and "and justice for all" came out in 2009. her most recent, "power in words," the story behind barack obama speeches. mary frances berry, thank you for spending this three hours with us on "in depth." >> guest: thank you for spending the time with me. i enjoyed it.

.. [applause] >> thank you, mark, for those kind words. thank you david for this invitation. it is a pleasure to be back here again in this gathering. benghazi was a night of heroes

of heroism, and it was a night of cowardice. the heroes were the navy seals, former navy seals, ty woods, glen doherty, who put their lives on the line to save their fellow americans that night. those who acted with cowardice did so far away from benghazi, in washington, d.c. failing to live up, in my opinion, to their legal, moral, and also political responsibilities. the two people in washington who i believe have the greatest responsibility for what happened that night are of course the president of the united states, who was simply absent without leave. and the secretary of state, hillary clinton, who was on the contrary, very present, very

active, very engaged and very wrong. i want to go through a little bit in my remarks before we open this up to questions. i want to tell you a bit, in detail, the story of what actually happened that night, of september 11th because so many facts have gotten obscured by the media and mistold, misrepresented by certain people in congress. remember that this began on a quiet evening. nothing was going on outside the u.s. diplomatic compound in benghazi. at, a while before the attacks began a libyan policeman drove up on the dark gravel street outside, turned off his car and waited, two minutes before the attacks began, he started up his car and left. all of this was duly noted by

the diplomatic security agent who was sitting in the compound watching his security monitors. at 9:42 out of the darkness surged approximately 20, perhaps 30 armed men with a plan. they were not there demonstrating. they were not there worried about a youtube video. they had come there for murder and they knew exactly who they were going to murder and they knew exactly where they would find him because they had inside information. the four unarmed libyan security guards at the gate were surprised when these insurgents attacked. two of them managed to flee. the other two were caught. one was shot in the leg and forced to open the gate. at that moment the alert was

sounded by alec henderson, the regional security officer in front of those monitors. 9:42 p.m., local time. he sounded the alert. it went out over loud speakers across the compound. everybody could hear it. it said, attack, attack. simultaneously the alert was sound ad mile way way in the cia annex where ty woods and other cia contractors who were former navy seals were waiting. now when ty heard the alert go off, he gathered five other former special operations guys. they got their weapons together. the. started loading them into two mercedes g wagons and went to cia chief of base. hey, we've got to rescue these guys. they're under attack. the chief of base said no. hold your horses. he did not say stand down.

he said hold in place. hold your horses. hold in place. we need to get some serious firepower to help you rescue these guys. let me call the 17th february martyrs' brigade on contract with us. they're supposed to be on contract with us to do security there and get 50-caliber gun trucks. ty said, okay, we'll wait a couple minutes. meanwhile the jihadis stormed inside. the ambassador has been taken out of his bedroom where he was doing his email and, checking up on, things that were going on during the day. and, he was taken with sean smith and herded into the so-called safe haven which was a, a closet back in the residential area of the main villa that was protected by ironed bars like a cage in a zoo, open iron bars. it was not a solid car. it was open iron bars, okay?

he was taken put into the closet with nothing. they left everything behind. computers, secure computers, classified computers. all of that was left behind and they're put into the closet with one diplomatic security officer. all right. ten minutes or so goes by. ty goes back to chief of base, we have to go, we've got to go. these guys are under attack. it is getting worse. reports from alec henderson in the command center saying more jihadis were heading into theville last, the residential villa where the ambassador was hiding where the plan they would do if the compound came under attack, so-called react plan. again the chief of base said no, no, hold in place. we have to get more fire power. another ten minutes goes by. by this point there, they found, they have actually managed to get to the compound, to the,

excuse me to the villa where the am boos door is, using silent military hand signals. this was coordinated military attack. they found a december, cans of diesel fuel and starting to does the furniture in the main living area. andty goes again to his chief of base says, chief, we've got to do, we've got to go. they're starting a fire. they're seeing smoke. the chief says, no, no, we hold your horses we have to get more firepower. ty wood says, you know what? expletives deleted we're out of here. he gets his guy together in the two mercedes g wagons and they go one mile, normally is five minutes to the diplomatic compound. the first thing that conclude from this piece of the narrative is, everybody could have been saved that night. nobody had to die. no americans had to die that night if the cia chief of base had listened to his people on

