look, every six months, wow, it's like a fish going around the goldfish bowl. look, a castle, look, a castle, look, a castle. [laughter] when you do not have to explain yourself to the public because it's a secret, when you do not have to win the debate in congress because the debate doesn't happen in congress, when you do not have to justify the funding because nobody held -- knows how much it's costing your argument can be a incredibly vague. you can pick up a transnational terrorist organization. you could pick a country that has no connection to terrorism and say that it does. you don't have to have good debate and you don't have to have a good argument. [applause] >> last question.

>> hi rachel. i think he is to be a counselor of mine. [inaudible] [laughter] c. i'm so nervous. >> were you a customer? did you used to go to the first -- at lunchtime? >> yes. >> thank you very much. [applause] 's be exposed as a daytime drinker in my last question. [applause] >> thank you, thank thank you sh rachel maddow. thank you. [applause]

former l.a. times tears and reporter josh meyer talks about the decade-long search for khalid sheikh mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. next on booktv. subfive director of the national security studies program at the new america foundation acts as moderator. this is about one hour and five minutes. >> josh is going to talk about some of the highlights from his book which is an incredibly good read, and it's called "the hunt for ksm" for people watching on c-span. over to you, josh. >> thanks peter. peter and i actually go way back. we met before 9/11 but we are to two reporters writing about it and i remember back then it was a whole different landscape. it was a lot easier to talk to

some people about this. there were people that were very concerned about it. they beat was harder to talk to some other people but i remember before 9/11 for instance i was only allowed to use one abu per story because my editor thought it would be too confusing. it was actually hard to get some of the stories on the front page. i remember doing one in the summer of 2001 about how al qaeda had changed its focus and appear to be intent on attacking inside the united states instead of targets overseas. my editors, who hopefully won't be listening to this, didn't want to put it on the front page so i had to call the managing editor and we finally got it on the front page and 9/11 happened 10 or 11 weeks later. so ever since then, i've been following al qaeda and terrorism as much as peter has. and starting in 2002, i got a tip, we mentioned this in the prologue of the book, that i was in a bar in new york city, talking to a bunch of agents who were from the fbi joint

terrorism task force there. incomes the investigators from the actual 9/11 plot. after talking for hours about terrorism because they couldn't talk about the investigation, i said give me a tip, give me something to go juan, a league, a name. one of them looked around and said in a stage whisper, khalid sheikh mohammed. i wrote it on a cocktail napkin and started making calls the next day. the reason i mention it is because writing about al qaeda and osama bin laden, and in peter's book i can't wait to read, allah was sorry, he stood out as someone that was much different than the others and seemed more politically oriented. he does seem to have a sense of humor. it seemed like he liked to have a good time and he was much more fascinating and well bin laden and zawahiri and many other state in their compound in afghanistan, ksm was the one who really was traveling around the world getting things done, doing

things, and it just really fascinated me because even i think it was almost exactly 18 months after 9/11, he was finally brought to ground. so you know, i just started thinking in 2002 you know, how did he get away with it for so long and what was he doing all that time? even more importantly, who if anybody was chasing him and what were they doing trying to catch him before 9/11? that was the genesis of the book and my cowriter at the "l.a. times," terry mcdermott, did a very long profile of ksm back in 2002. we were fortunate enough back then just before he was caught obviously to speak to people who were involved to talk to isi front-line officials and people in the top levels of the isi, the pakistani intelligence service, to try to get a sense of what was happening. i have been following the case on and off ever since so to talk about the book, you know some of

the things we touch on in the book are how officials that the fbi and department of justice in the years before 9/11 actually undermined the protracted ksm partly because it was too expensive. there was a group of dedicated officers and agents on the joint terrorism task force in new york who literally chased ksm around the world starting in 1993 after they identified him as one of the financiers of the first world trade center attacks. that quickly led to khalid sheikh mohammed who was the uncle of bob deuel all karim also known as you see round stuff and they followed him to the philippines to malaysia, to krotser where they almost caught ksm in 1996. they kept chasing him and somehow or other in the late '90s he disappeared and went into afghanistan. one of the big failures to connect the dots in the 9/11 attacks which i think we try to tried to articulate in the book,

