and then dry them out the cia succeeded. that it didn't see the global jihad was coming i think is in retrospect a clear failure. that's looking backwards. that's a little unfair to the people at the time to make those decisions. >> and in just a couple of minutes i would like to open this up to questions. looking out amongst the group, i

see a number of people who are deeply knowledgeable and we'll get some good and even perhaps tough questions. i should've mentioned in introducing bruce something that many of you know, and that is that president obama asked bruce to chair a policy review on afghanistan and pakistan. so if you could kind of leave over this story to the lessons learned and maybe some lessons that were not learned in our own engagement in afghanistan. >> i think there's a lot of lessons. first thing i would say though is we are not fighting the soviets more. we did not invade afghanistan unprovoked. we did not go in and kill the communist leader of the country which we have helped impose on the afghans before. we went into for because we were attacked by a terrorist organization based in afghanistan supported by the afghan government.

our warheads u.n. legitimacy. the soviet war was condemned by the general assembly. the only democracy i in the word that voted for the soviet union in the 1980s was india. every other democracy was on the side of the mujahideen. their war encountered a true nationalist insurgency. the mujahideen were able to draw from every element in every ethnic and sectarian part of the country. whose backs, pashtuns, universally. this war as much more pashtun uprising. the taliban is a basically pushtan the organization. the one big similarity is pakistan, huge similar to. pakistan backed the mujahideen, the cia in the 1980s. pakistan backs the taliban today. rarely in one generation deified seymore over again, but on

opposite sides. essentially that's what we're doing. what i think it's clear to say, it's a whole lot issue to win when pakistan is on your side and you were trying to overthrow the government than it is when you're on the other side and you are trying to keep the government in power and pakistan is trying to subvert. the of the lessons i would say is that it's critical defined -- critical to define the mission to the nation that was given to the agency by president carter and then by reagan was clear, understandable, turns into the soviet union or vietnam. in that sense is relatively easy to do. it was probably going to be their vietnam sooner or later. all we were doing was being the quartermaster to making it. if you have a mission that's more vague, like let's say trying to build a modern city and the opposition that is both anti-us not an anti-isis and which will support democracy and

freedom, that's a whole lot more complicated covert operation. one of the lessons, keep it simple. >> what was president zia's main motive for committing himself and the country to the extent that he did? >> zia was a true believer. i found a great quote about zia in reading the memoirs of benazir bhutto. she reported her father pointed zia chief of army staff, went to visit one time in his home, in his office, his home actually. he comes into the house and the entire inside of the house is one picture after another of mecca, medina. and he turned to zia integer turn your home into a mosque. he was really right. zia was a believer. he believed.

he wasn't doing this purely for pakistan national security interest. he was doing this because he believed it was every muslims of duty to fight the godless, atheist communist anti-defeated in afghanistan. zia is a fascinating figure who has yet to have a single english-language biography written on them. i think that's a big lacuna in history of the second half of the south asian, second half of the 20th century. we were lucky in the 1980s. there was a bigger evil than america for true believers to fight. it is conceivable you could get another zia as a military dictator someday in pakistan, and the problem is there's no more soviet union to direct his

animosity. >> we know who killed -- who killed her for? >> zia said that, he died in a crash of ac-130, just having left the demonstration of a new american main battlefield tank, demonstration which was a complete disaster. the tank didn't work and it missed the target when a shot at it. he died in the crash leaving. it is an open question whether it was an accident or sabotage. i think it was probably sabotage. zia had so many enemies, including the bhutto family. that could've been anyone. there is no reliable answer. it is the big ministry of the war in 1980s. not only is it a mystery, it changed the course. if zia had lived, the mujahideen i think more likely would've

taken kabul in 1989 or 1990 rather than in 1992. zia was a much more clever general and manager of the-itis eyes successors under benazir bhutto or mr. bhutto. he came in the office 30 in the office 34 years in the office to do for yourself to check no expense in international relations and the expense in governing anything and chadian army that basically saw her as the enemy, and her as the person they wanted to overthrow. you had a very dysfunctional -- the general headquarters of the mujahideen in other words, lost its commanding general. >> and in the crash you refer to of course, you didn't make much of this in the book, the american ambassador to pakistan at the time was also killed. in fact, i think i we were you're saying at one point, the two casualties of the war were spike dubs, some of us in the