the ground and our forces who were there with the military capabilities to respond had been allowed to respond and go there. they could have saved them. ty woods wanted to save him and he was told, don't go. eventually he disobeyed that order. and by the time i got there, a normal five-minute drive. took him 20 minutes because he was held up, by guess who, the 11th february martyrs' brigade supposedly helping us with security, in fact in league with attackers and stopped him at roadblock for ten minutes. tried to offer him tea. he said tea. you know where you can put your tea. and eventually they split up into two groups. one group, got into the diplomatic compound from the front. another group went around from the year. they had to fight their way in. by the time they made it to villa c, the diplomatic, residential compound, it was

about 10:30. i believe the ambassador was already dead. the flames were hot, intense. when they got to the roof there was the one diplomatic security agent, david ubben, who managed to escape. he was up there, they could hardly understand a word he was saying because of the diesel fumes which were toxic. and he was communicating to them that he had tried and tried and tried to find the ambassador in those roiling, noxious black fumes inside and to find sean smith and he couldn't. soty, and his men, under fire, went back into the villa, in the darkness, with these noxious fumes and the heat trying to pull them out again and again and again and again. they found sean smith. he was dead. but they couldn't find the ambassador. finally at about 11:15, now

remember. this was supposed to be a demonstration. this was all supposed to have been a lightning attack, took a couple of minutes. happened so fast, nothing could have been done. now 11:15. an hour 1/2 after the attack started. an hour 1/2 of constant fighting after the attack started. by this pointy says, okay, we can't get the ambassador. there are more jihadis on the street. we can see them forming. there are probably 100 people in the crowd. they will come in. we won't be able to hold them off. he sent diplomatic security guys, the other four, excuse me, the other three, they found hiding in their barracks in their underwear and bare feet. they never fired a shot. the diplomatic security guys there never fired a shot okay? the only weapons discharged were by the former navy seals who had come to rescue them. anyhow, they leave at 11:15.

ty and his guys hold off the jihadis for another 15 minutes and make it back to the cia annex by 11:30. at that point they concluded the ambassador is missing, probably death. they have sean smith in the car. all of this is being sent back to washington in real time, also communicated to stuttgart, which is the head of africom, head of u.s. african command, head of general carter ham, who coincidence happened to be in washington that evening. let me shift back to washington so you can understand what was happening, what the response was. 9:42 benghazi time, 3:42 p.m. washington time, okay? by 4:05 washington time, so beforety arrived and before the fires had been set, at 4:05 p.m. the state department operations center sends out a flash cable saying the compound in benghazi is under attack and more information will be following

shortly. a whole series much emails and communications are coming out of the state department operations center over the next couple of hours. every single one of them mentioned the word attack, mentioned the fact that later on that the ambassador was missing. that people may have died and not a single one of them mentioned a demonstration that got out of control or a youtube video. at 5:00 p.m., washington time, 11:00 p.m. benghazi time,py woods and his guys were fighting off the jihadis. the secretary of defense, leon panetta and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, go to the white house for a prearranged meeting. they had been met in the hallway by general carter ham ha who had had been getting reports from

stuttgart. hey, we have a real problem in benghazi. diplomatic compound is under attack. you might want to inform the president. here is the best information i have got so far. it is fog of war. we divert ad predator overhead. it will be over head in 5 mines minutes at 5:05. so we'll have real time intelligence to see what is going on. they're getting all this as they're walking down in the limo to see the president in the white house. they get there, talk to him about half an hour, bring him up to speed as what is happening. and as best anyone that i know has been able to piece this together, that includes the members of congress who have been actively investigating this for the past year-and-a-half, as best anyone knows, the president essentially told leon panetta, the secretary of defense and chairman dempsey, guys, i got a fund-raiser tomorrow in las vegas and this is, this is really bad.

would you please take care of it? i've got really important things to do tonight to prepare for this fund-raiser. so you can handle it with my staff. be in touch with my staff and i count on you. good bi. there was never a single conversation after that between the president of the united states and anyone in the department of defense or the military command. general carter ham, who is four-star general, commander-in-chief of africom, the guy eventually in charge of moving military forces that night, never once called the president. the president never once called him. and as i argue in "dark forces," worse than a stand-down order from the washington, what happened was the president of the united states never gave a stand-up order. and general ham understood this very well.