is how did they not reach the connection that ksm was part of al qaeda and ali soufan i know was here. he was one of the people that said we have no idea that khalid sheikh mohammed was part of al qaeda until march or april of 2002 when they caught abu sebaga in pakistan and almost by chance, literally by chance identified him as the guy they were looking for. so we tried to go back and tell this as a story. i, like peter, and others in the audience have read so many books on terrorism, having covered it that the one thing we didn't want to do was foist on the public another tome of, i don't want to discredit or criticize those, they are very important books that we wanted to tell a story about the hunt for ksm, the people chasing him. it was an unintended consequence but it was through the investigation of that we really

were able to i think tell also the story of how 9/11 came to be and how people missed it and how they missed the attack. one of the ways they did that was the fbi people that were chasing ksm in the late '90s really got sideways with their bosses because they were focusing on what was seen to be a cold case, an isolated case connected to some terrorist plots in malaysia, excuse me, and in manila in the philippines to blow up 12 airliners in midair as they were flying across the atlantic to the united states, to kill the pope and to kill president clinton but you know in 1998 certainly even the new york field office was focused on osama bin laden and al qaeda so much that ksm sort of fell by the wayside. we also tried to articulate in the book how the cia had a bin laden station but they were not focused on ksm because he wasn't

considered to be al qaeda, and the rendition unit that was chasing ksm or was in charge of his portfolio didn't have the analytical capabilities that the bin laden station did. so there is you know, there are many reasons why ksm was never caught in one of them was just that he himself is an extremely clever, charismatic guy who had as many as 60 aliases and could travel with the network of support that he had dealt. i think one of the most important things we talk about in the book is that ksm was instrumental and a lot of other things besides 9/11. he helped spearhead an underground railroad of sorts of al qaeda people from afghanistan back into pakistan right after 9/11. it was his connections with the jihadi underworld and pakistan that really helped al qaeda regroup in pakistan because as most of you in this audience know, you know, bin laden and many of his core inner circle

are saudis and egyptians and it's very hard for them to operate in a place like pakistan where people speak urdu. they are at the mercy of their host the same as it was in afghanistan. ksm wasn't really a link between them and their pakistani underworld like a lashkar-e-taiba. that was something that was able to survive after 9/11 and in fact it was after ksm was captured they want to went to the tribal areas because in part because the cities like karachi were sort of hostile to them at that point. so there is a lot of other -- i actually quote something that is eight pages but you don't want to hear all of this. the best information comes out during questions but i think a lot of the information in the book is character driven. there was a guy, frank pellegrino who was an fbi agent. i think he thought when i was reading a book about this, the people i was focusing on in the fbi and to a lesser degree the cia thought i was going to

really drop the hammer on him and really have this be a book that criticized him sharply for what they did. and reporting it, what we found was the small erpa people chasing these guys from 93 on really in some ways were true american heroes in the sense that they were trying to do everything they could to catch them. they ran into obstacles from within the fbi. they went into a obstacle from the cia and certainly from the governments of pakistan and qatar who weren't very hospitable or helpful in their request. so there were a lot of reasons why they did not catch them and certainly mistakes are made. leads were not follow. i know these agents in particular had many sleepless nights because they wondered which questions they should have asked that they didn't or who they should have talked to. so anyway i hope you read the book. there's a lot of information that takes too long to explain now but the creative techniques they used. they followed one guy around literally for years in the mid-90s and were able to get a

hotel room above and one below his tour in an apartment complex and listen to him for years just to see what he was saying. i asked asked them, why were you following him and not ksm? they said that was because we didn't know were ksm us. jamal was believed to be osama bin laden's brother so how do you know was an al qaeda operation? they had a very good answer for that, which would take too long to explain but it's in the book. part of it is that back then there were a lot of different operations that sort of different characters and bin laden was only one of them. i think if there is one real take away from the book it would be that it's not a monolithic organization like al qaeda that is really dangerous although certainly bin laden was a force of nature and brought together all the groups that became al qaeda and was responsible for a lot of plots but in many ways it's a guy like khalid sheikh

the hamid they came out of nowhere and he was the one who brought the plot to osama bin laden. bin laden initially didn't think it was a good idea. ksm was really persistent and then he kept independence from al qaeda. he refused to swear an oath of allegiance to al qaeda until after 9/11 i believe it was because he wanted the independence to do the plot his way into bring in someone else at the thought al qaeda didn't have the backbone to do it i guess is the best way to put it. so in many ways khalid sheikh mohammed doesn't get the credit that he deserves to as the single most deadly terrorist of our times in terms of actually personally been responsible for executing attacks. so i think it is probably best -- >> a question about ksm's involvement in 9/11.

