city, this is charlie rose. >> mike morel is here. he was deputy director of the

cia and twice served as acting director during that time. president obama vowed to destroy isis in syria and iraq. he said that the u.s. would not take on the terrorists alone and promised the military audience they would not return to direct combat. the house of representatives voted to authorize funds to arm the free syrian army. i am pleased to have mike morrell back at this table. give us the picture first of all these groups and why we have come to single out isis and the threat they pose. >> at the moment there are a number of al qaeda groups in the world that pose a threat to the u.s., to the homeland. al qaeda in yemen is at the top of the list. the last three attempted attacks on the homeland came out of yemen.

christmas day bomber, 2009. printer cartridge plot, 2010. to bring down cargo planes. 2011 am a nonmetallic suicide vest to bring down aircraft. you have a qaeda -- al qaeda's central leadership in afghanistan -- pakistan. they still pose a threat to the homeland. now you have syria where you have two groups, you have got the first al qaeda group that was established there and they are tied, they are aligned closely with al qaeda in pakistan. zawahiri. they pose a threat to the homeland and isis. it has grabbed so much territory. it, too, poses a threat but we

have to look at these together and we have to make sure that we're focused on all of them and not just let isis grab all of our attention and grab our focus and resources. this will buy this if we do that. >> is the administration focusing on all three of them? i do not know. i think that the strategy with regard to iraq and syria will also help us deal with al musra if successful. the weakness is on the serious side. we can come back to that. i hope we are focused on al qaeda and pakistan and yemen. i do not see as much u.s.

activity is i am used to seeing. but we have to stay focused. >> how many -- how much intelligence to we seem to have? any believe we did not see the rise of isis and its capacity to take territory as fast as it did. >> when i was there, when i was serving at the central intelligence agency we were telling a story about the rising strategic threat of isis. isis is the direct descendent of aqi. when forces left -- >> that is al qaeda in iraq. >> they were not defeated but significantly degraded. when u.s. military forces left a couple things happened. one is the military pressure was taken off of aqi and maliki moved in an authoritarian direction and he moved in a direction clinically that alienated and. they rallied around aqi so it

started its rebirth then and we reported it. and aqi moves across the border in syria and changes its name and rebrands itself as al qaeda in iraq and the levant or syria. it rebrands itself and in syria get stronger and stronger in syria for a couple of reasons. it is getting battlefield experience. nothing is more important than getting battlefield experience. by having victories in syria it draws attention, attention in the terrorism business is good because it means more money flows your way and recruits. all these foreign fighters that were going there, the vast

majority ended up with either, al musra or isis. growing strengths. the got their hands on advanced conventional weapons from syrian arsenals. they continue to grow in strength and we are telling the national story. that is where we were when i left the picture. my understanding based on putting pieces together here and reading the open media and what senior officials are telling reporters on background is that we did not do a very good job from an intelligence perspective and seeing the tipping point and

what i mean by the tipping point is saying when isis had reached the point that it made the decision to start grabbing all this territory inside of iraq. we kind of miss that. we also missed i think our understanding of the iraqi military and how brutal it was and its inability to stand -- brittle it was and its inability to stand up and fight. >> what is the commonality between al musra and isis? >> there is intense competition. they have occasionally fought with each other and they are still occasionally fighting. >> is it for power or because they have different goals? >> they have exactly the same

goal. they share a kite is ideology -- al qaeda's ideology of establishing a caliphate. what happened was al musra was a syrian extremist group that established itself after the syrian civil war started. they were recognized by zawahiri as the al qaeda group in syria. you have aqi who decided they wanted to join the fight in the move across the border and he says no. your fight is in iraq and they said no, we are doing our own thing and we want to get in the game of here so zawahiri owned them because they would not follow his orders. some people say he disowned them. they are every bit as brutal. it is over whether you are willing to listen to zawahiri and take his orders or not. >> this goes against the advice

