>> and now on booktv's "after words," former cia and nsa

director michael hayden provides an inside look at national security. he's interviewed by james woolsey, former cia director in the clinton administration. >> host: mike, first of all very fine book. enjoyed a lot. going to start right off with a couple of interesting chapters in the middle. one about pittsburgh and her history of growing up there in the same neighborhood. and the other about your family and what it's like to have a family in the midst of espionage. i thought you might want to say a word about those before we jump into things like metadata and the rest is the first of all, and you. i didn't have a chapter on me in the book i had the manuscript and the publisher says what about you? so i went ahead and put one together. as you suggest i put it near the

end. it all began on a dark and stormy night or anything. it's tied to a speech i gave at duquesne university in 2007 after i was struck at the cia. to a graduating class. duchesne was my alma mater. i use that to pay that off of my expert experience and now i brought with me to cia. catholic liberal arts education or i make in the book i was in the american air force before i was in a classroom that didn't have a crucifix in it. wonderful, broad, culturally based historically-based education which stood in great state. kind of values based from a parochial school to the catholic high school to detain university and, of course, from my parents and then it was in pittsburgh, which you know as well as i kind of blue-collar town even though it's kind of got a white-collar economy now. still had a blue-collar style of

life and culture. i quote an article by ernie pyle, famous world war ii correspondent before he was somebody, before the war he was traveling to the united states visiting pittsburgh. wrote an article which was pinned to a bulletin board on top of what we called the incline, one of those initiatives across in downtown pittsburgh. he characterized the city nationally in 1939-1940. this place just goes to work. so that's what brought me up. that's what brought me, that's what i brought to the job at the cia. >> host: i want to leap to a subject that you deal with more than once which is dominant many aspects of our debate on intelligence in recent years here in the u.s., and that's metadata. it used to be the case back when people just wrote letters in

longhand and put stamps on them, that there was something a thing called a male watch which would let the government tell the post office if you see anything coming to jim woolsey are going from jim woolsey want to keep track of the address and the return address and the postscript end date, and that's it. presumably if they saw woolsey get a lot of mail from a mafia figure they would take further steps. it strikes me that both on stella wind would you do with early in the book, something to do with right at the beginning of her time at nsa, and with respect to snowden, there have been a lot of misunderstandings of people thinking that when you're keeping track of the cup was keeping track of the outside

of the envelope, whether it's a letter or e-mail, that they are also reading the message. people got very scared and worried about that. could help clear up what's going on? >> guest: there's so much to be said about that. jim, you're right. the public a stampede into what i call the darkest corner of the room. i blame a lot of that on how the press, some of the press covered it. frankly, we should embrace all of it of that response with ourselves. we probably could've been more forthcoming pre-snowden osha been far more agile post snowden telling our story and explaining what was we're doing. by to look at the essential elements as you describe, metadata is literally the outside of the envelope for electronic communication. as you said american law enforcement traditionally has a good look at the outside of the envelope. the supreme court decided that

the fact that her phone call, you called, when, for how long, also is essentially the outside of the envelope. a very fundamental case in 1979 smith v. maryland the court held that just like the outside of the envelope, telephonic metadata had no expectation of privacy and, therefore, was not constitutionally protected. so when we gathered all of that did it after 9/11 and we discovered the wind program, to be fair, congressman limited access to metadata in the fight to act. the foreign intelligence surveillance act but it was not constitutionally limited but it was limited by statute. and after 9/11, the president using his article to commander-in-chief authority decided that to the degree of fisa statute stop the commander-in-chief from doing

that, the fisa statute had to be unconstitutional because it was limiting his own and your article to. by the way that stood out. that has stood up in court. on two occasions the appellate court said we take a has given e president has the constitutional authority. so we gathered the data. out of respect for american privacy, we didn't. we gathered the data. we put into for want of a better term, a lockbox where it was just lying there fellow. we didn't try to create the relationships. we didn't run algorithms against it for anything. which is frankly, practice in business. when we get knowledge of what we called a dirty number, we have a safe house in yemen, we've never seen this one before, this phone is really worrisome, i wonder if that phone has ever called the

