lay it all off on Mister Rich Armitage in the State Department and me. But the fact of the matter is when Mister Armitage realized that he was the source for Bob Novak’s column that caused all the difficulty and he called me immediately, two days after the President launched the investigation and what we did was we called the Justice Department. They sent it over the FBI. The FBI had all the information that Mister Armitage’s participation in this immediately. And we called Al Gonzalez, the President’s counsel, and told him that we had information. The FBI asked us not to share any of this with anyone else, as did Mister Gonzalez. And so, if the White House operatives had come forward as readily as Mister Armitage had done, then we wouldn’t have gone on for two more months with the FBI trying to find out what happened in the White House. There wouldn’t have been special counsel appointed by the Justice Department who spent two years trying to get to the bottom of it. And we wouldn’t have the mess that we subsequently had. And so if the White House and the operatives in the White House and Mister Cheney’s staff and elsewhere in the White House had been as forthcoming with the FBI as Mister Armitage was, this problem would not have reached the dimensions that it reached.

Let’s count the ways in which this is inaccurate or misleading. To begin with, Powell leaves out the critical fact: He and Armitage never told the president what Armitage had done. Instead, they sat silent as the investigation played out and others, including Karl Rove and Libby, were ensnared in an investigation for a crime that, if committed at all, was one for which Armitage should rightly have been prosecuted. Powell on Sunday slyly said they informed the attorney general that they “had information.” But they most definitely did not tell him, the president or the country that the leaker was Armitage.

The best account of this comes from Michael Isikoff, hardly a Cheney or Libby apologist. In his book, he explained what unfolded after Armitage told Powell about his role in the leak:

The next day, a team of FBI agents and Justice prosecutors investigating the leak questioned the deputy secretary. Armitage acknowledged that he had passed along to Novak information contained in a classified State Department memo: that [ Joe] Wilson’s wife worked on weapons-of-mass-destruction issues at the CIA... [William Howard Taft IV, the State Department’s legal adviser] felt obligated to inform White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. But Powell and his aides feared the White House would then leak that Armitage had been Novak’s source — possibly to embarrass State Department officials who had been unenthusiastic about Bush’s Iraq policy. So Taft told Gonzales the bare minimum: that the State Department had passed some information about the case to Justice. He didn’t mention Armitage. Taft asked if Gonzales wanted to know the details. The president’s lawyer, playing the case by the book, said no, and Taft told him nothing more. Armitage’s role thus remained that rarest of Washington phenomena: a hot secret that never leaked. [Emphasis added.]

Notice that in Isikoff’s account the FBI never told Armitage and Powell to keep quiet. No, the secrecy was their idea. Moreover, Powell states that White House aides were not “forthcoming.” We know, of course, this is false. Numerous aides were dragged into FBI interview and grand jury rooms, required to pay for counsel and, in the case of Libby, prosecuted and convicted while the actual leaker’s identity remained secret. Talk about cheap shots.

Recall how all of this played out. Armitage and Powell allowed the entire country and troops in the field to believe a lie, namely that the White House had “outed” Plame. This, aside from the galling display of moral cowardice, also put the president’s reelection in jeopardy since Democrats were all too intent on making this into a huge scandal.

The extent of the dishonesty is quite stunning. In a Cabinet meeting on October 7, 2003, the White House press corps bombarded President George W. Bush with questions about who the leaker was. Bush said he didn’t know, but there would be an investigation to get to the bottom of it. Powell, who had been told by Armitage just days earlier that Armitage was the leaker, sat there next to the president, stone silent. Not very loyal or honest, was it?

Moreover, the notion that Armitage’s slip was somehow inadvertent is belied by Bob Woodward’s taped interview in which Armitage repeatedlymentions Joe Wilson’s wife, evidently doing his best to get Plame’s identity out there. This was no slip of the tongue. Woodward testified that when he spoke to Libby sometime later that Libby never said anything about Plame.