of zawahiri. don't get out too far. >> al qaeda and pakistan's focus is attacking the u.s. first and cutting off the head of the snake as they call it. and then second getting rid of all the apostate leaders in the middle east that they feel are working at the behest of the united states and then establishing a caliphate. isis is coming at this the best -- back way. let's established territory and our caliphate and then we will go after the u.s. and another example of not listening to zawahiri. >> what is the fear we have in terms of these groups? >> attacking the u.s. and in

terms of isis you have to worry today. they come in young men in the u.s. who have been radicalized by the isis movement and conduct attacks on their own without any direction from isis and second are foreign fighters who have gone from the u.s., canada, or western europe to syria and get directed by isis to come back and conduct an attack. over the longer term isis can be kind of threat as it was in 2001. \they can put the operation together if they have the time and space and resources to do so. that is the threat that they pose.

al nusra poses that same kind of threat today but because they are more aligned with zawahiri and al qaeda in pakistan they are more of a concern in terms of attacking the homeland than isis is because they have that attack america first strategy of zawahiri. >> what is the president's strategy? >> to take their territory away, we can them, and i believe although this is not been said that i believe based on the good interview of john brennan. take away their territory, get rid of their leadership and we can get them to the point where they cannot hold territory and cannot pose a threat. >> this is by drones or any other method. find and kill. >> find, kill, capture.

would they rather kill or capture? >> i would rather capture. they can tell me things then. >> when you look at the strategy the president brings us to date among the people you know what has been the change in the president's mindset? >> changing his mindset i think is when it moved so quickly to grab territory. it became obvious just how significant a threat this was. we talked about the threat to the homeland but we did not talk about another threat which is the threat to the region as a whole. a threat to the stability of the region. >> it may be -- >> it is larger. we talked last time about the correct translation of their name is the islamic state of

iraq and greater syria. the definition of greater syria is pretty much the entire lavant area. when they think about their caliphate it is bigger than iraq and syria. and the impact of the region and sectarian war in the region and the redrawing of all these lines in the middle east and i think it was their very quick movement and success that got everybody's attention and said we had to do something. >> and the beheading caught the public's anger. >> and changed the public overnight. >> rather than being sucked into another conflict began to say they could not do this without reprisal. >> which is a very interesting look at the question, does isis

understand this or not because if you were advising isis -- they have miscalculated. if you were advising them you would say do not do that. do not behead these people, let them go. if you do this you will ignite passions -- >> fear is a central heart of their modus operandi. general dempsey said if all that fails we may need ground troops. would you assume he meant and do you assume that the president expected him to say that? >> i think general dempsey was misquoted. the president -- >> misquoted or misunderstood.

>> misunderstood. very good. what the president has decided on the iraq side of the border is to support the iraqi military and kurdish military with intelligence, with enablers, advise and assist special forces. not going out on missions. at the command level. that is where the president has decided to put them at this point. as advisors will be very important to the iraqi military and to the kurdish doing their job right. >> they will be advising them.

>> advising them on strategy and tactics. that is what they will be doing. and supporting them with airstrikes, right? so they would be advising at the ground level but not fighting, not actually fighting themselves. that is a big difference. when i think of combat troops on the ground i think of americans in battle. what general dempsey was talking about was advisors at that lower level, not fighters. >> are they going to be on the firing line? >> yes, they would be. with they be a greater risk? absolutely. do i think it makes sense to have them at that lower level, yes, i'm absolutely. >> everyone seems to believe you cannot do with your power alone and you have to have ground troops in the ground troops have

to come from somewhere. >> right. >> so far we know the there are those from kurdistan and so far as there is the anticipation in syria of the free syrian army which had been like wishing. they have some divisions and all of that. many people i know see that is not enough. do you think it is enough? >> on the iraq side of the border, you have the iraq he army and you have u.s. advisors and airstrikes. >> you have the possibility of sunni militias. >> yes. you have a real opportunity thanks to secretary kerry's good work of having a local solution in iraq that gets her buddies by

everybody's buy-in. you can retake territory. i am confident on the iraq side that within a year, year and a half you will see major reversals for isis. >> do you think they will get the sunni militias who are among those who we talked about who became disenchanted with the iraq e-government. >> there is a good chance they will. the full a cool piece is not completely formed yet. there is still a couple of key posts of that people are fighting over. the sunnis see the u.s. as are doing on their behalf. with the shia government in baghdad. so then we flip to the serious side where it is much harder to see someone who will fight for us. the free syrian army is disorganized and it is largely ineffective.