united states? i'm being a little cartoonish year. we get to go to the? >> guest: and say hey, anybody hear talk of his own in yemen? were in new york. a number in the bronx raises its hand, will come about once a week if we didn't get to say who did you talk to? i have now completed my explanation of the metadata program. that's all we did. there's kind of a nervousness out there among far right, far life again left -- far right, far left. i don't care if you use it again, i do what the government to abuse it again post back no good deed goes unpunished or catch you pushed to the ultimate legal possibility he might have gotten less of an angry reaction. >> guest: maybe. to give an anecdote, i'm on a panel, keith alexander is with

me. eric schmidt from google issue. we are talking with mr. eric says look, you have to understand how powerful metadata is. you can run algorithms, you can the relationships, on and on and on. we go that's all true, eric, but we don't do that. all we get to do is take it any of those numbers called up one? >> host: know and believe me when i said google and amazon particularly together along with saving some of the companies like this who managed data, they know a lot more about you and what you buy and what sites you visit and so forth in the u.s. government does. >> guest: the public discussion got worse. a lot of folks should know better who say consistently, even after someone may try to explain this to them, they would say consistently, and then come and then if you really get interested in him has called the number they can simply click on

the number and get the contents of the call. my explanation of that is that's not a violation of the laws of attorney, that's a violation of the laws of physics but you can't do that. it's not physically possible. >> host: let me turn you to another simple, easy going subject, waterboarding. i have been in many discussions about this and i'm curious as to your views, make them larger clear but perhaps not precisely clear in the book. our navy seals and special forces, many of them, iraq's most our waterboarded as part of their training just think they are. house are a whole bunch of american airmen. when i came to see a might former deputy secretary was an abc. there's also the case that some journalists and authors act in the interest of you to go happens of waterboarded said he could write better articles for magazines and so forth.

>> host: the test for torture is not simple and clear. but i don't know any other things call torture by anybody such as, say, putting bamboo shoots under one's fingernails that is done by journalists to see what it's like when that is done as part of our navy seals training. there's got to be something a bit different about waterboarding which might put it in the same category as, for some purposes, that you put i think sleep deprivation into, which was in some difficult circumstances, if the potential payoff is saving lives could be substantial, you could limit someone's ability to sleep if they were a terrorist suspect, prisoner, whatever. you think of this waterboarding in the same way or no traffic i

get in sense about the caveat that if i get into some of the specifics. you're right, i treat this in some depth in the book. not because i want to self justify frankly. all the waterboarded was done years before i got to the agency. but to try to create an historical record i do that to the best of my ability in the book. and you're right, i do make a distinction that there's something so a vote of greece are always wrong. you can't do under any circumstance. then you've got some things over here no one has any about the thing that is body of steps in the middle that didn't, and to be perfectly candid, waterboarding is way over here. it's on the edge. so what i say, and i repeat in the book, is that to judge whether or not waterboarding is ethical, moral, legal, appropriate, you need to understand the circumstances in which you find yourself.

and even once you digested the totality of circumstances, honest man can only differ. i didn't use waterboarding. i was part of the administration when we took waterboarding off the table. that's because i different circumstances than george tenet do. i had more penetration than al-qaeda. i do better knowledge of their threat profile. i had more legal restrictions. congress had taken some steps. i removed it but that was no judgment on what had gone on before. let me finish with this. when people ask me what you have done it, my answer is, this is from the heart, i repeat this in the book, i said my aunt is i thank god i never had to make that decision. and for those who are quick to criticize, they may want to thank god, too. that someone else stepped up and made that tough call. >> host: which is kind of what some aspects of intelligence or about, making decisions that nobody else will make us make in

an infinite great area as you know. >> host: let me ask you about khalid sheikh mohammed. there was a dispute, still ongoing i suppose about whether or not he being the only person who was waterboarded a substantial number of times, as distinct from once or twice, whether or not the waterboarding of them produced information from him that did, in fact, help lead us to discover osama bin laden's courier or been wondered what is your view on that? >> guest: it would be nice to have this golden thread and say ding, ding, ding, that's so obvious. but you've been in the same office i worked in, jim. there's no golden threads. there are hundreds if not thousands of threads edge into if you're really good in a fabric that gets you where you to where you want to be. so did just hit a couple data point. it wasn't waterboarding that

