seller, and this applies to everyone in this room, is knowing that you're part of a core, you do, i don't need repeated. you know what it is. he said that -- so that psychological salary is honor. that is something that is worth a lot to how can you put a dollar figure on that? >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org or. >> and out on booktv, former florida senator bob graham presents his novel about the murder of a senator who is killed just prior to his op-ed on the 9/11 investigation being published. this is a little over an hour. >> good evening and welcome to national press club. my name is learned and. and executive editor for state news, and a member of the press clubs book and author committee. before we get to our speaker i'd

like to mention some upcoming finger at the national press club. this wednesday august 3 will have a book wrap with former npr commentator juan williams who will discuss his book muscled, the assault on honest debate. on september choices, governor mitch denny will discuss his book keeping the republic, saving america by trusting americans. if you'd like to get on our e-mail list, see mr. mother all right here who as a sign she and will be happy to put you on our list of press club book events. i first met bob graham 33 years ago when he was a first state senator with black you running for governor in a crowded field of mostly senior state officials running in the democratic primary. i had just been assigned to the orlando saenz call has to be are. bob graham came in second in that primary which forced a runoff. and i do for the second primary

i had dinner with a bunch of florida reporters who are covering the race. and who went around 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 attorney general options. so much of the wisdom of the florida press corps. of course, bob graham one the run off and went on to serve two terms as governor and three terms as the night state senator from florida. the highlight of the career undoubtedly came 12 years ago when he and mickey mantle installed as president of the national press club. also know senator graham was chairman of the senate intelligence committee on september 11, 2001, and chaired the joint house-senate inquiry into the terrorist attacks of the day. he famously asked the question of why the intelligence community had failed to connect the dots that might have revealed the conspiracy before

the attacks. now in his book, the keys to the kingdom, referred to once there as google, 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, coach or the bipartisan national commission on the bp oil spill and share the financial crisis inquiry commission. senator graham will discuss his book and then we'll take questions for about half an hour or whatever time we need. and then he will sign copies of the book which is a battle outside if you haven't already purchased it. all the sales are at the national press club and overbook raps benefit the libra at the national press club. that's why we restrict the books to those soldier of the book wrap. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming former governor and former senator and now author bob graham.

[applause] >> thank you very much. i didn't want to thank larry for all the conferences demonstrated in my political career. i've been following very around for a long time. when i arrived in tallahassee as governor, larry was the president of the capital press club. the capital press club had as one of its annual for your events and a dinner featuring skits. i've never been to one of these dinners before i became governor. and, therefore, i was not prepared for the total laceration that all politicians took at this event are afterwards i went to larry with what i thought was a modest and fair and balanced suggestion, and that was that a politician should be given some opportunity to put on skits about our

brother did in journalism. you have never seen the first amendment shutdown so fully as it was that night. and, therefore, i do think of clandestine ways to get on stage during these skits. and the last of my efforts was my last year as governor when i appeared in a white military uniform with a big sash and a large sword as governor for life, bringing dignity back to dictatorship. and then as larry said, we followed again here 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 mention. my number two son at all that is just in a sequence of marriage.

tom gibson is here and with our triplet granddaughters. if tom and a dell and kendall and ansley would please stand. [applause] i'm not very objective because i think that's a pretty impressive group of grandchildren. all of which arrived on the the same day. i also want to recognize carolyn's and mark. mark was at my right hand throughout most of this process and was a very, very valuable assistant in this, and a very wonderful person -- personal friend. so i thank you. he's a big national span, so for at least tonight they had 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'm going to talk a little bit about that background. but let me first announced that this is going to be a debt ceiling free zone. at least until we reached the point that you might have some questions about that topic. i do think that as we are now within six weeks of the 10th anniversary of that tragic event, that there are some similarities between what's 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 disservice of the people of this country. one of the questions i get is why did you write this book. you had written three nonfiction books. you had 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 anchored. i had chaired with my colleague porter goss, the congressional inquiry into 9/11. and at the end of the inquiry we spent a year. we had a staff of 50 to 60 people. we read millions of pages,

