of a senator killed just prior to his adopted it on the september 11th investigation being published. this is a little over an hour. >> thank you, sir. could evening and welcome to the national press club. my name is larry lytton in command and the executive editor for the state news. a member of the press club bookend of the committee. before we get to our speaker would like to mention upcoming book kreps chair at the national press club. this wednesday august 3rd we will have a book representative with former npr commentator one of williams. ..

in a crowded field of mostly senior state officials running in the democratic primary. i had just been assigned to the "orlando sentinel." bob graham came in second in that primary which forced a runoff. the night before the second primary i had dinner with a bunch of florida reporters who were covering the race and we went round the table predicting who would win the next day. and everyone there with the exception of one person who was not me, predicted that bob graham would lose the next morning to charity general bob chevan. so much for the wisdom of the florida press corps. of course bob graham won the run up runoff then went on to serve two terms as governor in three terms as the united states senator from florida.

the highlight of that career undoubtedly came 12 years ago when he and -- installed made as president of the national press club. also of note senator graham was chairman of the senate intelligence committee on september 11, 2001 and chair the joint senate and green to the terrorist attacks of that day. he famously asked the question, why the intelligence committee had failed to connect the dots in light of the revealed conspiracy before the attacks? now in his book, "keys to the kingdom" senator graham bears a striking similarity to one of the characters in the book referred to once there as doodle. it connects a few more of the dots. since leaving the senate senator bob graham has served as a senior fellow at the john f. kennedy school of government at harvard university and was appointed by president obama to chair -- cochaired the bipartisan national commission on the bp oil spill ensure that financial crisis commission.

senator graham will discuss his book and then we will take questions for about half an hour or whatever time we need and then he will sign copies of the book which is available outside if you haven't already purchased it. all the sales here at the national press club in all of our book drafts benefit the library of the national press club and that is why we restrict the books to those sold here at the book club. please join me in giving a warm national press club welcome to former governor and former senator and now author, bob graham. [applause] >> thank you very much. i particularly want to tank a larry for all the confidence he has demonstrated in my political career. i have been following larry around or a long time. when i arrived in tallahassee as governor, larry was the president of the capitol press club. the capital press club has one of its annual premier events,

ate dinner featuring skits. i had never been to one of these dinners before i became governor and therefore i was not repaired for the total laceration that all politicians to get this event. afterwords, i went to larry with what i thought was a modest and very balanced suggestion, and that was that the politicians should be given some opportunity to put on skits about our brethren and journalists. you have never seen the first amendment shut down so fully as it was that night, and therefore i had to think of clandestine ways to get onstage during these skits and the last i everett was my last year of governor when i appeared and make quite -- white military uniform with a big sash session a large sword as

governor for life, bringing dignity back to dictatorship. and then as larry said, we followed him as he became the distinguished president of the national press club, so we congratulate larry for his long and illustrious career. there are a few other people, if i could mentioned. my number two son in law that is in the sequence of marriage. [laughter] tom gibson is here with our triplet granddaughters. if tom and a dell and kendall and ainsley would please stay on? [applause] i am not very objective because i think that is a pretty impressive group of grandchildren, all of which arrived on the same day. i also want to recognize carolyn and mark.

mark was at my right hand throughout most of this process and was a very very valuable assistance in this and a very wonderful personal friend, so thank you. he is a big nationals fans so at least for tonight they have got a winning record. i appreciate this opportunity to talk about a book that represented five years of my life. i started working on this book in 2006, and finished it earlier this year. i am going to talk a little bit about that background, but let me first announce that this is going to be a debt ceiling free zone, at least until we reach the point that you might ask some questions about that topic. i do think that, as we are now

within six weeks of the tenth anniversary of that tragic event, that there are some similarities between what has been happening now and what happened almost 10 years ago. one of those things is the fact that our country has been accepting of higher and higher levels of secrecy, of non-transparency. when abraham lincoln was president, he made it a point that every communication that went in or out of the state department was treated as a public document. from that standard we have descended into a high degree of non-transparency, i think very much to the disadvantage and to service of the people of this country. one of the questions that i get is, why did you write this book? you have written three nonfiction books.

