>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: we begin this evening with a look at politics. less than two weeks into his presidency, president donald trump continues to ignite controversy. earlier this week he abruptly fired acting attorney general sally yates after announcing that the justice department would not defend the administration's immigration ban in court. yesterday, president trump engaged in a twitter exchange accusing the iranians of ingratitude for the nuclear deal with the west. trump's presidency has established terms of battle

likely to continue indefinitely. i am joined from washington. welcom. e. size up those terms of battle. let's begin there. terms of battle that are likely to continue indefinitely. size up those terms of battle. dan: well, it's an extension of the campaign that we went through, charlie, and i think that everything that has happened since the election through the transition and particularly in the opening weeks of the trump presidency have reinforced the divisions that we saw in the election. donald trump has come to washington determined to shake it up. he promised that he would do that in the campaign. i'm not sure everybody took him as seriously as they should have but he's determined to do that in his opening weeks. all of his moves, in part, are designed to send the signals that he's going to keep the promises that he made in the campaign, that he's going to offend the establishment.

it.out worrying about be true togoing to the people he knows put him in office. he will alarm a lot of people, not just in this country, but around the world. one of the things we've seen in the wake of everything he has done, and he's moved at such a rapid pace and moved in so many different directions that it's kind of hard to think about what's the center of gravity of all of this. but it has created an enormous backlash, created alarm around the world and has put people in the streets here in this country and elsewhere and it has set the terms of battle for how you respond to donald trump over the next weeks, months. this year, next year, heading toward the 2018 and ultimately the 2020 election. charlie: so on the one hand you could argue in some cases, that there comes a time in which someone needs to come in and shake things up and create some

ideas that are not simply what has been done in the past. on the other hand, you can say that you can come in and shake things up so that you create circumstances that will lead to a far worse situation in the end and you create circumstances in which you can't do anything that you even intended to do over the long run in terms of betterment for the populace. dan: i think that's the real risk, charlie. shaking up washington is, in and of itself, not a bad thing. this hasn't been a town that's worked particularly well for the last eight years or 16 years or for quite a long time. the idea that doing business in a different way is somehow wrong, i think a lot of people would say it's exactly what needs to be done. but as you say, do you create so much chaos, so much disorder, so much distrust or uncertainty. do you literally create so much exhaustion on the part of both

your allies and friends in congress that people don't know exactly where this is heading and as a result, it sets off other reactions? whether it's with our allies or in the streets that are hard to contain, and i think we're so early in this administration, that i think that we all have to be a little bit cautious in kind of extrapolating in a linear way where this is all heading and what it's going to do. but there's no doubt that what he's done so far has created much more turmoil i think than most people expected he would have been able to do in this short amount of time. charlie: some argue that if you speak to everything you speak to nothing. people don't have a real understanding of your values and your priorities. dan: that's correct, although i think that with donald trump there are still some core convictions.

one certainly has to do with trade and jobs and his view of what has happened to the united states of america over a long period of time, whether through globalization or trade deals or whatever it is but that in one way or at the united states has gotten the wrong end of the stick on this and he wants to send a signal that he wants to reverse that. he has been consistent about within all of his meetings labor in all of his meetings. talking about it is one thing. beginning to act on it is another. accomplishing it is, of course, biggest question mark of all. he's got very little done other than a few small successes with this company or that company or -- but nothing on the kind of macro scale that he's talking about. so there's that issue. on immigration and in the sense of national identity, he was

very clear in the campaign and a number of things he has done have gone in that direction. building the wall and most controversially, the steps he took with the immigration order on refugees over the weekend, which created a huge backlash. in other areas, it is not clear what he wants to do. he wants better relations with the russians but today the u.n. ambassador, nikki haley made a very strong statement saying that the sanctions will stay in place and as long as the russians are in crimea and she was very tough about the activity in eastern ukraine so we're still wondering how this all shakes out, whether he has a firm idea of where he wants to get to. charlie: how about the issue of veracity looked at from two separate angles. here's a man who's begun to do what he said on the campaign trail, so he's been true to his word. on the other hand, there have been constant questions, including the iranian deal when he talked about $150 billion and