i think you mean that the tactics that ksm was suggesting were exactly right but bin laden i think strategically wanted to attack the united states, right? >> right, and they they think these two guys had very big egos and there was a lot of, i think there was a lot of sizing each i remember many people telling me that ksm wasn't even sure that he wanted to work with bin laden and it was only after the embassy bombings in africa in 1998 that he said, i'm going to try this again and i think we can work together. but i don't think, and i think ksm as you said this in guantánamo, i don't think he ever thought he worked for bin laden. i think he worked with him and he was an independent contractor. but yes, bin laden played some role in it and i think khalid sheikh mohammed was the template attack and bin laden said it should be more manageable. there are some parts in the book

that also i wrote some stories in the "l.a. times," where it was one of the most read stories i wrote in terms of people passing along was that ksm thought bin laden was a really bad laws. i think i might've made a reference to a dilbert cartoon, because. [inaudible] and was uncertain and one of the plot moved up to the summer of 2001. and ksm said it's not ready yet and we want to wait until september because his on the run commander mohamed atta thought -- and he wanted to move the plot of because ariel sharon was the pc at that time? >> there was a lot of pushback and the bottom line is that khalid sheikh mohammed thought the plot just was not ready and like any good manager was relying on -- he was good at delegating responsibility and in that case he was relying on mohamed atta who was giving him instructions. >> they were able to find ksm a

year before the cia. so long relatively speaking. [inaudible] he has a vivid story of the premiere of qatar calling to say by the way this guy is here. is that story true? >> i think it is in many respects. there are other things that are book difference from tenet's look and i will just leave it at to get a broader picture by talking to a larger set of people than the cia. >> but just to drill down on that, al-jazeera calls the cia director to tell him, i have a reporter on ksm and i'm giving

you information about where he is. that story is true? >> the broad outlines of it or cheer her believe. i have never talked about that. >> al asiri says he doesn't know. >> it was done without his knowledge because -- >> course it would be incredibly dangerous for any al-jazeera reporter. it would be incredibly -- to their reputation. >> i think the information was relayed and that is what i was starting to say that al zawahiri would not do that. some hour somehow or the other you the the information was conveyed and it ultimately got to the cia. but you raised a very important question which is how did al zawahiri find khalid sheikh mohammed and that is not what happened. is actually the other way round the that khalid sheikh mohammed sent out basically invited al zawahiri to karachi to meet with him as who has taken on a

circuitous road and all of a sudden he opens the door and khalid sheikh mohammed and ramzi yousef for there. that just goes to show a couple of things. one, how it egotistical khalid sheikh mohammed is but also how brazen he was in karachi. we talked to somebody who was familiar with that incident who said ksm literally walked down the stairs of the flat and out onto the street when he left, and you know, one thing that i will always remember that a senior isi person told me back in 2002 was that the isi has pakistan so well covered that you can't smoke a cigarette on any street corner in pakistan without us knowing what rand it is. i always remember that because of that was the case why couldn't you find these guys which raises a lot of questions. >> beheading that is overstating isi's capability. not that they don't have capabilities, but it took the cia 10 years to find bin laden.

>> frank pellegrino is big ksm -- one of the key characters in the book. tell us a little bit about it and tell us also, i mean here is one of the leading experts on ksm who wasn't allowed to speak to khalid sheikh mohammad for many years even though he was in american custody. how did that happen and was that a good idea? >> that is a great question. i think he was one of the most compelling figures for me in this whole thing. he is almost a figure of shakespearean tragedy type proportions. he was a very idiosyncratic agent who had been an account in and decided to join the bureau, got his law degree in his early years and then was one of the guys who was asked to help out on the trade center investigation. because he was fairly new he got