At issue here is not simply Powell and Armitage’s deception and undermining of their commander in chief. There was a victim, one whom neither Powell or Armitage has ever apologized to. The person who ultimately paid the price for this was Scooter Libby. Had the president and the country known about Armitage, a special prosecutor would never have been appointed. Libby was eventually convicted on the basis of a he-said-he-said dispute between his recollection and that of the late Tim Russert. (Charges concerning Libby’s alleged comments to Judy Miller were dismissed, and he was acquitted on the count involving Matt Cooper.) A compelling case for Libby’s innocence can be found in this account by Stan Crock.

Powell may be peeved at being fingered by Cheney. But on this one Cheney has him dead to rights. The Plame is a blot on his record and that of Armitage. Maybe it is time to own up and make amends rather than bristling at Libby’s former boss.

By Jennifer Rubin | 11:00 AM ET, 08/29/2011

PR chiefs weigh in on market freefall

Steve Barrett, Beth Krietsch, Ilya Leybovich, Lindsay Stein

August 05, 2011

NEW YORK: The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted more than 500 points on Thursday, setting off recessionary red flags. It fell a further 200 points during Friday trading before eventually finishing up 61 points at the end of the day.

A drastic decline in the US market, coupled with lingering unemployment problems and the debt crisis in Europe, has reawakened fears of a double-dip recession. While the PR industry has largely been immune to economic troubles in the past thanks to the rise in social media and the need for corporate reputation counsel, the latest round of economic pressures may be a game-changer.

Here's what chief executives across the world of communications are saying about the macroeconomic uncertainty and its potential effects on the PR economy:

Fred Cook, president and CEO, GolinHarris:

“Hopefully the wider economic situation will not have a big impact on PR. But it is bigger than our industry and it is awfully hard to predict – there are bigger forces at work than just marketing and PR.”

“We are not seeing any signs of reductions in budgets from our clients. These are unpredictable times, but hopefully these giant macro issues will not filter down into marketing and corporate reputation work, which often operates a level below that.”

Richard Edelman, president and CEO, Edelman:

“Despite these difficult macroeconomic issues, I still believe PR will gain share of total spend over time. But if the pie is shrinking, growth will be slower. It is likely that clients will look at their overall spend and review retainers in Q3 and Q4 to see if they can do it cheaper – then it becomes all about market share.”

“There will be a continuing trend towards consolidation at the holding companies, as that's what happens at the networks when economic stresses come along.”

Kathy Bloomgarden, CEO, Ruder Finn:

“Companies need to step out and get ahead of the uncertainty in terms of management strategies, growth opportunities, and investments, so they can build the trust they need as this market goes up and down and as economic uncertainty causes people to question what their growth and profitability might look like.”

“We all know companies are being very slow to increase headcount and that most likely presents more opportunities for agencies because there is a need to do the work and people are a bit overstretched. If the economy continues to decline, some projects will get put on hold, but it's too early to say whether retainers will be reduced or budgets will be stopped.”

David Chamberlin, SVP and director of issues and crisis, MSLGroup:

“We don't know if we're in a double-dip recession. Nobody really knows because you find out after you're in it. That said, the first quarter and first-half GDP numbers were pretty flat and the economic situation and unemployment are very uncertain. I can't say it's leading to agency switches, but we may see smart companies that have a good deal of cash and are pretty settled in their financial outlook using this period to increase market share and potentially steal it from others.”

“If agencies try and gain more and more efficiency when the economy gets tough, it becomes harder for them to maintain their levels of service unless they're continually beating that drum to make sure it happens. They're going to have to stay vigilant if they end up going through periods of layoffs to make sure their service levels stay up.”

Liz Kaplow, president, Kaplow Communications:

“It's going to be important for companies to communicate to consumers what they stand for, and loyalty and differentiating will become even more crucial. All of that happens by communicating the brand's story, so that is an area that will be able to continue to move forward as brand reputation and brand stories become even more critical.”