a regime that was ready to collapse. and other examples that question among many people and many foreign policy people, credulity. dan: there were separable issues here. one is where he says things that aren't true. he says falsehoods. know, the issue of 3.5 to 5 million illegal immigrants who voted in the election. no evidence of that at all. on foreign policy, the question is how much does he know? what does he know about the world or the complexity of the relationships that exist or the history of the relationships that exist? when he says certain things you have to say is this something that he was told, studied? has he digested this or is this something he heard or saw somewhere that wasn't

particularly reliable? i think we have to wait a little longer to judge him but every time he does one of these things, certainly within the foreign policy establishment, it's going to rattle some cages. charlie: is one of the tests we're going to see in the first 100 days of this administration, whether people that have a lot of respect around the world, people like general mattis and rex tillerson will find themselves in a very difficult place where either they have to push back very hard and insist on a different direction or insist on not participating in it or resign? dan: let's put the resignation issue in abeyance for a little bit and let them at least -- charlie: i'm not suggesting there's an issue here. but i'm suggesting you do hear and we have seen things that the president has said and they

disagreed. dan: we have and as we watch them operate, particularly secretary tillerson and, to some extent, secretary mattis too. on somen very outspoken of thse things. to what extent do they feel obliged to reinforce, at least in part, the message the president is sending on some of these controversial issues and to what extent to fight back internally and/or externally send out conflicting signals so at least there's a sense around the world that there is a debate going on and that these are not necessarily settled policies at this point. charlie: steve bannon, it is reported at every turn, when donald trump was being urged by other people to become more presidential, to be more inclusive, urged him to drill down with his known core constituency. it is now assumed that went a long way to helping him win the

presidency and i assume by doing that, earned a special place for steve bannon. dan: we can already see he's earned a special place in the role he's been given in the new administration. he is, if not the most important, one of the two or three most important people in the white house and therefore the administration. he also has a world view that may be more complete and well shaped than donald trump's. donald trump has visceral instincts and i think those mesh nicely with steven bannon's view of the world but bannon -- we had a very good piece in "the post" a couple of days ago about things that bannon has said over the years in interviews, on radio programs and discussions in radio interviews with donald trump and speeches and things like that. they add up to something that is coherent. it's radically different than the conventional view that a lot of people accept.

it's certainly different than a lot of our major allies have embraced over years. it is anti-globalization. it is populism. it is a view that the biggest single crisis that we and the world face is radical islam that needs to be the focus of creating and making alliances, to focus on that as opposed to some of the other things. there is a nationalist element about it clearly and he's said that he is a nationalist. charlie: tell me what america is going to look like if he succeeds in all of these objectives? dan: we're going to be a much more inward-looking nation. we are going to be very muscular in the way we look and talk about certain parts of the world, particularly isis.

i don't know what that means in terms of military action but it could certainly lead to that. we know that. we are going to be a very, very divided country because, as we've seen, the anger on the left, the anger in the progressive movement, the anger among people who did not vote for donald trump has escalated really since the election. people were upset and unhappy the morning after the election. i think as a result of what's happened since then, they're more alarmed than they were and they're making their views known so we're going to be even more divided than we were. charlie: dan, it's great to have you here. i hope you'll be here many times to help us understand this. it's a remarkable time and i'm glad you're there and we're having an opportunity to understand it. thank you. dan: thank you, charlie. charlie: thank you. be right back. stay with us. ♪

♪ charlie: lisa monaco is here. she served as president obama's chief homeland security and counterterrorism advisor for four years. that put her at the nexus of many pivotal national security issues. her portfolio included the fight against isis, hostages. sanctions, cyber security, outbreaks and natural

disasters. i am pleased to have her back at this table. welcome. lisa: thanks, charlie, good to be back. charlie: we talked about this the other day. who was on your principals committee? lisa: what i did as the president of the homeland security advisor was chair members of the committee, members of the cabinet addressing homeland security issues. things like ebola, zika. border questions. the attack on the boston marathon. the boston marathon bombings. we didn't know what the origin of that was. was it international terrorism related or not? i convened the principals -- so the secretary of homeland security, the attorney general, the secretary of treasury, the cia director, you name it.