he understood that this president, what he said, take care of it, or do what has to be done, wasn't look jack bauer in "24," go out and break things and kill people. keep this as quiet as you possibly can and make sure we don't have any collateral damage okay. there was a stand-down order given that night and not been talked about very much. it was issued bit secretary of state in person. b two hours after the beginning of the attacks, mark thompson, who is a senior state department officer in charge of international security, an been a u.s. marine and personally familiar with attacks on u.s. embay is -- embassies how we respond to them, made a suggestion up through his command, they should deploy the foreign emergency support femme,

the fest. the fest is an interagency group with a very heavy special forces component, including cia officers, fbi agents and state department people, on call, 24/7, 24/7, for precisely the kind of emergency that happened in benghazi. they were created to deal with this kind of emergency. they were set up after the africa embassy bombings in 1998. hillary clinton came back and said, no, don't need the fest. do not call the fest. they were on standby. they could have been in their airplane within an hour or two hours, over there before the final attacks occurred. she said, don't call the fest. so the standdown order, such as it was, came personally from the secretary of state. all right.

now when hillary clinton gave her, unique testimony, remember, she had aer is beeb al -- cerebral hemorrhage or fall that rendered her from testifying in december of 2012 and eventually did appear before congress in january much 2013. she said that, she had a phone call with the president at about 10 p.m. to discuss what was going on and coordinate. what they were coordinating was their story. right after that phone call, the secretary of state releases a statement, at 10:08 p.m. that was 4:08 a.m. benghazi time, beforety woods and glen dotterry were killed i might add. so they were still alive when the statement came out. the statement. i would like to read it to you. some have sought to justify this

vicious behavior as response to inflammatory material posted on the internet. now to this day, i haven't figured out, nor has anybody i know in congress investigating this figured out, where she got that. you know, some, some have sought to justify this behavior. nobody was seeking to justify the behavior because of a youtube video. she says the united states deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs in others. our commitment to religious tolerance goes back beginning of our nation. there is never any justification for violent acts of this kind, blah, blah. it is utterly baffling, utterly baffling how she could come up with such a bald-faced invention, a lie. every single email that was sent back, and they have been released to congress. so we know what they said. talked about an attack.

brigadier general lovell, who was the the j-2 in africom, testified in congress, what we did know quite early on this was a hostile action. this was no demonstration gone terribly awry. that is what was in the intelligence reporting. that is what was in the state department reporting and yet hillary clinton, at 10:08 p.m., said no, this was all because of a youtube video. i think one of the things that trey gowdy and his select committee have got to find out, they have to get the paper trail that led up to the statement. you don't issue a statement like that, without something, some preparations or drafts. people involved in the drafting of it. we know for example, the talking points of susan rice used. went through a three-day process with over 100 emails and different people giving their opinions. it would be very instructive to see who actually told hillary clinton this was because of a youtube video and where they got that information because there is nothing, in the

reporting from the ground, from the state department, or the cia that mention as youtube video. it is invented whole cloth. now i call this the original spin of benghazi. and you have to ask the question, that's what i asked in dark forces, why? did hillary clinton invent this story out of whole cloth? well i believe the reason that she invented it, had to do with a number of things. number one obviously, they did not, the administration did not want to admit this was a terrorist attack. it was weeks away from the presidential election. it would. it would destroy the quote, narrative that al qaeda was defeated. obama was not president bush. he beat bin laden. wasn't attacked by bin laden. right? got our troops out of iraq instead of in iraq. it would destroy the narrative that terrorism was on the wane and threats to terrorism were

disappearing because of obama policies. but there is much more than that. it goes back to what i call the original sin in benghazi. and the original sin in benghazi began very early on during the insurgency against qaddafi in march of 2011. at that time, the president obama signed a presidential finding, authorizing the central intelligence agency and other agencies of the u.s. government to provide covert assistance to the libyan rebels. part of that covert assistance, was the supply of weapons through cutouts, and the cutouts of choice were the special forces of the emirate of qatar.