assigned to follow a guy named rashid who they didn't think was important at the time but he turned out to be ramzi yousef so he started following ksm and 93 which lets fast-forward to get to the point. frank is a very good agent and he is a very dogged agent. everybody always describe him to me as saying well you have got to talk to frank. i would say well, described them for me and they would say he is about his on fbi agent as you get. everybody who said that would say, why is that? you just have to know him. said he bucked authority and actually got in a lot of yelling matches with john o'neill, the guy who is socially lionized and a hero for his single-handed receipt of bin laden. as we say though, his tunnel vision on bin laden and al qaeda in the early '90s made it very hard for frank pellegrino and his partner to pursue their

investigation into khalid make -- khalid sheikh mohammad. after 9/11, frank was in malaysia at the time and he is talking to his former partner. they knew immediately that it was al qaeda. he wanted to join in the hunt. he was doing counterterrorism work and that he wasn't allowed to pursue, to too joined the specific investigation for khalid sheikh mohammad and even more frustratingly, after ksm was caught he tells his wife, you know they are going to really need me. he was summoned to headquarters in washington and he drives down there, and they did not use him. the interrogation of ksm, they also didn't use them and some of the efforts to mine information they ksm had. we have a scene where is in the basement of the fbi building after khalid sheikh mohammad is god and he is going through xeroxed pieces of paper and pocket letter, what they found in ksm's pockets and e-mails. another agent said frank, what

you doing here? you should be out on the frontlines interrogating the sky. i think that speaks volumes. >> he wasn't allowed to interrogate ksm because the fbi wouldn't allow any fb agent to. >> that speaks to the larger problem which was that the fbi and the cia were in such you know, odds with each other that the fbi effectively took itself out of the interrogation regime, because they seem to think that the story has been very well told. they thought they were using methods that were bordering on torture, and so the fbi would not allow its agents into these interrogations but also the cia went out of their way to try to do it themselves right away so there was a lot of tension and conflict between the two agencies. so the fbi to a large degree didn't play a role in any of the interrogations of these guys and you know i think that there were

people at the highest levels of the fbi who are saying this is crazy, this guide logged 400,000 miles building a criminal indictment against ksm. he has encyclopedic knowledge of him and you need to let him in the room with ksm when he is being interrogated. it happen happened finally in 2007 after ksm and the others were brought to guantánamo and because of some adverse information the bush administration said well, we really need to do something here and we are probably going to have to build some sort of -- so he said to these clean teams of fbi agents and task forces, to essentially rebuild the cases. i think that is very important because that is one of the building blocks if not the building block for the case going forward on guantánamo. frank and other agents were able to interview ksm and others down in guantánamo. and there are are some great

scenes, if i may say so, in the book about how frank finally gets a case against his nemesis khalid sheikh mohammad in 2007 and you know, obviously he has got a lot of strong feelings for mohammad. but he started by being very friendly and open because the traditional fbi way of building rapport with your target, you want to be nice to them so they can talk to you. so pellegrino explains to ksm, i was the guy who is chasing you in pakistan and i was the guy chasing you in qatar and the philippines. khalid sheikh mohammad looks at him and says, so you were the ones? and even told pellegrino that when they almost got him in qatar in 1996 that ksm knew which hotel pellegrino was staying in. he relate to somebody when he left the interview that it -- chills went down his spine, that he sort of felt like he had been the hunted instead of the hunter.

>> is pellegrino still in the bureau? >> frank is still in the bureau, yeah. i actually said to the fbi do you really want the front page, the first page of the book to say this is the book the fbi did not want you to read? part of it is institutional bureaucratic inertia and some of it it is institution a resistance to talk to the press but i would not say that the bureau was overly forthcoming in talking to us about it. in the end we were able -- also part of it as they were very concerned that the people involved in the investigation you know, not compromising what impact the prosecution in guantánamo or the civilian court. i would only add, actually i do mean to speak perfectly, that you have to read the book to see who we ultimately talk to. i think we were successful in

getting the story. >> how do you build up the story of ksm and post-9/11? it seems there was a lot of material and thereby ksm in his network in karachi. >> a lot of -- those documents were very valuable information. some of that stuff can be obtained elsewhere through talking to people and things, but no, it was fortuitous. i think that they really help show a picture of what was going on at the time. part of it i think was just you know, the hard part is getting all the different sides of the story, the cia version, the fbi version, the pakistani version and i can tell you and i'm sure you know this as well or better than i do, especially when you're talking about something that happened in pakistan,