state.retary of charlie: f.b.i. director? lisa: f.b.i. director. depending on what the issue is, the attorney general, as i mentioned, the secretary of state. the relevant members of the president's cabinet who have expertise, knowledge, interest, equity, perspective on the homeland security issue. charlie: were the other principals meetings that were chaired by others? lisa: susan rice chairs the national committee of the national security council and that would involve all of the people i just mentioned and maybe others, depending on the issue. charlie: when you look at this incident in yemen, it's said to have been thought about, considered planned in your administration. correct? lisa: so -- here is the thing. i've been seeing some of the reporting on this today.

first let me say, operations like the one that has been reported are always going to be inherently risky and i certainly wouldn't second guess those who planned and certainly not the operators who are putting their lives on the line to undertake these types of operations. so the risk is considerable always if you're putting people in harm's way and there will also be risk in inaction. i don't know what was presented to president trump, what process was undertaken to approve that operation and i'm not going to get into internal -- i'm out of the government now quite obviously but i'm still not going to talk about internal deliberations in the obama administration and i certainly am not going to talk about classified information. but the white house was presented in the waning weeks of the obama administration, a broad proposal. so not a single operation on a single target -- a broad proposal for increased military operations in yemen.

it was of such a nature and of such scope to include a request for broader authorities that had significant policy implications. risk to force implications and it was going to be undertaken in large part, if not exclusively, after january 20. so -- charlie: so it was being considered to be implemented after a new president takes office. that it wasew was of such significance and such a broad proposal, that would extend well past january 20 and pose significant policy issues that it ought to be deliberately considered by the new team, considered by the new president with the benefit of input from his advisers, his national security team. so there was interagency discussion about the proposal, but for the purpose of basically

enabling the next team to come in and undertake some careful consideration of what to do. charlie: let me understand what you are saying. and really understanding what you said about the parameters of not say.could say and was it not being carried out because you wanted to leave something that was an ongoing mission in the hands of the new administration? was that the reason to wait? lisa: the reason to not undertake a decision in the obama administration is that the actual operation was going to be undertaken after january 20. so it would pose policy issues, risks that the new administration would have to deal with. and it's not appropriate for the obama administration to kind of get in front of that and to undertake a decision that was going to be happening after

president obama left office. now, let me say, charlie, not to say that the obama administration might have approved the proposal that was presented to us. we just didn't reach that conclusion. and -- which is not to say also that the obama administration might have approved whatever was ultimately presented to president trump. charlie: but you can help us understand, in the interests of the national conversation, what are the risks of something like that and what kind of target has to be there in order to undertake those risks? there has to be a high-value target. what constitutes a high-value target? lisa: first of all, let's separate two things. there is the inherent risk anytime you're putting special operators on the ground to undertake a foreign operation. on foreign soil against a very dangerous enemy, al qaeda in the

arabian peninsula in a situation where we don't have infrastructure or presence. we left yemen some years ago, given the conflict there and the threat to our personnel there so anytime you are undertaking an operation, there has to be consideration of the risk to the force and so the risk has to be worth the reward. those are the types of things you're considering. for a broader engagement, if you're talking about doing not one raid, not one operation, but a broader sustained level of u.s. military involvement, including increasing the number of troops on the ground, increasing and expanding their role so that they would be in harm's way in a more sustained way. you're thinking about what are the authorities that are needed. does that pose new questions of expanded authority?

what's the risk to those forces? what type of mitigation, which was the word we used. what things were going to be in place to lower that risk to forces? what engagements have gone on with the government of that country? what coordination has been done with partners in the region, with partner forces who may be present. those are all the types of considerations and what you want to do is have everybody at the table, charlie, to have that discussion. so you want to have a full airing and a full consideration and frankly, a full understanding from the intelligence community, and that's what we would do. we would ask the intelligence community, give us an assessment of what might happen if we undertake this operation or this series of operations or we embark on this campaign of operations what might happen?