made them talk. it was sleep deprivation. okay? so we did use waterboarding. but at the en end of the it wase of the other techniques. having said that, there is the difference and how leachate mohammad before and after the eit, the enhanced interrogation technique. this was totally defined. this was more cooperation. it didn't turn into a boy scout or patriotic democratic all right, but he was more cooperative over here. in fact, gave us large volumes of information including information that help is on the courier. now can i do this began.com began at? gap that? it doesn't work that way. me give you the way i explain it again and the book at the bottom of my heart. i cannot imagine any operation like what happened at abbottabad ticking place that did not rely on that shoppers food warehouse

of beverage we got from the 100 plus detainees. it was like the encyclopedia al-qaeda is to. >> host: and now with the ease of, once you find them which point it is very hard but once you find the terrorists to be able to kill him with, say a hellfire from a drone, along the afghan-pakistani border, that is something that is still doable technologically for us now in ways that it hasn't really ever been before. and as a result we've killed a lot of people that if we captured them, we might get a good deal of information from the but we can't get information from them if we can't sometimes use enhanced interrogation

methods, or at least something that is not over the border but on the tough side of the spectrum that you've described. i've characterized this in the past as treating terrorists like trout in certain streams, catch and release. you catch and hold for can't get any information, and released them. it seems an odd use of time. >> guest: we haven't done quite the catch and release but i will offer you this. we have made it so legally difficult and politically dangerous to capture and hold someone that we seem like we just default to the kill option. now, jim, if we had our successor john in your, he would deny can no, no, no, we are still in the capturing business. if we have a chance and so on. john is probably speaking from his heart, too big but if you

just look at the numbers, since january of 2000, i probably have more fingers after that we people that we have captured and held for american interrogation. >> host: do you think that's in part because we're pretending the rules of criminal law and criminal justice applied to what we are supposed to do with respect to terrorists or and ignoring the fact that we are at war with terrorist movements? >> guest: that's one of the things i really tried to emphasize. because in the public debate you've kind of got the default option that if you're not treating graduate in the criminal justice system, then you are acting in a lawless way but what i tried to point out is stop stop stop, we have multiple legal structures in which we can operate. you got the criminal justice system which is very useful and don't give that up, but you also got the laws of armed conflict. but the two presidents and the

congress say we are at war with these people. and, therefore, if we choose, if that gives us more potency, we can operate in any particular operation under the laws of armed conflict, not under the laws of criminal justice. >> host: one more easily characterized simple term, weapons of mass destruction. i'm particularly curious about why they got into the habit of talking about wmd, or weapons of mass destruction, instead of talking about each weapon independently? one produces biological weapons in a very different way. if you turned it into powder you can have huge volumes that come once they are liquid, in powdered form in the backseat of a volkswagen. chemical weapons are manufactured completely different of course they nuclear

weapons, and people get confused in talking about wmd. but the government has never tried to make this clear. wide? what's going on? >> guest: one of the underlying themes that i try to address is despite your inclination and mine, we are the secret service, we are looking out for your welfare. first of all that never really worked and what doesn't work in today's society with such a high demand for transfer to the in our successes are going to continue we did in the cost of big business is transparency. that's just not tending to the change the political culture. there may be a real benefit to that because you are telling the american people precisely what it is you're concerned about. you are exactly right. let me parse out how we thought that wmd with regard to terrorism, for example. we always said, can buy a new

could disperse them nuclear detonation by jus this giving to them in the order of probability. so we just kind of wmd. you know as well as i do, we parse it much more tightly inside the business. the american people are pretty smart. they could get that explanation. >> host: one thing to put in the book, the first time i've seen it in work like this, this very important, which is if one is enriching uranium up to a level of 20%, which is what you need for some medical uses, you have done about 90% of the work necessary to get it to weapons grade. >> guest: it's a geometric progression host but not a striker. and i think there's a lot of misunderstanding about that. people being relatively relaxed

about iran having, let's say, some 20% enriched one type or another during the debate all this going back over years. but that's another subject that has never really been clearly explained effectively to the public and to journalists, or if it has been explained, people don't pick it up. >> guest: i tried to bear my about the iran question. i am uncomfortable with the joint coverage the plan of action with a new could do. i end of the chapter saying something along the lines of, i don't think we would have bought this deal but it's not like we had a better idea either. so this has been a problem that is bedeviling us host the better idea, captain of the sanctions aspect guess but i understand what i'm trying to suggest this is a very, very difficult -- >> host: it is.

