fort william henry is the site of the last of the mow here cans. so for win who's read james fen hover cooper's famous novel or seen the movie with daniel day lewis, that's the fort we're currently digging in the summer through adirondack community college. however, this fall here on campus here at plymouth state university we're digging on campus. universities all across america are doing campus dig these days because it's hard for students to take the whole summer off to go far away to dig something. but during the school year campus digs looking for the traces of the early university, that's what we love to do. i have students outdoors right now digging, and t exciting for them. 100 feet from their classroom they're digging up a storm right

now. >> well, thank you so much for your time. >> it's good to be here. be. .. both of them spend roughly the last year as a residence for the center for new american security. join the new york times in 1997 as assistant washington editor and is currently a correspondent covering the pentagon and national security, including

efforts of transformation within the pentagon and the global campaign against terrorism. prior to joining the times of foreign editor of the chicago tribune, spending expensive time based in berlin and also as moscow bureau chief. eric schmidt is a senior writer for the new york times to has written about the military and national security affairs for the newspaper for more than 20 years. mr. schmidt has covered some of the bigger stores and was part of two teams of times reporters awarded the pulitzer prize, including one in 1909 for coverage of the transfer of sensitive military technology to china and another in 2009 for coverage of the afghanistan and pakistan. so since the september level of the tax both have made numerous trips to the middle east in betting latrobe's at various levels to cover american military operations there. please welcome thom shanker and eric schmitt. [applause] [applause]

>> well, thank you, christina, for the warm introduction. thank you for coming up here on a jury monday morning. my teammates under interfax wishes she were here to. she is open to be a part of your community for the next four years. i thought i would start out. we will do a tag team. the way we have been doing this. kendis describe all little bit about what we have been doing. how this book came to be written and why the campaign against terrorism in this administration , how this all came to be. it was about three years ago that tom and i first of looking at this question as we were researching articles on house counterterrorism strategy and operations unchanged. many of our sources said to understand where we are today

you really have to understand where the country was on september 11th to understand how far does, and how far it still has to go in terms of changes. there were two things and refocused on early in our reporting. one was on 9/11 just how little the united states government really knew about al qaeda and about terrorist networks. and to get an understanding of this, really understand a little bit about how little that was known, as we went around and talk to individuals and the bush white house who were there that date and were in the white house and washington and it had become clear when 9/11 that al qaeda was the organization that was responsible for carrying out the attacks, there were people inside the white house u.s. to who. it just was not on the radar. an organization that was not well understood even though it had already carried a one attack against the world trade center towers in new york in 1993 and

carried out an attack against the u.s.s. cole in human. terrorism was something happened overseas, not people in the united states aside from, of course, the tragedy in oklahoma city. the other major flaw as a reluctance to the reporting was the response to 9/11 that the government undertook. perhaps understandably that was a response, an instinctive one to use military might of the united states along with its intelligence community. basically use the approach to try and kill and capture its way to victory. the idea was, we kill enough of these fighters and kill and capture enough of its leaders that this organization will collapse and will be done with it. that was pretty much the thinking, even after the successful efforts in afghanistan with small numbers of stuff for forces troops move

al qaeda out of afghanistan and take down the taliban government. that was the philosophy and thinking at the time. it was only a couple of years into this campaign when there is an important and pavel moment. this comes in december of 2003. this is when secretary don rumsfeld and a very important memo to about half a dozen of his top civilian and military leaders. at this point we have to caution our editors. just because rumsfeld said it does not mean it is necessarily wrong. after -- [laughter] in fact, rumsfeld put his finger on it in this important memo. a very short memo, but he raises this important question, and the question is this. are we, with our operations no, december of 2003 and a rock, are we creating more militants then we are taking off the battlefield? and if we are we have to look at this whole campaign against a new enemy in different ways.