what might be the reaction to have local populous? what might be the reaction of the enemy and what are the risks entailed in that so we can weigh and so the president can get the advice and the considered input of his full team. the state department, the ambassador to the united nations. the director of national intelligence, the cia director, the attorney general, you name it. the full team needs to come together and understand and provide their best advice. charlie: in this case of those brave people on the ground taking fire and calling in fire on top of a building in which they've now acknowledged there were women and children killed. what are the rules of engagement for doing something like that? lisa: it can depend. first of all -- and again, i don't know what was entailed in this particular operation. charlie: i'm not asking to you comment but there are rules.

lisa: the defense department and our military observe the laws of war, right? they have to do everything they can to avoid civilian casualties, to undertake what's called proportional operations. to be discriminating in how they're approaching and engaging in their own self-defense. there have been reports that there may have been civilian casualties here. i think the defense department will undertake a careful and thorough review and investigation and impart lessons learned. charlie: i'll ask it more directly then. is there any obligation to find out whether there are women and children when you call in fire on top of a place where you're receiving enemy fire? lisa: sure. charlie: what are the requirements that we as a nation insist on? lisa: first of all, we're going to be training our fire and our use of force on a compound in the first instance -- we should not be doing that if we think there are civilians there unless

there is a grave risk to our soldiers. but we wouldn't embark on this if we think that there's a risk or a disproportionate risk of civilian casualties and that takes a lot of careful intelligence work and it takes sometimes imperfect information that these are the considerations that you want to have the full team really looking hard at, gathering intelligence, using a whole range of tools to understand what the picture is. charlie: so if you don't know and you feel like you're at risk then you're appropriate to call in fire? lisa: if our service members are in harms way and if their lives are threatened, they can respond.

but you want to step back and consider what is the purpose for the operation in the first place? are we going in to disrupt an imminent terrorist attack? are we going in to assist partner forces? what's the purpose? and again, these are all the types of things that would be considered and get really worked over and carefully discussed. charlie: knowing nothing, i would assume there would be a couple of things they'd want to know. if there's the consideration of future activities of al qaeda on the arabian peninsula and two, there have been some people that you've been following you'd want very much to either kill or capture. lisa: those would be absolutely important reasons. charlie: would you assume that it's a reasonable assumption that in this case they had to have one of those two possible realities? lisa: they may have but again, is this an isolated operation or part of a broader thing? charlie: it's part of a broader thing, you're suggesting. lisa: it may well have been. i don't know what was presented to president trump.

what was presented to the obama administration was a broad proposal for sustained increased military engagement in yemen that presented a host of policy issues that we felt needed to be considered. charlie: bob gates and others have sat at this table and said that the obama administration in its aggressiveness in terms of the kinds of missions they were willing to undertake at the end administration was more where they wanted to see it than several years earlier. do you think that's where you were in terms of practice against isil, al qaeda and any other similar group? that you had moved to a more aggressive posture. lisa: so, i can only speak to what my purview was in the last four years in the white house. i think what the president was

very clear about is he wanted to put isil on a path to lasting defeat before he left office and as i think the secretary of defense would tell and you the chairman would tell you, every proposal they made, every request for authorities they made in the campaign against the so-called islamic state was approved by the president. charlie: ash carter has said that to me. lisa: because our interest was making sure that isil was put on a path to defeat, that we were working with capable partners, the iraqi security forces who have demonstrated resolve in an environment in iraq where they are making careful and steady gains and now on in the process, we hope, of taking mosul. balance, we'reht

working with capable partners, we've undertaken the planning to make sure the risk to our service partners is calibrated and in our interest to take. absolutely. the president was -- i'll put it this way, i never saw him hesitate to act in our national interests, particularly when u.s. lives were at risk from terrorist plots. charlie: what's the fundamental assumptions of fighting isil within the administration? was it beyond boots on the ground? lisa: i think there are two separate things. you're talking about the campaign against isil which i think has been waged quite aggressively and we're seeing the fruits of that rolling back. rolling back from isil occupied territory in iraq and syria. charlie: first iraq and then syria. lisa: that's the goal. charlie: it's not just the goal.