room remember as the american ambassador in kabul, and earning. >> both the died in incidents that were clearly related to the war. dobbs was murdered by come it's not really clear who, some kind of time in his element that may been doing the work of the kgb or may not include work of the kgb. it's not very clear, and arne died a long the accident with zia. but their deaths are related to the war but they didn't die in the combat during the war and that gets back to the central point from the american standpoint, we lost no lives fighting on the battlefield because we never put any boots on the ground. we were risk averse. it's interesting. the british were not risk averse. the british part of the alliance lies at every spring they sent

two or three games of the british intelligence officers and retired commandos into afghanistan to help train and assist the mujahideen with the pakistani support. if you think about it, it is an extraordinarily brave thing to do for a british officer to go into soviet afghanistan to assist the mujahideen. there was no rescue force. if they got in trouble there was no way out. i had the opportunity in doing the research for th the book to interview somebody british officers who did it on the condition that i not name them or provide any information that would identify them. but their stories, going behind the lines, or an extraordinary part of this whole campaign. it shows we could have done differently if we were not risk-averse, we could have sent people in.

>> given the british historical experience in the 19th century with afghanistan i suspect they would've chosen exactly the side that they were on with the famous kipling song in mind. the russians learned the hard way, how true that palm was. is going back to zia for one more question and then i hope some hands will come up. i think you alluded to this when you talked about how, i think you characterize it in the book as zia's mastery of the situation. had he lived, the defeat of the russians would have been quicker and that matter sufficiently diminished the time for the mujahideen to morph into al-qaeda. you want to speculate all little on that? >> i think that's probably true. zia knew how to manipulate the

mujahideen more than anyone else. he controlled the most radical factions, especially the haqqani faction. i think that he would have not made the mistake that the pakistanis made in 1989. they decided in 1980 and once the russians left that the mujahideen had reached the stage in the development of a guerrilla army where they could go from being guerrillas to being conventional army and essentially fight a conventional battle. that was a disaster. the afghan communists could not control rural areas of the country, but they could defend cities and use scud missiles and mass artillery and tanks to fight basically an infantry led force but it was a disaster which the isi was principally responsible for. i don't think zia would've done the. i think he would've done what in

the end to end the afghan comments government, playing on the intel dissensions within it. the afghan communist government fell apart in 1992 for a number of reasons. one, soviets stopped providing any economic aid. number two, the ethnic divisions within the afghan communist party came to a head. ahead of the afghan communist party was abolished in, the most effective afghan communist fighter was in uzbek. he was a brilliant commander of the pro-soviet forces back in the 1980s. a committed communist. also a human rights abuser of monumental levels. is the first figure introduced into the book will of course going to have a conversion to islam, democracy and capitalism in the 1990s, become our ally in 2002 and is on the cusp of becoming the vice president of afghanistan today.

>> and who is going to be the president? [laughter] >> good question. >> we finally stumped him. see if you can do the same. >> my name is doctor donna wells. while i was at church to identify research. do you think we'll continue to rely on pakistan for our intelligence operations? >> that's a very tough question. i alluded earlier that pakistan now supports our enemies. what to me is remarkable is we all know that, and yet we continue to provide pakistan literally with billions of dollars of aid every day. i don't think it makes sense

myself if mr. obama wants to turn over his foreign policy to me. one of the first things i would do is stop military assistance to pakistan. i think i will continue economic assistance. i characterize her policy of providing military assistance to pakistan as essentially a bribe. after 13 years, we know the answer. doesn't work. stop spending good money after bad. it was worth a try in the beginning, but it's not working. on intelligence, i think that we have to be very careful in the dealings with isi. we need them, no question about that, but we need to be very careful. >> what is happening right now? do you think it is true or is it generally a false exercise?

>> might give some context to the question. >> it is definitely true that the pakistani army is engaged in major military operation in the borderlands of infamous north waziristan against the pakistan taliban. the pakistan taliban is the frankenstein of the taliban movement that is turned against pakistan. it is very difficult as an outsider, especially one sitting on massachusetts avenue trying to figure out what's going on in waziristan. my suspicion is that this is a very careful operation that goes after parts of the palace of pakistan taliban that are turned on the pakistani state, but very carefully does not go after terrorists and militants in the area which are long connections to the isi, most notably the

