dynamic american family. in fact, i just read a recent news report in which there were punches thrown at a party. so we know it's not going to be lacking for drama in any way. [laughter] >> thank you, ken. [applause] thank you all for coming today. we are adjourned. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. ..

>> for more information on this weekend's 48 hour television schedule, visit us online at booktv.org. >> kenneth timmerman argues that the benghazi attack was an iranian state-sponsored terrorist action pulled off by professional fighters. he says the scandal will end up being worse for president obama than the iran contra scandal was for president reagan. this is about 50 minutes. [applause] >> well, thank you, mark, for those kind words. thank you, david, for this invitation. it's a pleasure to be back here again in this gathering. benghazi was a night of a heroes -- of heroes, of heroism, and it was a night of cowardice.

the heroes were the navy seals, former navy seals, ty woods, glenn 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 pun armed libyan -- 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 loudspeakers all across the compound. everybody could hear it, it said, attack, attack k. be simultaneously, the alert was sounded a mile away 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, started loading them into two mercedes g wagons and then went to see the cia chief of base and said, hey, you know, we gotta go 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 go rescue these guys. so let me give a call to the 17th february martyrs brigade who is on contract with us, at least they're supposed to be on contract with us to do security there and get some 50 caliber gun trucks. ty said, okay, we'll wait a couple minutes. meanwhile, the jihadis have stormed inside. the ambassador has been taken out of his bedroom where he was doing his e-mail and, you know, 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 closet back in the residential area of the main villa that was protected by iron bars like a cage in a zoo, open iron bars. it was not a solid door, it was open iron bars, okay? and he was taken, and he was 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. ten minutes or so goes by, ty goes back to the chief of base and say, hey, boss, we gotta go, these guys are under attack. it's just getting worse. they were getting reports from alec henderson of the command center saying there were more jihadis coming in, and they were heading to the residential villa where the ambassador was hiding. and, again, the chief of base said, no, no, hold in place. we have to get more firepower. another ten minutes goes by. by this point they've found, they've actually managed to get to the compound, excuse me, to the villa where the ambassador is using silent military hand

signals, and now they found the cans of diesel fuel and were starting to douse the furniture in the main living area. and ty goes again to his chief of base and says, chief, we've gotta go, they're starting a fire, they're seeing smoke. and the base says, no, no, hold your horses, we have to get some more firepower. and at that point ty woods says, you know what? exme tyes -- expletives deleted, we're outta here. and he gets his guys together in those two mercedes g wagons and they go the one mile -- which normally is five minutes -- to the diplomatic compound. the first thing that i 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 he got there, a normal five minute drive took them 20 minutes because he was held up by, guess who? the 17th february martyrs brigade, supposedly helping us with security but, in fact, in league with the attackers, and they stopped him at a roadblock for about 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 rear. they had to fight their way in. by the time they made it to the diplomatic, the residential come pound, it was about -- 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, who had managed to escape. he was up there. they could hardly understand a word he was saying because of the diesel fumes which are 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. and so and his men, under fire -- ty 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. 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. it happened so fast, nothing could have been done. it's now 11:15, an hour and a half after the attack started. an hour and a half of constant fighting after the attack started. by this point ty says, okay, we can't get the ambassador, there are more jihadis out on the street, we can see them forming, there are probably a hundred people in the crowd, they're coming in, we won't be able to hold them off. so he sent the diplomatic security guards who, by way, the other four -- the other three, they found hiding in the barracks in their underwear and bare feet. they never fired a shot. the diplomatic security guys who were there never fired a shot. the only weapons that were discharged were by the former navy seals who had come to rescue them. and, yeah, they finally 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's missing, probably dead. they've got sean smith in the car. all of this is being sent back to washington in realtime and also communicated to stuttgart which is the u.s. african command, commanded by general carter hamm who, by coincidence, happened to be in washington this -- that evening. now, let me shift back to washington so you can understand what the response was. 9:42 p.m. benghazi time, 3:42 a.m. washington time. before ty had arrived, 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 of e-mails 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 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 p.m. washington time, 11 p.m. benghazi time, ty woods and his guys are 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 hamm who had been getting reports from stuttgart, and he ran up to see them and is said, hey, we've got a real problem in benghazi, the diplomatic compound's under attack, you might want to inform