it's the plan. lisa: absolutely. iraqi security forces are moving toward mosul. it remains to be seen what comes now with raqqa. my own view is that it ought to be pursued and it ought to be done with the only force capable of doing that work are the kurds and we have to produce them the arms and capability to take it. why is that important? it's the seat of isis's external operations. charlie: do they believe they've been given all that they can, the united states can to provide them to do that? lisa: we're talking about the kurds? charlie: yes. don't know. charlie: because there are

active reports that they don't feel they've gotten as much as they needed. lisa: there are active discussions and it's been reported about what is the next step? what's the force? we assess the only capable force is the kurdish military that we have been working with and providing assistance to. the problem with that, of course, is the reaction of the turks. our nato ally. but we're really on the horns of a dilemma here if we do not arm the kurds in order to go towards raqqa to dislodge isil and its external operations there. there's no do that other force capable of going into raqqa. charlie: was there any possibility of creating an arab force, an arab government that would be willing to put people on the ground?

lisa: it has never materialized. never been something that was a viable option. to shovewhen push came it did not happen. lisa: did not happen. charlie: why? lisa: inherent capability issues. a willingness to train folks and then put them in and what's the incentive to, you know, to be a force in there that is going to take and hold and sustain that area? charlie: was there also a question of targets and priorities? meaning that they were more interesting in taking down assad than they were going directly at isil? lisa: sure, that discussion -- that's evolved over time. there came a time when i think -- and we've discussed this before, charlie. though one thing i would say that has galvanized our gulf of mexico partners is the fight against isil.

they could all agree that it was something that needed to be reckoned with and needed to be dealt a very final and lasting blow. but how to do that and as you say, how to prioritize that in the conflict, the broader conflict in syria has been the subject of ongoing conversation. ♪

♪ charlie: how much of significance is the russian-turkish cooperation against isil? lisa: i think it's something to keep an eye on and what we've seen is russia enter into syria as you know and you were there with your interview with president putin right when that happened. they went in claiming that they were going to fight isil and help bring syrian conflict to an end. charlie: never did? lisa: neither one of those things materialized. charlie: they also acknowledged they were going in to prop up assad. putin never denied that. he believed there was a necessity for a strong central government. he has an abhorrence of weak

central governments, as he described it. lisa: be that as it may, we did not see and we still have not seen a concerted effort against isil. as you know, john kerry worked very hard to try and do that. charlie: a lot of people look at what the russians did and believe that they established their goals, that they were successful in syria. no matter how abhorrent it was to us in terms of what it took to put assad in a stronger position. win-win russia. lisa: i wouldn't quarrel a lot with that. the two caveats i would make to it is they have, as you said, undertaken activities in aleppo, just to name one, of abhorrent behavior, as you said. flouting international norms and rules, humanitarian horror that has occurred there.

the other consequence has been a continued flow of foreign fighters, a continued capability of isil to operate to some degree and frankly, a further outflow. we now have the isil caucuses branch, which poses a risk to russia and russian citizens and we know that in some degree they're making themselves a target and we'll see what the second, third-order effects are of russia's involvement. charlie: what's the circumstance in libya today? lisa: isil had moved into libya, particularly to a coastal town and established a significant presence and what we did there was work with the government of national accord and their forces

them toes aligned with assist those forces, those forces on the ground, to assist them to rout isil out. now, we've also seen isil undertaking and retrieving to a set of camps south, and in the last days of the obama administration, our military undertook action against those camps. so the point being, where isil has taken hold and has tried to establishing yet another safe haven, we have and did undertake efforts working with partner governments to dislodge them and prevent that from happening. charlie: is the answer to the question who controls libya nobody? lisa: i think that that is a pretty fair statement. now, we've got the government of

national accord but it's teetering. we've seen general haftar also leading forces that have undertaken efforts against the oil fields there so it is quite -- it's tenuous. charlie: donald trump said in a tweet in i think the last 24 hours. iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the u.s. came along and gave it a lifeline in the form of the iran deal, $150 billion. deconstruct that sentence, please. lisa: i'm going to have a hard time. you know, i'm not going to characterize tweets and the like. what i would say is -- charlie: i'll ask the questions then. did the united states provide $150 billion for iran? lisa: no, what the united states did was work with the p-5, the five other countries, to undertake a very rigorous process to impose sanctions that