haqqani clan which also operates in this area. so i think what we're seeing in pakistan is the gradual realization that is graded frankenstein. i think at the same time they know better than any of us have big frankenstein is. and not unreasonable strategy is to try to divide frankenstein which means in the end that as mrs. clinton wrote in her book, pakistan will continue to encourage poisonous snakes in its backyard. on the hope that they will only bite not pakistanis. >> do you think the visit that these u.s. special forces paid to abbottabad to get osama bin laden focused pakistanis on the problem? >> what it clearly focus of the pakistanis on that their air

defense system and radar systems was insufficient. [laughter] the pakistani postmortem, which is secret but which thankfully al-jazeera published complete on the website, spends more time focused on the question how did the americans spot on osama bin laden and the more interesting question, who is helping to hide osama bin laden. i think it did though help focus minds, particularly in the civilian government. i think you can make a big difference association between the civilian government and the military. i have to be careful because i know your opinions are pretty strong. i think both the sharif clan and the bhutto clan recognize that this policy of encouraging poisonous snakes in the backyard is ultimately self-defeating for

pakistan. unfortunately, they don't control the people who run the snakes, who put them in the backyard, which is the pakistani army and the isi. i don't think they are convinced yet that this is a mistake. >> how high up in the military do you think it was known that osama was there? how high up in the civilian? >> i don't think the civilians had a clue. i don't think there's very much he or sharif know about how the isi operates. my take on who knew is based on my understanding of what the isi is, and in the interest of candor, i spent a lot of time working with the isi so i know them pretty well. the isi is a professional intelligence organization. you do not get promoted in the isi by blowing up the indices of

other countries or harboring international terrorists, a just because you feel like it that morning. you get promoted because you do what the boss tells you to do. it is a hierarchical organization. the director general of the isi knows what's going on. that doesn't mean they can't be assets of the isi that behave in roguish manner. after all, if you're recruiting and running as your agents terrorists who want to commit suicide, you are not dealing with the most stable human beings in the world. they are going to do things you don't normally anticipate. what i do mean is if the isi knew osama bin laden was in that house, and that certain -- i'm certain circumstantial evidence new the director general of the isi knew, and since the director general of the isi in previous

time, just prior to moving into that house was general kayani, i think general kayani speech the chief of the army. >> just retired chief of the army. >> i'm a college student. i was originally going to ask something similar to the previous gentleman on the north waziristan operation. what i'd like to ask since he yu asked that question for me is, is a similar pakistani policy relating to kashmir, is there an overlap between the organizations that are running those same terrorists policies? and to what level is kashmir and american concerned? obvious that arming the taliban is an american concern but what about -- [inaudible] >> partly in what we want and partly in a previous book entitled deadly embrace, i

looked at this question. i said at the beginning zia was a true believer. for zia, the war in afghanistan was not on an opportunity to fight the soviet but also an opportunity to create a cadre to fight a civil war against india in kashmir. the isi networks that were built to support the mujahideen in the early 1980s, by the late 1980s are now supporting a similar jihad inside of kashmir. the main facility outside of islamabad were all the equipment, all the weapons and ammunition that the cia was providing to pakistan, the saudis and the chinese communist party others were providing was a dual use facility. part of it was supporting the war in afghanistan. part of it was supporting the war in kashmir are probably the

kashmir does matter a lot to the united states. i believe lashkar blago is perhaps the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world. because if they carry out another attack like the attack on mumbai in 2008 they could precipitate the war between india and pakistan and the war between pakistan and india to me is the most dangerous scenario that i can think of for going nuclear in our lifetimes. it didn't get a lot of notice but two days before prime minister modi was inaugurated, there was an attack on the indian consulate in afghanistan. that attack was carried out by lashkar-e-taiba. the united states government has officially said that attack was carried out by lashkar-e-taiba. content of the tag as best we can put together was to take hostages inside the consulate, hold those hostages for ransom

as mr. moody was being inaugurated. how that worked out we would've had an enormous crisis spent quick question but then the lady constantly to bring the microphone to her. just wanted to pick up on the reference to india. what was the principal indian the motive for essentially blessing or supporting the soviet invasion? was it because of the close relationship between india and the soviet union, or was it more related to india versus pakistan? >> i think in this case it was complementary. endura gandhi had gone to the soviet union in 1971, signed the treaty of friendship, gotten soviet support. she detested, she saw in him quite rightly india is nightmare, and they overlap very neatly. that said, to be fair i think