again, rumsfeld, for all its flaws, a division here when he had a problem and it was not being addressed. you expand the problem. that is essentially what he did. starting with his top military advisers he just expanded throughout the government which is one of the first times that a government is starting to of look out from that kill and caption mentality. and so will we do in the book is look at the evolution over ten years where the government goes from knowing very little about al qaeda and terrorist organizations in general to where we stand today. a pretty detailed knowledge of its structure, how it works and certainly since the death of osama bin laden and the information that was taken out of his safe house in pakistan. much is known. it is still imperfect. imperfect knowledge of the understanding of how terrorist networks operate and how they tend to bleed together in many of the areas that the u.s. is

combating courses today. we also look at how this campaign goes from being a fairly straightforward military campaign with the assistance of the u.s. intelligence agencies to what we call a much more whole of government approach. spies and soldiers are still very important obviously has this great in may that killed osama bin laden indicates. but by now here we are ten years later. a much more holy government meeting other agencies are much more involved. the justice department and the fbi have people deployed overseas working along condo foreign counterparts. the treasury department of all things is the lead agency in trying to choke off the financing of terrorists from have analysts sitting side by side in places like saudi arabia trying to work on cutting back and eliminating what the donors in that country who continue to give money to the taliban and al

qaeda. as we look forward in terms of how this approach is going to listen to those two questions. how is the threat changing? al is the response the government makes? how does this all happened? will turned over to thom. >> of like to echo eric's very sincere thanks. i would like to say that everything important and know in life i learned from my wife, johnny cash, and the united states army. and the army in particular is important. eric and i were testing our ice we looked at so organizing principles together all of this information in a way that would be digestible. if you know the way the military likes of the world, they divide things into tactical and

operational and the strategic. so we do just that in our book. we have tactical case said these young men and women learning, evolving, doing missions on the ground. very cool and exclusive stories that have never been reported before, and i was chair one of those with you later. the operational level we analyze how the bureaucracies and the institutions of our government involved and how they came to a greater understanding that terrorists up right in networks. corporate structures, a few well. and if you understand the business model of how terrorists operate, what individual nodes are essential to the entire enterprise, then the opportunities to target and take out those individuals, financiers, bomb makers, gun runners, etc. you don't have to capture and kill everybody. there is no way today kill your way to victory in the war against global violent extremism

and what the government learned is that it takes and now work to defeat in network. and then, of course, at the high level, at the natural level we describe the search for a grand strategy of counter-terrorism, something that would echo containment and deterrence that existed during the cold war and kept a tense and nuclear peace with the soviet union during all of those dark days. so i would like to focus on first that strategic search for a grand strategy of counter-terrorism, and it is really an untold story of how very unlikely groups of big thinkers inside the pentagon, across the intelligence community and in some of the military command said thinking outside the box. the two most important were an old cold warrior at the pentagon and his gang jeddah apprentice to is sort of a hung with hansen cia and turn. but he was looking for screen rights, and i will be available

after words. the problems are obvious, though, when you try and apply containment and deterrence to a terror network. obviously terrorists don't hold territory let the soviet union did. there is no way to identify very valuable targets to hold at risk like the kremlin, like factories, like the soviet union's own missile silos, like the doctors of tough talks on the black sea. i mean, valuable things that you can hold the risk. at the same time, of course, terrorists do not leave their return address like an incoming missile from the soviet union does. so those are the problems. what these things do is identify a different kind of territory that these violent extremists holed year. of virtual territory is required for them to operate effectively. and if you can put those things a risk, if you make the

terrorists worry about the safety of those virtual safe havens then you can affect their thinking, change their behavior, and that, of course is the essence of classic deterrence. so what are these things? chances for success, personal glory and reputation. so if you throw up barriers and make it harder, then a lot of terrorists would rather not try than try and fail and be disgraced in the eyes of their followers. terrorists believe. they give money and volunteers from the community. sully the government learned it should point out that 85 percent of those killed in terrorist attacks since 9/11 had been innocent moslems. terrorists also require network cohesion, trust, confidence. the government and intelligence community try to understand how to get inside the terrorist communications systems and how they think and therefore soul of this trust and dissent and take

apart the cohesion from the inside. we have knowledge it is not perfect. it certainly won't work on someone like a osama bin laden, those of the highest level, and it will work on those young committed people after they have strapped on a suicide best. it is simply too late. there are a lot of people in the middle or required for a terrorist system to operate who don't want to make the ultimate sacrifice. you can threaten them and put them at risk to achieve a deterrent effect. this concept also borrows from and all the thinking on deterrence which goes back to traditional criminal-justice. you put cops on the street, bars on the window, build prisons with unbreakable walls all to influence the decisions of those who are intending criminal action and hope to deter that. well, as exciting and as -- with