the president. here's the best information i've got so far, we've diverted a predator overheld, and it's going to be overhead in about five minutes at 5:05 p.m.. so we'll have realtime, eyes-on intelligence to see what's going on. so they're getting all this literally as they're walking down to the limo to see the president. they talk to him for about a half hour, bring him up to speed on what's happening, and as best anyone that i know has been able to piece this together -- and 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've got a fundraiser tomorrow in las vegas, and this is, this is really bad, and would you please take care of it? i've got so many really important things to do tonight

to prepare for this fundraiser. so you can handle it with my staff, be in touch with my staff, and i count on you. good-bye. 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 hamm, who's a four-star general, the commander in chief of africom, so he was the guy in charge of eventually 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, from washington, what happened was the president of the united states never gave a stand up order. and general hamm understood this very well. he understood that this president when he said, you know, take care of it or do what has to be done, it wasn't like,

you know, jack bauer in "24," go out and break things and kill people. it was, you know, keep this as quiet as you possibly and make sure we don't have any collateral damage. okay. there was a stand down order given that night, and it's not been talked about very much. and it was issued by the secretary of state in person about two hours after the beginning of the attacks. mark thompson, who was a senior state department officer in charge of international security and had been a u.s. marine and was personally familiar with attacks on u.s. embassies is and how we respond -- and how we respond to them made a suggestion up through his command that they should deploy the foreign emergency support team, the fest. now, 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 and over there before the final attacks occurred. she said don't call the fest. so the stand down 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 a cerebral hemorrhage or fall or something that rendered her from the testifying in december of 2012 and eventually did appear before congress in january of 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. well, what they were coordinating was their story, and right after that phone call the secretary of state releases a statement at 10:08 p.m. that's 4:08 a.m. benghazi time before ty woods and glenn doherty were killed, i might add, so they were still alive when the statement came out. and the statement, i'd like to actually rad it to you. -- read it to you. it says: some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a 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 as because of a youtube video. she said: the united states deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. let me be clear, there is never any justification for violet acts of -- violet violent acts of this kind. blah, blah, blah. it is utterly baffling, utterly baffling how she could come up with such bald-face invention, a lie. every single e-mail that was sent back -- and they've been released to congress, so we know what they said -- talked about an attack. brigadier general lovell who was the j2 at africom, he testified in congress, and he said what

did we know? what we did know quite early on was that this was a hostile action. this was no demonstration gone terribly awry. that's what was in the intelligence reporting. that's what was in the state department can reporting. and yet hillary clinton at 10:08 p.m. said, no, no, this is 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 because you don't issue a statement like that without some drafts, people involved in the drafting of it. we know, for example, the talking points that susan rice used went through a three-day process with over a hundred e-mails and different people giving their opinion. so it would be very instructive to see who actually told hillary clinton that 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 mentions a youtube video.

it is invented wholecloth. now, i call this the original spin of benghazi. and you have to ask the question -- that's what i ask in "dark forces," why did hillary clinton invent this story out of wholecloth? i believe the reason that she ip ip -- invented it had to do with a number of things. number one, obviously, the administration did not want to anytime this was a terrorist attack. it was just weeks away from the presidential election, it would destroy their, quote, narrative that al-qaeda had been defeated. obama was not president bush, he actually beat bin laden, budget attacked by -- wasn't attacked by bin laden, right? and got our troops out of iraq instead of into iraq. they kind of destroyed this whole narrative that terrorism was on the wane and the threats to america were disappearing because of the obama policies. but there is much more than that. and it goes back to what i call

the original sin in pep ghazi -- benghazi. and the original sin in benghazi began very early on during the insurgency against gadhafi in march of 2011. and at that time 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 can cutouts of choice were the special forces of the emirates of qatar. in the end of march when gadhafi's forces were bombing the libyan insurgents and everybody thought the insurgency was going to collapse -- they