and one last -- >> guest: on this progression thing, one reason i'm uncomfortable with the iranian nuclear deal is that if it works, okay, if it does everything we've wanted it to do and no one cheats, will they cheat? of course the key. that's what they do. was achieved in a way that it matters? maybe not. because they just wait 10 years. they will be an industrial-strength nuclear power never more than a few weeks away from enough fissile material for a weapon. >> host: keypoint. let me ask a set of questions that people always ask me and i imagine that ask you, which are your favorite. spy novel, spy newbies. whether or not any of the movies really have anything to do with reality -- spy movies.

i've offer an example that is in the espionage world. it's often hard to find but there is a film several years ago, a german film called the lives of others. about germany in the 1980s before -- >> guest: electronic movies. see that. >> host: it's as good as movies get about really what happens in intelligence, this thing from battle scenes and so forth. >> guest: one of the reasons i wrote was actually kind of pull the veil back, you know, ma let people see into the nature of the own security services. i mentioned there's something about, i've been around the world talking to cia officers. never met jack bauer. never even met jack ryan. [laughter] okay?

and so although there's truth in fiction as you know, you and i talked about the forms of art. i wanted to show all of the reality in terms of here. taking that and now moving into the realm of fiction, two or three examples. number one, the best written piece on cia i think it's actually david ignatius is first article, agents of innocence. it was reviewed on cia website which is very unusual. i still remember one of the lines. agents of innocence as a novel. it is not fiction. >> host: it was really -- >> guest: based on robert ames of the no relationship to the other. but bob ainsworth -- aims was remarkable officer in the station she. when he was killed when the

embassy was blown up, this is not exactly a biography but it's close and it really does come i completely agree with you, it really has come to judge of what it's like to be an officer. >> guest: i teach at george mason i want to talk about covert action. i signed the book. we just talk about what's in the book. that's pros. in a more visual medium i will bring it to. one is homeland. okay? here's my short summary of olympic everything in the foreground, that's wrong. people out of cell phone out at langley, people aside on a but you're never going to happen. but the background, obsession, focus, nation. it rings really true. and then let me pull out "zero dark thirty" witches the abbottabad rate. there are many things in there that are artistically correct but are not factually correct.

i actually touch upon this in the book. i say look, they say, for example, that there's a straight line in the movie between enhanced interrogation and getting to abbottabad. in real life they were connected. we discussed, but it wasn't like this. it's like this. the first 20 minutes of the movie are alleged cia interrogations. infinitely over the top. that said, i mean, we weren't very nice to a couple dozen people. so artistically correct, not actual accurate. then you have the heroine. it was a team effort but it wasn't an individual effort, but again the artistically correct versus action to correct. i will tell you 15 that got bin laden was a band of sisters. they were comprised of women. they were working on that

problem before chasing bin laden was cool for the rest of the agency hosted and on interrogations, at least in terms of literature, my favorites are smiley's. let me ask you this. as you and i know at a lot of other people know, of course, the cia for out of a military organization, the os as. as a result of that heritage, the full-time employees of the cia to operate particularly overseas uncle officers, not agents. cia officers recruit agents inside al-qaeda. fbi agents recruit informants inside al-qaeda. why can't hollywood, some people get this right? >> guest: it actually insider code that i use personal. if they get it wrong, all right,

you really don't know what you're talking about. it's a great tip off. >> host: i had a guy claimed to be a cia they officer. he did tha the wrong. i didn't get into much time. what about the concern, the issue of whether what we do in the intelligence business, can be characterized by something very different than what one might say officers military and particularly special forces, they are trained to kill it but they don't lose track of their reality and go killing their comrades and colleagues. it virtually never happens. whereas in the intelligence business, in a way officers, clandestine service officers,

are taught to lie cheat and steal for the computer a lot about who they are. basei've had difficulty getting people to depart from logical correctness and to admit that, that what come as what we really do. ..