what happened including the capture of ksm. >> final question, what happened but they capture of ksm? how did that go down without giving away too much in the book? >> part of it is the success story of the cia. by that time the fbi and the cia were so much in conflict with each other that they were virtually not working together and in fact if you talk to the fbi they played no role in the final capture of ksm. >> on this issue or just writ large? >> basically there were a few people, a lot of this is personality driven. the book, pakistan and an fbi assistant who got along very well and they worked well together. left, and the case was really heating up, it was sort of unfortunate because the summer of 2002. the fbi believes the

cia wasn't even looking in the right places were talking to people like ksm's nephew or ksm capture of khalid sheikh helpful in being able sort of nsa type listening devices. ksm was using a particular kind thought was secure but it turns out that it wasn't. >> why did they think it was secure? think ksm was a fanatic about

operational security and that is i think they thought there was purchase of the chip back use it sparingly you would only remember -- as soon as he came ksm and rumsey yousaf that they took the cell phone detective work and the swiss and the germans and others had some electronic pakistanis helps to 8 degrees so it was a figures. ..

did a great story how she was taken through the house by quite's mother. and she said there's no wall in the house that looks like the wall behind the one where he was photographed. so, you know, how he could have been captured in europe. as we say in the book, the photograph was later when he was

in the safe house. they wanted the sort of news up the photograph that was less frat i ares than some of the other ones. i think it's, you know, robert the fbi director once said about 9/11. he said one of those things where we're probably going to be finding out important pieces of information thirty years from now. it's you, you know, think you know the whole story. it's going to to take a long time to find out everything. i don't think we answered all the questions, i think we answered the basic ones. so i'm still very cure use as to how cleche they was able to operate in 1990 or 1990 certainly through 1993 and go was going. >> do you have a question please

identify yourself. wait for the microphone. >> yes. john mueller from the ohio state. you talked a bit about the plot on clinton and. besides 9/11, could you get some terrorism was carried out by ksm or any of them. did they reach information or were they successful? >> that's a good question. you know, i think even in the paper two days ago the shoe bomb we are richard reid he testified in new york how they were working for khalid sheikh mohammed. >> right. >> no terms he was involved in an extraordinary number of plots. he was creative. a lot of them and i hate to keep referring to it. we go into the details in the book about which plots worked.

the mind set. he was coming up with plots all the time. some would work, some i wouldn't. i think one of the biggest, i hate to use the contribution. that's positive. one of the most things he did was set up terrorism cells here and there. he was instrument tal in helping southeast asia come into the al qaeda folder. he helped finance the bombes and the tunisia bombings. it was a synagogue off the coast of tunisia. i think there was a lot of information that we had that he was directly, or some of his lieutenants were involved in the saab bombings in 2003 where i think peter and had i had a nice lunch, one of the royal families big dining halls, we were both there after the tacks. we didn't knew it was al qaeda. but later, we just in the

reporting of the book, we came to realize that i think it was him one of the names run together. some of the people that had been working for ksm were involved in the plot. i think there was a tremendous amount of them. the plot against the pope andwj against president clinton, it's hard to tell how close 0. i do know when they surged the room where they were plotting all of the this which caught fire for a law enforcement. they found robes and other things they indicated they were trying to get cloaks. they pick on the root at the motorcade. so there was certainly, fairly, what's the word? eager try to do this.ya >> what do you assess ksm's motivation to be? >> i think that what's one of the most fascinating things

about the upcoming trial if and when it happens. is how eager ksm is to tell the word what the moted elevations are. i think that's one reason in the book we have the transcript verbatim transcript at the back of his very long shrill question at guantanamo in 2008. to me, she was much more political than bad. i mean, you literally wrote the book on bin laden. >> political and secular. >> national streelly. >> yeah. i was going to say bin laden had political issues too. but i think ksm is a secular guy. he is not what you call a radical. when he was in the philippines within terrorist a lot of stories he would hang out in car row key bars. do you think those are accurate? >> i was going to get to that. >> it's hard to tell if he was using that as part of his cover. or whether he enjoyed himself.