interviewed hundreds of people. but i came away with the sense that there were still some court and i've answered questions. and that most of those questions revolved around the full role of saudi arabia in 9/11, and why have our government gone to such lengths to cover that up. just briefly, some of the specific issues that raised 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 a were approached a man who had been categorized by the fbi as an agent of the saudi government, with a suggestion that they move from 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 the job and that he had, which is called a ghost job. he received a check periodically, but never was expected to show up for work. is real job was to monitor young saudis 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 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 lifestyle in san diego. it turned out their lifestyle was a little bit non-muslim. they particularly like 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 couldn't make it on the increase in allowances. and so they gained access to this agent to a fund administered by the wife of ambassador to the united states saudi arabia, which was supposed to be for saudis in need, medical need over some financial crisis. this became a regular monthly source of funds, again which is assumed was used to meet the costs of living for these two

future hijackers. the agent whose name was omar, still alive, living in saudi arabia, he also arranged for an apartment, paid for the apartment, arranged for flying lessons, and introduced these two men to a circle of prominent saudis 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 the report that our congressional inquiry issued. first in december of 2002, and then after going through the classification process to the public in july of 2003. that declassified version had a number of redactions. most of them were words or

sentences, a name or a location. but there was one chapter of some 27, 28 pages that was totally redacted. that was the chapter that discussed the saudi role in 9/11. so that is an example of some of the circumstances that led me to have the anchor -- anger that there 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 is to be nonfiction, but representing it to be fiction. where the standards of censorship are substantially lower than they are and you present it as being reality. i'm i said i am a member of the

cia's external advisory board, and as such i am required to submit anything i write to the prepublication board of cia. and every draft of this novel was so submitted. and what you now have in printed form has passed that clearance process. this is 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 are of the federal government, makes available. now, there's a third reason but i'd like to withhold that for a moment. there's some who have said you're over the top or these, stretching from the facts 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've gone too far in stretching what you know into these tissues allegations. well, let me raise two instances that are prominent, 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, was a very disciplined and orderly mind, determined to do it in stages. the most dramatic first stage was the attack on two u.s. embassies in africa. on the second phase, occurred about three years later, with the attack on a u.s. destroyer

in aden yemen. but he always had the aspiration of attacking the united states in its homeland. he faced a problem. the basic plans for the attack had been formed at a meeting of his key operatives that took place in malaysia in january of 2000, the two men came in through los angeles, had that meeting. he realized that if he is going to carry out an attack of the complexity of the 9/11, 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 had any previous experience in

the united states. the 19 people who are 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 this was going to be very difficult to achieve. and so, he sought out an infrastructure, a support unit that would assist his 19 carrying out their commitments. and also be 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 work, that

saddam hussein moved quickly through kuwait he could have taken down the state of saudi arabia. there also were concerns 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, in the monarchy felt might be the front sword for such a revolution in saudi arabia. they developed 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.

that was the network in the united states that would be 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 explanation of why, but that he wanted to have access to the saudis infrastructure of agents to protect these 19 people. and that if the request was not honored, that he would lead a revolution against the monarchy and use, as his foot soldiers, some 30,000 who served in the march 18 in afghanistan and had successfully routed a much stronger military adversary, the

soviet union, and they would face in the military, the king of saudi arabia. now, that though i think is a fairly factually substantiated set of events. i think what happened was the king capitulated and made these agents such as the ones 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 have. but i will say after a number of briefings and question, no one has given the answer as to why would these two out of the 19 have been selected and the other 17 excluded from that assistance. the second, i'm not going to

lift the suspense of the novel, "keys to the kingdom," and a certain not going to do anything that would dissuade you from buying a copy of "keys to the kingdom" by telling you some of the central facts, but there comes a point where we try 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 into the period immediately after the persian gulf war. the united states had frankly been extremely duplicitous in the war between iran and iraq. we are well aware of the iran-contra scandal where the united states was selling military equipment to iran, and then using that money to purchase military equipment to be used by the contras in their

war against the sandinistas in nicaragua. what's 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 it started in the early 1980s. it was sort of 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 dual use prohibition. that is, if 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 a list of other countries. beginning in the mid '80s, we essentially rescinded that

policy as it related to iraq, and begin selling in 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 buried fashion very stupid act on behalf of saddam hussein was the thing that kept them from getting that last step that they need. after the war, 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,

special arrangement between president roosevelt and the king. and that they were going to announce our duplicity and less we would be helpful to them. now, i have taken that sent the facts and suggested that maybe the form that that would take would be the form that are help to saddam hussein and taking. that is, assistance in gaining access to a weapon of mass destruction. now, that is a fictional extension, but i don't think it is a long leap from what we in fact know. i am very distressed that the facts that underlay "keys 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 i think that we have treated saudi arabia as a