all the potential there are a lot of people who resisted. i guess the number one resistor in chief was president george bush. he wanted to be a war on terror president, not a deterring terror president. so when rumsfeld took these ideas down to his ranch in crawford, texas, in 2005, bush said no. it doesn't work. as fate would have it, inside that closed firmer at the ranch there was a four-star general sitting there who at the time was commander of america's strategic command which owns the classic con jewels of america's nuclear arsenal, the bombers, the muscles, the nuclear submarines. car wreck on his own, a brilliant analysts had been working through some of these same issues. president bush turned to general car wreck and said, hostile what do you think about this nonsense that my defense secretary is talking. and he said, with all due

respect, mr. president, we're doing the same work, and they're is a lot to be at. he was in the room that they not talk about this, but to talk about missile defense against north korea and iran. what car right said to the president, he said that if you think 12 or 20 or 30 of our missile interceptors which we know will be unable to knock down every in a new vessel, but if you believe that small system can inject uncertainty into the mind of an adversary and north korea or wrong, if you think unlimited in perfect system might change the thinking of north korea or ron, if you except that deterrent, well, mr. president, how can you not apply the same rules and thinking to countering violent extremism. >> so this deterrence idea

sounds good, but how was it carried out in the field, in practice? this was what some of the critics in the pentagon were saying. how do you make this work. well, let me give you a few examples. again, a lot of these things are happening in the field. many of these things, the innovations are coming from the young military officials, offices, young analysts, people who are trying to solve problems on the ground, not being directed from washington were higher headquarters. the state this example of thinking about deterrence and networks. as thom mentioned, the idea of networks is really important because the idea that you can have on one end of the spectrum suicide bombers, probably most of them are not the trouble. they have the -- they think they're going to get their just reward. probably not much going after them. but osama bin laden himself, probably not going to get to him, although the government tried to make secret efforts after the 9/11 attacks to get to

enter his family with secret messages. but the people in the middle that thom talked about, these enablers, the supporters, people like, the financiers, people who are relied upon. they're also people not driven by the ideology. there it for the money largely. if you can target them and say we're going to take you out of this business, you will take that important piece of the chain out of place, and make it much more difficult for bombers to carry out there task. so how does this actually happened in the field? well, one and since we talk about is the essence of the suicide bomber now works that evolve. young suicide bombers are recruited throughout the east, north africa, the come into syria, and they're is a pipeline initially the attempts to take

off the suicide bombers. kill off as many as you can. but they found that there was almost an under -- you know, a virtual -- it limit the supply of these and men who were committed to the hon and blowing themselves up. some of the intelligence analysts getting together so saying if we take out a very important piece of this network we will do better. the key here is each one of the suicide bombers had to have his mission blessed by cleric who is going to bless the attack on fort, therefore ensuring the bomber knows that he will go to heaven and get all the benefits. what happens is if you take that out as head of killing and capturing the bombers and sells you take out that a key person who is blessing the attacks.

so what they did was started killing and capturing some of them. guess what, it is a lot harder to replace it trained men and is a suicide bomber and without the man to bless the attack the bombers will go forward. so this effort for several weeks and months until they can reorganize, what, again, it is an example of where the military working with analysts start pulling a very important piece out of the network to disrupt or dissuade the attacks from taking place. another example is going after the finance year, and we talk about how in the case of afghanistan the american military working with analysts on the ground go after this ancient money trading system. these are family-run businesses. with the americans did was they shut down some of these, about half a dozen of these businesses. they turn to their colleagues.

