>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." >> the last american prisoner of war was exchanged on saturday. sergeant bowe bergdahl was

kidnapped five years ago. the price of his freedom was five detainees. president obama spoke on saturday alongside the soldier's parents. >> as i said, we are committed to winding down the war in afghanistan and we are committed to closing gitmo. we also remain a commitment to bring prisoners of war home. that is who we are as americans. it is a profound obligation in the military, and today, in this instance, it is a promise we have been able to keep. >> the deal has attracted controversy and doubts about how sergeant bergdahl fell into enemy hands in the first place. i am pleased to have him back on this program. welcome, david. it may begin with the three

important questions for me to begin with, what do we know about how he was captured, what his imprisonment was like, and what led to his release. >> well, we know with near certainty he walked away from his forward outpost in afghanistan in 2009, sneaking away in the middle of the night. why he did it is a subject of some controversy among the soldiers in his unit. some say he had been talking about walking across afghanistan. others about making friends in the local community. others say he was talking about fighting for the taliban. so without hearing from bergdahl, we don't really know

what his motive was, it is clear he deliberately left his base. as to his captivity, it must have been grim. it was five years, most of it in pakistan and most of it he was in the custody of the haqqani network, which is a ruthless outfits. we know that he is having trouble speaking english, he did not have any chance the past five years, and he's got dietary needs, which means he is suffering some ailments from the food he had to eat the last five years. as to why it came about now, i think two things did it. one, there was a proof of life video which the public has not

seen, but was sent to the u.s. in january. that showed him in a weaker condition. and the other important factor was that the u.s. finally started getting assurances from the government of qatar that if they released these five afghan taliban from the prison, they really would be kept in qatar at least one year and not allowed to leave the country. >> do we know with there was communication with him while in prison? >> no. i do not know of any. although usually in those cases is, there are ransom demands. the family gets the ransom demand. of course the fbi is sitting on

the family's telephone. so that is all of the information we do not know. certainly they had intelligence, not on where he was, but how he is doing. >> his parents are obviously expressing their love for their son and happiness he is coming home, there is also the sense of their knowledge that he is in bad shape in terms of where he has been. the father said it is like somebody deep into the ocean and has to be decompressed before they can come up. >> i think that is true. he would have been in solitary confinement those five years. he may have had prison guards around him. in terms of a fellow prisoners, he was held by himself. that must have been a dispiriting experience. he is in for a more dispiriting experience when he comes back to

the united states because the former members of his unit are in full cry on television and the internet saying bergdahl is not a hero, some are calling him a traitor. >> soldiers lost their lives or risked their lives in pursuit of him, trying to rescue him. >> yeah. it is hard to draw a one-to-one correlation because what they are saying is that once they started searching for bergdahl, their patterns became more easily identified by the enemy and they could set ambushes and lay roadside bombs.

they are making the case so many resources, drones, were devoted to the search for bergdahl. their unit was unprotected. i do not know they will ever be able to prove a soldier died looking for bergdahl. certainly some of the soldiers believe it and they believe it strongly. >> although quatar will keep the five for one year, what happens after the year? they will be in communication with the taliban. these were important members of the taliban and the haqqani network. it is a very powerful group. >> we do not know the details on the conditions under which they are going to remain in qatar. it has been described as a form of house arrest. they're going to be with their families. i think it seems inevitable they are going to end up in afghanistan. they are probably going to end

up in afghanistan after 2014, after the end of the u.s. combat role. >> so that is what the administration may have rationalized, we will be gone, so we are not releasing five people who are going to do great -- >> i think it was a genuine determination within the administration to wrap up all of the loose ends in this afghanistan venture and get it over. >> does the controversy have legs? >> he is going to come back to the united states and he is going to have to tell his side of the story. he is going to have to explain why he did what he did. that is going to keep this

controversy alive in these -- and these former soldiers, they are using a public-relations firm. this is not a haphazard matter of a few soldiers speaking up. there is a coordinated effort. i am not meaning to suggest they are not legitimate and their concerns are not legitimate, but it is being organized by a public-relations firm. >> finally, does this offer some possibility there has been a successful negotiation, you know the taliban is calling this a coup for them, as if they got something they wanted, that it might lead to real negotiations about what happens in pakistan and afghanistan?

