♪ you're watching book tv on c-span2, every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. c-span2, created by america's cable television company as a public service, and brought to you today by your television provider. week nights this month, we're featuring book tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span2. and tonight, we focus on history. first, johns hopkins university professor martha jones explores the right of black women to vote. and david davis the first wheelchair basketball teams comprised of world war ii veterans. later, a book about the federal government's forced migration of native americans to territories west of the

mississippi in the 18th century. enjoy book tv this week and every weekend on c-span2. >> my name is karen greenberg. thank you so much for joining us here at the center on national security at fordham law. we're delighted to be bringing you this afternoon's conversation. with me today is chris whipple, award winning author, journalist, documentary maker. his new book is "the spy masters". can you see it? how the cia director shaped history and the future. and we'll talk a lot about this book today. first, i just want to say, thank you, chris, thank you for joining us. >> a pleasure to be here. thanks for having me. >> this is actually a wonderful read. when i started it, i was sort of like, oh, no, this is going to be too much information, i won't be able to take it in. it's fantastic. it's based on, in addition to your own knowledge and research, it's based on over 70 interviews and you've

interviewed, among those, the leading directors of the cia. living directors of the cia. except for the current one. and it's really not so-- i'm going to stay it out there. it's not so much about the cia directors as about the cia directors and their relationship to the white house and the president. would you agree with that? >> yeah, well, thanks for the kind words about the book. one of the things i really tried to do, maybe above all, was to humanize these directors and i was lucky, because it's a cast of characters that john la coray never could have dreamt up. bob gates, prescribed him to me the james bondsion character, cigarette in one hand, martini in the other and walk into the oval office and tell lbj that the domino theory was flawed

and going forward to bill colby who to me was kind of the vito korleone of the ceo and then bill casey and you've got a cast, an amazing cast of characterings all the way up to gina haskell, the first woman to run the ceo. you're right, the book focuses a lot on the relationship between the president and the cia director. it's an almost impossible balancing act for a cia director because he or she, on the one hand, has to tell the president hard truths, while also keeping the president's ear. that's a really tough challenge, even in the best of times, and in the current times it's practically mission impossible. >> yeah, and i don'ten if you saw the comey film over the weekend. >> yes, yes. >> but it's one of the things that becomes clear how hard

that particular relationship is just generally and how much harder it was under trump. so, just going down that line a little bit, so, who had the worst relationship? and i kind of-- i mean, i read the book so i kind of know i think what you're going to say, and then who had the best relationship? and this is-- >> jim would have been for worst relationship with a president. woolsey, a fascinating character to me, brilliant guy. he was, as we all know, on a spectrum, on an ideological spectrum he was well over to the right, but he loved to joke about the fact that he was president of yale students for eugene mccarthy back in '68. he opposed the vietnam war not for the reasons mccarthy did, but he thought if it was winnable, we weren't doing enough. anyway, he becomes cia

director, but bill clinton and woolsey were like oil and water as one source put it to me. clinton just did not like him after the first briefing, which went on and on and evidently at some length. woolsey left, bill clinton learned-- turned to one of his advisors and says, i never want to see that man again and he almost never did. woolsey had literally one meeting with the president, and at one point, there was a freak accident on the south lawn of the white house, a small plane crashed and killed the pilot, afterwards woolsey said to the press, that was me trying to get an appointment with bill clinton. >> oh, my god. >> so it was not a very productive relationship and woolsey met his demise over the james scandal, ames, that case

the most serious mole since kim fillby probably in american intelligence history. intelligence history. happened on his watch and it essentially ended his tenure. >> and what about the best relationship? >> there would be a number of contenders for that, probably. i would say that bob gates and george h.w. bush had a very good relationship. leon panetta and barack obama had a very good relationship. john brennan and obama, certainly. and here is the sort of spoiler alert for those who know that i wrote another book called the gate keeper about the white house chiefs of staff. some of the attributes that make a great white house chief of staff also serve cia

directors well and it's no coincidence, in my view, that leon panetta was the gold standard at both. there were certainly other great white house chiefs and other great cia directors, but panetta was up there at the best in both jobs and had a lot to do with the fact that panetta, when he became cia director for obama, he was 70 years old. he'd been around the block. he'd served in congress, he was comfortable in the corridors of power, he knew the white house, and he could walk into the oval office, close the door and tell barack obama what he didn't want to hear. and that's essential in both jobs. >> yeah, you portray him as cannot just an honest broker, but, like a brilliant strategist for-- >> oh, he was, he was, and one of the classic-- one of the great infighting