you so what we just did, we shut down your neighbors and colleagues. these are good businesses have. they provide you nice standard of living in a nice house. there's a nice garden. nuys wherewithal for your children. we will make this go away. we will should you don't like we should down your neighbors if you continue to do business with the taliban. two legitimate business, but keeping business with the taliban and you will end up like her neighbors, out of luck. within a matter of weeks yamada business transactions the taliban were able to connect to dropped dramatically in they have to move elsewhere. it forced them. now of shots were fired. finally we talk about an hour book and a great amount of detail is how the united states has been able to penetrate the ultimate safe haven that terrorists have, and that is the internet. the cyberworld. this is where the terrorists to much of their recruiting, raise

money. but even through the use of virtual online work they can actually plot and carry out attacks using the same vernacular that you're a teenager might use in using the step of war games. the other thing that americans are doing now -- terrorists of doing now is infiltrating chevron's, oftentimes no more than posing questions. why is it that this bombing of a wedding party in jordan that killed scores of muslim men, women, and children, civilians, how those events are gold, the goal of osama bin laden. it raises questions and persuades and militants.

the point where most of these messages on there, i think our data is lost. a delta and a surly want to go along with the program and more. finally this cyber defense of the nez states have been able to come up with that duplicates of the watermarks that al qaeda uses, sending out contradictory messages in terms of confusing and perhaps to sweating those from starting is a tax altogether. so even as the tactical successes on the ground are growing, start to understand the intelligence better and looking at how to combat enemies, they also have this understanding that we talked about earlier of how to understand your enemy, get inside their head, dissuade and disrupt. this is really the long-term solution to the campaign.

of would like to share with you one of the case studies from our book. it is an example of how after the early stumbling after 9/11, after a number of years the interagency didn't learn to work together in the case of what life really can look like. a starts on another september 11th in 2007, and it was a mission in a western desert of iraq. a dusty village that american intelligence had found was the most significant smuggling route it for foreign buyers and others coming in from outside. it is a modern historical footnote, but iraqi insurgents really were not suicide bombers. they did not want to die for their cause. they wanted to live another day. most of the suicide bombers were florence who came to attack the

americans. as you all recall the suicide bombings were 40, 50, 60 day exacting a terrible toll, not only on american allies, but the iraqi people. so the u.s. government put a number of intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance platforms. then sucked up so phones, real-time video, and establish what they call a pattern of life they could predict when each shipment of future suicide bombers would be coming in. so a commando team went in and they went in hard. they killed the emir who managed the smuggling and several of his comrades. but what they did not expect which was a real bonus, they scooped up a number of computers and hard drives and documents. what they learned according to

our sources was that al qaeda is as a well as the nazis when it comes to record-keeping. another interesting observation was cameras. al qaeda video everything. so what they were able, this data became known as the al qaeda rolodex. add the documents, hometowns of all of the young men who had come to. ♪ to make g. hunt. more importantly it showed which schoolteachers or religious leaders had inspired them to make behind. there were able to determine in graphics spreadsheet form where there were from and what the centers of gravity that were providing some of these was of bombers. coming from libya and saudi arabia. very interesting. one an ally, all the documents

were translated, compiled, and analyzed. the military wonder what we could do. this is a very powerful narrative. well, in the military whatever your it captures intelligence was the classification of the intelligence. an officer who was number of well-known at the time, stanley crystal. he was the commander of this nation, and he decided this is simply too valuable to keep inspired my joint special forces command. we need to push this out. he declassified more than 800 files. he gave it to special operations command, kuwait, west point to do academic research. then the most revolutionary idea , a give it to the state department or the new ambassador for counter-terrorism was an old battle weary of his, retired

three-star general who have become the state department's top officer for counterterrorism so he went across the middle east to countries that were friends of the u.s., countries that were partners of the u.s., and even countries whom we have a very rocky relations with cal and he would walk-in with his generals credentials and ambassador xu and layout for an interior ministry : justice officials, intelligence officers all of this data. @booktv look, this is not american propaganda. these are your passports, your identity papers, york travel documents that show they're coming from your country. even if you don't care about the fate of our soldiers or the rockies and number of these are going to come back your countries very highly trained. do you want that? you have to help us stop the flow of these young men out of your country.