>> the issues are so much larger when it comes to reconciliation between the u.s. and taliban. the u.s. demand is that the taliban renounce their support for terrorism. that is such a great ideological leap compared to letting one soldier go, who may have become a problem for you, and in fact his captors may have started to worry about his health and realized if he dies on their hands, they're going to get nothing. >> do they worry that somehow the idea of finding a soldier somehow, being able to snatch a soldier and hold him hostage or imprison him might be a bargaining tool to get other

people out of guantanamo? >> when it comes to the taliban, that has been their top priority, to get their hands on an american soldier. i don't think this is going to increase the risk of the taliban or al qaeda snatching an american soldier. in other parts of the world, where other of these al qaeda affiliates are watching, this may give them ideas. >> david, thank you. david martin from the pentagon. back in a moment. stay with us. joining me now for further analysis of the release of soldier bergdahl is an investigative journalist for reuters. and someone who served and is invited to the commanding general for u.s. special operations forces and is the associate director of the

defense policy center, at the rand corporation. i am pleased to have both of them. david, let me begin with you. because of your unique insight, you can tell us about where he might be in his head and what he faces. >> i was elated when we escaped. there is a great story of bowe breaking into tears. he does face a long journey. he's going to carry this for the last five years with him and there is a lot of criticism of him and soldiers that may have died looking for him. he will carry that as well. i understand the frustration, but we should hear from bowe and what led to him being taken captive and hear his side.

>> what have his parents told you over the years? >> they don't know what led him off the base. they have been desperate to get him home. they are concerned about him. >> based on understanding what five years in the hands of the taliban can do or more? >> the time with the taliban. i was only there seven months. i was lucky. i had an afghan journalist who helped me escape. he and i could speaking which. bowe bergdahl has been alone with no english speakers around him. at best some young taliban guards that would speak to him in the local language. >> and the stress of all of this? >> what it does, in the beginning you think they going to kill you. then you are brought and they take you to pakistan and there is a separate story about how come he was held for five years in pakistan without the pakistani military finding him or trying to. or is criticism of the deal, a lot of the lame on the pakistani military. once you get into pakistan you realize they can hold you as long as they want.

they have this safe haven. i was no longer afraid of dying, but thinking, is this ever going to end? they're going to try to trade you. you enter this dark sense of, are you going to be forgotten. and also, what am i doing to my family and my loved ones? >> what were your conditions of life? >> i was held by the haqqani network. he was probably in a small brick house. i was probably treated better than him, because i am a journalist. he spent his days doing chores, trying to pass the days somehow. >> what can you tell me about the unit he was with?

>> he was with a u.s. unit in eastern afghanistan. when something like this happens, everybody gears up. you have u.s. intelligence officials that begin to collect information on his whereabouts, special operations forces that year up to try to insert and conduct hostage rescue, you have the afghan government and its services trying to identify him. just to support david's point, i remember in the initial hours after we realized he was in captivity, to try to get him before he was taken across the border into pakistan. once he entered pakistan territory, that is a different game.

the idea that u.s. could unilaterally insert its forces into pakistan has a range of political sensitive questions, as we saw with bin laden. it was a rush to get him into pakistan that was the focus of effort and obviously that failed. he was held in pakistan. >> what did they tell you about bergdahl? >> at that point, not a lot of information. some information about leaving the compound. what is most important is to hear from bowe himself. we have not had his perspective. we have had reports of people who spoke to him and people to communicated with him. we have not heard from bowe. in general we are missing an important perspective. before anybody reaches a conclusion, they should hear from him. >> could this lead to conversations with the taliban that would be productive? >> in my view, negotiations with

the taliban are going to require a range of issues. there are some factors working against successful efforts, the u.s. has announced it is going to leave by 2016. end its combat forces. the u.s. was negotiating with the taliban. it has increased its lyrical stature. i find it unlikely, and the taliban's perspective with the u.s. believing that it is going to be willing to negotiate. talking is useful, but prospects are low. >> i want to talk about negotiation and paying ransom to bring somebody home.