you have been in politics most of your life. what caused you to think that you could write a novel? well, the first answer to that question is anger. i had shared with my colleague porter goss, the congressional inquiry into 9/11 and at the end of that inquiry we had spent a year, we had a staff of 50 to 60 people, we read millions of pages of interviewed hundreds of people, but i came away with the sense that there were still some important unanswered questions and that most of those questions revolved around the full role of saudi arabia in 9/11, and why had our government gone to such lengths to cover that up? just briefly, some of the specific issues that raise those questions, what we do know is

that the first two of the 19 hijackers, both of whom were saudi citizens, came into the united states through the los angeles airport in january of 2000. we also know that within less than two weeks of their arrival, they were approached by a man who had been categorized by the fbi as an agent of the saudi government. with a suggestion that they move to los angeles to san diego and with the representation that he would provide full support should they do so. they did, and he did. he was facilitated in his ability to provide full support because of a job that he had, which was called a ghost job. he received a check periodically but never was expected to show up for work. his real job was to monitor young saudi's living in southern

california to see if any of them were harboring plots that might be threatening to the monarchy. he was one of a number of agents of the saudi government around the world with that same responsibility. but face it as soon as these two men came from los angeles to san diego, his allowances jumped. now the assumption is that he was the conduit of funds from the saudi government to these two men to facilitate their lifestyles in san diego. it turned out their lifestyle was a little bit non-muslim. they particularly liked to drink and to go to strip clubs. in fact, one of the two men wanted to marry one of the strippers. he was finally dissuaded from that, but their expenses were such that they could make it on

the increase and allowances, so they gained access through this agent to a fund administered by the wife of the ambassador to the united states of saudi arabia, which was supposed to be for saudi's in need, medical need or some financial crisis. this became a regular monthly source of funds, again which is assumed was used to meet the cost of living for these two future hijackers. the agent, whose name was omar, still alive living in saudi arabia, was -- he also arrange for an apartment, paid for the apartment, ranged for flying lessons and introduce these two men to a circle of prominent saudi's living in southern california who became somewhat of a support network for these two men.

now, all of that and more was discussed in the final version of a report that our congressional inquiry it did first in december of 2002 and then after the classification process to the public in july of 2003. that declassified version had a number of reductions. most of them were words or sentences, a name or a location, but there was one chapter of psalm 27, 28 pages that was totally redacted. that was the chapter that discusses the saudi role in 9/11. so, that that is an example of some of the circumstances that led me to have the anger that were important pieces of information that were being

withheld from the american people. the second reason i did it was because i came to the conclusion that the way i could tell this story was not representing it to be nonfiction, but representing it to be fiction, where the standards of censorship are substantially lower than they are if you presented as being reality. i might say, i am a member of the cia's external advisory board and as such am required to submit anything i write to the prepublication board of the cia. and, every draft of this novel is submitted and what you now have in printed form has passed that clearance process. this was very important to my wife, who did not want me to take a recess from my retirement

to become a more or less permanent resident of atlanta or leavenworth or some of the other accommodations that the federal government makes available. now, there is a third reason. there are some who have said, you are over the top. stretching from the fact that you know and 40% of this book is facts with the names of living people changed with a few exceptions -- 40% is pure fiction and 20% is a combination, but some have said you have gone too far in stretching what you know into these big dishes allegations. but let me just raise, let me raise two instances that are prominent in the book and see if you think this is an overstatement. when bin laden decided that he

was going to commence a series of attacks against the united states, he as an engineer with a very disorderly minds determined to do it in stages. the most dramatic first stage was the attack on two u.s. embassies in africa. the second phase occurred about three years later with the attack on a u.s. destroyer in ayden, yemen. but he always had the aspiration of attacking the united states in his homeland. he faced a problem. basic plans for the attack had been formed at a meeting of his key operatives that took place in malaysia in january of 2000, and the two men who came in through los angeles had that

meeting -- had been at that meeting. he realized that if he was going to carry out an attack of the complexity that 9/11 became, that his operatives were going to be very vulnerable for a long period of time. of the 19, only one or two spoke any english. of the 19, only one or two had any previous experience and the united states. the 19 people were largely strangers to each other. with those constraints, those 19 people were expected to complete the final planning, to practice and then to execute an extremely sophisticated and complex operation. bin laden was aware that this was going to be very difficult to achieve. and so, he sought out an