reliable friend, when, in fact, they were very suspicious of faux. and have taken steps that a vendor adverse to u.s. interest. and 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 virulent potential pathogens for a biological weapon of mass destruction, smallpox. and many of us would think that smallpox has been eradicated. many of us probably have a little scar on our arm, as i do. there may be younger people here

who didn't get vaccinated because the feeling that this was no longer necessary. the resolution that the united states put before the w.h.o. said that all of the countries membership had to either do one or touched one of two things to either declare they were smallpox free, that is, they had no smallpox that was being used for medical or scientific research, or any other purpose. and if they could not make that declaration, and the united states would've been one of those that could not make that declaration because we have smallpox in several of our laboratories. that we would commit that within five years we would destroy it. the principal opponent of that resolution, may of this year, was iran. it's not surprising that a country that we suspect wants to get a nuclear weapon, but 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 disagree with the position of the united states was saudi arabia. now, the question is why would the saudis have joined forces with the country that they consider 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? well, 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 extremely between fact and fiction. so, friends, that's what the

"keys to the kingdom" attempt 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. but second, also be an awakening to the american people as to some things that happened fact happened, and with what i hope is reasonable extension, what might happen to us as result of the lack of transparency that we have given to the actions of saudi arabia. now, let me provide the third and final reason why i wrote this novel. as governor and u.s. senator, i gave a number of commencement speeches. and in those speeches i typically would do what every young graduate 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.

that young person wants an old guy with gray hair to tell him how to live their life. well, i succumbed to the. and among others, advise that if you're going to maintain your vitality, you should consider periodically taking on the 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, i figured i should eat my own cookie. there was a brief attempt to learn to play the guitar. i found out afterwards. so my second thought was to write a novel for this, on this subject. and i started it in the spring of '06, and as i say, finished

five years later. i can tell you that it was distinctly different. i've written three nonfiction books were you writing about events that have already occurred. so you already have the narrative of the story based on the facts of what has happened. with a novel, you've got 300 plus blank pages and you've got to fill them in with interesting narrative, a plot, characters that people can identify with, and relate to their changes, so-called arcs. thank you, mark. ..

>> in the last five year, i will state that i'm pleased that the reception that "keys to the kingdom" has received. if anyone here sees a part they would like to consider in 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, you know, effort in, you know, both administrations or how many -- how far back does

the secrecy extent? and what is the rachial -- rational for it to continue? >> pat wrote 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 need to share with its people. i think my description of this as being nonnational security, but rather covering embarrassing political events is substantiated because my republican colleague made the same statement that i had, which is very little if any in those censured paged that represented

national security disclosures. >> what about the wikileaks things. there was a lot of information that came out from that. some say it was harmful, others say it was a good thing. what's your proposition on that? >> i believe that america is best served when americans know what the government is doing. so there maybe -- probably were -- some wikileaks leaks that were adverse to our interest. particularly when people who were engaged as our assets collecting our intelligence were named. the majority of the material that wikileaks disclosed was not of a national security threat

level. >> yes, sir? >> senator, i'm wondering to what degree that you know of did any representative of the saudi government try to prevent the book from being published or certain details. >> i don't know what the role was in the decisions to censure the joint inquiries report to the degree that was done. i have not had any sense that the saudis have done any relative to this novel. maybe they are willing to accept it as imagination too. yes, sir? >> two questions, one on saudi arabia, one on weapons of mass destruction in the region. many observers feel like after the egyptian i don't want to say revolution, but the ousting of

mubarak you have in effect have a counterrevolution led by saudi arabia and the gcc countries of the gulf cooperation counsel, moving into barr barr -- bahraid jordan and morocco on the other side of the arab world. do you see that's part? the saudis are trying to influence egypt. they didn't want mubarak to go. do you see that's part of what's happening? a task that cooperation between the parts of the united states government that might talk about democracy, but push come to shove, really don't want it, and obviously anti-democratic portions of the anti-democratic saudi regime. >> aye -- i'm certain the saudis have not been a cheerleader for the arab spring that has occurred. some of the things they have

done to try to push back, including the items that you discuss, 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-$20 million to build 500,000 units of low-income housing. the second thing they have done is violence. the use of very public, highly

amotive means of demonstrating their desire and will to maintain control. the headings has been an example of that. and in the book, i describe a beheading that occurred in the colonial and old area of riyadh. in 2010, there were 27 beheadings in saudi arabia. there were 27 in the first five months of 2011. an indicator of the willness to use public violence as a mean of remaining public dissent. >> on the weapons of mass destruction, i've found a remarkable lack of forthrightness. i don't know if you are a perpetrator of this as well, of