>> i was on the phone with the daughter of warren weinstein. he is a 72-year-old that was also held captive in pakistan. the weinstein family is elated their nightmare is over, but they do not know what to do. with my family went through is there is no clear policy from the u.s. and even all western countries about dealing with the kidnapping by a terrorist group. israel released 1000 soldiers to get one israeli soldier. many european governments, france, pay ransoms. ones.the u.s. and the british -- many european governments, france, pay ransoms.

very large ones. the u.s. and the british say the government will not pay ransoms and these families are left on their own. >> do you have an opinion as to the better policy? >> something consistent and very clear and public. the shrouded nature of all of this leads to these crazy beliefs among the taliban about what they can get. i was in captivity when the american captain was rescued, captain phillips, the focus of the movie. my captive heard about this and heard there was no navy seal raid. this tactic is working. >> and they are getting compensation. >> boko haram is getting money. most of them have been paid in yemen, which is the largest threat to united states. it is an argument, either they do not pay ransom, or there is some other way to deal with this. it seems different in different cultures. in france there is an expectation they will ransom a journalist. >> this was a prisoner of war exchange, is that a fine distinction with no difference?

>> i do not think there is much of a distinction. the u.s. was negotiating with ultimately, two organizations that are linked. one is the taliban and the other was the haqqani network. the haqqani network on the ground where bowe was and who held david is an organization with close ties to al qaeda on the ground. as well as the pakistan intelligence agency. there is an important question about why an organization was closely tied to pakistan intelligence. pakistan was unable to get him released. that is a looming question i have not seen raised. >> what do you think it might be? >> i don't know the answer right now. you have to ask pakistan. their argument has been they do not have a relationship with these militant groups. they have said the taliban

senior leadership is in afghanistan. although many of us know the opposite. to be involved in this, they've got to become public about it. >> in my seven months in the haqqani network in pakistan, that is where bowe was, i saw no effort by the pakistani military to confront them. i was able to escape because we were being held half a mile from the pakistani military base. the soldiers never came to investigate what the taliban were doing. thank god this soldier brought me to this base. isi turns a blind eye to the haqqani network.

it is a policy. we backed, once, jihadists to fight the soviet union. they think they can use them as proxies and this disastrous. >> isi took a blind eye to that fact osama bin laden was there? >> where they knew about it. this is an american soldier on the territory of pakistan. let's hear from bowe bergdahl. maybe he deserves criticism, but so does pakistan. >> if this guy was in afghanistan, special forces could have gotten him? >> i think so. the issue would be literally special operation forces could have gotten him. the question would have been at what moment.

because an analysis of terrain using satellite imagery, human sources on the ground, would be to do an assessment of where he was held, the terrain, and whether it was feasible for a hostage rescue mission. the placement of the guards, you just have to wait for a moment when the risks were minimal and the benefits were high. once you go into pakistan, then you are breaking sovereignty. had he been in afghanistan, there would have been a chance. it would have been a waiting game. >> there is also the question you have any circumstance like this, if you pay ransom, how do you make that happen? who initiated this conversation between the taliban and the united states? >> i don't know. i know there have been discussions for a long time, for several years, about a

negotiated settlement. as part of that, there have been discussions about the release of at least these five taliban prisoners in guantanamo bay. this issue has been in play a long time. we have seen it resurfaced now as part of the bergdahl deal. >> omar, whom we did not hear from, in pakistan, had not been heard from. >> it is a victory to show he controls the taliban. this is an initiative to have a prisoner exchange is a first confidence building measure that can lead to a peace process involving the u.s. karzai has been a huge problem. it will be interesting to see if

afghanistan changes once he's gone. it got down to doing this deal. the administration, criticism these five could be on the battlefield, but we seem to have decided we are leaving afghanistan. if they are held in qatar, there will be very few if no americans there. we are ending this war. you would have prisoner exchanges at the end of wars. it is ugly, but if we're going to leave afghanistan, do you leave bowe bergdahl and leave these afghans in guantanamo bay? there are still 12 there. they didn't ask for them back. they seem to be low-level

fighters. >> if you could speak to bowe bergdahl, what would you say to him, what advice would you give him? >> to take this slowly. it's -- it's, i've talked with other people held hostage in somalia, and syria, i understand the criticism of bowe. i would say again this is a burden he is going to carry forever. i have guilt feelings. it has changed his life. he may not know soldiers died searching for him. i could say that i know he will always regret this happened. whatever decisions he may have made. i regret going to the interview that got me kidnapped. i would tell him to take this slowly. there will be a torrent of attention. some negative, some positive. and then he will move on with his life. i and he will rebuild his life. i am a working journalist again. the my wife is pregnant. he will have a life, that it is going to be a long road. he deserves to give himself time. >> time to think it through. >> and make amends to so many people.