i talked to one person that said that he was in the philippines he dray beer, which is a nonalcoholic beer. whatever he was enthusiastic pursuing that per son that. one of the most fascinating thing we got one of the ways they tracked ksm to cuter. he liked one of the bar girls in he would send her letters and cards and things. he sent her a christmas card one year. the two fbi agencies frank pellegrino they'd go back and work. they'd talk to the bar girls and families. one day they were talk together mother of one of the bar girls. he e she said i have letters to my daughter. one of them -- a couple of them from from khalid sheikh mohammed. one was a card and return address was whited out. they sent it to an fbi lab, and

sure enough the return address was the ministry. that was one of the ways he found them. he liked women enough to certainly pursue that kind of thing. but it's, i think, it's part of what a complex character he is. when they caught ramzi yousef however you pronounce it in 2002 they found a suitcase with the belongings in it. they found photographs in there of her playing with his that seemed to be recent. time with his children. i think he's sort of a ball of contra contradictions. >> tell everybody the nearest point, maybe. if ksm had found in arrested maybe 9/11 would have turned out difficultly. what happened there? >> i personally believe that 9/11 would never have happened if ksm had been caught there.vú

clearly al qaeda would have other plots and attacks. this was ksm's baby, the plot that came out of the attacks. the plots in the manila. there was good work by the fbi and cia that lead him to khalid sheikh mohammed. he was working for the ministry of water and cutter. one of the membersful royal family had i don't know if it's a guarantees employment program. he brought a lot of the over to cutter and let them hang out an farm he thought they were an important service to the slammic world. he was using his job as bureaucrat there as a travel and the fbi very much wanted to get him when they were there. we have a letter from the fbi director lewis who was e-mailing the government and saying so you a very dangerous terrorist

here. we want to get him and we need your cooperation. there was a lot of back and phot. it went to the deputies meeting. instead of doing a snatch and grab, or even pushing him out or they were trying to find a way to get him to fly out of the country so they could grab anymore another country. they were working on that. but ultimately, the u.s. government decided to go through the front door and ask the government for permission to get him. a lot of people warned it wasn't out a good idea. it wasn't a good idea. frank pellegrino and other agencies were on the ground in pakistan, excuse me in cutter, trying to get ksm. he slipped out the back door. >> yeah. gentleman in the back here? hi. adam and the project of

overgovernment oversight. excuse me. we have a book coming out in the near future by jose rodriguez talking about the utility of various intergracious techniques. mr. rod rei grouse was associated with the cia interrogation of detan knees included khalid sheikh mohammed. he was personally there. what do we know about the interrogation of khalid sheikh mohammed. obviously the book is about the hunt not the other. but what do we know about the interrogation if anything or are what are the indications. where did it take place? had saved many lives and warned us about future attacks. what was the utility of that exercise? >> i would say that our book --

i haven't read his book. i love the title, "hard measures" but i would say did focus primarily on the hunt, but we do go into some details about the khalid sheikh some of the people involved in this, there was a feeling he was practice in the counter intelligence and counter intelligence. he was good at knowing the limits of water water boarding tack tickets and provided them with a tremendous amount of disinformation. i think he provided them with aá lot of information. the attacks that followed shortly after that, the attacks in saudi arabia were in may 2003, which is right after he was captured. you had the accident followed shortly therefore after that. and even in the years after that. they were linked closely with ksm.

he knew about the attacks, if he did say anything about them. nobody has told me that. and it certainly didn't lead to them stopping those plots. it also didn't lead to the capture of bin laden or ramzi yousef number two. the first to report this, we were to be report that ksm met with ramzi yousef right before that. i think most importantly the courier that ultimately lead to bin laden the full name was one of the guys that was working closely with ksm back then. i'll have to -- i believe he was one of ksm's property jays. so i think that all of the information certainly ksm had the head and everything they understand about whether it's, you know, being priefe to what was in the cables that was coming back about the

interrogations and people that were involved in was that he did not give up that information. so i don't know how successful it was. >> contrast what you just say with the latter faze that began in 2007 when they brought in frank pellegrino to do the clean team cleanup to produce evidence that might be useful in a legal prosecution, but conducted by the country. of course, by then all of the attacks this and that that you have described had already happened. so that wasn't going to be stopped. but what about the clean team exerciseing? he stopped to some extent at that point as far as we know or