so right in the middle of the book i actually take this issue on head-on and i began with a quote with a dylan song in the 60s come aside three of the double album blonde on blonde. the line is when you're operating outside you really have to be honest. and i followed very quickly by saying cia doesn't operate a typo law, at least not outside america. then i go on. i mean this from the heart and make as several in the in the book that the moral responsibility, the more weight you place on someone to act the

way you just described is an incredibly difficult, moral burden. i talk about going down to the farm for graduation after a field training course in talking to the graduate and actually telling them about this moral responsibility. i said you will cultivate sources. people agree to cooperate with you, they are placing their fate in the fate of their families in your hand. you may be feel they face of america these people ever need. never forget your moral responsibility that you've embraced by recruiting this person or that person. so jim, again i stress this. we can have mistakes because are always operating on the edge of low probability shot as you well know. we can stand mistakes, but we can't stand disarmament.

and if you've gotten officers was not totally candid, you have no use for them. the mac let me turn to iran. the rising quite vividly said about 8% of your focus at one point. >> guest: actually, the president-elect says focus on iran. i asked the question and when i'm describing this in chicago, december of 08, 80%, mr. president elect. >> well, there is that and then your formulation by using the initial three things to focus on a counterterrorism. would he tell us? >> guest: people he is asked, what is your priority?

i respond with washing off the bat suit. counterterrorism, counter proliferation, rest of the world. that is not a happy description. there is a lot of stuff in the rest of the world that we are coming in a distant third to terrorism and proliferation because they were so demanding. that is my honest assessment of where we were. >> host: iran has distinguished themselves by being number one terrorist in state in the world. and by lining a great deal, which is as i understand it there point of view recommended, not just tolerated. i think it is important for people to understand what happened with respect to the

issue of whether iran was there was not in the process of reacting to iraq or was back under the process of trying to build up itself such as a way to dominate that part of the world. god clearly was worried about iran as a result of the iran-iraq war, one new report suggests that the interrogation of him by george peter fbi agent, a very effective interrogation indicated that he in fact did no longer have an early period of time weapons of mass destruction, but he did

everything he could to convince the world that he did have them in order to deter the iranians are not of course have reverberations inside americans. >> there's so much to look at. one of the things that i stress is the second most discussed topic in the oval office. terrorism and iran and other stuff. we talk about other stuff and not that any of them are technically number three. terrorism and then it was iran. president bush used asked me to kinds of questions about iran. how much do they have there and how much are they had reached and so on? the other question he gave me related an incident in the chapter they appear the other question was how did these guys make decisions? i always wanted the nuclear questions because this is an incredibly opaque society and very difficult to penetrate. i tell the story that president

bush was a little bit impatient. i had a good relationship with that. he had some regard for me and i certainly have a great deal for him. he shuts a neighbor couple times. look, i get it. not korea as a closed society. where tens of thousands of americans going back and forth between los angeles every summer. how come we don't know more? the answer was it is just a tough nut to crack. they've got good security services. frankly i don't read many iranians really understand how iran makes decisions because of the different powers. >> host: i want to turn to the new york police department. you had a fascinating positive the cia clearly often enough

operates overseas. they have offices here in the united states and if you're going someplace americans don't normally go common emr and you want to overtly be glad to come back and chat with somebody who works here. that is not covert. that is not compensated. just some citizens do. but it is everything overseas whereas domestic, fbi, crime. how did the cia get together with the new york police department and why and what was going on? >> so this is part of the legal ambiguity that permeates the book. what i need is for well over a century, we decided to protect

our security and liberty and putting stuff in separate boxes. one of her year, domestic over here come intelligence over here. one person over here. the attacks of 9/11 were right down that, right between foreign and domestic law enforcement intelligence. so out of moral responsibility, we had to close that theme. so congress actually legislate the fbi messick intelligence service. that is kind of a cultural here. in addition, we always have a special case. i mean, new york is certainly in america. this is a truly international city. one third of the population wasn't worn in the united states. one third. this police force is twice as large as the next largest

resource in america. or than twice as large as the chicago police force, so we are talking about great scale. so ray kelley under mayor bloomberg had a very aggressive intelligence program that we actually thought it was within our responsibilities to try to support. so we sat up a tight liaison relationship with the n.y.p.d. they didn't think it was controversial, so-called mosque calling and other things. and i would not recommend what n.y.p.d. did here. but this is difference. this is a special case. we worked very hard knowing that new york was a special target that we would have a special relationship with the n.y.p.d. dave: who ran points out they