did, 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, and the cia released a blockover stinger missiles -- a block of stinger missiles from a stockpile in kuwait to the qatari special forces. some of these missiles were brought in by land in a convoy through sudan into northern chad and into libya by ground. now, how do we know this? well, we know this for a couple of reasons. number one, a "wall street journal" reporter stumbled into the abandoned office of abdullah -- [inaudible] quaff my's intelligence chief -- gadhafi's intelligence chief days after the fall of the regime and discovered intercepted communications between a french commander in northern chad because the french still had a force there and his commanding officers talking about a kuwaiti -- excuse me, a

qatari special forces unit, a convoy bringing in stinger missiles. they said, hey, 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 close to president sarkozy what was going on, and they said, 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 say, hey, what do you want us to do with this? the sting or missiles are not our missiles, but our guys can stop it if you want because they've got the convoy. and the answer back from the u.s. embassy was, no, go ahead and let them go. now, there's no evidence so far

that those missiles were actually delivered to the libyan rebels, and they were never used in the conflict, and 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 indict who was steam -- duty who was steamed about this and 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 25, 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 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 that the benghazi select committee can go discover and investigate and look into, and i have spoken to them about this already. that is the original sin of benghazi. now, those missile ises went missing -- 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 gadhafi was killed. remember that wonderful, cute statement she made to an abc news reporter? he said i came, i saw, he died,

referring to gadhafi. that was her summary of u.s. policy in october of 2011. well, she announced during that same trip that the united states 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. and 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 that this shipment was covered by a presidential finding -- was revealed to the public in turkey. they found it. journalists were going down there, they were snooping around. people were getting very upset, they were very worried it was going to get public and the whole u.s. operation to arm secretly the rebels in syria would become exposed.

chris stevens, who knew all the rebels personally, he had spent lots of time there as a special envoy to the insurgents against gadhafi the year before, he was the guy, he was the go-to guy. he'd sit with these jihadis and say, look, we need you to do this in an orderly way and not send the b team in so the shipments get exposed. we have to do this quietly or not do it at all. that's why he was there. so that was the -- the original sin was the arms shipment. now, there's another side of this i want to mention briefly, and then i'll open up to questions, and it's extremely important, and it's something nobody has yet spoken about publicly aside from my book, "dark forces." the people who carried out this attack -- well, we've been told it's ansar al-sharia. now, clearly, there were members present. they were captured on videotape.

their pictures are there, and their actions could be seen. buttal sharia is what i call the pick-up team. these were the guys, the local hires. they were hired to carry out the attack, to fill out the ranks, to -- they were the rent-a-crowd outside that ty woods saw on the roof. they were not the ones who killed the ambassador, they were not the ones who orchestrated the attacks, and they were definitely not the ones who launched the military attack on the cia annex at five in the morning with five mortar rounds, 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 belong 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 the insurgents on behalf of the taxpayer, by the way, as early as march of 2011. they saw the iranians there, they saw iran's surrogate, hezbollah from lebanon, there on the ground. and 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 the weapons going to syria, to the syrian rebels who were their enemies -- remember, the iranians were working with bashar al assad, and the rebels were against them. ..

he said timmerman has spent more face time with iranian defectors than anybody in the u.s. intelligence. because it's gone on for many, many, many years. just about every major defectors come out i have debriefed and spent months with getting their information. one of the things i learned from some of these iranian sources were the names of the heads of the operation of the quds force your let me remind you what i'm

saying. this is a state-sponsored terrorist attack, okay, carried out by the islamic republic of a ram. this was not a bunch of ragtag jihadis who, all of a sudden decided one night they're going to go kill some americans as hillary clinton said or they saw this youtube video. this is a state-sponsored coordinated military terrorist strike against america. with the goal of driving us out of libya, turning libya into chaos, and the stopping arms trade industry. 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 name him in the boat. the person in charge on the ground was a senior quds force officer who spent many, many years in lebanon. money was brought in, and i talk