the israeli weapons of mass destruction. they have them. everybody knows it. they asked obama at the conference, do you know of any country, i don't want to speculate. the cheese is out the door after that. can you address the israeli nuclear weapons program and what effect that has on 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'm not going to comment beyond what is in the public press in that. israel is not a member of the nonproliferation treaty countries. and therefore is not under a legal obligation to publicly announce what it's nuclear

status might be. and i think for fairly obvious national security reasons they have chosen not to make that announcement. i'm concerned about the fact that there is the potential of happening in the middle east what has been happening for the last ten years at least in southern asia. in the last ten 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 the pakistan had less than 20 nuclear weapons. by 19 -- by 2008, it was estimated that they had as many as 60. as of today, the estimate is they have 94 or more. so that's the scale of the

increase in nuclear capability in that part of the world. i'm concerned that there is the potential in the middle east of a series of countries. it's the saudi arabia has already announced if iran goes nuclear. they are going to go nuclear. if those two go nuclear, i don't think it's long before turkey and maybe egypt would also. so in a region that already very volatile, you would make it that much more so by the edition of those additional nuclear states. yes, hello. >> senator graham, i imagine you went through quite a few brief lings on the attempt to catch osama bin laden. when he was captured, who was the most surprising part of that to you? >> i'm afraid your premise is

error. i was -- i won't say surprised, because i know that we've 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 1st. my reaction was one of a sense of relief, and that justice had been done. it was followed by the concern that americans might feel now we could lower our guard. that the symbol of terrorism in the world had been dispatched. i think that would be an enormous mistake. one, the leadership that is stepping into place in al qaeda

in some ways is more violent than bin laden. he was a thoughtful, disciplined engineer. the people who are now taking leadership roles are not so constrained. one of those second and illustrative, is that al qaeda has changed organizationally. at the time of the attack, al qaeda was a centralized organization with bin laden making most of the decisions. today al qaeda is like a franchise, 60 or more operations around the world. some of them are almost to the scale of big al qaeda. particularly al qaeda in the arabia peninsula based in yemen which is led by a man who an american citizen, 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 them here and he's now in yemen, his name is awlaki. very dangerous adversary for the u.s. interest. yes, ma'am? >> so if you did have an idea in the book, who would play the character? >> which? >> the title character. >> there isn't a title character. but there is a main male character who's name is tony ramos. i've already said he's the will smith of the state department. we have already cast that role. now some have -- some who have misguidedly assumed that the person in the book who is senator john billington is somewhere like me then ask why

if he was your alter ego did you kill him off in such a dangerous , violent way so early. the answer is that the person that will play billington is going to be robert redford. [laughter] >> and redford's daily fee is very high. so in order to keep the cost of the movie down, we couldn't afford to have him on screen very long. thus poor mr. billington had to be dispatched. yes? >> you said you do a lot of commencement speeches. what's your sense of the future here? do you think we're going to have a symmetrical warfare forever can terrorists threats or something to get a grip on? >> well, forever is a long time. i think we're going to have it

certainly for the foreseeable future. and one the challenges to the united states is really a change in mentality. in the novel, there are some under lying events that are occurring. one of those is a presidential election, and at a number of points in the novel, actions are taken because they are political in the most basic sense, political in the impact rather than what is in some national security interest. but another of those is the war in iraq. our hero, tony ramos, who i will modestly say i think is an interesting person. he's a cuban american who grew up in the town next to where i grew up, came to georgetown on the scholarship, was a very good

student, and athlete, won the ncaa singles in tennis, i don't know how many national championships george has won recently, but tony has racked up one. he's also an r.o.c.c. second lieutenant and because he spoke fluid pashtun and arabic, he was assigned to a special operation unit in afghanistan during the 1990s. the height of the taliban's control. he was working as we had units working with the northern alliance. a group -- a tribe of tribes that was resisting the taliban. so he -- from that background he was a sering opponent of the war in iraq. because he thought that our principal adversary was afghanistan and that we should