they have grown more ineffective over time. training and equipping them is going to be helpful but it is not going to be as helpful as putting advisors with them. there has been no discussion of putting advisors with them because we might have harder time protecting them in syria. it seems to be we are talking about fewer airstrikes in syria. there were reports this morning that the president is going to have to approve himself every airstrike in syria. >> why is that? >> i do not know. >> it sounds like you do not believe it is the right way to go. to have the president approving airstrikes like lyndon johnson in vietnam. >> i do not know if it is accurate but that is the report this morning. i am not as confident they will get that done on the problem with that is you have the strong hammer on the iraq side and you have no and phil on the syrian side. isis if pressed goes across the border into syria and just hangs out there so this syria part of

this is the week -- it is the essential part. i think to deal more effectively on the syria side, we have to do a significant number of airstrikes to go after isis and al musra and get the intelligence and we need to think about putting advisors with the free syrian army is putting advisors with them will strengthen them and we need to think about something else that no one is talking about. which is the guy who started this whole problem, asaad. he created the instability in his own country and allowed al musra and isis to become a problem in the first place. we need to talk about how do we get this guy out of there now

without weakening the syrian military come a syrian security services and syrian intelligence. >> and doing -- unless you target assad personally but getting rid of assad. >> how would you do that? >> how did we get bin laden? >> knowing that might be done that we did it. you have no problem with that. >> sure. i would not have a problem with it and we would be heroes in the gulf area of -- gulf. >> who are supporters of the russians and iranians. >> you have to calculate what is the consequence. especially if you go in there and take them out, what will the russians do? >> there will be a lot of rhetoric about intervention, lawless u.s. intervention but there's not much they can do. i do not believe. >> is that a doable mission? >> i do not know.

we need to be thinking about because what he is starting to do and what he is already doing, he is calculating two things, assad. he is saying the u.s. will go after isis in my country and the u.s. will go after al musra. >> both al qaeda groups. >> we do not like them a lot. >> in recent days he has picked up the pace of his military operations against the moderate opposition. he is calculating -- if this thing get serious enough maybe the u.s. will come around and see me as a solution of the problem rather than a cost to the problem. >> you cannot imagine the u.s. doing that, can you?

people sitting at this table have said, we have to do that. we have to hold our nose and let the sun be and go after isis and al musra. >> a know why do not like that? you have a guy who has killed thousand and thousands of his own people and displaced millions, one third of his population, a brutal dictator and most important way, he is in the pocket of the iranians. assad wins, the iranians win. i do not want the iranians to be the hegemonic power in the middle east. if we shifted horses, we would lose our friends in the gulf. >> we cannot change our policy. >> there is an alternative to siding with him against isis and al musra and that is getting rid

of a sudden putting in power a sunni who will take on those two groups and who will be our friend and not the friend of iran. we need to be making about that. >> let me tell you about other people in the region. the iranians are saying an interesting thing about the united states. he said they want to do the same from the air but they do not want to take any risk. that is not acceptable to us. they do not have any people there risking and they're asking us to do it. what do you make of that argument? does that have validity in the region? >> i think it does. our friends in the region would like to see us do more.

there are good reasons why we will not do that at the moment. down the road, maybe. rex are the saudis, the emirates doing enough? those sunni states that had either money or power. both. >> in this case, yes. >> they are doing enough. >> i think so. >> what are they doing? >> they have been providing money and weapons throughout this upholstery and civil war to -- this whole war to the moderate opposition. >> why is the moderate opposition at her? >> because we have not been doing enough. it has been too small in scope. you have gotten musra with 30,000 people and you have the syrian army which is 100,000 people. you need to be training more than a few hundred guys at a time. the scope of it mutts -- needs