infrastructure, a support unit that would assist his 19 in carrying out their commitments and also being able to maintain anonymity while they were in the united states. bin laden was aware of the fact that, after the persian gulf war, saudi arabia had become very concerned that how vulnerable they were in that war, that saddam hussein moved quickly through kuwait. he could have taken down this debt -- state of saudi arabia. there also worked concerned that this may have sent a signal to some of the dissidents within saudi arabia that the monarchy was vulnerable in the same way that dissidents in iran in 1979 had seen the vulnerability of the shah. so in order to monitor what young people who had led the

overthrow in iran and the monarchy felt might be the front of the sword for such a revolution in saudi arabia. they develop this cadre of agents around the world, wherever there was a significant number of saudi young people. to monitor it to see what they were doing. bin laden concluded that was the network in the united states that would be the most beneficial to serve as the infrastructure for his 19 operatives that were soon to enter the country. bin laden came to the king in the late 1990s, laid out the general thought of what he was going to do. i don't represent that he gave detailed explanations of why,

but that he wanted to have access to the saudi's infrastructure of agents to protect these 19 people, and that if that request was not honored, that he would lead a revolution against the monarchy and use as his foot soldiers some 30,000 who had served in the mujahideen in afghanistan and had successfully routed a much stronger military adversar, then they would face in the military of the kingdom of saudi arabia. now, that i think is a fairly factually substantiated set of events. i think what happened was that the king capitulated and made these agents such as the one in san diego, available. what we don't know is whether

any of the other 17 hijackers received the same kind of support that the two in san diego had, but i will say after a number of briefings and questions, no one has given the answer as to why would these two out of the 19 had been selected and the other 17 excluded from that assistance? the second, and i'm not going to lift up the suspense of the novel, "keys to the kingdom" and i'm certainly not going to do anything that would dissuade you from buying a copy of "keys to the kingdom," but i'm telling you some of the central facts, but there comes a point where we tried to answer the question, why did the government of the united states go to such lengths to cover up the saudi involvement?

and in that, let me go back again to a period immediately before the persian gulf war. the united states had frankly been extremely duplicitous in the war between iran and iraq. we are well aware that the iran-contra scam where the united states was selling military equipment to iran and using that money to purchase military equipment to be used by the contras in their war against the sandinistas in nicaragua. what is not so well-known but is truthful is what we were doing for iraq during the same time. iraq had a nascent nuclear program that had started in the early 1980s. it was going along at a modest pace. one of the problems was that there were important pieces of

equipment, which they could most readily get from the united states, but which fell under a doctrine called the duel use prohibition. that is if a of a piece of equipment that might be useful in a medical context also could be used in a military context, it was not to be sold to iraq and the a list of other countries. beginning in the mid-80s, we essentially rescinded that policy as it related to iraq and began selling them equipment, which was very useful in their nuclear program, and so by the late '80s, iraq was on the verge of having highly enriched nuclear materials. the war in kuwait, a very stupid act by saddam hussein was the

thing that kept them from getting that last step that they needed. after the war, the persian gulf war, the fact that the united states had been making these materials available to saddam hussein became known to the saudi government, and they were highly enraged about this because they said we had violated our friendship that went back to world war ii, the special arrangement between presidents roosevelt and kinks out, and that they were going to announce our duplicity unless we would he helpful to them. now, had have taken that set of facts and suggested that maybe the form that help would take would be the form that our help to saddam hussein had taken that his assistance in gaining access to a weapon of mass destruction.

now that is a fictional statement but i don't think it is a long leap from what we in fact no. i am very distressed that the facts that underlay the kings to the kingdom have been so effectively withheld from the american people and there have been some serious consequences of that withholding, one of which is that i think we have treated saudi arabia as a reliable friend when in fact, they were very suspicious flow, and have taken steps that have been very adverse to u.s. interests. these were just things that have happened a decade ago. in may of this year, there was the annual conference of the world health organization at its headquarters in vienna. there are over 190 countries

that are members of the w.h.o.. the united states had as one of its objectives at that meeting to tighten down on one of the most lethal and feral and potential pathogens for a biological weapon of mass destruction, smallpox. many of us would think that smallpox has been eradicated. many of us probably have a little scar on our arm, as i do that there may be younger people here who didn't get vaccinated because the feeling that this was no longer necessary. the resolution of the united states put before the w.h.o. said that all of the countries membership had to do one of two things, either declare that they were smallpox free, that is they had no smallpox that was being used for medical or scientific research or any other purpose.