“During this time, PR will really begin to rise to the occasion. We have good momentum now, but social media is more important than ever for companies during difficult economic times.”

Alice Chan, principal, Bird PR:

“Oftentimes, the immediacy of what is happening in the market is not impacting the startup market. It takes a little longer for the effects to be felt. There is no doubt companies may start to be even more conservative with their spend.”

“In general, I don't think anyone has gotten frivolous with their budgets in the last 18 months. They have never gotten back to the size of budgets they had in ‘07 and ‘08. Spend has remained conservative and thoughtful for the most part.”

Sabrina Horn, president and CEO, Horn Group:

“Dips or gains in the stock market don't make companies reduce or increase their PR spending. These days everyone is being cautious and conservative whether that be client or agency.”

“One should not overreact to such market conditions but instead follow a strategy of focusing on what is best for a client given its situation and delivering quality results.”

Susan Butenhoff, president and CEO, Access Communications:

“PR has been somewhat insulated because of the additional services we offer in times of economic change: organizational change and internal communications counsel for companies experiencing downturns; social media for a broader communications reach; M&A advice for the inevitable consolidation that takes place in the market when there is a slow recovering economy; and even IPO support for those brands, primarily in the social media and consumer tech space, that are defying the macroeconomic realities. These dynamics will continue for the foreseeable future.”

“Agencies will constantly be waiting for the other shoe to drop because clients will promise budgets and activities and then be slow to activate, or will fluctuate on timing and available funds. The impact to agencies is that they will continue to run staff lean given the unpredictability of the work and budgets.”

U2 at Glastonbury Festival 2011

U2 talk to the BBC after their Glastonbury headline set

Fame, Faith, and Social Activism: Business Lessons from Bono

Published:	June 20, 2011
Author:	Kim Girard

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To Nancy F. Koehn, the history of the Irish rock band U2 has it all as a business case study: teamwork, leadership, creative destruction, branding, and strategy.

Koehn's case "Bono and U2", co-written with Katherine Miller and Rachel K. Wilcox, reconstructs the story of U2's meteoric rise in the 1980s, the band members' journey to sustain and enhance their identity in the next two decades, and the ongoing commitment to balancing their music careers, fame, personal lives, and—in the case of three of the musicians, their Christian faith. At the same time, Koehn charts the lead singer Bono's escalating, high-profile campaign against Third World debt, poverty, war and disease.

Koehn, a Harvard Business School historian who has studied social entrepreneurs and leadership in the work of celebrities including Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Oprah Winfrey, was drawn to Bono's commitment to conscious capitalism and to the question of what made Bono, well, Bono.

"It so clicked for me," she says. "I hadn't listened to U2 in 10 years. I started peeling back the layers of the U2 onion. As I did, I realized that no one had ever told this story as a business story."

In the bigger picture, U2's journey reflects our own moment here in the early 21st century, Koehn says, pointing to a growing spiritual hunger among young people, the backlash against Wall Street greed, and the revolutions in the Middle East. "U2's appeal has always been about our common humanity and the yearning we all experience to follow a higher path. People are looking for the light, and U2's music has spoken to that search since the band started recording more than two decades ago."

For CEOs who struggle with building a company that reflects their personal values, U2 also provides a model.

"Any CEO who thinks his or her job is primarily about maximizing shareholder value is living in the past," Koehn says. "The game of what kind of capitalism will define this century has changed very quickly and dramatically. "'Creative capitalism,' 'conscious capitalism,' 'stakeholder capitalism,' call it what you will," Koehn adds. "The larger social footprint and role of business are here to stay."

The project, inspired by a friend, began with Koehn, a classical music zealot, spending a year listening and studying the lyrics of most U2 songs. "It was like a huge baptism," she says, referring to the Christian ethos of some of the music, alongside the political and social messages of songs like "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (violence in Northern Ireland), "Bullet the Blue Sky" (political violence in Latin America), and "MLK" (about Martin Luther King Jr.).