in the end of march when qadaffi's forces were bombing libyan insurgents and everybody thought the insurgency was going to collapse, in the beginning they thought it was going to collapse, a decision was made to deliver surface-to-air missiles to the insurgents through qatar. the cia repleased a block of stinger missiles from a stockpile in cute way, through the qatari special forces. some of the missiles were brought in by land through a convoy through sudan into northern chad and libya by ground. how do we know this? we know this for a couple of reasons. number one, a "wall street journal" reporter stumbled into the abandoned office of muammar qaddafi's intelligence chief days after the fall of the regime and discovered internal cable traffic, intercepted communications between a french

commander in northern chad because the french still had a force there and his commanding officers, talking about kuwaiti, qatari special forces unit, convoy bringing in stinger missiles. maybe we ought to ask washington whether they want stinger missiles going into libya? we also know this because i, as a reporter have spent, have lived for 18 years in france and have some pretty good contacts in that administration at that time. i asked my contacts and close to president sarkozy what was going on. oh, yes, we got a call from the u.s. embassy in paris as a result of this saying hey, excuse me, we called the u.s. embassy in paris after we got the call from chad and said, hey, what do you want us to do with this? stinger missiles. they're your missiles. not our missiles but our guys can stop it if you want. they have the qatari convoy. the answer back from the u.s.

embassy in paris referred back to the state department, no, go ahead, let them go. now, there is no evidence so far that those missiles were actually delivered to the libyan rebels and they were never used in the conflict. i don't allege that in the book. however,. what i was able to find out subsequently from u.s. special forces sources, including a senior officer on active duty who was seemed about this. so was willing to take the risk to brief me on what had happened, a u.s. military helicopter in afghanistan was hit on july 25th, 2012, brought down by a surface-to-air missile. luckily the missile warhead did not explode. everybody jumped out of the aircraft and during the crash investigation, they found a scrap of metal from the fuselage

in the engine cell that contained a serial number. and that serial number tracked back to the block of stinger missiles that had been signed out to the cia in kuwait, to the qatari special forces. that is something that is called a paper trail okay? that is something the benghazi select committee can go discover and investigate and look into. i have spoken to them about this already. that is the original sin of benghazi. now those missiles, went missing obviously. and one of the reasons that ambassador stevens was sent to benghazi, was to try and get them back. hillary clinton herself announced the effort to recuperate missing surface-to-air missiles when she made her lightning trip to libya right after muammar qaddafi was killed.

you remember that wonderful cute statement she made to an abc news reporter? she said, i came, i saw, he died. referring to qadaffi. that was her summary of u.s. policy and her importance in october of 2011. well she announced during that same trip that the nights was going to give money to the libyan government to recuperate missing surface-to-air missiles. she just neglected to say that some of those missiles were american. ambassador stevens was sent to benghazi on september 10th specifically because a shipment of weapons from benghazi for the syrian rebels, and i don't believe this shipment was covered by a presidential finding, was revealed to the public in turkey, in turkey. they found it, journalists going down there. they were snooping around. people were upset and they were

very worried it would get public the whole u.s. operation to arm secretly rebels in sir libya would be exposed. he was a special envoy to the insurgents against qadaffi the year before. he was the guy, the go-to guy. he is the one that would go to sit with these jihadis and say look, we need you to do this in orderly way and send the b-team in so the shipments get exposed. we have to do this quietly not do it at all. that is why he was there. so that was the, the original sin was the arms shipment. there is another side i want to mention briefly and i will open it up to questions and it is extremely important and somebody that nobody has yet spoken about publicly aside from my book, "dark forces." the people who carried out this attack, well, we've been told is ansar al sharia.

now, clearly, there were members of ansar al sharia present. they were captured on videotape. the pictures are there and their actions could be seen. but ansar al sharia is what i call the pickup team. these are guys, local hires, they were hired to carry out the attack, to fill out the ranks, to, they were the rent a crowd outside thatty woods saw on the roof. they were not the wons who killed the ambassador and not ones who orchestrated the attacks. and definitely not the ones who launched the military annex on the cia annex at 5:00 in the morning with five mortar round, one long, one short, three right on target. a perfect military tactic. one which nobody in libya had ever demonstrated. now the people who carried out the mortar attack were iranian

nationals. they belonged to the quds force of the islamic revolutionary guard force. and i go into great detail in the book how i know this. to begin with, the iranian presence in benghazi came to the notice of u.s. military contractors who were there helping insurgents on behalf of the taxpayer by the way as early as march of 2011. they saw iranians there. they saw iran's surrogates, hezbollah from lebanon there on the ground. what were they doing? to start with, they were buying influence, spreading money around, trying to figure out what was happening. later the next year when they saw weapons going to syria, the syrian rebels who were their enemies, remember, iranians working with bashar al-assad and rebels were against them. they saw the weapons leaving benghazi and going to syrian rebels and iran said we'll put