stories that i tell in the leon panetta chapter is-- it's about the time that are denny blair, then the national director of intelligence made the mistake of trying to take on leon panetta in a bureaucratic struggle over who would appoint the cia station chiefs. well, i guess you could on paper make the argument that the director of national intelligence outranked leon and therefore denny blair ought to make that appointment, but in the real world, blair should have known that that was turf that was jealously guarded at langley. panetta knew that and blair sent out a directive, without informing panetta, to all the stations saying that he, denny

blair, would be appointing the new station chiefs. well, panetta waited about a half hour and sent out another message to all the stations saying, disregard the previous message. well, this went-- this was not a fair fight. this went to the white house, but leon knew exactly who had his back on this one, not only barack obama, but vice-president joe biden, who wound up being the referee on this one, as they walked into the office to adjudicate this biden, lee turned to him and said, joe, is our tee time still 9:30 tomorrow? and biden said, yes. and blair knew he was a dead man walking. >> yeah, just look at not just about the white house, the president, the cia directors, but it's also a chronicle of american foreign policy and not

just things we're learning from behind the scenes, but just the major events taking place in american foreign policy over four to five decades and a number of those things, obviously, have been on our minds lately, 9/11 being, you know, perhaps the most obvious one. but the killing of bin laden, but there was one incident i think a lot of readers and our audience won't know much about, and that is that of ahmad mia, i wonder if you wanted to tell the stories, i don't know about others listening to you, but i'm so embarrassed that i don't know this story, but now i'm grateful i know this story. >> don't be embarrassed because a lot of people don't know it. in fact, the first half of the story that i tell in the book-- >> we're going to break away from the program at this point to keep our 40-plus year commitment to congressional

coverage. we'll return to this event as soon as the senate pro forma session is over. now to live coverage of the u.s. senate here on c-span2. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the parliamentarian will read a communication to the senate. the parliamentarian: washington, d.c., november 6, 20. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable roy blunt, a senator from the state of missouri, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: chuck grassley, president pro tempore. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands adjourned until 3:00 p.m. stands adjourned until 3:00 p.m.

>> and the sin is finished its legislative visit until after the election. a short pro forma sessions are held every three days. no vote are expected to the senate will return for legislative business monday, november 9 at 3 p.m. eastern to resume debate on a judicial nomination. we will have more live senate coverage when lawmakers return here on c-span2. >> really essentially drove the israelis out of lebanon and it was that effectively full and it would cut through a tank. he killed the famous israeli general triggering the israeli withdrawal. in short he was the most wanted guy, and the other two most wanted guys were general soleimani of syria and then a rainy general named soleimani whose name may ring a bell. since you skilled january this year. in any event, cia tried and

tried to track down the dla tell the story of an operation on bill clinton's watch at the end of his presidency on george tenet watches cia director and which they tracked him down to beirut. they discovered he was visiting his mistresses flat and he would visit her and he would beat her, as a turnout. the cia enlisted her to set him up and grabbing and bundle them down to the dock and onto a vote at all to a battleship offshore. it all went south. the operation failed and another decade went by before cia finally tracked him down in damascus. so i tell that story in hair-raising detail how, in a joint cia mossad operation they

finally got him, tracked him as he was driving around damascus in his luxurious suv. they decided they couldn't plant the bomb on the phone. he discarded phones too often but he always had his suv. they wound up, cia building a bomb. they had, , it was a technical marvel because they had to replace the hold back door of the suv without his bodyguards noticing an and had to match te paint color exactly, even the age of the paint job. they did all this and mossad wound up pulling the trigger. and at one moment while they were surveilling him and waiting for the moment to strike, they looked and looked against and realized the guy, someone

leaning on his car talking with him was, guess who, general soleimani. they thought it's a twofer, we can get, take them both out. they got -- waited wait for pe. permission was denied. it was denied. soleimani went off and he finally did get him. it's just an unbelievable story and also the whole negotiation because assassination quote-unquote has always been a front proposition at the cia. it's been prohibited by executive orders including 12333 for decades. in this case they went through contortions so that the israelis would pull the trigger rather than the americans.

bush signed off on the deal as long as nobody ever talked about it, and nobody does talk about it to this day except in part to me for this chapter that i wrote in the book. >> you have a whole page where you excerpt from your interviews where you asked a number of cia directors what happened, and is just no comment, no comment, no comment which i guess guess comes with the territory but it's not a best way to eventually get to know. >> can i just add, for terms very own john brennan who finally gets frustrated with me asking him repeatedly for comment what happened? he finally looked at me and he said, he died quickly, period. that was his comment. >> that's more than you got any of the others. >> from any of the other directors. >> one thing i wanted to ask that you don't at least will