Savvy from the start

U2's business savvy in the earliest days serves as a lesson for any MBA student. In an industry notorious for its focus on short-term hits and for taking control of an artist's work and profits, the band members and their long-time manager Paul McGuiness always looked to build an enterprise that would have a long life.

As important, they recognized the importance of creating as much autonomy—strategic as well as artistic—as they could. Toward this end, they obtained the rights to their own copyrights back from Island Records; they oversaw the vast majority of decisions about touring, record production, graphics, and packaging themselves; they focused on touring and a direct relationship with their audience (versus relying on radio station distribution and the roller coaster of trying to generate "Top 40" hits); and they acquired a 10 percent ownership stake in Island Records worth $30 million when the record company was acquired by PolyGram in 1989.

U2 was also innovative, understanding from the get go that technological change and the creative destruction it unleashed would have a big impact on the business of making and distributing music. In 1981, for example, U2 made a video for the song "Gloria," which was one of the first videos to slide into constant MTV rotation. Some two decades later, in 2004, Bono connected with Apple for an early release on iTunes of the single "Vertigo," and the video was featured in an Apple ad campaign. "We turned advertising into a rock video," Bono said at the time. That's not selling out, he said. "It's exciting."

Bono on business

The business takeaways from U2's story, according to Koehn, are universal and ring true whether she's teaching the case to advertising execs or second-year students in the MBA program. They include:

1. Take smart (and onging) stock of how you are using your people, your authority, and your resources. Bono became interested in Africa in the mid 1980s when he and his wife, Ali Hewson, worked at an Ethiopian feeding station. He used his growing celebrity status to forge a crucial longtime relationships with Eunice Kennedy Shriver (U2 recorded a song for her Special Olympics cause), and then Bobby Shriver, who connected him to the Kennedys and other influential politicians. Bono and Bobby Shriver formed the fundraising campaigns DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa), ONE, and(RED) to fight disease, poverty, and hunger in Africa. He also used his fame and understanding of Christianity to convince North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms to change his position on government funding for AIDS. As Koehn points out, Bono chose to use his authority as a rock star for social ends, recognizing that his own status has been critical to his ability to make a difference: "Bono doesn't get to meet with Bill Clinton and shake hands with the Pope John Paul II if he's not a rock-and-roll roll star."
2. A leader's mission is not static; it evolves. Bono continuously sets new goals around several related global challenges. For example, he started advocating for famine relief in Africa in the mid-1980s, and then in the early 1990s began raising awareness of the conflict in Sarajevo, playing live footage of the war during U2's Zooropa tour. After working to get eight industrialized nations in 1999 to agree to $100 million in African debt relief, he continued with a campaign to cancel debt owed by Third World nations to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Then he began lobbying the administration of George W. Bush for additional funding to fight AIDS (in 2003, the US government pledged $15 billion toward the disease). Like Bono, Koehn says, leaders "must take a hard look at (their missions) on an ongoing basis."
3. The mission of the CEO should align with the organization's performance. The band's mission is to make fulfilling music that comes from the four members' heads, hearts, and souls, and that connects to many audiences. Koehn says the band would not have been as successful if its members had not remained true to themselves and this larger purpose. For example, at various moments, Bono's commitment to the band was questioned by his colleagues because of all of the time he devoted to political causes. In Koehn's case study, manager Paul McGuinness says Bono "takes far too much on but it is hard to criticize him because his political achievements are very real." Ultimately, the other members believed in what he was doing. "There was a sense that (the political activism) could demystify and devalue U2," Bono has commented. "It wasn't very glamorous work...It should have damaged us…but it didn't."
4. Who you are and what you stand for as an organization have great relevance to the people who buy your product. Many of U2's supporters embrace the band because the causes the four members work to address—from social injustice to hunger—are issues the fans themselves are concerned about. By participating in Live Aid, Band Aid, and the Amnesty International Conspiracy of Hope tour, U2 also refuses to sell out creatively, which keeps fans loyal. "People don't just buy (the single) "Walk On" or (album) No Line on the Horizon," Koehn says, "they are buying the backstory to that music, just like grocery shoppers buying organic milk or fair trade coffee." This lesson applies across all businesses. "We think this is only true for artists and entertainers, but it's true for making tennis shoes and semiconductors, and for how you create limited partners at an investment bank," she says. "The backstory of organizations is now part of the value proposition for consumers. The lads from Dublin understood that early on and they still understand it."