>> seth, looking to the politics of afghanistan, it looks like we will leave 9000 troops there. we assume the new president of afghanistan will approve that. that is good news? most people believe for having some impact in terms of anti-terrorism and training police? >> i put out a report from the council on foreign relations at the end of last year which argued that a force of between 8000 and 12,000 would probably be sufficient to prevent and overthrow of the karzai government, particularly if it included not just counterterrorism, but also a train, advise, and assist component. in a range of enablers, helicopters, aircraft,

intelligence collectors, drones, if they were needed to potentially strike. what the administration did, and we spent time talking to them, they came into the middle of that. i think these numbers are good enough to prevent a taliban and overthrow of the karzai government. the challenge is that the u.s. is going to be leaving. it will have it by 2015, and then by 2016, go to zero. you can do some issues over the course of 2014 and 2015, but the focus to be clear, even with 9000, you've got to be working on conducting operations at the same time you are taking down infrastructure, figuring out what to do with your vehicles. you've got to retrograde at the same time. that is never ideal in training or counterterrorism operations. >> thank you, seth. great to have you. we will be back. stay with us.

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>> david ignatius is here. he is a columnist for the washington post and has covered foreign policy for more than 25 years and is also a best-selling obvious. the latest book is called "the director," drawing on american intelligence and hacking and what it portends for the future of intelligence. i am pleased to have david ignatius at this table. how do you do it? this is number nine. >> my ninth novel. the simple answer is this is pleasure. this is my hobby. i love writing fiction because it is relaxing. i get lost in a book when i am writing it. >> can you tell stories here because you could not nail it down for reporting? >> you can speculate and draw them out and imagine how they might work. as a journalist, i do not see into the details of intelligence operations.

i see the surface. people tell me stories. i hear a lot, but i am not on the inside of this world. in a sense, that makes it easier. i can describe what people might do and operations. >> how many of the characters are based, in some sense, on a profile of someone you know? >> they are all composites. no one is based on a single person.

>> but i just said i loved ramona, and you said, "you might know her." >> with any character, the character in this book, they are people who are like the character and you may know some of them. but there is no -- honest, if you tried to describe a real person, it would be nonfiction. it would be journalism. it is the invention that makes it -- >> you are inspired by things you see. i would assume that you go through your life on an airplane going to foreign countries, to report and interview people, you are meeting people along the way. you are hearing stories and all of the stories are filed in your brain and in your computer, this may be part of something. >> for sure. there are bits of real life that stick in your consciousness and get you going. i will give you an example, when i was researching "the director" in 2012, this idea of hacking and intelligence was

interesting. so i decided i needed to find out about this world. i went to the biggest hackers convention, they have a convention every year in las vegas. i went there, there were 10,000 or more people dressed in black t-shirts and jeans and spiky hair. i had somebody who guided me around and introduced me to people. as i met those oh, they began to stick to my consciousness. they come out in fiction. am i drawing on the real life i saw, absolutely. that is what makes this kind of book, that purports to be real life espionage fiction, seem interesting. >> tell me who graham weber is.

not in terms of the model, but who they are in this book. >> in the book, graham weber is the head of a communications company on the west coast. he is an iconoclastic guy. he refused a national security letter from the fbi. the cia told him to produce information, and he challenged it. he is a hero to people on the left who would like to see cia reform. the president likes him and decides he wants to shake up the cia. he is installed as director. in his first week on the job, in walks a scruffy hacker, a swiss kid, who tells the cia based chief, you have been hacked. we are inside your computers. we know your communication system and to prove it gives the base chief a list of all of the officers from the agency.