to be much larger. they have been in the lead, those moderate gulf states have been in the lead of trying to do with this and they have been wanting us to do more. >> there is iran. what role would they play? >> iran i worry will play the role of spoiler. every time that the coalition supporting the moderate opposition in syria has done more, the iranians have come in and doubled down on assad. they are desperate. they brought hezbollah into it and trained militias in iran and brought them to syria. very effective. they brought their own guys and he is advising assad. they do not want to lose assad, why? they believe they need assad to have hezbollah. that is the channel that all the

weapons go through to get to has blood. >> and iran to syria and lebanon. >> this is the terrorist wing of the iranian government. >> what do you think worries the president the most? >> i think let me say what i think should worry him. if i am not inside of his head. but i think should worry him is that isis is the tip of the iceberg. what i mean by that is if you think back to september 10, 2001. al qaeda was at one place and one place only at the time, afghanistan. today, al qaeda is -- are in northern nigeria, up into the sehel, mali, march any a,

-- maritania, tunisia, to libya where they are in huge numbers, in egypt where they are back for the first time in 25 years of my down into east africa -- years, down into east africa, up into syria and iraq and still in south asia and pakistan-afghanistan. and bangladesh. they just announced a new cell. >> not to mention asia. >> right. they have done a pretty good job and i will welcome back to that if you want. the asians have done a good job of rooting it out. so why i say two of the iceberg,

i think in that huge geographic area that i talked about you will see isis-like problems pop up over the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years. >> is this the greatest challenge today? >> yes. >> not russia, not china. >> i break that into threats and challenges. the greatest threat to the u.s. without a doubt in my mind is islamic fundamentalism. the greatest challenge to the how do we come to terms with a rising power in a station when we are the status quo power, when we need to have a good relationship with this country both for economic reasons and national security reasons. the greatest threat, greatest challenge. >> thank you for coming. >> always great to be here. >> back in a moment. stay with us. ♪

>> terry gilliam is here. he has been called one of the cinematic fabulist of our time. his new project is set in a futuristic london and follows a computer genius that is given a project to discover the meaning of life. here's the trailer of "the zero theorem." >> how's it hanging? touched.fer not to be

>> you are a tough nut to crack. i do not mean in the pejorative sense. >> what seems to be the problem here? >> we are dying. >> he is not. >> zero theorem. >> the zero theorem is unprovable. >> i have a friend who might be able to help. >> locked up all alone. so tell me how did it all start? ♪ >> you have any idea what the zero theorem is all about? everything adds up to nothing. what is the point of anything? >> we always want to feel different.

♪ >> why would you want to prove that all is for nothing? >> we only have to answer yes and the voice would give us a reason for being. >> i am pleased to have terry gilliam back at this table. welcome. >> nice to be back. >> you have said it is a glimpse of the world i think we're living in now. that is the world we're living in now. >> mm-hmm. people just need the eyes to see. i remember when i started

watching fellini movies. i thought they were fantasies. they were extreme versions of something that was not even close to reality and that he went to italy and discovered he was a documentary filmmaker. that is a documentary film maker work you just watch -- at work you just watched. >> what is the creative act here, to show us what? >> it is odd. i am not sure. basically trying to raise questions and get people to look at the world slightly differently. i have been trying to do that from the beginning. here's another window. >> do you like technology? >> i use all the time. i do not like the worship of it. >> it will find the answer to all those things because those machines will take us where we cannot go. >> they are very seductive. my computer has taken me over.

i'm a victim of my computer. it has access to some much information, most of it i do not need but with an inquiring mind i can avoid oohing real work by exploring endlessly. >> there's all kinds of knowledge. and wherever else -- whatever else. >> also what it has done is given each of us our own little silver screen where we are the start, we are the king, the center. i was in france promoting it and if -- he would tweet, i tweet, therefore i am. >> tell me about this movie and casting it. >> everything i have seen has been wonderful.

>> he has never had a bad conversation at this table. >> he is great to work with. he is never off-camera. he is a movie. that character. it is so different from anything he has done before. almost not recognize him. that is exactly right. what intrigued me about him is here is an actor who worked for years. he was 52 before he was discovered by the world. the stuff inside is incredible. there is so much information and frustration and anger, and earnest, wisdom all in there. >> all that you can call on for performance.