are what happened there? >> well, you know, whether they got -- again, in terms of operational intelligence and whether you can use it to stop plots, like talking to somebody in 2007 after they've been in custody since 2003, i think it's nenltble what you're going to get from them. at that point, they were trying to build a case against him. one of the things which is most important within which is a point we tried to make in the book, i think it's froactly ignored or it's not just that the type of interrogation measures methods you're using. it's who's doing the interrogating. what never seemed to make sense to me, and i know a lot of other fbi agents have been scheming about this for years. even if the cia brought into the contract interrogations. they had absolute now background knowledge of al qaeda or who the players were. when the fbi interrogates

somebody they know everybody who is now your network. what your back story is how the variation parts work together. you need that information so when somebody gives you an answer you can tell them what question to ask. what they think is that even if the water boarding and the other methods they were using on ksm worked, they didn't know what questions to ask. and, you know, -- >> describes that. tell me what i want to know. >> right. >> the interrogation. >> right. and i heard from a lot of people they would come in and repeat the same question over and over and it was actually like, you know what we want. >> yeah. >> and like, no i don't. so to me, and as we say in the book, there were three different organizations that were desperate -- they were reading the cable coming back when ksm was being interrogated. they were saying he's either

making this stuff up or you're not asking the right questions. it was the 9/11 who had smart and, you know, experienced people on that. it was the criminal investigative task force who was reading the traffic say yo have to ask him this. for some reason now, i'm forgetting what the third one was. it was either the fbi or whatever. but these three, you know, entities were saying, look, you know, he's not -- you're not getting the right information out of him. you need to ask questions and the people that i spoke to said they weren't getting -- those theafn that they weren't getting the right information out of him. so -- >>. >> hi. david. you just said something thought i -- a guy like khalid sheikh mohammed can come out of nowhere. no bad's dead and the the ranks

of al qaeda have been dismated by the predators. i know, the sub -- smart guys in groups with the roots there have through the timings we're bombing shown a transnational reach. where is the next threat coming? is someone like ksm likely to come up with one of the groups how can we identify or prevent such a threat? >> that's a great question, david. i think one of the most disagree intriguing people that i focused on since 2006, and at the time, i didn't know this, was one of ksm's proteges. i didn't know this at the time we, you know, ksm liked people he thought could function in three world. arab world, the south saysha world, and the western world like ksm he spoke many languagea

and spent time in the united states. i think -- >> she was an american citizens. >>o yeah. i think people like that -- a national. >> he grew up in the bronx of florida. >> yeah. >> but he was born in saudi arabia too. that's right.i i forget my own reporting onz that.k i spent three weeks in miami writing about him back in 2006.t but i think, you know, there's a lot of people that are to worry about that worry their train by khalid sheikh mohammed.z you don't need training like that. you can come out of nowhere on your own. i think the mum bay attacks are i think somebody like khalid sheikh mohammed doesn't come along all that often, thank thankfully. somebody who has the sort of, you know, sort of obsession with attacking the united states and

scary because i don't know if you, you know, they can be from al qaeda and the arabian peninsula. or something like in texas who just gets radicalized on the internet. there's a big difference now. -- on the 21,000tsa, all the joint terrorism task force. put trying to sort of look at the question. >> yeah. >> we have a ksm presumably, take after 9/11 find him. but it seems impossible there would would be somebody who had a big network that wasn't on the radar. >> i think that the al qaeda would like to call these spectaculars. i think it's harder to do now. certainly in the united states. you can also do a lot of damage as an individual doing some kind

of attack. i mean i remember after 9/11 i get a call from somebody saying if you took out a chlorine tank in the united states with a grenade you could kill a lot of people like the disaster in india. >> it never happened. >> i remember thinking do i want to write that story because i don't want to give people the idea. i remember saying i'm going think about it. >> just -- >> several hundred thousand. >> but the "wall street journal" did that story the next day back in 2002. i was like i don't have to worrq about that now. >> my name is -- the fbi cia, they're searching everywhere even people in los angeles -- may be sent to gaunt moe bay. how can they stop all the al qaeda or ksm the activities

right from the beginning and is there anything the fbi, or christ try -- american or any country they want to find against -- do they know where the al qaeda or bin laden to hideout? i don't know why they can't find out that all the the years of war. >> okay. >> why couldn't they find out these guys were planning the attacks? i think that's -- there's a lot of ink that's been spilled on ha. that's one of the reasons we wanted to write the book. i think that's why peter wrote the longest war. i think that history is, you know, the history of this hasn't been -- is not finished. i think the 9/11 commission did a great report.