his efforts were so effective that by the end of 2007 and 2008 general patraeus was the overall commander in iraq, but the seoul government after beginning with intelligence, the commando raid, the capture of the documents, the exploitation of intelligence, and then the diplomatic effort to spread it across the middle east, that entire hole of government ever did more to halt suicide bombing then any military mission could have. >> so, to conclude, where does all this leave us today? here we are a couple weeks after the tenth anniversary of 9/11. a lot of commemoration ceremonies. where is the country today? complete the ark of our book. to be sure, the al qaeda, the

death of osama bin laden has taken considerable blows. several other key leaders have been taken off the battlefield. drawn strikes, capture, and so that important al qaeda structure in the tribal areas along the afghan border is diminished. its capability to organize and carry out attacks against the united states is diminished. not completely eliminated, but diminished. at the same time there has been a growth of affiliate's. corporate offshoots, franchisees and places like north africa, east africa and somalia. most troublesome, in yemen. after all, the al qaeda offshoot of orchestrated the so-called underpants' mark, the young nigerian man who tried to blow himself up in a plane over detroit in a christmas of 2009. or the same organization the ten months later backed explosives and printer cartridges, put them

on the cargo plane en bound for chicago. so you have a diminished threat from the that carried out the attack against 9/11 which suggests the possibility of another large-scale mass casualty attack like what we was that -- witnessed is probably less than what we have today. but the likelihood of another attack on a smaller scale is probably greater coming not only from these affiliate's that continue to steam and come up with plots, but also from the americans here in the united states who are radicalize in a couple of ways, either by traveling to the area to be trained by instructors and the use obamacare techniques. the manhattan pushcart vendor and later denver airport driver.

a plot to carry backpack bombs on to the subway system in new york and blow them up during rush hour. luckily this ploy was to order it, but it also involved americans who have been radicalized in their homes listening to the online videos of an american born cleric who preached in mosques in fairfax virginia and san diego. he is now hiding in yemen hunt. he is one of the chiba operational plan is right now, knowing and understanding the ways of the west and the ways of some of the the united states and china to come up with new attacks. where does this leave us in terms of their response? clearly the government is marshalling much more of its response. cost hundreds of millions and billions of dollars. we're going now for an exercise in washington of reconciling the cost as the economy -- the

trouble of the economy sinks in in trying to measure and assigned some risk. this country now takes more rest of the we are more mature and think more maturely about the threat we face, understanding that if you look at the 9/11 attacks. that day there were four hijacked. true driven into the world trade center towers, one into the pentagon. what was the threat that people were worried about? it was a concern that a couple of the ten possible u.s. citizens have gone back into the country and were going to carry out a truck bomb. so the scale is quite different. what we argue in our book her, however, is that this country's starting with the president on its way down to the congress has not prepared the american public for what we believe will be another attack. we don't know what format will be. the creativity of these lawmakers up there now, it could come in the form of another airplane strike.

could come in the radicalization of an individual as we saw at fort hood, texas, where an army major picked up an automatic rifle and shot his colleagues. but what this country has not done, the country's political leaders have not started talking about how the next attack will come and have the country needs to be more resilient. and we don't mean to say resilience in the form of rebuilding. all this is all the images of crown zero have to be heartened by what we saw. we are checking about a psychological, the center and the resilience of the ritz and israelis have. unfortunately they have wondered throughout many years of hard experience. learning that after an attack to physically clean up the attack degrees those who have died and move on. you don't overreact and give the

terrorists exactly what they want hot by overreaction and continue their momentum. so as we look forward to the coming years, this government tries to get its arms around this attack. again, are we safer? probably from the same kind of mass casualty attack that we witnessed on 9/11 but more vulnerable to the smaller scale attack. the question is, will this country be resilient enough to do with it in a mature way, address the problem, and not overreact? that is the question before us today. thom and i think you for coming and look for to your questions. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> in a few moments so head to the back of the room and in view of the police lineup to ask questions. above like to begin with the point the you touched upon very briefly, eric. and it is something that i

imagine, is a surprise to most americans. these early u.s. efforts to communicate directly with al qaeda and osama bin laden. i was hoping you could give us details on this, putting it into context, and to what extent you reason to believe that perhaps these attempts continue today. >> so this right after the al qaeda attacks there were a number of reactions. we talked about the killing capture reaction. i mean, some of the reactions were frankly somewhat hairbrained. one of the things that we read about in the book is shot one time the small, medium pentagon officials, somebody suggested that there was going to be signs of another attack coming from al qaeda. the united states is threatened to bomb baghdad. you can imagine that show the lack of cultural sensitivity to say the very least about the kind of thinking. thankfully that idea never left the room to be put the americans, a small number of intelligence officials and others in the government did was try to open up a conversation