and two, they could not make that declaration and the united states would have been one of those that could not make that declaration, because we have smallpox and several of our laboratories, that we would commit that within five years we would destroy it. the principle opponent of that resolution in may of this year, was iran. it is not surprising that a country wants to get a nuclear weapon would also be interested in a biological weapon. the surprising thing was that one of the strongest allies of iran in opposition to our resolution, stating that they strongly disagreed with the position of the united states, with saudi arabia. now the question is, why would the saudi's joined forces with the country that they have considered to be their sworn

enemy and that they have gone to such lengths to protect themselves from? why would they have joined forces with them? one possibility might be that they in fact do have some aspirations for the development of biological weapons of mass destruction. i don't think that is an extreme leave between fact and fiction. so friends, that is what "keys to the kingdom" attempts to do, to tell hopefully an entertaining story. if you don't do that, then you have failed the first task of writing a novel. second also to be an awakening to the american people as to some things that have in fact happened and with what i hope is reasonable extension of what might happen to us as a result

of the lack of transparency that we have given to the actions in saudi arabia. now, but may provide the third and final reason why i wrote this. as governor and u.s. senator i gave a number of comments and -- commencement speeches and in those speeches i typically would do what every young graduates sitting on the edge of their seat, anxious to walk across the stage, hear the applause from their family and then get on with life was. that young person once an old guy with gray hair to tell them how to live their lives. well, i succumbed to that, and among others advised that if you are going to maintain your vitality, you should consider periodically taking on a task which was different than anything you have done, and was hard. such as learning a foreign language or learning to play a musical instrument.

well, when i retired from the senate in january of 05, thinking i should eat my own cookie. there was a brief attempt to learn to play the guitar. i found out -- so my second thought was to write a novel on this subject, and i started it in the spring of 06 and as i say finished with five years later. i can tell you that it was distinctly different. i had written three nonfiction books where you are writing about events that have already occurred, so you have already had the narrative of the story based on the facts of what has happened. with a novel you have got 300 plus blank pages and you have got to fill them in with an

interesting narrative, a plot, characters that people can identify with and relate to their changes, so-called arts, thank you mark, as they move through the novel. it was also a hard thing to do, because of the fact that you were challenged to levels of creativity that you had probably escaped particularly if you think that what you do in politics is fiction, this is really fiction and really hard. very much for the chance to talk about something that has meant a lot to me in my last five years. i will state i am very pleased with the reception that "keys to the kingdom" has received.

and if anyone here sees a part that they would like to consider and what i hope will be the movie of "keys to the kingdom," please sign up. glad to take any questions. [applause] >> senator discussing the secrecy, has this been a bipartisan effort in both administrations or how many -- how far back does the secrecy extend and what is the rationale for that continuing? >> pat moynihan wrote of book charlie before he died called secrecy and it was about the history of secrecy in america. he would go back to the first world war as the event which started a chain of increasing reticence in the united states to share information with its

people. i think that my description of this as being non-national security but rather covering embarrassing political events is substantiated because my republican colleague shelby made exactly the same statement that i am, which is that there is very little if any of those censured pages that represented national security disclosures. >> senator what about -- there's a lot of information that came out and some people say was harmful and others say it was a good thing. what is your feeling about that? >> well, i am a believer in the proposition that america is best served when americans know what their government is doing. and, so, there may be, probably

were, some wikileaks leaks that were adverse to our interests, particularly when people who were engaged as our assets collecting intelligence were named, but my sense is that the majority of the material at wikileaks disclosed was not a national security threat level. yes, sir? >> hi senator. i'm wondering to what degree that you know of did any representatives in the saudi government tried to prevent your book from being published or certain details from being published? >> i don't know what their goal was and the decisions to censure the joint inquiry's report to the degree that it was done. i have not had any sense that