>> the worst fear you can deliver. >> the worst thing that can happen happens to this director in his first week. he has no idea what to do. it is a new world to him. he began by reading about james accompanying the director to this convention where he acts as his guide, and so he turns to him, a smart kid, and says up to me. i'm going to send you to hamburg to unravel this mystery of us being hacked. you are a hacker. his nickname in the internet operations division at the cia is "pownzer," which means we own you. he set out to try to own this problem.

as we will discover in the book, he turns out to be a very complicated person. he has multiple agendas, and none of which are clear to the director and he gets the director in the kind of nightmarish problem american national security agencies have been experiencing. i like to say this is a post-snowden novel in the sense my characters are fictional, but they live in a world after edward snowden has revealed these secrets. this book is about the tools the nsa has against the cia and the cia being under threat from the same kinds of aggressive operations against others. >> what are you saying about the cia in this book? >> the cia is inhabited by ghosts.

that is something the president says to graham weber. and everything weber encounters as he arrives at the agency confirms that. one of the first things he does is removed the statue of wild bill donovan, the famous founder. there is this statue in the lobby. he has his fingers in his belt. he ran oss. weber's first act is to get the statue out of the lobby. there is a big discolored spot. what has happened? where is wild bill donovan? he is saying we have to shake this place up. these ghosts are tied to a past that is not fully our. >> does this reflect your views about the cia? >> it does. i have written nine novels about the cia. if you look at the arc of those books, you see an agency that went from its greatest days when it had its winds at its back, when everybody wanted to be a

cia agent. you are nobody in beirut if the cia had not recruited you. today, in so many places around the world, the united states is hated, rejected. the agency suffers from that. the agency has gotten too big, too bureaucratic. the combination of bureaucracy and secrecy has produced a special kind of disaster. i would like to see a smaller cia. i would like to see it focus on the secrets that matter. i would like to see it get out

of the covert action paramilitary side of the business. one of the things i liked about president obama's speech was too was suggesting that in these future training missions we are going to do in iraq, the training should be done by military people, special operations. >> the mission that got osama bin laden was conceived by the cia, run by special operations. >> it was a title 50 mission, the cia ran it. it was officially deniable. it was covert. under title 10, the authority under the military, you can't do these deniable covert things. the military has to go in uniform and declare their presence. special operations officers from delta force can be cut to the cia where they are working for the cia and as they say, they are operating under title 50. that is the training program we are doing now of syrian opposition forces.

it is a cia program run by paramilitary officers. some of them are army and special forces. >> in jordan or in syria? >> jordan. they do not go into syria. the idf president obama is playing with is let's make this more overt. the idea of calling it covert when it is in the newspaper is ridiculous. let's do it with the military. a title x program. obama has gone the support of the chairman of the joint chiefs, which is a big change. he was against this sort of thing before.

>> here is what is interesting, when david petraeus became director, people assumed it would be more of a paramilitary role for the cia. and when, i am asking you, when john brennan became the cia director, he said i don't think we should be doing that. i want to go back to our mission of finding secrets. am i right? >> the basic parameters are right. it never went as far in the paramilitary direction as people expected. brennan understands the cia's counterterrorism mission, which runs the drone program -- >> which is run by the army? >> no. well, in pakistan, where we have not conducted many drone attacks, i believe it is run by the cia.

and in yemen, which is the other major theater for where drones are used, the idea was to turn it over to the military. some operations did not go well. there were terrible civilian casualties. it is my understanding it was handed back to the agency. >> talk to me about snowden. what did you think of this interview with brian williams? >> i thought it was fascinating because it was almost as if he was opening renegotiations with the government. i want to go home, he said. i am a patriot. he was saying i am willing to plead to reduced charges. i might be willing to serve a short prison sentence. that is what i took away from it.