squeezed iran, put them in tremendous difficulty economically, to make them come to the table to arrive at a joint comprehensive plan of action, which has stopped their nuclear program and expanded the time it would take them to get a nuclear weapon. charlie: when he said iran was on its last legs ready to collapse, was it because it would have if there had been no negotiations leading to the iran nuclear deal? lisa: i think what we saw was their economy in a free fall and their dire need to get relief from that. iarlie: so you might argue, others haveahu and

that you had them on the run in a terrible economic situation. if you had applied more sanctions, they would have collapsed, and there would have been no question of a nuclear -- lisa: what flies in the face of that is that in the ever-shrinking time that our experts described that there was for a breakout, which netanyahu would agree with. so those two things are not -- charlie: they might have been collapsing economically but there were also on a short term to a breakout. which would have meant they had the materials to make a nuclear weapon. lisa: exactly. charlie: what do you make of iran's behaviors of the nuclear deal? lisa: they appear to be undertaking, testing, probing reactions here and elsewhere. we've seen them undertaking what would i would characterize as malign activities in the region for many years and activities for which we have not given them a free pass. set aside the iran deal. that's about the nuclear program and our interest and the rest of

the p-5 countries' interest in halting that. we have never disregarded or ignored their malicious activities, whether it's aiding hezbollah, providing arms, as we saw with an attack on a saudi vessel just in the last 48 hours. so those efforts continue. we have to, i believe, continue the work that the obama administration did, which is not allowing those malign activities to have a free pass. that means sanctions, working with the international community for sanctions. that means continued designations. that means interdictions against those kinds of weapons shipments places. and other

so those pressures need to continue to be applied and we need international cooperation, importantly, international cooperation to do it. charlie: the president said, i think in december 2016, we have to take a long view of the terrorist threat and pursue a smart strategy that can be sustained. what is the legacy in the end of the obama administration on not only containing terrorism but defeating terrorism, if that's the world you use? lisa: i would say that the legacy is one of applying relentless pressure to al qaeda, to other groups that would seek to do us harm. to be unwavering in our attention to that and not shy about taking action unilaterally where we must and working with our partners where we can. but over the long-term, building

a strategy and a set of platforms. partnerships with other countries who themselves can take the fight to the terrorists where they are and keep them from establishing a safe haven before they get to the point where they can threaten the homeland and it's critically important that we have those relationships, those partnerships with countries like iraq so that they can undertake that work. like libya, as we talked about. and more importantly, enabling those local forces to take and hold ground and work with government in those countries so you don't have the seeds of grievances and discord that provides the environment for a group like isil to take hold in the first place. charlie: president trump said in his inaugural speech that one of his principal goals was to eradicate from the face of the earth radical islamic extremism. was that your goal too?

lisa: no, i think our goal was to and is, as i said, to first and foremost disrupt plots against the united states and u.s. persons abroad and to work with partners to make those safe havens not have the seed corn that allows those groups to take hold. you're not going to be able to eradicate extremism unless you get at the underlying grievances that allow it to fester in the first place. take the rise of isil. isil was able to roll through in 2014 -- charlie: we're talking about the goal, not talking about how you do it. the goal to eradicate radical

islamic extremism. was that the goal, to eradicate from the face of the earth radical islamic extremism? lisa: no, because that is not where i would assign the issue to be confronted. first of all, we can talk about nomenclature. first and foremost, there's been lots of debates about what you call it and i first would not do things that are going to feed the recruitment capability of a group like isil. isil exists because they claim that we, the united states, are at war with islam. they feed off that. charlie: but does radical islamic extremism suggest a war

with islam or a war with radical islamic extremism. radical extremism is different from simply islam. lisa: sure, but what you do is you can feed how you talk about this, you can feed the propaganda machine that isil has that says you're making it about a war between the u.s. and islam and us and them mentality. now, look, nobody is trying to deny that violence has been horrific violence has been perpetrated by isil, al qaeda and others based on a perverted and radical interpretation of islam. that is not the issue. no one is denying that. the question is how do you get at the underlying grievances that allow isil or al qaeda to take hold in a place like syria? in a place like yemen? how do you stop that from being a magnet to travelers from the united states to go over and be recruited into this? and one of the ways is not feeding into their own messaging