with osama bin laden himself, ostensibly to try to set down some lines. obviously we have been attacked by al qaeda. we agree to draw some lines on which we will take actions that may be you need got to concede. it went to family members and business associates in the hopes that at -- hopes of drawing out adversaries, soviet leaders throughout the years. but as these efforts went on for a number of years, and very small group. very hush hush, the response from osama bin laden was silence, and as far as we know today there has been no response . >> thank you for coming. it is a fascinating story, and it sounds to me as if what you are describing represents the victory of those who said we'd better concentrate on

counter-terrorism rather than counterinsurgency. finally been workout. i think the point that you were making about developing american resiliency, like the statement. he was leaving in ctc. people had to be ready for this, but my question goes to the so-called arab spring countries. you mentioned it in the context of yemen. and thinking of broadening that to libya. we don't know of that will work out. egypt, the same thing. there are people do are working on this matrix and these people who are fueling terrorist activity, making money out of it, they're beginning to look at the turbulence in the arabs from countries. >> that is an incredibly

important question. in the early days of the arabs during and too easy and egypt al qaeda was caught flatfooted. in fact, they had already said it would take violent acts from the despotic regimes. so when, in fact, those governments fell through the efforts of bottom of people power revolution democratic ideals, the al qaeda narrative seems to be dead. what we have learned sense, of course, is that is just what the first act, or is going to be at three act play if not more. as the hopes and aspirations of the arabs bring begin to enter part of a gram autumn, and that gap there is certainly an opportunity for extremists and to come back and and try to gain in terms.

>> thank you both for coming in laying out some much in such a short time. i might conclude from the introduction that you feel that it was the wrong move to start war against the taliban and afghanistan just after 9/11. is that what you intend? >> not at all. there's going to be a natural reaction to go after the perpetrators. i don't think there's any question about that, and i think we would argue that was done fairly smartly with a small footprints. the leaders were conscience of the soviet experience in afghanistan. small numbers of cfa and special forces to work with the north alliance to drive out using air power, american air power to drive out al qaeda and to collapse the taliban government. from there, of course, you move into the decision, the bush administration made to go to war , which was not a center or

hub for terrorists at the time but became one as we talk, some of the examples. so i think now we have come full circle, of course. as time went on and afghanistan was an effective campaign, both the tell a man and al qaeda or thom shanker allies largely across the border in pakistan relieve reconstitute, retrained, and take more territory leaving the government and the united states in a position where we have the american troops on the ground. they're both fighting tell ben and other militant groups, many of whom have save havens in pakistan, which is a major problem. bofa the effort on the ground there as well as for american foreign policy. >> i think you very much for your excellent talks. could you comment on the role of the broadcast medium in helping us develop this resilience that i agree with you that we need. i have been thinking about this for some time.

i don't think the broadcast media with a mediator general have really lifted a finger along these lines. >> well, i am sort of an old school journalist. vienna for arms talks. late flowers at the saatchi of gutenberg. so i am old school. i don't believe that the broadcast media or any media have a role to further government policy. we are to inform and educate and investigate so when all of you, the taxpayers and voters tell your government how you want to act. the theme of resiliency is to be communicated to the american people. it has to be done by the senior. it really has to come from the presidential level. just before 9/11 eric had a scoop in the terms because we were made privy to the white house talking points ahead of

the tenth anniversary. for the first time resilience was front and center. the way that is a challenge is in the polarized political environment that we have today, or never a leader talks about civilians, we are going to get its act again. that, of course, in this political environment, every party, which are party to accuse the president of being weak. so i think that there is one thing but, you know, the whole media has to discuss. whole leaders accountable for why there is not a more unified view of national policy from the water's edge downward as the were for many years during the cold war. domestic dispute on foreign-policy parties come together. i don't think it is a broadcaster. at think it is up to the political leaders. >> thank you very much, both of you, for joining us this morning. i have a few questions if you