the saudi's have done anything relative to this novel. maybe they are willing to accept that it's imagination too. yes, sir? >> two questions, one on saudi arabia and one of weapons of mass destruction in the region. many commentators and observers feel like after the egyptian, i don't no one is a revolution but the ousting of mubarak and at least a revolution in progress that you now in fact have a counterrevolution led i saudi arabia and the gcc countries, the gulf cooperation council and the saudi's moving into bahrain and it includes jordan and morocco to the other side of the arab world. do you see that is part and the saudi's are trying to influence egypt? they didn't want mubarak to go. lots of dictators are inside

saudi arabia. do you see that as part is part of what is happening here tacit cooperation between parts of the u.s. government that talk about democracy but when push come to shove really don't want it and obviously antidemocratic portions and the antidemocratic saudi regime? >> certain saudi's have not been a cheerleader for the arab spring that has occurred. some of the things that they have done to try to push back, including the items discussed where they use their military in bahrain, they have used as a means of keeping the people passive a couple of devices. one is economic. this year, the saudi government is going to get out 14 monthly checks to all government employees for working 12 months.

i think that level of generosity has something to do with the desire of keeping the people passive by improved standard of living. they are also spending some 15 to $20 billion to 500,000 units of low income housing. the second thing that they have done is violence. the use of very public, means of demonstrating their desire and will to maintain control. beheadings have been an example of that and in the book i describe a beheading that occurred in the old area of riyadh. in 2010, there were 27 beheadings in saudi arabia.

there were 27 beheadings in the first five months of 2011. and indicator of the willingness to use public violence as a means of restraining public defense. dissent. >> weapons of massive destruction i have found a remarkable lack of forthrightness, and i don't frankly -- as well of the israeli weapons of mass destruction. israel has nuclear weapons and everyone knows -- helen thomas asked a bomb in his first news conference if israel had nuclear weapons and i don't want to speculate. she is out the door after that. can you address the israeli nuclear weapons program in the region? >> i did it in this book and i used as my source, i will not name him but a very leading

intelligence journalist who stated that the best estimate was that israel has 200 nuclear weapons. i am not going to comment beyond what is in the public press. i think israel is not a member of the non-proliferation treaty countries and therefore is not under a legal operation -- obligation to publicly announce what its nuclear status might be. i think for fairly obvious national security reasons they have chosen not to make that announcement. i am concerned about the fact that there is the potential of happening in the middle east what has been happening for the last 10 years at least in southern asia. in the last 10 years, china, india and particularly pakistan

have been rapidly increasing their arsenals of weapons of mass destruction to use pakistan as the example. in 2000 it was estimated pakistan had less than 20 nuclear weapons. by 2008, it was estimated that they had as many as 60 and as of today the estimate is that they have 94 or more, so that is the scale of the increase in nuclear capability in that part of the world. i am concerned that there is the potential in the middle east of a series of countries. saudi arabia has already announced that if iran goes nuclear they are going to go nuclear and if those two go nuclear, don't think it is long before at least turkey and maybe egypt would also.

so in a region that is already very volatile, you would make it that much more so by the addition of those additional nuclear states. yes? hello. >> i imagine you went through quite a few briefings on the attempt to capture osama bin laden. can you tell me when he was captured, what was the most surprising part of that to you? >> well the answer is i'm afraid your premise is an error. i was -- i won't say surprise because i know we have been committing an enormous amount of effort over a ten-year period with some very competent people, but i had no prior indication that it was going to come down that night on may the first. my reaction was one of a sense of relief and that justice had

been done. it also was followed by the concerned that americans might feel that now we could lower our guard and the symbol of terrorism in the world had dispatched. i think that would be an enormous mistake. one, the leadership that is stepping into place in all qaeda in some ways is more violent than bin laden. bin laden was a thoughtful, disciplined engineer. the people who are now taking the leadership roles are not so constrained. one of those -- the second illustrative of the first is that al qaeda has also changed organization. at the time of the attack, al qaeda was a very centralized organization with bin laden

making most of the decisions. today, al qaeda is like a franchise with 60 or more operations around the world. some of them are almost on the scale of dig al qaeda, particularly al qaeda in the arabian peninsula based in yemen, which is led by a man who is an american citizen who had lived in san diego when the two hijackers were there. as they got closer to 9/11, as they moved to falls church virginia, he moved with him here and he is now in yemen. his name is awlaki, and a very dangerous adversary for u.s. interest. yes, maam? [inaudible]