were 17 down against new york this time he was there and al qaeda was over 17. >> people like dave -- [inaudible] i want to ask you about a couple cases that protect people. we both run into this. we caught him on my watch, that several members of congress and the senate were particularly upset because no one was fired over it here it doesn't matter how many times i explained that people who would have been fired were all retired and you can't fire someone who's already gotten tired. at times often are out of point. you have deals with issues that arose before you became director

in the beginnings of some that didn't manifest themselves until after. i was particularly intrigued by the case of the woman who had wrongly identified hamas to. tell us about what happened there because i thought it spoke very agreed to how you handled it. >> guest: thank you for saying that. in fact when i was happening i thought it was an easy decision and now we look back it was an easy decision. but it appears to have been -- [inaudible] it appears to be controversial. because it suggests -- what is the right word? the moral dilemma, the moral conflict and pressure is at an agency to get to the point. we picked up someone, actually the macedonians picked up

someone, he looked suspicious. we did our check. we thought an analyst but added to the best of her ability, decided this is somebody we really need to talk to you. he was interrogated. the agency was actually slow and not gain after it realized this is not -- this is not what we were looking for. it took several months to finally release them and send him on his way. that part of the story actually theories because how can he did not do more quickly and so on. the inspector general asked me to focus on the animals who had made the decision we need to talk to this person and take custody. they wanted me to form an accountability board, kind of a

jury of your peers to make a judgment. i got absolutely not. is the direct their, you are responsible for the overall health of the agent he and success of the mission. i said if i've been an analyst for creating a false positive, i will be teaching every analyst in this agency that the one thing you have to really make sure you avoid is any false positives which would then mean the analysts would be plane back from analytical judgment in order to be safe than we would probably have more true positives get through because a false positive, bad things could happen to me. if i skipper richard positive they won't happen to me. in conscience, how could we

possibly do this? this is just not going to happen. by the way, one of the best analysts we had. what i put on a jury of their peers? [laughter] so it was easy for me. you have this urban legend of accountability for mistakes. this permeates the book. you walk into the concourse, go up the stairs, george h.w. bush, one of our predecessors. but to the left and there is a barrel of lady liberty. we accomplish what others cannot accomplish. we work in a very narrow state. no one is asked to work in, no one else is allowed to work in. we live in a space -- i was doing a briefing downtown. they ran fine and, talking about

global situations. this is going on in the world. someone has actually resident in the city and people would know sesame, general, on a scale of zero to 10, how would you rate the cia analysis? is that the first thing you have to keep in mind is we don't do eight, nine or 10. if you can get to eight, nine or 10, they asked the department of commerce the question. and that's what i try to display. going back to it actually happened inside the security services and inside the cia, real people, extraordinarily only in that they are asked to do extraordinary things. >> very good. i want to ask you who you worked

with really stands out to you by somebody who would go the extra mile to get the right thing done. i will tell you whom i miss. charlie wilson the congressman. the house appropriations committee, we never would have gotten it done without charlie. he would miss the money around here, not breaking any laws or anything, but being on the appropriations subcommittee for defense. he had a lot of flexibility. the combination greater than that is the executive branch together with the real flexibility that he had made it possible for us. he and i would sit there in the $500,000 from one account to another one because we are talking about big money here. he was just a terrific. >> i had thought about this.

a couple things come to mind. i don't mean to be self-serving to the administration i stared. someone like steve hadley, i could have a straightforward conversation. i recounted it is these kinds. i've got a decision to make and it is my. i will make a decision that i want to let you know that. in essence, i don't know that i was even inviting you to be a sounding board. irish is given a warning that i'm governor and they have to be pulling me out. he was forever stable and forever want to cover your back. i got invited to be on the price. so mark mansfield comes then and

says "meet the press" here. steve, i've been invited to be on the press. he said good, good luck. the political guidance. so he had to come in the agency remained but actually allowed us to stabilize. i'll throw one more name at you. i got selected to be director and a process that i laid out here. john negroponte out here in new york. dnr wants to talk to you. yes, sir. okay. i got a pretty good understanding what it was. i walk out to my other office to

the executive assistant and i find the use retired and made to have an unhappy incident at the agency. they tracked him down in a rather station. i got in touch with stephen said would you ever consider to be a deputy or cia? he said it really depends on who is the director. steve, i'm not at liberty to discuss that. but i'm the one making this call. he said i get back to you. about two hours later he has to talk to kathleen. he said okay. if you're going to be number one all happily come back. we had a wonderful relationship. get that 5:00 ct meeting. you're making decisions and very

often and say we are going do acts. it was as a friend. another time steve and i were in the room after a particularly edgy covert action decision and everyone else left the room. steve is looking at me and i'm looking at steve. his cleveland browns at the pittsburgh steelers. do everything to buy some western pennsylvania and eastern ohio make that kind of decision? >> steve and i were in the law firm and negotiated settlements occasionally together and we were negotiating, guess who got to be the good cop and who is the bad cop?