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

9/11 attacks against america in 2001. the victims, the families of the victims $186 billion judgment against the iranian regime based on this evidence which helped to coordinate. during the time 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 she is an the sunnis for breakfast but, of course, they're not going to work together. we respond by saying, well, gee, really? as i recall, the iranian guerrillas who will do that the ousted the shah of iran were trained by yasir arafat, a sunni islamic terrorist come in south

lebanon. really? i seem to remember that the iranians had been the biggest arms supplier to hamas in gaza in sunni fundamentalist terrorist group. really? gee, the u.s. military is getting people blown up in iraq and afghanistan by explosively formed penetrators produced in iran, supply to the taliban, a sunni fundamentalist terrorist group in afghanistan, and to al-qaeda and iraq, another sunni group. eventually we won that argument. i get classes at the joint counterintelligence training academy in quantico to use intelligence community, and about a year and after had the opportunity of learning at the end of one of these sessions that a person sitting in the office with a very senior assistant to the director of national intelligence working on a rant. and this person came to be

afterwards and said, we changed our analysis on this. we've changed our analysis and we're actually looking into iran's involvement with al-qaeda, and specifically, iran's involvement with al-qaeda in the 9/11 attacks. so the only hopeful note that i 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 i put in a job said, and his successors have said, -- ahmadinejad. which is to destroy the america. thank you very much. [applause]

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

the white house has told us specifically that 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 what the cable news shows the other night and heard, i think it was howard fineman, talking with chris matthews, and he's going on about how, gosh, nobody could've predicted what's happening in iraq today. nobody could've predicted it, not even the u.s. intelligence community. and david and i were joking earlier. david sedney doesn't listen to tv much anymore because he gets so angry. i don't either. i happened in the public place and had no choice but i was reaching for my shoe to throw at the tv and instead i got into an argument with the guy behind the counter. i was in iraq a year ago, in northern iraq in exactly these places were isis is taking over. and everybody knew that they were coming. everybody knew. the christians knew that isis

was there, knew that they had infiltrated their towns on the outskirts of modal. the bishop of mosul knew this. the patriarch i got to know, he knew about it. warns about it again and again. they elected officials from northern iraq, the kurds knew about it. everybody knew. that this is coming into new is coming. why? as we had evacuated our military forces from iraq. prematurely before the job was done. they sacrificed tremendously in the battle of fallujah in 2004-2005. they sacrificed again against all political odds in the search of 2007, 2008. they lost the political structure of election of 2009 and barack obama pulled the plug and told the terrace go to the jihad is that we are out of

there. and they could have the country. oh, by the way, they could share with iraq. because the iranians controlled, or at least control up until recently most of iraq. so i do not think that the shows any change of policy on the part of the obama administration. i think it's a public relations stunt, and tragically tragically the people who will pay the price for the seven christians of northern iraq who have been driven out. for the first time in 1600 years no mass was said in the cathedral in mosul three weeks ago. the first time in 1600 years. another question? >> 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 is an old -- there's an

old adage in the middle east that the strong horse commands respect. and the terrorists, the 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's what we have right now. the strong force has departed the middle east. now, i'm not suggesting the trend it should be the policeman of the middle east, that we should be there with military forces in the dozen countries. not at all, but we have to demand respect. i think what we saw in benghazi -- by initial reaction to benghazi, without knowing the details of 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 is no lack of jihadis and evil people who would love nothing better than to murder americans. witness what happened with this journalist fully just a couple days ago, and will happen again. so i think a lot depends, what the middle east is goin going tk like in two or five is going to depend on what the united states does. and if the united states continue to act as we act today, in other words, stepping back, standing bow, leaving a power vacuum, iraq will be in the hands of isis and arendt put it will be split between isis and iran. the kurds will have a little holdout area in the northeastern part of the country, undersea should and they may not make it. they may not make it big iranians will control the southern part of the country. isis the north and west. that will become the new

afghanistan launch port for terrorism around the world. you will have a tax was jihadists with european passports, american passport coming back to this country, coming back to europe. there will be attacks all over the world by individuals were virtually untraceable. you will have muslim communities, david spoke about this, on campuses in the united states. you will have muslim communities across the world rising up in claiming their right, justice for their communities. and it will get progressively worse. you have to come up in front of the microphone. >> could you also comment on turkey, the future of turkey with respect to all this? and what happens to israel given the anti-israeli, u.s. literature they? >> turkey was a tremendous, powerful and strong u.s. ally up until about 2009. a member of nato, holding the