>> there is in the title character but there is a main male character whose name is tony ramos, and i have already said that he is the will smith of the state department, so before we cast that will -- we have already cas that role. now, some who have assumed that the person in the book who is senator john billington is somewhat like me and then ask why if he was your alter ego due to did you kill him off in such a dangerous, violent way so early? well, the answer is that the person that will play billington is going to be robert redford. [laughter] and, bradford's daily fee is very high. [laughter] so in order to keep the cost of the movie down, they couldn't

afford to have him on screen very long. so poor mr. billington had to be dispatched. yes? >> you said you do a lot of commencement speeches. what is your sense of the future here? do you think that we are going to have asymmetrical warfare forever with terrorist threats or is this something we can get a grip on? >> forever is a long time but i think we are going to have it certainly for the foreseeable future, and one of the challenges to the united states united states is really a change in mentality. in the novel, there are some underlying events that are occurring. one of those is a presidential election and there are a number of points in the novel where actions are taken because of their political, and the most

basic sense, political impact rather than what is in some national security interest. but, another of those is the war in afghanistan. our hero, tony ramos, who i will immodestly say i think is a very interesting person -- he is a cuban-american who grew up in the town next to where i grew up, highly of florida, came to georgetown on a scholarship, was a very good student and athlete on the ncaa singles tennis. i don't know how many national championships georgetown has won recently, but tony has racked up one. b. is also an rotc second lieutenant and because he spoke fluent pashto and arabic, he was assigned to a special operations unit that was in afghanistan

during the 1990s, the hide of the taliban controlled. he was working, as we had units working with the northern alliance, tribes that were resisting the taliban. so, from that background, he was a searing opponent of the war in iraq because he thought that our principle adversary was afghanistan and that we should stay the course there until we took on more adversaries. and i might say in the book, i recount a discussion and i am now going to break, not new news, but i don't name it in the book. but, in february of 2002, about four months into the afghanistan war, i went to central command, which is located at mcgill air

force base in tampa, to get a briefing of the state of the afghanistan war and it was a fairly standard military briefing, lots of power points, and optimist about the progress we had made and that we would make in the future. when the briefing was over, the commander of central command at the time, general tommy franks, said senator i would like to talk with you privately. we went into his office and he said, we are no longer fighting a war. which i said, i don't understand. we just had this briefing about how well our efforts are going. why do you say we are not fighting a war? and he said, because we are already getting ready for a war not yet declared against iraq

and that some of our important assets such as special operation units with native language speakers and the predator drones are being withdrawn from afghanistan to get ready for that not yet declared war in iraq. tony goes from that fervent support for a muscular war against afghanistan to the end of the book where he thinks we need to re-examine our role in afghanistan because we are committing most of our military effort against terrorism in a country that has virtually no terrorists left in less than 100 al qaeda estimated still living in afghanistan. it was tony's feeling that we needed to transition to a more nimble strategy, similar to what happened on may the first, rather than boots on the ground.

and, recognized as tommy franks did back in february of 2002 that al qaeda is now metastasizing around the world and that we are going to have to fight it in places more than just afghanistan and we need to have a greater dispersal of our capabilities in order to do that. so, that is sort of a story within the story of "keys to the kingdom." yes, larry? >> there was a question about what is your biggest concern with the current thrust of american foreign-policy? >> well, let me just narrow it to the thrust of the foreign-policy in central asia. and as i just said, i think that we are fighting a world war ii type take and hold real estate war against an adversary who is

largely left the real estate which we are fighting and bad that it is going to take a geographic diversification of our efforts and a change in our military tax dix to excellent intelligence supported by superbly trained quick strike operations that are able to carry out the series of attacks that will be necessary to cut the head off the snake will we be moving in that direction though? >> we are lowering the number of troops modestly in afghanistan this year and will do so again in 12, 13 and 14. i think what is needed is more than just the question of how many troops we have got to play. it is how do we define the mission that we are attempting to accomplish and what is the