stay the course there until we took on more adversaryies. i might say in the book, i recount a discussion, i'm not now going to break not new news, but i don't name him in the book. but in february of 2002, about four months into the afghanistan war, i went to central command which is located at mcdill air force base in tampa to get a briefing of the state of the afghanistan war. it was a fairly standard military briefing, lots of powerpoints and optimism about the progress that we've 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'd like to talk to you privately. he went into his office and he said we are no longer fighting a war in afghanistan. i said we don't understand, we just had the briefing about how well our efforts are going. why do you say we're not fighting a war? 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 the not yet declared war in iraq. tony goes from that support for a muscular war against afghanistan to the end of the book 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 less. less than 100 al qaeda estimated still living in afghanistan. it was tony's feeling we needed to transition to a more nimble strategy, similar to what happens on may 1st, rather than boots on the ground. and recognize as tommy franks did back in february of 2002 that al qaeda is now metastasizing around the world and that we're going to have to fight it in places more than just afghanistan and we need to have a greater disbursal of our capabilities in order to do that. that is sort of a story within

the story. of "keys to the kingdom." >> that leads to the follow up question about what is your biggest concern with the current thrust of the american foreign policy. >> let me narrow is to the thrust of the foreign policy in central asia. it's as i said just. i think that we are fighting a world war ii type take and hold real estate war against an adversary that has left the real estate which we are fighting. and that it's going to take a geographic diversification of our efforts and our change in our military tactics to excellent intelligence, supported by superbly trained quick strike operations that are able to carry out the s of

attacks that's going to be necessary to cut the head off of the snake of al qaeda. >> do you think the united states is moving in that direction? >> we're lowering the number of troops in afghanistan this year and we'll do so again in '12, '13, and '14. i think it's more than just the question of troops, 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 carry out that mission? >> yes, sir? >> could in your opinion 9/11 have been avoided? was there a certain degree of negligence that you think? it's easy to speak after the fact. but what's your feeling on that. >> yes, in the -- in another

book that i would encouraged you to purchase "intelligence matters" which is a nonfiction book that covers some of the points, i identify a dozen instances in which had we acted differently and had this been less inso lairty among the intelligence agencies, a greater willingness to share, had there been a little bit more to use the 9/11 commission imagination has to what could happen that we could have interdicted the plot before it happened. it's quite amazing that we didn't. just suppose that let's say this group on this side of the aisle here today, if you were to be given exactly the same assignment that the 19 were given and you had the same level as linguistic and cultural

knowledge and affinity, the same complexity of a plot, and you were dropped in to let's say yemen, how do you think you would fair in carrying that out? pretty tough assignment. so i think there were multiple points where we had the opportunity to dislodge the terrorists and break up the plot. but for a variety of reasons, did not do it. yes? >> at what point do you think that spending on national security makes us less security and in particular 9/11 costs roughly half a million dollars for the terrorists to attack us. we respond with $1 trillion or more fighting that. so at what point do you think that makes us less secure? >> well, i think it -- to make

us less secure in a number of ways. one is economically. we've just been through the debate about raising the debt ceiling, largely or in significant 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 we were attacked at pearl harbor, it was justified for us to respond. i think iraq was a war of choice and was a diversion from that. but it added about $1 trillion 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 historic precedent. in the civil war, much more absorbing nationally engaged military effort. we ended the war almost debt free. because the american people were paying for the civil war as it was being fought. the same thing was largely true of world war ii. so this is -- we've gotten now in the habit that we can go to war without having the general public be much affected by it. we don't have a draft, people aren't on call to actually be a participate in the war, and we are not asking the civilian population to pay for the cost of the war. yes, sir. >> senator, what was the feeling 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 and initial vote of the patriot act? >> you asked two questions, one the patriot act, the move was one of -- i would say enthusiasm driven by fear. to enact the patriot act. i was very involved in those sections that involved the intelligence community because they were under the jurisdiction of the intelligence committee. i think it's now incumbent in

congress to see the enthusiasm driven by fear to see what parts the patriot act still are appropriate to maintain. your second question was -- >> actually, you answered it. i'll do a quick follow up. my understanding 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's 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 9/11 -- 2008-2009 commission on weapons of mass destruction. and we spent some time on that

issue. as you know there's now been a panel of the national science foundation which has raised questions about whether ivan is the man who -- at fort dietrich identified as the man being response for this. in fact, he was the man. while there's still significant questioning by a group as thoughtful as that, i think the invest vest should not be closed. because it's 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 representative of a larger effort? we have found in our final commission report that we thought it was more likely than

not the less policies in the united states and globally were changed dramatically and expotentially, that there will be a successful use of a weapons of mass destruction some place on earth before the end of 2013. and that it was more likely the weapon would be a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon. with those kind of stunning projections, i think we need to know everything that we can about the major biological attack that has, in fact, taken place in the united states. >> okay. do you want -- listen larry, for all of the necessary things that yao done to me. the scars that you've infi