an end to this this is coming out benghazi. we know how to stop it there. were approximately 50 or off u.s. national classified intelligence reports, something i learned about from people who had access to them, mentioned money and arms flowing from iran and hezbollah into benghazi in the weeks and months before the attacks. i've spent many years of my life working with defectors from iranian intelligence. a former senior cia officer once said of plea, i like to think it was in jest and it may have been serious, timmerman has spent more face time with iranian defectors than anybody in the u.s. intelligence community because it has gone on for many, many, many years. just about every major defector who came out i debriefed and spent months with getting their information. one of the things i learned from some of these iranians sources were the names of the heads of

the operation of the quds force. now let me remind you what i'm saying here. this is a state-sponsored terrorist attack, okay? carried out by the islamic republic of iran. this was not a bunch of ragtag jihadis who all of sudden decided one night they would kill some americans as hillary clinton said or saw the youtube video. this was a state-sponsored, coordinated military strike against america, with a goal of driving us out of libya of turning libya into chaos and of stopping the arms trade into syria. and on every count except the last i think they were pretty successful. the operation was led by a two-star general, from the revolutionary guards. one of the top 10 members, they're called the commanding heights. i named him in the book. the person in charge on the ground was a senior quds force officer who had spent many, many

years in lebanon. money was brought in and i have, i talk about the money trail a bit in the book. there are wire transfers which i have been able to get access to from my iranian sources that show money coming from well-known quds force channels in indonesia and malaysia coming in through france, through algeria, into libya to finance this they spent 50 to $70 million over a year's time to recruit terrorists on the ground as surrogate force, and deploy them when they needed to for the september 11th, september 12th attacks. now i have spent a lot of years working with victims of terrorism. the biggest case that worked on has been what is known as the havlish case or iran 9/11 case and we proved into a new york court, in december of 2011, that the iranian regime had a

material, direct material involvement with the 9/11 attacks against america in 2001. and the victims, the families of the victims won a $6 billion judgment against the iranian regime based on the evidence which i helped to coordinate. during the time that we were preparing that evidence we got extraordinary pushback from the cia and the u.s. intelligence community more broadly because they could not accept the notion that shiite fundamentalist iran could coordinate and work with sunni fundamentalist al qaeda. they said basically, shias eat sunnis for breakfast. of course they're not going to work together. and we respond by saying, well, gee,. really? as i recall, the iranian guerrillas who ultimately ousted

the shah of iran were trained by yasser arafat, a sunni islamic terrorist in south lebanon. really? i seem to remember that the iranians had been the biggest arms suppliers to hamas in gaza, a sunni fundamentalist, terrorist group. really? gee, the u.s. military is getting people blown up in iraq and afghanistan explosively formed penetrators, produced in iran, supplied to the taliban, a sunni fundamentalist terrorist group in afghanistan. and to al qaeda in iraq, another sunni terrorist group. well eventually, we won that argument with them. i give classes at joint counterintelligence community in quantico. i had ability to learn in one of sessions was a person sitting in

the audience was senior assistant to the national director of intelligence working in iran. the person came to me afterwards and ken, we changed our analysis on this. we changed our analysis. and we are actually looking into iran's involvement with al qaeda and specifically iran's involvement with al cade in the 9/11 attacks. so the only hopeful note that can leave you with, from these remarks is that perhaps the u.s. intelligence community today has learned from its mistakes of yesterday and understands just how diabolical, how dedicated, how determined, and how skilled the iranian intelligence services are and how determined they are to do just what ahmadinejad said, and his successors have said, which is to destroy america. thank you very much. [applause]

so now we have questions? yes, sir? >> yes. like to turn your attention to something different. your book makes out an argument that sound correct that the obama administration foreign policy has been feckless, rather impotent and very passive. but what do you make of the recent bombing campaigns against isis in iraq. is that mark a change in the obama administration viewpoint or strictly one time pop up thing that really means nothing? >> well we've been told about it white house that those bombing, can't call it a campaign when you have 18 bombs dropped in a day. if you remember bombing campaigns by the u.s. military, talking about thousands of