the second thing that i found fascinating, was that he wanted people to understand he had been a significant intelligence officer. he was not a low-level tech nation. he was trained as an undercover officer. i heard susan rice say that was false. another important statement he made in the interview, which was he had tried to blow the whistle through channels written to the general counsel and others, just this afternoon, the nsa released when they said was the text of the letter he had sent, which is different from what he described. it is much more technical. it is not whistleblowing, angry, and i as an american protest it,

it is something much more -- >> he believes it did not do any damage. certainly nobody is hurt. susan rice and others say that is simply not true. what do you say? >> it is hard for me to see edward snowden as a hero. he signed an agreement, he's had some precious secrets, he signed an agreement to protect them. he disclosed them. it is difficult today to know what the benefits and what the cost of what he did our. some benefits are clear. there has been a debate about surveillance that has led to new legislation, which will be passed and signed by the president, that will allow us to experiment with a less intrusive surveillance. the phone companies hold our metadata for a year or two. that is good. it is worth trying. we should look and see, contrary to what the nsa has said, it is possible to respect people's privacy. let's go further. let's have additional reform. so that experiment, to see how we can do things that are more respectful of privacy, that is a

good thing. the damage susan talked about, and others, the systems that have been compromised, there is no way for me as a journalist to know. i have heard the assertions over and over again. i know from traveling in terms of public opinion about america overseas, it has been very damaging. people are angry. you could save me had it coming, we should not have been listening to angela merkel's

phone calls, that is true. but this snowden time has really been a difficult one for the government and you have to hope for the country, the benefits are going to be greater than the cost. >> speaking of u.s. foreign policy, you said, this was a month ago, u.s. foreign policy has suffered reputational damage by an administration that focuses on short term messaging in egypt during the arab spring and yes, benghazi. the administration was driven by messaging priorities rather than sound interest-based policy. >> i am glad you quoted that. it is a tough statement, but one i believe. we have suffered reputational

damage. everywhere i go, i hear people say your government is in retreat. the united states is weaker than it was. we need more leadership than we are getting from president obama. that hurts us. it is damaging to be seen as vacillating. when the economist has the words, what would america fight for? that is reputational damage. and a loss of credibility is significant. when president obama gives a speech like the one he gave, which was generally good, when susan rice comes on your show and tries to speak carefully about foreign policy, that helps. i would say the outcome in ukraine shows that president obama generally made good

decisions, realizing he did not have military options, he chose other options and vladimir putin realized he did not want to invade ukraine and we had elections on sunday and they went well. this white house is too focused on messaging. it is too reactive and short term. that is why the president -- >> what do you mean by messaging? >> messaging in the sense of campaign professionals in a political campaign. you are messaging within the 24-hour cycle. >> when you look at the president's policy with respect to china, and what is the relationship? >> the first thing i would say is my impression is that the strongest leader in the world today is the chinese president. the obama administration has

been trying to deal with the reality of this sprawling china and to balance its traditional alliance with japan against the importance of having an open relationship with china. the president got that balance about right. he stood by the japanese about the disputed islands and he also made clear the united states wanted and negotiated a resolution of this problem and generally in the south china sea, wanted to see a rules-based outcome rather than more chinese belligerence. i thought i was the right place to be. >> you are at work on another book? >> i am at the stage of beginning. just what you said.

whenever i go anywhere, i think, that is interesting. i will make a note. >> what is the first thing you look for, a central idea that will drive the book? >> i tried to think what this cia is going to be dealing with a couple of years down the road. you mentioned a book i wrote about the iranian nuclear program. i got to thinking, what is it the united states will be trying to do to disrupt this iranian nuclear program along the way? i got to thinking about supply chains and how you get inside those and i thought about computers the chinese were using. >> shanghai, your next book, about cyber. >> it might have a little of chinese cyber. a foreign minister asked me about the iran book, he said, he was thinking of the virus, which was a real-life thing. he said, david, how are you cleared for something i was not?

[laughter] i was very flattered by that. obviously not true. so the fun of being a novelist, the fun of having the job i do is that you get to speculate. you think about where will things be two years from now? what will you, charlie, will be doing programs about and how can i write fiction that will be interwoven with that fact, in a way that teases out and let you have fun with it. >> the book is called "the director" by david ignatius. this is the ninth and you are working on the 10th. it will be based in china. thank you. ♪

>> live from pier three in san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west" where we cover innovation, technology, and the future of business. i am cory johnson, in for emily chang. apple showing off to developers in day two of its worldwide developer conference. includes news on its new cell phone platform, home kit, and health kit. they're also featuring components going up against competitors like dropbox. most of google is shut down in china ahead of a sensitive anniversary. there is the 25th