right form of our military intelligence and other assets to the carry out. >> yes, sir? >> in your opinion could 9/11 have been avoided with a certain degree of negligence and it is easy to speak after-the-fact. what is your opinion on that? >> in another book that i would encourage you to purchase, called intelligence matters, which is a nonfiction book that covers some of these points, i identify a dozen instances in which had we acted differently, had there have been less insularity among our intelligence agencies, had there have been a greater willingness to share, had there have been a little more, to use the 9/11

commission's turn imagination as to what could happen, that we could have interdicted before it occurred. in fact, it is quite amazing that we didn't. just supposed, let's say this group on this side of the aisle, if you were to be given exactly the same assignment that the 19 were given and you have the same level of linguistic and cultural knowledge and affinity, the same complexity of the plot and you were dropped in let's say yemen, how do you think you would fare in carrying that out? a pretty tough assignment. so i think there were multiple points where we have the opportunity to dislodge the

terrorists and break up the plot, but for a variety of reasons did not do it. b.s.? >> at what point do you think that spending on national security actually makes us less secure and in particular 9/11 costs roughly are a million dollars as we respond with a trillion dollars or more fighting back, so at what point you think that makes us less secure? >> well i think to make us less secure in a number of ways. one is economically. we have just been through one of the most wrenching national debates about raising the debt ceiling largely or insignificant part because of the debts that we have incurred because of things like the war in iraq. i personally think the war initially in afghanistan was a justified war in much the same

way that when we were attacked in pearl harbor it was justified for us to respond. i think iraq was a war which was a diversion from that but added a trillion dollars to our current national debt. we also have gotten into the habit that we don't pay for wars. in fact, we had tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 and in between them we had 9/11. this was almost without historical precedent. in the civil war, much more absorbing nationally in gauge military effort, we ended the war almost debt-free because the american people were paid in the civil war as it was being fought. the same thing was largely true

of world war ii, so this is -- we have got now in the habit that we can go to war without having the general public be much affected by it. we don't have draft so people aren't on-call to actually be hurt his opponents in the, and we are not asking the civilian population to pay for the cost of the war. yes, sir? >> senator, in the senate when the patriot act was voted on, the first time, you had the anthrax attacks, are you totally comfortable that we know what we should know about who perpetrated the anthrax attacks that led to the continuation of the initial vote of the patriot act? >> u.s. to questions. one, the patriot acts.

the move was one of a guy would say enthusiasm driven by fear to enact the patriot act. i was very involved in most sections of the patriot act that involved the intelligence community because they were under the jurisdiction of the intelligence committee. i think it is now incumbent upon congress to review what was done during that period of enthusiasm driven by fear to see what parts of the patriot act still are appropriate to maintain. your second question was? >> actually you answered it so i will have a very quick follow-up. my understanding is that president obama said he would veto the defense appropriation

act if there was anything in there about a new investigation of anthrax. do you think that is an appropriate way to deal with the kind of concern that you just mentioned? >> well, as larry mentioned in his introduction, i also chaired the 2008/2009 commission on weapons of mass destruction and we spent some time on that issue. as you know there has now been a panel, the national science -- which is raised questions about whether ivins, the man at fort dietrich who the fbi identified as being the lone wolf responsible for this in fact was the man. so while there is still a significant questioning by a

group as thoughtful as that, i think the investigation should not be closed because it is in america's interest to know as much as we can about who did it, what was the method of acquiring access, was it done alone or was it representative of a larger effort? we have found in our final commission report that we thought it was more likely than not that less policies in the united united states and globally were changed dramatically and expeditiously, there will be a successful use of weapon of mass destruction someplace on the earth before the end of 2013, and that it was more like -- likely that weapon would be a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon.

with those kinds of stunning projections, i think we need to know everything we can about the major biological attack that has in fact taken place in the united states. listen, larry, for all this negative and the scars you have inflicted on us i am going to turn it over to you that you have to select a person to pass the final question. >> so we have one more question. [laughter] >> in your 9/11 committee, you had some differences with the 9/11 commission specifically one that was that the