sorties in a day. so this is not a bombing campaign. it is a couple of bombs dropped. the white house told us specifically that will not lead to a u.s. military involvement in iraq. there will not be u.s. combat troops in iraq. i was listening to one of the cable news shows the other night and heard, i think it was howard fineman talking with chris matthews going on about how, gosh, it was just, nobody could have predicted what is happening in iraq today. nobody could have predicted it. not even the u.s. intelligence community. and david and i were joking earlier, david says, he doesn't listen to it. v much anymore. he gets so angry. i happened to be in a public place and had no choice and reaching for my shoe to throw into the tv instead i got argument with the guy behind the counter run renting me a car. i was in iraq a year ago, in northern iraq in exactly these places where isis is taking

over. and everybody knew that they were coming. everybody there knew they infiltrated their towns of mosul. the bishop of mosul knew about this the tray at this arc i got to know, the patriarch of the call deanne church. knew about it and warned bit. elected officials from northern iraq. the kurds knew about it. everybody knew that this was coming and they knew it was coming, why? because we had evacuated our military forces from iraq. prematurely before the job was done. they sacrificed tremendously in the battle of fallujah in 2004 an 2005. they sacrificed again against all political odds during the surge of 2007, 2008. won the military fight and lost the split called struggle after the election of 2009 and barack obama pulled the plug and

essentially told the terrorists, told the jihadis we were out of there and they could have the country. oh, by the way they could share it with iran. because iranians control are or at least controlled up until recently most of iraq. so, i do not think that this show as change of policy on the part of obama administration. it is publicly relations stunt. tragically the people that paid the price are the christians 67 northern iraq being driven out, first time in 1600 years, no mass was said in the cathedral in mosul three weeks ago. the first time in 1600 years. question here. >> you paint a picture of the middle east a year from now, two years, five years, going forward with some focus on isis but

other countries as well. >> there's an old, yeah. there is an old adage in the middle east that the strong horse command respect. and the terrorists, jihadis, the bandits, will respect the strong horse but if the strong horse goes away, they all come out of the darkness and start to play. that is what we have right now. the strong horse has departed the middle east. now i'm not suggesting that the united states should be the gendarme of the middle east, the policeman, should be there with military forces in a dozen countries not at all. but we have to command respect. i think what we saw in benghazi, my initial reaction in benghazi, without knowing the details what had happened was that this was a response to the perception of u.s. weakness.

in the region. and when the united states is perceived to be weak, we will be attacked. inevitably. we will be attacked because there are, there is no lack of jihadis and evil people who would love nothing better than to murder americans. witness what happened with this journalist foley just a couple days ago. and it will happen again. so i think, a lot depends, what the middle east is going to look like in two or five years is going to depend what the united states does. and if the united states continues to act as we are acting today, in other words, stepping back, standing back, leaving a power vacuum, iraq will be in the hand of isis in iran. it will be split between isis and iran. kurds will have a little holdout area in the northeastern part of the country under siege and they may not make it. they may not make it.

iranians will control the southern part of the country. isis, the north and the west. that will become the new afghanistan, launch board for terrorism around the wormed. you will have attacks from those jihadis with european passports, with american passports coming back to this country, attacks all across the world by individuals who are virtually untraceable. you will have muslim communities, david spoke about this on campuses here in the united states, you will have muslim communities across the world, rising up and claiming their right, justice, for their communities. and, it will get progressively worse. >> come up in front of the microphone. >> comment on turkey, the future of turkey with respect to all this and what happens to israel, given the anti-israeli u.s. leader today? >> turkey was a tremendous, powerful and strong u.s. ally up

until about 2009. member of nato. holding the for the, with us, against terrorist forces around the world. cooperating with the united states, working with israel, joint military production, even joint exercises. intelligence all the rest, as erdogan became more powerful and felt more secure and felt he had u.s. support in his turn, to transform turkey frommed into earn secular state to islamist autocracy, turkey broke its relationship with israel. remember the so-called, flotilla of ships going to gaza. and, broke the military cooperation with israel. became an enemy of israel. open enemy of israel. started to cooperate with the republic of iran and

coordinating with kurdish opponents in new york and today turkey is working with qatar to help hamas, to help jihadis in syria and quite possibly according to some sources to help isis in iraq. turkey has barges has really flipped from becoming a u.s. ally to i would say a u.s. adversary remember in the region in very big way. israel will do what israel needs to do. thank god, and, they will do it despite the united states. they would prefer to do it despite the united states. i think israel's democracy is strong enough to survive the worst of president most this country. >> thank you. >> plus. [applause] >> ken, if what you say is true, that iran is behind two major attacks on the u.s., 9/11, and benghazi, which, aren't these considered acts of war?