talk about. i'd love your thoughts on is the use of military generals to be head of the cia and whether you know how we should think about that and have others have thought about that come thinking of general petraeus, general hayden and just kind of like, because there is way which these are distinct authorizations for using force, for using covert activity here . you did learn about that particular, that mixing of expertise? >> it's a mixed bag. the two directors i get into with our mike hayden and david petraeus, each of them really capable and really interesting characters. hayden tells a story about how

first when he arrives he would run the nsa, national security agency prior. he was still a general, not quite retired when he arrived at the cia. he went through the bubble, so-called bubble, the auditorium at cia to make his first address to the troops, as it were. as he was speaking when you came to the end of his remarks he took questions, and somebody's hand shot up and they said, what would you like us to call you? and hayden who was famously eloquent and glenn and articulate -- glib -- was prone for a minute. he did not answer and finally he said, whatever makes you comfortable. don't call me general. whatever you call me,, whatever you call me. he said in retrospect it was most important thing he said.

that day. there is what some at cia call something called 4-star general disease, and what it means is that military people sometimes arrive at the cia and certainly directors have arrived on occasion with a very well developed sense of entitlement. used to having 50 staff, 50 people who, as david petraeus did when he was in afghanistan, to cater to his every whim. just a little bit of a a problm for the trace when he arrived. it was just a culture shock. they are just different cultures and when you have been a commanding general like petraeus, you are a custom to a different way of life in way of operating and having people at your beck and call.

by trey is got over that and i think adjusted to the cia culture, but in the beginning it was rocky for him. he had only just really adjusted to cia culture when of course he met his untimely demise by sharing classified information with his mistress, paula. and in the book, i mean, i asked him point-blank about that, and it's fascinating. >> and use an excerpt from her which i thought was also interesting and i can be a teaser for reading that section of the book. what about when directors are asked or told by presidents to break the law? what did you learn about that process and how that plays out looking all these different directors and the relationships with presidents? >> to me that might be the most fascinating scene in the book.

because it's a continuous theme from the beginning all the way up to our current cia director gina haspel. i had the privilege of getting to know the waiter of richard helms, the previously mentioned quintessential cia old-school cia director. cynthia died last summer by spent a lot of time with her the summer before. she was 95 and she was full of terrific untold stories about her husband, and she said you know, chris, they were all asked to do things they shouldn't have done. and i said, like what? and we got into it and we talked about the fact that helms was come he was a flawed character. he was brilliant and he was smooth and he was, you know, i love the stories about him

holding his own on a dance floor with fred astaire at the 1975 date dinner for the shah of iran. helms was dancing with cynthia and fred astaire was dancing with the shaw avenue from iran. quite a character but flawed. his relationship with lbj assassinated because he admired lbj for his domestic achievements and the great society. he was exasperated by the vietnam war. but he wanted -- lbj to succeed and lbj leaned on him very hard as only lbj could do, and told him in the uncertain terms that he wanted intelligence showing that domestic protesters against the vietnam war were being controlled by foreign communist powers.

helms protested, said that's not in the cia charter, and lbj said i'm well aware of that. i wanted. he wanted intelligence. helms should've known better but he bent the law. he set up an operation called operation mh chaos. it was illegal domestic surveillance of protesters went and the right to protest. and at the other day he came up with absolutely no evidence of any form, his control. so helms was flawed but at the end of the day helms stood up to nixon at the most important time, when the crunch came during the watergate scandal and h.r. haldeman, nixon's white house chief of staff called him into the white house and told him famously to shut down, the fbi investigation into watergate. helms was having none of it, and he stood up for the rule of law

and he arguably saved the cia. so helms was the earliest example of a cia director who had to do with that kind of pressure. but so many of them have had to do, and time and again presidents will ask them to do stuff they shouldn't be doing, including -- i mean, i love the way bob gates put it. he said usually you have a really difficult problem, the state department says that the military handle it. the military says let the diplomats handle it, and then they all say well, let's let the cia do it. cia is -- one former director told me that you could never get rid of the cia, never abolish it because presidents would have no one to blame. so the fact of the matter over the last five or six decades is

that when the cia gets in trouble it's usually because presidents have asked them to do stuff they shouldn't be doing. >> do they get in trouble? >> do the given trip? >> you said the cia, do they actually get held accountable or get in trouble? >> yeah, certainly have been playing time and again. the other classic lament added language which a love in this count the early successes and intelligence failures. certainly cia was blamed for 9/11, was called a failure of imagination. it was called all kinds of things but basically the cia was, covert black, george tenet deputy said people would come up to me, congressman would come up to me and say hey come how does a field of the worst intelligence failure since pearl harbor? the truth is, and i have really

detailed chapter on this, in july of 2001, george tenet, black and rich who is head of the al-qaeda unit went over to the bush white house, he slammed assist on the table, said where to go on a war footing. they met with condi rice. essentially they blew the whistle and nobody heard it. this was the case, this was my gift last of -- it was a white house failure to heed the warnings. fast-forward to 2020, and we are now suffering the catastrophic consequences of a president who ignored warnings in his residence daily brief throughout