don't mind. one, have you looked into what the root causes for people to strap on a bombshell to, suicide bombers? you know, al qaeda would not exist before we attacked in two dozen three. any comment on that? and now that osama bin laden is gone, should we not get out of afghanistan? thank you. >> i'll take a shot at the first couple of those. in terms of the root causes, of course, it is very difficult as you look at the al qaeda leaders. many came from very wealthy families. his father is one of the most wealthy construction buildings

in the middle east. but certainly as you look across the arab spring movement, for instance, there is -- there are some common elements. the alienation of in this case many young people, the economic opportunities, educational opportunities, a party of hope that any chance of advancing themselves or their family. and i think that is -- obviously these are local grievances that al qaeda has preyed upon, and other militant groups as well in trying to make this not just a local grievance, whether it is in your village or a province or your county, but naked and nationwide and in international crusade. so i think this was the troubled that the united states has had in trying to counter this message. a very effective message that al qaeda continues to espouse, and that is the west and the united states is in war with his lawn. how you fight that when there are tens of thousands of american troops remaining in iraq in afghanistan and as we

saw last week in the debate for the united nations general assembly, the issue of palestinian state in which provides much of the alienation to continue. it was not a terrorist threat and side of iraq into doesn't two or three, once the united states goes and it becomes a magnet as we talked about suicide bombers trying to come and. it becomes the center for g. hunt in an area, trying to turn that around no has been a great task as we have talked about in our book. largely defeated, but today it is starting to make a comeback. maybe thom would like to take on the third one. >> to answer your third question, should we get out of afghanistan, it is worth reviewing the answer on the second. the bush administration made the

case because of what intelligence said was weapons of mass destruction and indicated potential links to terrorists. an attack on the u.s. well, intelligence has been debunked. the one lesson that is undeniable is that no american president is ever going to send a hundred injured to thousand troops to invade a country on the counter-terrorism missions. this is not going to happen. how is that relevant for afghanistan? the u.s. troop withdrawal is set for the end of 2014. that being said, there is of vital and strategic interest in preventing a question from becoming a safe haven for al qaeda or allowing any police and the world to be a safe haven where terrorists kenwood to attack the united states. what this country is evolving to the narrative spine of our entire but is this new darwinism. terrorists are evolving and getting smarter. the u.s. is trying to evolve and

get smarter as well, so troops are slated to come out of afghanistan by 2014, but no doubt a smaller counter-terrorism presence is likely to remain there in also in other parts of the world. >> the beginning to incorporate questions from different social media outlets. this is a question that comes from washington d.c. how do you think real-time reporting help or hurt u.s. efforts to combat terrorism. >> certainly it gives you a bird's-eye view as to what is going on, but it can cut two ways. let's look at them by a tax. by having those attacks there live on international television industriously give the general public as well as counter-terrorism officials are clearly what is going on in

gives and situational awareness. their handlers back in pakistan could be directed to a certain other kind of attacks just by watching what is working on various floors of some of those hotels and what is going on around the town. this has raised questions and their aftermath of my mind whether the media and television broadcasting should either boycott or blackout or somehow restrict coverage of this. this was actually raised by people the nypd he sent a team over to study that, study what would happen. could this happen in new york or any other major american city the right and could we actually request the broadcast media to restrict some of this coverage to impair the ability of terrorists and use that to the tactical advantage. it is a discussion that has obviously been going on behind

closed doors. the need to know. it raises a very interesting point of how you in this case would manage from a law enforcement standpoint of very fast moving, fluid terrorist type attack, small scale attack opening -- happening in multiplication simultaneously how you would defeat that. thinking about the recent number of soldiers that have been injured in pakistan aren't telling them with their ties to al qaeda, do you think is a good idea for the united states to remove the financially we have been giving to pakistan? >> probably the most vexing pour into the foreign-policy issue facing our country today cal and, yes, that is one line, but

i cannot give you a direct answer. we have vital interests there. it's in their power sitting on the crossroads of violent extremism. will we learn in years past when the u.s. cut off ties completely with pakistan is we allow the entire generation with military officers not to have their virginity to come to the net estates and steady and interact and create the kind of ties that bind the military's to get. is there a problem with the relationship? absolutely. but the first step we should take cutting off all aid, not sure what the effect of that would be. to understand the point of view, you really have to put yourself where they said. whether you agree or not, they looked at one direction and see in the as their existential threat. the other end see a very unstable country.