>> we had -- we argued about things all the time. i am more contrary than he is. >> what would you argue about? >> character. everything. we argue about everything. why is the character, why is he referring to himself as we all the time and i said it is in the script. he would not accept that so he got a psychiatrist to explain that people who are alone a lot to -- do just that. it is cohen. i never got an answer and i finally discovered there was a canadian blog. it is the hebrew for ecclesiastes. the day i discovered that i was writing a preface to this

autobiography that comes out next year. it was going to be -- start with vanity, all is vanity. ecclesiastes is about the -- betty and what makes life -- vanity and what makes life worth living. >> everything is -- everyone is getting rich except you. >> the church of the redeemer needs you. >> [indiscernible ad messages]

[car horns] >> what did we just see? >> the reason to be alone. [laughter] it is the world out there that is hammering us all the time, demanding, suggesting, offering us solutions. it is my reaction to the world and why i want to pull back from what is out there. just in new york, maybe i am just getting old but there is something in the insistence of everything shouting at you. >> is there a kind of -- is

there an art or an evolution in your work -- arc or an evolution in your work? >> my wife says i just make the same movie over and over. >> is she right? >> all these movies have to do with the individual fighting the larger world and imagination versus reality as is -- it is proclaimed by the media. reality is something we have to create every day of our lives and you have to fight against the reality that the media is telling us is reality. it is trying to get people to think and it is that battle between the world we live in and our dreams.

they're both necessary. one is not necessarily right and the other wrong. they are at war with each other and i think all my movies do with that in one form or another. >> have you lived the life of a filmmaker that you wanted to live, heavy get it on your terms? -- have you done it on your terms? i don't agree that there is an audience for each movie. when you deal with hollywood there is an audience. dealing with hollywood, you have

to be able to pitch and i pitched to a certain degree with energy but not necessarily the kind of simple structure that they want. i have always relied on the fact that i succeeded more times than they expected to justify my continuing making films. >> what happened in monty python in june? >> it is very weird. it is almost like it did not happen. it was an anomaly. we played the o2 arena in london which was like 16,000 people in the audience and it went out in cinemas all over the world. it was a huge success. it was extraordinarily -- extraordinary feeling to be on stage as mike halen says this must be what it feels like to be a dictator. [laughter] it is an enormous stadium and it

did not feel big as the audience loved us so much. >> it felt intimate. >> it felt absolutely intimate. just a bunch of friends gathered together and at the beginning every body was tense but i the end it was joyous. we had a great time. >> whose idea? >> it was a desperate need to plug a hole. we lost a court case and it was a big to make spence of thing and eric idle has always been trying to get us to do a stage show. eric said, what about this and we said ok. it will not take us too much time and we get together and do one show. that show sold out within 47 seconds. this is crazy. >> on the internet. >> and we penciled in a few more and we ended up doing 10.

we could have gone on and on. >> you made the amount of money that you need to make and that was it or because -- >> we wanted to get back to our own lives and careers. suddenly returned to 30 years ago and i have always liked the fact that python quick while we were still ahead, we went out while we were still good and that is very strange. you are back with your mates and will we see each other, it is not like we are separated in any way but the old relationships when it comes to work are coming back and it is very odd. >> i was told by one of the members that the reason you stopped was that he did not think you had it in you to make more of them at the level you had made them, you thought they were so good and you could not -- you are stretched to make it that good and sustain it that good and you said let's stop what we are on top. >> people were pulling in different directions. that was going on. it was like the same chemistry was not working the same way because when the chemistry worked it was wonderful stuff. many -- it was not the same.