the people that wrote that will be the first to admit they didn't have access to certain documents and officials. the history changes. i think we're trying to find that out. i think that people like khalid sheikh mohammed fell through the cracks and that some of the problems that were in place back then are now. 5th? will you be covering that? >> i'm hoping to be. there's sixty spots down there for journalists. i think there's 800 people that are applying for it or so. but, yes, i certainly plan to follow it whether i'm there in spirit or in -- >> they're hooking it up in ford mead? >> i've talked to some people recently that have said that, you know, we need as much transparency for the trial as we can. this is our -- have a fitting toantd 9/11 era

and put in the public record what happened. i think the government really has never done that where theyx have done a formal sort of document dump about what they know about 9/11. i think the american public is waiting for that and deserves that. i was at the "l.a. times" for twenty years. one of the cases i cover was o.j. simpson. if that was the trial of the century and you can every minute of a televised, there's -- there are some complications about televising the trial about the security issues. you can do it on the delay mechanism in play so that you can give the public a view what happened in the trial, and what happened in 9/11 in a way that doesn't comprise national security. i'd like to see that. >> should the trial happened in the district of new york where the crimes happened? >> as a reporter, i try to -- about that. >> but you written a book.

i asked you a question. >> i do. that's true. somebody told me i've been promoted. no, i think so. i was there in the summer of 2001 when the embarrass sei trials were takes place. i wrote a piece i forget how tortuous it is to get the piece published. when i was there in 2001 talking the bombings trial. they brought in witnesses from, sides where the ambassador were attacked. they brought in the families, they brought in tun tons of witnesses. they introduced mountains of information. there were people in the courtroom to point to them and say those are the guys that i saw at the sight.ú0 and i think at the end of that,p you have a sense that justice was done. >> national security information

did any national security information come out of the trial that was not supposed to. >> no. >> but the people involved? >> i think it was 240 years each. something like that. >> and you really had a. you got hear from the terrorist themselves about why they did. ping some would be afraid if ksm is going to use the trial to use the term hijack the trial. he's going to use the trial to like tell people why he, you know, why he did it it's inadvertent. i don't know if that's a bad thing to have the public hear what he's saying. people are smart enough to know how like you i think that by keeping him and we say this in the book by hiding him for so long and refusing to bring him into the light. you almost give him much more what he wants which is a mythical persona.

the worst thing you can do is execute the guys. they will become the martiers they're traying to become. >> what's interesting aye never -- we always say that. i don't think it's true. and bad martier right now. essentially a judicial execution the u.s. navy sales. it hasn't happened. the only movement is shane. it's one of these people who are more on the fighting side rather than on the religious side. they don't seem to live on as martyrs. >> i think there are some people who look at bad's death as sort of a cause for continuing the would ask most people if you know what's up with ramzi yousef. he's been locked away in the prison in, you know, in colorado for so long. i think he's disappeared off the

consciousness. >> bury alive. >> somebody told me that they went to visit ramzi yousef and said frank pellegrino said hello. he said, tell frank i said hi. you know, these agents spend so much time with them in court and elsewhere. they got to know them. i think that's important that you know your enemy not just keep them, you know, at the 30,000 foot distance. >> other questions? >> the yes man over here. -- the gentleman over here. the details do you know if it's true that he was 140 times. its did true, how can he survive such a treatment. >> i think the official number is 183. >> 183. it happened over a period ofm$ month, which if you do the math. i don't think the public is aware of what does that mean?

like if you're lying down and they pour water on you like four times in one session. is that four water boards or is that one? i think the bottom line is, is that we haven't scene in the book about ksm is ticking off his fingers about water boarding them because he know it's going to stop at the certain point. that's a good thing, they were applying the technique so carefully that somebody like ksm could know they could only take it to a certain point. that's off 180 second? >> i think it was the thirt yet time. if you water board somebody twenty or thirty times.u@ they're probably going maybe they're going to get a sense they're not but who knows? but, you know, it's a very controversial tractic.

can use is sleep deprivation. i don't know anybody who's been able to sleep for three days. i saw some video of ksm even his head up. he was mumble. d qúf.nn((nú&(