fort, we thought, against terrorist forces around the world, cooperating with the united states, working with israel, joint military production, even joint exercises come intelligence sharing and all the rest. as aragon became more powerful, felt more secure and filthy of u.s. support in his term, if you wish to consolidate power and to transform turkey from a modern secular state into an islamist autocracy, turkey broke his relationship with israel. we know the so-called flotilla of ships going to gaza, and broke the military cooperation, became an enemy of israel, open any official. started to cooperate with the islamic republic of iran in joint military strikes against the carter's opponent in northern iraq, and today turkey is working with qatar to help

hamas, to help the jihadis in syria and quite possibly according to some sources to help isis and electric security has become, as really flipped from becoming a u.s. ally to i would say a u.s. adversary in the region, in a very big way. israel will do what israel needs to do. thank god. and they will do it to spite the united states. they would prefer to do it with the united states but they will do it despite the united states and i think israel's democracy is strong enough to survive the worst of president in this country. sound like. [applause] >> if what you say is true that iran is behind two major attacks on the u.s., 9/11 and benghazi, which are these considered acts of war? and is the u.s. the government

hiding this promise because they don't want to admit there's an act of war? >> that's a very good question and the i can't give you an eas, straight answer. yes, they are acts of war. kludgy our rx of war. but again there's a resistance i think in illegal circles and also intelligence circles to call them by the name. i remember as a young reporter in beirut, my first front page story was april 19, 1983, with n the iranians blew of our indices in beirut. i was one of the first reporters on the scene during that attack. later on that you the iranians murdered 241 u.s. marines again in beirut and force us to withdraw, and were very proud. that was their goal, to get us to withdraw. they have been at war with us since they took our diplomats hostage in tehran in 1979. we thought it was over when they get them back. in january of 1981. they knew the war was just

beginning. so from an iranian perspective, they remain at war with us, and the goal is to destroy america. and as we know the developing nuclear weapons. they are working on weapons that are capable of exploiting -- exploding in an electromagnetic pulse projectors, which we take our power grid, should they be able to watch them close to our shores from a cargo ship or something like that. we know that those are their intentions and yet we turned a blind eye to the again, the one bright spot in this is what the united states treachery has been doing, and they've been 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 an elusive nuclear agreement, which i believe will

simply be trying iran's nuclear weapons programs and make it off limits to any form of international intervention. >> thank you so much. this is so fabulous and interesting. i lived in the middle east for quite some time, and one of the things that i perceived with great for when i was there is the pervasive level of evil in the middle east, everywhere. i mean, it's not just a few people are evil. there is a kind of biting with people that is astonishing to since i came back to america what i find is the american people have been propagandized into believing that there's no such thing as evil. people don't believe in evil here, not really. i'd 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 again, don't you think? and don't you think we need to some of make the american people understand that there is evil and that these people are absolutely evil, and we must destroy this evil? it's just terrifying to me how naïve the american -- doesn't this just kill you, how naïve everybody is? [applause] >> americans are fundamentally a good and decent people. and because we are good and decent people, we don't like to believe that evil exists in the world. it's very difficult for americans to accept that. and you're right, clearly i've also experienced evil in the face, face-to-face come up close and personal in the middle east. it exist. it stalks the world and there's only one thing to do with the evil. you cannot compromised with it.

you cannot negotiate with the. you cannot make a deal with it. you certainly cannot hope that it will wish you well. you have to rip it out and destroy it where you find it. [applause] >> i want to thank you, ken, for this lecture. it's rare that somebody is as informed as you are about these matters coming before us but i really appreciated. i know the audience does as well. [applause] >> 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 to regulate

boots on the ground. we should have had that base in iraq. we need to we arm. we need to increase our military budget. we need to show we mean business. we can't do it with an anti-american president in anti-american commander in chief like barack obama. and i'm not sure that republicans have the spine to do it either, but that's the only thing that will drive these people back. isis has to be destroyed and if that means seen in the marines, we need to send the men. [applause] >> thank you, david, for the. i would just respond, i've been trying to keep my remarks to those as observer, author, journalist and that the 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. n. 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's not a single combat soldier left in iraq or is in the u.s. base in iraq? it just boggles the mind. it boggles the mind. and by the way, by the way, the iraqis would've been very happy and will be very happy should we negotiate those agreements. but could have negotiate agreements like that with the kurds. we could have negotiate a grimace