her government was always uncomfortable with being in the position of being only democracy supporting the soviet union in afghanistan. had no illusions about the afghan time in us. it was a marriage of convenience. there was no ideological sympathy. and interesting question is what factors produced zia's decision to bring stenger and? why did he decide to get the water to boil? i think one of the big factors and that was mrs. gandhi was dead. she died just before he made that decision and i think okay, if mrs. gandhi was around, i would be very careful about boiling the water. with her son who is kind of a playboy and a flake, i don't have to worry about him. >> i'm a visiting fellow at

stimson. i look at this region. and what i found is that zia was building his case for getting counter administration to upgrade the bilateral security cooperation and commit to a treaty. and the administration were dismissive of pakistan threat perceptions vis-à-vis india. so while i don't dispute your opening statement that it was the united states does not take any part income you know, spreading or proliferation of global jihad and you would dismiss it as a statistic that history.

there is administrations have been dismissive of pakistan's threat a session. there are a drive towards munich on engaging so hard-core with these mujahideen at a time, had a very strong element to it which you alluded to it when you're answering questions. so i just want to know as to how do you look at it, and does u.s. feel responsible that at some point had the threat perception been taken sicily, pakistan probably would not have had this orientation of supporting, you know, nonstate actors, for example, which are in india today? thank you. >> the first thing i want to say is if you go back and look at the record of intelligence community assessing pakistan in the 1980s, and fortunately we

have several declassified national intelligence. they had no illusions. the intelligence community was telling first carter and reagan, pakistan is building a nuclear weapon. you're not going to be able to prevent them from doing that. it is supporting the war in afghanistan because it believes, its leader, zia, police in global jihad. two presidents decided that it was more important to defeat the soviet union than it was to try to alter the course of pakistan in history. i had the opportunity thank to strobes intersection to interview jimmy carter on this, and he also provided me access to his private diary, and it's clear from that that will before the soviet invasion of afghanistan, jimmy carter had decided that with all of his

faults, hanging zulfikar torching the american embassy in islamabad, killing two american marines in the process, pakistan was too important in the cold war for the united states too cold -- to turn a cold shoulder to and read to work with the pakistanis. i want to be very careful on this question of the global jihad. as i said the cia did not train osama bin laden. we didn't give him weapons. interviewing a lot of cia officers who were involved, osama bin laden wasn't on the raider screen and choke the very, very end of the war, which is an intelligence failure by the way. we should've seen this important saudi individual. that wasn't the priority. the priority was killing russians, not focusing on arabs. that was a mistake. but there is no question that the war itself created the

intellectual environment in which the global jihad emerges to one of the figures i profiled in the book is a palestinian. in 1983 he wrote a book called the defense of muslim land. it is the functional equivalent for the global jihad of thomas paine's comments and for the american revolution. is an inspirational book decorated global jihad. his closest partner was osama bin laden. >> actually i have two questions. one, if i recall correctly, there was one leader in afghanistan and his name was matsuda or something, that a suicide bomber, if the stinger

had not been introduced, how much longer do you think this war would've drunk on? my second question is where was china during this time? how did they feel? why did they feel that way? >> reverse order. the chinese were a critical player. the chinese not only provided a lot of the armaments the mujahideen use. because after all china produced soviet style weapons. so chinese made ak-47's look a lot like a soviet made ak-47. zia was determined during the war to take the war inside of kabul. the cia could not find a rocket propelled weapon that could fire

into kabul from insurgent and drove territory. zia went to the chinese communist to be designed specifically a rocket propelled weapon that could be fired the 20 are so clogged that were needed. zbigniew zabriskie deserves credit for bringing the chinese into this effort although they might've come on their own anyway, but he saw the chinese as a critical player. one other thing. the chinese weapons were universally regarded by the afghans as the best quality weapons they got. the weapons that they got from egypt, they regarded as the worst quality weapons that they got. the chinese did it because by 1979, the china soviet split had gone so far that it wasn't, there was no chinese affinity anymore for the soviet union. they wanted to see russians get killed also. they may not have wanted to see communism come to an end, in

which case the web unintended consequences for them, just like it had for us. your first question about the stinger. the stinger it certainly was the change on the battlefield. with the russians have left anyway? there's a healthy debate about that question among soviet apologist. some so yes, some say no. my opinion is this. whatever the stinger did, it probably accelerated the decision of the soviet to get out. it may not have been the critical factor, but when they started seeing helicopters coming down so fast, i think even the soviet general staff said we can't win this war. we need to either put a half a million men in or get out. >> i am a friend of brookings. >> more than that. member of the family. >> thank you.