Koehn says the U2 case remains a work in progress and she believes she will someday interview Bono for her work—just as Oprah showed up at her classroom to answer student questions during a case discussion about the talk show icon.. "Stay tuned," Koehn says. "I am meant to meet this restless, devoted, and inspiring leader."

About the author

Kim Girard is a writer based in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Exclusive: The Edge and Adam Clayton Reveal U2's Future Plans

By ROLLING STONE

JUNE 10, 2011 4:05 PM ET

Last month, Rolling Stone Senior Writer Brian Hiatt traveled to Denver to catch up with U2 as they kicked off the final leg of their 360 Tour. He chatted with the Edge and Adam Clayton about the epic two-year tour, the difficult birth of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark and where exactly U2 goes from here. (For more, read our full account of U2's time on the road from the most recent issue of Rolling Stone.)

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You seemed pretty happy out there tonight.

Adam Clayton: I definitely got to a point where I realize how unusual it is to be able to play large, sold-out shows 30 years into a rock and roll career. I don't take it for granted.

There's still a substantial number of No Line On The Horizon songs in the setlist, but at this point it doesn't feel like the No Line tour necessarily.

Yeah. It is unfortunate. We would like to be playing more of the material from the album. It got great reviews. There's great material on the record, but there's no point banging away songs to people who don't get it. It didn't catch fire. It's old news now. The single didn't work, and when the single doesn't work people don't have a way into the record.

Photos: U2 Comes Full Circle as 360 Degree Tour Launches in Barcelona

The tour was supposed to be long over by now. None of this was planned.

There was nothing we could do about the timing of the tour. What happened to Bono was a fairly serious injury. At the time, it wasn't like he could have gone on and had it treated later. He had to be operated on, and that was exactly a year ago. That set the die, and we worked on material in the down time, but we haven't had time to go back to that material and complete it. That's why we don't think we're going to have a record this year, because when we work everything backwards from when this tour finishes, you need to finish a record by September for a release, and we don't do that.

It must have been a relief to just say, "next year." When did that decision get made?

We did some work on it in January. It was great progress. We worked with Danger Mouse in New York. After that, we had to have a bit of a meeting and look at the schedule for the rest of the year and see if we could pick up any extra time to work on it. We just realized that we couldn't. To be honest, everyone was a bit gutted, because I think it would have been great to have got to the end of this year and have a new record out. It's not my favorite decision to put it back, but it was the only sensible decision.

Paul McGuinness said that the idea of having a new album out was sacrificed at the altar of Spider-Man.

Well, I think there may have been an element of that. At the time when we made the decision not to do the record, we didn't know what was happening with Spider-Man. It only subsequently turned out that Spider-Man was in difficulty and Edge and Bono had to put a lot more time into it.

Photos: U2: Three Decades of the World's Biggest Band, Onstage and Backstage

You have credit on a couple of the songs.

I think we do. I haven't followed it too closely.

Have you teased them about it or do you just let it be?

They're my songwriting and musical partners. They're entitled to do what they like, and I hope it goes well for them, and I support them wholeheartedly in it.

It must be frustrating if it prevented an album.

It's not the best situation to happen, but we stick together and we get through it. We'll get through it. There's no other option.