they know the u.s. is boeing to leave yet again. they have seen this movie will for. and so they are supporting in certain extremist groups in afghanistan because that is how they want to maintain influence there. the problem is, one of our intelligence sources used to say to us, pakistan is keeping these poisonous snakes to bite the neighbors' kids, but they will buy their own kids as well. it is up to them internally to come to the realization that is not the best policy. >> is strikes me that much of what you steady and the book, tough to get in there. can you tell me something about your sources?

>> our book is largely drawn from first accounts, antabuse we had with more than 200 individuals throughout the government. again, trying to get as full and approach. we did receive pretty good cooperation in large regard because thom and i have been working this story as lead reporters for the times for 5920 years, and so we're going back to sources who have been working with us basically saying we want to take a step back and try to create the last ten years and put it in perspective. can you help us to that and through their recollections and providing us with certain documents and in giving us the real perspective sometimes after they have left government didn't neville's than to be a little more candid than there were 04.

in terms of the question of classification, typically areas such as the cyber stuff. we were very careful. we discuss these sources. nothing publicist crosses in spirit of this information, very careful to go back to our sources and say here's what we are planning to publish. this is what we do with daily newspaper stories. these agencies may want to try a similar technique or use a similar tactic again without the enemy knowing all the details to go through it. this is our approach. it mirrors the approach we do on a day-to-day basis working with new york times reporters.

>> the nsa, general alexander is dual hat as director of the nsa as one of the commander of u.s. ever command to give us his very first interview ever. as you know, so highly classified that we could not even enter the complex. we met at the national apology museum, which is outside the gate. i call up and did not even get off the front porch. >> thank-you. there have been several television interviews including fox affiliated california. spokespersons for an organization called the architects and engineers for 9/11 truth. this is a group of about 1600 licensed architects and engineers in the united states you are claiming that the evidence, scientific evidence that they have analyzed says that the two towers and building seven were brought down by controlled demolition.

now, whether we believe this and not, this is what these licensed architects are putting their careers on the line for to say, and they want a new investigation. you think that thom shanker could have had the capability 9/11 to plan explosives in the buildings with six weeks to do. would they have had the kindle the? >> no, there would not have. i know this is come up. the lectured on the west coast. this is unprecedented to have these kind of attacks. neither one of those are technical experts and others that have happened i think a lot

was not nohow, this amount of jet fuel at high temperatures, basically forming a molten core. i think we would refer you end others to the investigations had taken place. and they have been exhausted and looking at how this happened. two buildings side-by-side kid actually implode like this, not keel over or tip over. obviously it was a great interest to the engineering community involved insurers as well and looking at how this possibly could have happened not just once but twice. >> we have just spent an hour listening to why this happened and how it happened and what this country and others are trying to do from keeping it from happening a n. i can go all the way back to cain and abel. l. -- how can you get into the

culture that creates people that want to go out and give their life to bomb? is one thing to go out when your country has been attacked as we have in defending reward to and those kinds of things. but there is an answer to this question, how do we get along with people so they don't want to bomb us and the latest thing now is why did they hate us so much? >> well, to unpack your question, how do we get into their culture, i think that is impossible. the sorts of changes you were talking about have to happen internally within the muslim world. moslems themselves must decide that violent extremists and carried out in the name of their great religion is something that they don't want to tolerate. said the united states and other countries in the west help that part of the world to eradicate was earlier described so well as the party of hope.

that is our job. whenever you talk about us getting into their culture, how do we win their hearts and minds , i think muslims find that insulting because to talk about winning their hearts and minds says to them you have to let us and think like us, and we would not appreciate that coming from another culture. one of our interviews is with a three-star general. multiple the plummets in a rock. after he left for the third time he said he had gone far beyond the military concept of hearts and minds that this country should do is under respect and the trust of these countries. we can only do that by the way we behave. >> another question from twitter . he asked if there will be a backlash from the u.s. launching drones in the horn of africa, specifically ethiopia? ..