going back a little earlier in history, it seems to me that it's not too long before the soviet invasion of afghanistan that we had the church hearings and the accusations of cia as a rogue elephant, and fall onto all of those controversies, reports that the cia was in turmoil, disarray, this organization and was very much, its operations bring much hampered and yet it appears from your account that the cia was operating very effectively in this particular instance. i'm curious to know how that may have happened, how those perceptions apply to contemporary times? >> there is no question that the cia in 1978, 1979 was an

institution shell-shocked, i would put it, not only by the church committee revelation but by the war in vietnam. after all, we lost our quagmire war and to the cia that was a huge defeat. one of the implications of that i think is the risk o of her sad he which is the nsa operations in afghanistan. cia managers did not want to get stuck with being the driving force in the war that might not turn out to be a good thing. so they wanted to keep it as possibly turn out as possible and he wanted to take as few risks as possible. they did not want to have new stars on the wall in the cia headquarters. if you look back at the decision-making of the carter and reagan administration inside the white house, cia is usually

the one who is saying let's do less, not do more. what's striking about that is at the same time they were keeping the congress fully informed, old sides of the hill, both political parties, this was by the late 1980s the cia that was also engaged in illegal, unconstitutional, covert operations in central america, and the famous iran-contra scandal. bill gates had a remarkable ability to compartmentalize how his operations were running. because on the one hand i would argue they were very successful and completely legal, as much as a covert operation can be legal, completely legal operation in afghanistan while he was carrying out rogue, illegal operations in other parts of the world. what it means for today, i think risk of her city -- of her city

is a good thing in an intelligence organization. i think intelligence organizations should be the ones who say to presidents, yes, we can arm the series but you do realize there's a lot of downside to what's going to happen and it's going to be really hard to deny. i think intelligence professionals responsibility is not just to say yes, sir, we can do it, but to say yeah, we can do it but it may look a lot like the bay of pigs when it's all over. i don't know whether they do that today. i hope they do. >> this gentleman and then this gentleman over here. >> he touched briefly on my question and answer to the previous one and that is with the obama administration decision to begin supplying funds to the syrian opposition, what particular lessons learned,

successes or failures, can we take from training and equipping the mujahideen and begin applying it to future u.s. trained equipped programs? how can we avoid some of the intelligence failures that gave rise to the global jihad in the '80s moving forward in the middle east? >> the second thing i can answer pretty simply, and that is to have a 360 degrees awareness. do not focus solely on the main enemy. be aware of what's going on in the office next door to you in the isi. put it differently, spot on the isi so you know what they're up to, and have no illusions. i think there are several lessons. the first lesson is this. both the cia and the military were very reluctant to send in the stinger. the military was reluctant to send this thing because we are state of the armed american shoulder fired antiaircraft weapon. they didn't want to see that

technology fall into the wrong hands. they predicted that if the stinger was provided to the mujahideen it would fall into wrong hands, and we now know and less than six much, probably in less than six weeks both the iranians and the soviets had working stinger missiles which they had been given by different mujahideen caliphate. so first lesson, if you think you can provide weapons only to the good guys, forget it. it's not going to happen. good guys will either give them away, sell the, or be penetrated by the bad guys. or turn out to be the bad guys. don't have any illusions about that. the reagan administration had no illusions about that. that was a risk they decided to take. lesson number two, keep the nation simple. do not try to create -- mission some. do not try to create a freedom loving democratic organization big your fighting an insurgency. people who are fighting an

insurgency are not likely to be jeffersonian democrats. if you don't like that, don't go down that road. and lesson number three, you've got to find a pakistan. unless you wanted it with american boots on the ground, which argue we don't want to do, you've got to find some who was willing to play the role of pakistan and provide sanctuary for this insurgent movement. there are really only two possibilities, the turks or the jordanians. >> i am an afghan american and i will speak just as a citizen and sort of a historian. and i some of my family, some others in afghanistan in the 1980s saw the afghan resistance as it took roots in afghanistan as a national resistance against soviet

occupation. but the moment it became more of a religious war, it mostly had to do with the pakistani ambitions or fears of afghan nationalists of the tensions that existed because of the drawn line and the future of the pashtuns. and as a result in the '80s, a large number of afghan elite to the religious figures and others were either assassinated or marginalized or forced out of the country. despite warnings that this type of an approach at a time was pushing for would lead to some serious consequences. this would amount to a fanatical regime in the future of afghanistan. and then just wondering how much of that have you captured or have you noticed in your