You had 'Songs of Ascent,' the RedOne record and at some point there was talk of putting out the Spider-Man songs as a U2 record – so there's these all these phantom albums. It's unusual for you guys.

I think that's a good thing, conceptually, for Bono to focus on, because as a writer he needs to have these scenarios going on – but my view tends to be, when the record is finished, we'll know what it is.

So in your mind it wasn't all these different records. You were working on music, and once you figured out what was best . . .

Exactly. I know that the Songs of Ascent material is there.

It would be strange to release it now, right?

I'm not convinced that it would be the next thing to do. The work we did with RedOne was very, very exciting. But again, I'm not sure it was the essence of what U2 is good at, and U2 is very elastic, we can do many different things, but I think we have to get down to the essence of the band. I think that's what people like about us, and we have to do what we do best and we have to focus on that, and the work we did with Danger Mouse came closest to that. And we're curious. We want to be in the clubs and make pop music as well as the thing U2 does, and we did that thing with RedOne, but in the end, it doesn't feel like the right fit.

Are you going to take full-on time off once this tour is over?

We're saying we'll take both August and September off. And October and November we'll start thinking about material. But we probably won't get a whole lot done. I'd say we'll start in earnest in February.

How do you feel about the future of the band in general?

You can't make assumptions when you're dealing with health issues. We're getting to a point where there are health issues.

It's a hard, grueling life – although it may not seem it. And you really have to be very focused and very determined to keep yourself in the kind of shape you need to be in to do that. I imagine everyone will get away from this tour and get a bit of breathing space, then in two or three years time, they'll be able to do it again. You have the same set of questions: "Do you want to play in a stadium?" "No, we don't want to play in a stadium." "Do you want to play in an arena?" "Yeah, we like playing in arenas." "But if you play in arenas, it will take you this long to get around the world, if you play in stadiums, you can do it over a couple of summers," and the debate will start.

Is it possible you'd put out a record and not do an insane world tour?

Obviously, when we release the record, we'll do a tour. I'm just pretty pedantic about doing it each step at a time, and as far as I'm concerned, there isn't a record until it's in the shops, and there isn't a tour until the record is out.

I don't think we'd want to do another stadium tour, but I don't know. If the record caught fire in a certain way, then we would. So we have to work these things out. I do like arena tours – they're much, much easier.

Can you imagine you guys still doing this in 20 years?

I think it's unlikely, but, you know . . .

Is 10 years easier?

Yeah, I can imagine 10. But never say never, you don't know. I think rock & roll would become exponentially, considerably more difficult to perform past about 65. The type of music that Leonard Cohen is performing now, he seems to be able to do. Whether a rock & roll band could work at that level, maybe the Stones . . .

You have a couple more months of the 360 tour left. What is the mission statement for the remaining dates?

The Edge: We'd like to finish the show. We'd like to get it to the place that we want it to be. The final one or two shows, I'm sure, is where we'll fully realize the 360 Tour. I think Dylan wrote, "He not busy being born is busy dying." This show is still being born, even if it's two years in.

Adam was saying that you're at the point where it's impossible to imagine the next tour. He can't wrap his mind around starting another one.

I say it will be a while before anyone wants to think about it, but I'm sure the next time we go out, it will be quite different. That, I'm pretty confident about, but what that might be, there really is no clue at this point.

Not that long ago you let go of the idea of getting out an album before this set of dates.

Yeah. I think we all understand that we'd probably have to tour another album, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility of early next year, but thinking practically, I imagine that Bono's right – probably next fall.

I saw a bunch of shows early on in the tour, but this show feels like a whole new thing.

It's changed quite a bit since the first show, and I think there's a whole bunch of new songs we're playing, and that's the way it always goes with us. The minute a show actually gets to a place where it's reached a peak, it's like we immediately want to start planning for something new, because we just get bored. It just gets stale so quickly for us that we can't really let it become static.

How has it been to work in the face of of the negativity surrounding the Spider-Man musical?