>> host: you had something happening when you first went to the agency. fort meade went down and it was obviously an embracing experience were concerns about the future of electronic infrastructure government, national security particularly do you think are salient and what are we really need to do about it? >> it doesn't come first chronologically in terms of the timeline, but it's the first chapter in the book because it was such a powerful experience with me. i get a phone call i think it

was a monday night. i'm sorry. but he mean? we were unable to move back. there were still collecting data, but we couldn't move it, process and analyze them so long we stayed a bit more than 72 hours, which means america was pretty much not collecting signals of intelligence for half a week is enough. that's a big deal because it's your skirmish line for events coming at you. so i taught me several things. number one, we better get in gear to modernize our i.t. system. i've been direct or 10 months and i knew i had inherited a national treasure.

i also knew was in trouble. assigned technologically behind. this thing goes belly up. i internalize the lesson. there is no course of action i could set out on that would be more dangerous. and so, the condition of the technological psychic lesson. move out. actually, we outsourced it. we gave it to a private contractor and is the genius of the american industry not constrained to the pattern of american federal budget name to refresh our i.t. and get us somewhere close to the 21st century. >> host: very interesting. i've been concerned about the vulnerability of the electorate.

generally to cyber, a lecture and a magnetic pulse of the short range and detonated by a nuclear weapon up in orbit. they are just a number of things they could do to take down the operation of our electronic standardbred and it would probably have first and in some ways most robotically our intelligence. i write the manuscript kind of roughly chronological. i get it all done and i ago i don't have any ink on here. true story. i'm thinking i'm kind of done here, like wait a minute. i've got a little snippet here and a little snippet here, but no abrogation of the cyberdomain. i sat and started to write and it just gushed out of me in terms of the importance of what you're describing and how much it has fundamentally changed

american life, the way we fight wars, the way we collect or protect intelligence. actually when i was done writing mac, i kind of step back from the section and said this pretty detailed history of an evolution from the outside looks slow and for those of us in government to get to the tailored access operations office and national threat operations center and to get to cyber command, but fundamentally we built a structure in the u.s. government to conduct operations in the cyberdomain in about a decade. that is the speed of light for government agencies. anyway, i really try to lay that out. i talk about moral dilemmas.

we can be fairly accused of militarizing the cyberdomain. i don't think that is quite accurate. i'm sorry if we are better at it and were actually more public about it. so we do get the accusation of militarizing it. i actually fall back to the cyberdomain as a domain. land, sea, air, space. nobody complained about navies. a lot of people think navies keep the comments common. so american power in the cyberdomain is controversial. i take that on head-on. the last chapter is something along the lines of here we are and now we have to live with the consequences. >> host: takes just a minute and expand for me on your fascinating characterization of the four cia cultures, service

>> fighter pilots and the analyst being like a tenured faculty and university, the people who make things operate and essentially fellow steelers fans and the science and technology people. >> is one of the parts of the book i really enjoyed writing. if you thought espionage, family life and bureaucracy. i bring out different aspects into it. one of them is the aging cia culture. they drive down the 1123, look for the ¢-cent-sign. i make the point, it is never singular. on a good day it is a collective

noun. most days it is plural. you've got issued this for fundamental directories. john brennan is trying to cut through those. >> host: a subject for another day. you've got to learn to deal with each. >> host: i love your final quote in one chapter and i'm going to close about because of the way you operate as well as a great attitude people in senior positions said you are the only superpower in the room, but don't act like it. just a vast array. that was my guidance to our station. thank you. >> thank you.

>> "in depth" is next. author and new yorker staff writer jane mayer talks about her books and takes your questions. she is the author of bestsellers landslide, the french justice, the dark side and "dark money." >> host: author jane mayer, when we talk about the koch brothers, who are we talking about? >> guest: well, we are talking about