it was like we had gone back to sketch format as opposed to "life of brian" which felt much more narrative. it was better than the best stuff we've done. >> what is it about opera that attracts you to directing? >> i think it is a job-like quality in my life. when life is getting enjoyable after the do something to punish myself. god will not do it so i have to. i had never done opera or theater before. this is all new. i do not particularly like opera because the images of a 55-year-old that woman pretending to be a young 18-year-old virgin, my suspension of disbelief is not great enough to deal with that

no matter how beautiful the music is. and people have been trying to do opera for about 20 years and the english national opera company come at a moment when i was not sure what i was doing. i love the fact that berlioz had not succeeded with the opera. it was an assembly of eight symphonic pieces that he had strung together and it gave me a lot of room to play and it was a huge success. it made critical reviews and won prizes overnight. for leslie, i said i would do another one of berlioz. at least -- i do not have to fight all the good versions that have been done prior and this has worked out to be a huge success as well.

it is frustrating. you do some and 20,000 people see it. i have always wanted to be a populist as opposed to -- >> isn't there ways to broadcasted around the world? --broadcast it around the world? >> i was watching the monitor and at the half -- halfway point i left. i could not watch this. we had never been outside. all these things had been done inside. >> is that because you need the containment of the sound? >> i could do it outside. years ago they wanted me to do poly a cheap -- pagliacci in verona. the opera starts when the sun is still setting. it has got to be. the focus is -- you control it. there is nothing out there.

[laughter] >> not even camera people. >> it is -- the total focus is you. of all the things you do what are you best at? is it sketches? >> i do not know how to do any of it. it is a bit late. >> do you think most creative artists get their -- to their best when they are very young? you have got energy. almost all the things i do require energy. films are the thing i love the most. it is not the control. it is the shape of experience as

opposed to opera were you rehearse for a few months and a week on stage and you do not know whether it works or not until the audience arrives. with film you have time to prepare it and think about it, dream it and i love looking for locations and finding reactors and the shooting becomes, that is the painful part of the process because time is the dictator and you are up against everything. moments happen every day that make it more worthwhile. actors come and that is wonderful, that is a whole new way of looking at it and after all that you have six months in the editing room to calmly look at it, change it, move it around. at that point you have the pieces of the jigsaw. let's put them and hopefully the right order. i was pulling seams apart and

took scenes off the end. that is the moment i love. this is the limitations of what we created earing the shoot area that is all. i love having a border, a finite area whether it is budget, time, whatever. without it, the explosion is diluted. >> did you love the arcade fire experience? they came to you. >> they came to me and i've always loved -- i tagged along with several shows and it was a joy. i like working with people who are talented. especially people who have more

and different talents than i do. let's see if we can pull this together and the arcade fire was strange. we went out in madison square garden and i was supposedly directing. i cannot do that. the pro guy, i was given four cameras and it was a great show and it went out and everyone was happy. >> what do you think of "breaking bad"? >> i was against all of it, netflix, all of it. people kept telling me and then my wife was away. i signed up and one month was free and i got through almost four series. i could not stop it. it was alien. -- it was brilliant.

it is the best thing i have seen in the long time because it is imperfect, it is up and down but the totality of it. the premise was so utterly brilliant. and the cast was great. i just loved it. >> and you finished it. >> christmas day while the family was downstairs. i went upstairs and got through the last series because they were watching something i did not want to watch and it was "frozen." [laughter] now i have just finished the danish version of "the killing." it is so good because the writing and all these things is so excellent and it is not doing what hollywood has to do now. the structure has to be by the numbers. >> for people like you it is a godsend, isn't it? you are not confined by time. >> that is my problem. >> you need an hour and a half. >> i am looking at one of my old scripts that we wrote after "fisher king" and seeing if we can expand it to an eight part series.

i do not know. >> have you worked with anybody who has more talent than robin williams? >> his was so unique. it was a very unique talent. if i had to watch "fisher king" and -- i miss him so much but watching it, it was wonderful and he is alive, he is alive and he is just robin. the thing about that film, the character he is playing, almost all of robin in one character. the joy, the nightmares, all in there. and i felt so good coming up because robin is still with us.

>> thank you for coming. >> this table. [laughter] >> been there, done that. "zero theorem" opens this friday. loved having you. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

>> live from san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west" where we cover innovation technology and the future of business. i am emily chang. alibaba getting more than 38%. also setting a record as the largest u.s. ipo ever. what is the future of the company? i have an interview with jack ma.