I don't really care that much about the negative media. In this instance, we were the junior partners and composers, but not the director and not the producer. We really didn't have that much significant input or control over the way things went. But we did realize there were problems. The show was actually a good show, it just wasn't great. It didn't quite work as a story. Some aspects of it were amazing. Some journalists called it one of the worst Broadway shows ever, and I think that's complete nonsense. But was it where it needed to be? No, it wasn't. So I didn't have any complaints with the bad reviews. I was furious, mind you, that they all showed up virtually the same day. That raised a few eyebrows.

Bono & The Edge - Rise Above (Spiderman) - American Idol Season 10 Finale

The Christian Al Gore: The eternal appeal of doomsday cults.

"With no sign of Judgment Day arriving as he had forecast, the 89-year-old California evangelical broadcaster and former civil engineer behind the pronouncement seemed to have gone silent on Saturday," Reuters reports.

Talk about liberal media bias! Were they expecting him to keep broadcasting from heaven?

OK, that's a joke. We don't really expect doomsday cultists to be taken seriously. One could, indeed, fault the liberal media for taking Harold Camping too seriously, "as a prime piece of proof that American evangelicals are nuts," in the words of historian Tim Stanley, blogging for London's Daily Telegraph.

In fact, the Reuters piece respectfully quotes one Stuart Bechman, "national affiliate director of a group called American Atheists," who says: "There are a lot of silly and even unfounded beliefs that go on in the religious community that cause harm." That's such a broad-brush statement that one can't exactly claim it is false, and it's not hard to think of examples of harmful acts that result from religious beliefs: terrorism, widow-burning, refusing or withholding medical treatment. But these are practices of different faiths and are far from universal within them. The obvious flaw in Bechman's conception is his notion that there is a single "religious community" consisting of everyone outside the world of organized irreligion. In fact, that world is as tiny and eccentric as any religious sect or cult.

Something else bothers us about the media mockery of Harold Camping, as justifiable as it may be. Why are only religious doomsday cultists subjected to such ridicule? Reuters notes that "Camping previously made a failed prediction Jesus Christ would return to Earth in 1994." Ha ha, you can't believe anything this guy says! But who jeered at the U.N.'s false prediction that there would be 50 million "climate refugees" by 2010? We did, but not Reuters.

Doomsday superstitions seem to fulfill a basic psychological need. On the surface, the thought that God or global warming will destroy the world within our lifetimes is horrifying. But all of us are doomed; within a matter of decades, every person alive will experience the end of his own world. A belief in the hereafter makes the thought of death less terrifying. But so does a disbelief in the here, after. If the world is to end with us--if there is no life for anyone after our death--we are not so insignificant after all.

To reject traditional religion is not, as the American Atheists might have it, to transform oneself into a perfectly rational being. Nonbelievers are no less susceptible to doomsday cults than believers are; Harold Camping is merely the Christian Al Gore. But because secular doomsday cultism has a scientific gloss, journalists like our friends at Reuters treat it as if it were real science. So, too, do some scientists. It may be that the decline of religion made this corruption of science inevitable.

Reds make Sports Center commercial

Zooropa from Denver

Gates, Cook, Redd offer grads words of encouragement, challenge

Media Contact:

Darin Watkins, WSU News, 509-335-4456, darin.watkins@wsu.edu

PULLMAN, Wash. – Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates issued a ringing call to public service in addressing Washington State University graduates at the second of three commencement ceremonies held at the Beasley Performing Arts Coliseum on the university’s Pullman campus Saturday.

“It’s precisely during these trying times that America needs its best and brightest young people, from all walks of life, to step forward to bring their talents and fresh perspectives to bear on the challenges facing this country,” said Gates, who has served as defense secretary since December 2006 under President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. He has announced plans to retire later this year.

Gates spoke to just over 1,000 graduates of WSU’s College of Liberal Arts and Edward R. Murrow College of Communication.