that we are at war with islam. charlie: jonathan chide, whom you know, i assume. you read what he writes and has on this program and other programs defended the obama administration and spoke approvingly of many things about it. this is what he says in his new biography of president obama. the administration failed to carry out comprehensive response to the disintegration of the states across the middle east. agree? lisa: i guess i'd like to know what is entailed with that. what is the prescription that was not carried out? what is true that in a place like syria, which you know and have studied, is we evaluated first and foremost what's in our interests. what is going to be in our interest in terms of exercising

military power and intervention in syria. not to say we didn't do anything. we wrestled with this question, as you know. first and foremost, our responsibility, the president's responsibility is to focus on u.s. interests and our first responsibility is to make sure it isn't being used as a place to plot attacks against us. so what did we do? in 2014, we began the campaign against isil with six countries. what sometimes i think gets lost in all this is there's another group that's taken root in syria. it's called al qaeda in syria. charlie: right. lisa: it is now the largest affiliate of al qaeda, the core of which is decimated in the afghanistan-pakistan border region which attacked us on 9/11 but because they face so much pressure in afghanistan-pakistan, veterans

of al qaeda decamped to syria because of the chaos shown by assad's activity. they went there to establish a new safe haven to plan and plot including against the homeland in 2014 at the same time we targeted isil we undertook specific strikes against them. but the chaos has continued in syria. al qaeda in syria has expanded and they continued to be focused on attacking the west and attacking us. my own view is that we cannot let up on that pressure, as the obama administration did not in the last four years, and that's got to be kept up and that includes working with partners to do it. charlie: help us understand the national security implications of biochemical weapons and bioterrorist weapons and the whole range of things that are sometimes called pandemics and the range of weapons that have a powerful possibility to be used as weapons of attack.

lisa: so i think about this in two ways, charlie. one is the ever present concern that a malicious actor, state or nonstate or a terrorist actor is going to get their hand on a pathogen that they can weaponize or use chemical attacks, as we've seen isil doing in iraq. so that concern is ever present. now, it takes a certain amount of sophistication. it takes a safe place to plot and plan, which is why we're applying the pressure we are. so we need to continue our focus on and keep them from obtaining those things, those pathogens, building that capability to weaponize. because it takes some sophisticated doing.

but i separate out that concern from what i consider a concern and a homeland security threat right up there with terrorist actors and cyber security. the third thing i told my successor in the transition that he has to focus on and because it is what has kept me up at night is the third pillar of threat, which i feel is ever present and will be a focus going forward, is emerging infectious disease. and what do i mean by that? not any pathogen that has a malicious origin. i'm talking about things like ebola. like zika. and the concern is that because of globalization, because of climate change, because of the fact that human beings are now living a lot closer to formally developed areas and there's a lot more travel to urban centers as we saw with the development

ebola. the threat of diseases is much greater than it was before and i firmly believe the next administration will confront a challenge from that. charlie: we learned an important lesson from the ebola threat. lisa: we did and one of the things we've learned, i believe, is we have got to double down and continue to sustain something we called the global health security agenda. something the obama administration started. now has 50 countries in it focusing on their own global surveillance capabilities to detect when a new disease emerges because we have to keep it out before it comes into the homeland.

we've learned that something like ebola -- we had plans on the shelf due to in part very good work by the bush administration to combat say pandemic flu or h1n1 but ebola required a different playbook. so we have to be able to adapt to that. charlie: how many times did you have to call the president and wake him up? lisa: i do not know how many times i actually woke him up. charlie: you or the national security advisor or the chief of staff, whoever wakes him up. lisa: i don't know how many times i woke him up. time.s one specific first of all, he's a night owl so -- but i did specifically have to wake him up my third week on the job. charlie: thank you so much for coming. great to have you here. lisa: thanks. charlie: lisa monaco. see you next time. ♪

carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. oliver: and i'm oliver renick. a secret alliance between two very old enemies in the middle east. carol: the irs wants a piece of michael jackson. oliver: all that ahead on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ carol: we are here with editor-in-chief megan murphy. the week we talked about