research by the kind of sacrifice and the damage that was done? we have a bigger strategic interest, the more fanatic the fight, the more effective they would be. but i'm just wondering, i think afghanistan feels the effect of that today because of some of the most tainted and fundamentalist elements of afghan society came to the forefront. and we've been dealing with that. >> first things i want to say in response to that is, the afghan people paid a horrific price. i said there were no american casualties. at least a million afghans died. another five to 6 million afghans became refugees. another several couple afghans became internally displaced people. afghanistan, the afghan people defeated the soviet red army. we just gave them the guns to do that. they got very little of the

benefits of victory. and a big part of that was that the revolution was sabotaged or subverted or drawn to the interests of their pakistani neighbor. and the figure most epitomizes the concern of mujahideen about what was going on -- i profiled him in the book. i was able to get access to an unpublished dissertation about him no space on extensive interviews with him. and it was clear, very clear to them that the isi was stealing the revolution for its own purposes. and he was and became virulently anti-pakistan. and we see it today in the

presidential election. abdullah abdullah who won the first round overwhelmingly is the 21st century reincarnatio reincarnation. at the top of that list is the belief that pakistan is not a friend of afghanistan. i just want to raise the point because i think we should finish today on afghanistan without acknowledging that we are at a critical moment in afghanistan history. this election puts afghanistan on a precipice. if it doesn't come out with a good ending, i would not be surprised to see afghanistan split apart right now. i think the obama administration needs to be in this game now, 100%.

what ever you think of the rights and wrongs of the iraq situation, president obama, a disaster in afghanistan after what has just happened in iraq would be the most thorough indictment of his foreign policy. i don't have a rest the other than we need to have a thorough audit of this election. it is astounding to believe that they were six-point 8 million votes cast in the first round and 8.2 million votes cast in the second round. that is the best ground game of mobilization in history of elections. and it just doesn't add up. spent i don't know if this is what about this is full disclosure or a proto- institution plug but i think that afghan is the first brookings nonresident senior fellow to be a candidate for the president of his country. just drop that name in there as well. i would like to ask a two-part

final question, bruce, it has to do with leaders. gorbachev and putin. with regard to gorbachev, in your research did you find evidence that another motivation, or bishop had, for ending the misadventure in afghanistan was that he had other fish to fry, namely to reform the soviet union? so that there was basically a domestic, you know, we have to fix her own country and get out of afghanistan. with regard to what our colleagues call mr. putin, operative in the kremlin, 35 years after the soviet union invaded afghanistan, a post-soviet leader, putin, invaded another neighboring

country, namely ukraine. and there have been, there's some evidence and certainly some speculation that that could be disastrous or at least bad for russia over the long run for reasons that relate actually to afghanistan. i remember as a journalist going to central asia about three months after the invasion, told by central asian authorities that the recent had gone to afghanistan was because, it was the equivalent of a forest fire there and wanted to keep the forest fire from jumping over in to the culturally and historically islamic parts of the soviet union. and putin, of course, has justified going into ukraine on the grounds of basically great russian chauvinism, which i don't think probably plays very well in those parts of the russian federation that are

populated by the descendents of turkic people and mongols and so forth, islamic people in the caucasus and elsewhere. and so i wonder if you given any thought to whether maybe mr. putin could have learned a lesson from afghanistan? >> first on gorbachev. i don't think there's any question gorbachev saw the war as probably unwinnable and a drain on soviet resources, and a barrier to his objectives of reform of the soviet union. so for him getting out was an essential step to a larger -- that reasoning was completely lost by the way on the american intelligence community, which was convinced when the soviets left that the soviet union was not about to reform itself, was about to become bigger and better than ever before.

there's nothing in the intelligence record at the end of the war that suggests the american intelligence committee and even a whisper -- >> eighty-nine? >> eighty-nine, the commander-in-chief right, ronald reagan had a very different view than his professional analysts. putin, kgb officer, stationed in east germany during the war must have followed the war very, very closely. i don't think he is learned any of the lessons of the war. i think that he looks at it from a technician's standpoint, that is only we were smarter spies we could have won certainly from his handling of chechnya. i don't see someone who is trying to defuse islamists sentiments. he's trying to do to the islamists in chechnya with the sodium tried to do to the afghan people in afghanistan. drive th o