“To serve our country, you don’t need to deploy in a war zone or a Third World country or be buried in a windowless cube in a gothic structure by the Potomac River. You don’t have to be a CIA spy or analyst or Navy SEAL who track down and bring to justice the most notorious terrorist in the world,” said Gates, making his only reference to Osama bin Laden, who was killed in a U.S. military operation in Pakistan Monday.

“Whatever the job, working in the public sector at some level offers a chance to serve your fellow citizens as well as learn the inner workings of our government and build skills that will stand you in good stead in facing other challenges in your career and in your life,” Gates said.

He urged graduates not to shrink from today’s challenges, saying that he can clearly remember other times – the Soviet Sputnik launch, the Vietnam War, the OPEC oil embargo, and the economic crises of the late 1980s – when it seemed to some that the nation faced insurmountable obstacles.

“I lived through each of those periods of “declinism,” when many were convinced that America was stuck in a downward spiral. And yet, after meeting the many challenges we faced head-on, our nation emerged from each of these periods stronger than before – and I am convinced that we will do so again,” he said.

Gates, whose wife Becky and son Brad are both WSU graduates, was warmly received by the crowd. He praised WSU’s efforts to help returning veterans realize the goal of earning a college degree and he administered the oath to 19 graduates of WSU’s ROTC program who were commissioned as officers.

The day’s three ceremonies, presided over by WSU President Elson S. Floyd, marked the university’s 115th spring commencement.

Speaking to graduates of the WSU colleges of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences, Engineering and Architecture, Pharmacy, Sciences and Veterinary Medicine at the first ceremony of the day, former WSU Dean and Professor Emeritus R. James Cook told the graduating students that America needs them to be and stay competitive in their chosen fields.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences who this year received the 2011 international Wolf Prize for Agriculture, Cook – who served as the R. J. Cook Endowed Chair in Wheat Research during his 40-year tenure at WSU – urged graduates to resolve themselves to lead the changes that will occur throughout their lifetimes, rather than simply attempt to keep pace with them.

“The U.S. now ranks 20th in high school completion rate among industrialized nations and 16th in college completion rates,” he said. “The total annual federal investment in research in mathematics, physical sciences and engineering is now equal to the increase in U.S. healthcare costs every nine weeks.

Cook said a committee formed by the National Academy recently concluded that essentially no progress had been made over the past five years in strengthening the science and technology enterprise in America.

“How can America be competitive if we the citizens that make up the nation’s workforce are not competitive in this global market place,’ Cook asked. “Just assume that, whatever your field, someone will raise the bar. Why not have it be you?

“The world may be flat when it comes to the global market place and employment, but it is not flat when it comes to innovation,” he said. “The innovators of the world still want to pursue their dreams in America. No one knows exactly why, but somehow the environment in America brings out the best in entrepreneurship and innovation.”

In addressing graduates of the WSU colleges of Business, Education and Nursing later Saturday afternoon, Retired Admiral John S. Redd, the first Senate-confirmed director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, was expected to stress the importance of maintaining a lifelong checklist of key personal qualities that will support success, including vision, excellence, character, teamwork, organization, and respect.

“Character is both the most important and the most personal of the attributes you’ll need in life,” said Redd in his prepared remarks. “Your character reflects what you believe, which is the basis for your personal sense of morality. It drives everything else you do.

“Remember this,” he said. “If you fail, it will probably not be for lack of ability, but for lack of character. In short, your character is the foundation on which you build your life. Build it wisely. Guard it carefully.”

Redd served in several senior policy positions in the Pentagon and as executive director for the WMD Intelligence Commission.

Note to Producers/Assignment Editors: B-Roll of Commencement and Soundbites from Robert Gates are available for download at this link: http://134.121.160.190/Dropboxes/WSUGrad2011/
Multiple formats for Radio/TV media are available for download. Gates’ address is called “gatesWSU” and broll is called “wsugradbroll”

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