and is the u.s. government hiding this from us because they don't want to admit there has been these acts of war? >> that is a very good question and i can't give you an easy, straight answer. yes, they are acts of war, clearly acts of war yet there is resistance in political circles and intelligence squirrels to call them by their name. i remember as a young reporter in beirut, my first front page story was april 19, 1983, when the iranians blew up our embassy in beirut. i was one of the first reporters on scene during that attack. later on that year the iranians murdered 241 u.s. marines again in beirut and forced us to withdrawal and we're very proud of it. that was their goal to get us to withdraw. they had been at war with us since they took our diplomats hostage in tehran in 1979. we thought it was over when they gave them back, right, in

january of 1981. they knew the war was just beginning. so from an iranian perspective, they remain at war with us and their goal is to destroy america. and as we know they're developing nuclear weapons. they are working on missiles that are capable of exploding in an emp trajectory, electromagnetic pulse trajectory take out our power grid, should they launch them from close to our shores from a cargo ship or something like that. we know those are the intentions but we turn a blind eye to it. the one bright spot in this tableau is what the united states treasury has been doing and working very hard and very effectively against, to frustrate iran's efforts to use the international banking system to further their terrorist designs. but even that is being scaled back as we scale back sanctions on iran for a, an elusive

nuclear agreement which i believe will simply enshrine iran's nuclear weapons program and make it off limits to any form of international intervention. >> thank you so much. this was so fabulous and interesting. i lived in the middle east for quite some time and one of the things that i perceived with great horror when i was there is the pervasive level of evil in the middle east. everywhere, i mean, it is not just a few people are evil there. there is a kind of a abiding with evil that is astonishing. now, since i came back to america, what i find is the american people have been propagandized into believing there is no such thing as evil. people don't belief in evil here, not really. i would like to know what you

have to say about the fact that what we need is a powerful propaganda here in this country. we need a real campaign of propaganda, don't you think? and don't you think we need some how make the american people understand that there is evil and that these people are absolutely evil? and we must destroy this evil? it is just terrifying to me how naive the americans are. doesn't this just kill you that how naive everybody is? [applause] >> americans are fundamentally a good and decent people. because we are a good and december people, we don't like to believe evil exists in the world. it is very difficult for americans to accept that. you're right, i have clearly, lives experienced evil in the face, face-to-face, up close and personal in the middle east. it exists. it stalks the world.

and there is only one thing to do with evil. you can not compromise with it. you can not negotiate with it. you can not make a deal with it. you certainly can not hope that it will wishing you well. you have to rip it out, destroy it, where you find it. >> i i want to thank you, ken, r this lecture. it's rare to have somebody as informed as you are about these matters come before us. so i really appreciate it. i know the audience does as well. [applause] >> thank you. >> i wanted to disagree with you on one point. this evil that is now flourishing, in the middle east, is going to continue until the

united states flexes its military muscle directly, boots on the ground, bases. we should have had that base in iraq. we need to rearm, we need to increase your military budget and show we mean business. we can't do it with an anti-american president and commander-in-chief like barack obama. i'm not sure republicans have the spine to do it either but that is the only thing that will drive these people back. isis has to be destroyed and if that means sending in the marines, we need to send them in. [applause] >> thank you, david, for that. i would just respond. i've been trying to keep my remarks to those of an observer and author and journalist and

not be overly political. however, however, clearly if you remember the lessons of history, we kept several hundred thousand troops in germany for 50 years after world war ii. why? so the germans would be better germans. we kept hundreds of thousands of troops in asia. why? so the japanese would be better allies to us. all right. in korea, we kept 30,000, we still have something close to 30,000 troops in korea. why? to remind the north koreans that we are still there. how is it that we fight two wars in iraq and there is not a single combat soldier left in iraq or a single u.s. base in iraq? it boggles the mind. [applause] boggles the mind. by the way, by the way, the iraqis would have been very happy and, will be very happy should we negotiate those agreements. we could have