the month of january, , and 200,000 americans are dead. >> one of the things you talk about that goes above those stories which is all different and at like like to your thoughts on it is the abandonment of norms, procedural norms under this president, particularly in terms of the principal committee meetings. can you talk a little bit about that? it's the thread you talk about, and just doesn't come out of the blue when you're talking about the trump presidency and the cia. >> this is a white house that not only has declared war on process and on norms. this is a white house that essentially declared war on government from day one. i will never forget denis mcdonough, the outgoing white house chief of staff for obama, telling me that when the clock strikes noon on june the 20th,

sitting in his office waiting for reince priebus, the chief of staff and his staff to arrive, and nobody showed up. he waited an hour or more and finally just turned off the lights and left. to me that's a metaphor for the presidency, but it's not the first time that process and norms have been abandoned. in one case is 9/11, that's go back to that for a second because one of the things i learned in the book, i did a documentary in 2015 for showtime by the way called the spy masters in which we told the story of the july 10 meeting, july 10, 2001. in a book i book i was able to go deeper and talk to a number of really persuasive sources in the white house and cia who said essentially that all you had to

do in july of 2001 was call a principal speech. and, of course, principles being the heads of cia come fbi, vice president or national security adviser and all of those department heads and you get them around a table and you shake the tree. when you shake the tree with all those people at the table stuff falls. a number of people told me that they think had condi rice called the principals meeting, that they would have discovered that two of the al-qaeda hijackers were on u.s. soil and had been for months. this was as we all know a failure to communicate between cia and fbi. but that's the kind of stuff that gets you, that gets found out when you go through that kind of process. so this is not the first presidency, trump's is not the first presidency to fail to

follow some of those norms. and in this case in the case of the bush white house frankly they were living in a kind of time warp. they just couldn't believe a bunch of guys with beards in case and afghanistan were going to blow the world trade center. as cofer black put it to me memorably, he said, they thought terrorist were a bunch of euro lefties, stay up all night, drink champagne and blow stuff during the day. that was a '70s mentality. >> as you pointed out, clark famously tried to get that message to the national security council and the president. i think it's one of the things we haven't quite ignored just as a country and we need reflect on as you say so well the war on government. another thread that goes through the book and this is less abstract is iran.

every director time and time again has to deal with iran, almost always in a crisis situation for more than one crisis situation, , right? hostages, iran-contra, now soleimani and others. i don't know exactly had asked the question i want to know, like where you think and what time to think we had the best understanding of and relationship with iran? >> well, we certainly had a very close relationship with the wrong guy in iran, the shah of iran. as he turned out to be. that's one of my favorite chapters in the book, because again turner, , happened on his watch as ci director but it was arguably the greatest

intelligence failure of the 20th century. bay of pigs was certainly a huge fiasco come but in terms of intelligence failures quote-unquote failure to see the shah of iran was as weak as he was in late 1979 and on the verge of collapse was just a fiasco. and one of the reasons, quite frankly, we had almost willfully blinded ourselves and part of that was because henry kissinger had cut a deal with the shot in which he basically said, if you will give us access -- the shah -- to your listing post on the soviet union, we will look the other way, we will not pay inattention to your political opponents and we simply relied

on the secret police for all of our intelligence. i get into all of this in the book, and that whole relationship between turner and jimmy carter big enough brzezinski and all that to me is really fascinating but one of the caveats about all of this i suppose is one of the great sources i spoke to is stu eisenstadt, just a brilliant guy. some of you may know him. he's still very active and are really persuasive voice on foreign affairs and wrote a book on carter recently that was terrific. eisenstadt was saying that our intelligence was just terrible during this whole time. and that we often just completely misunderstand other societies. and this was a classic example

and certainly vietnam before i ran it was a classic example of us just not understanding society. but at the end of the day you also have to wonder if we had known that the shah was on the verge of collapse, what would policymakers have done with that knowledge? what exactly could we have done to have changed that pivotal moment in history, you know, with their been anyway to have arrived at some motors with the ayatollah? i'm not sure the odds would've been that great we would've been smart enough to forget what to do and i'm a great george packer fan by the way. i loved his book, our man come on richard holbrooke was my first boss by the way. about come just about the human, just about how badly we have

misunderstood so many of these conflicts from the vietnam to iran to bosnia to our current situation. we are obviously human beings who are terribly flawed in diplomats are as well. >> are you suggesting not much of a learning curve? >> well, i think the cia is probably much more capable today than it was in 1979. there was certainly a lot of -- no offense to anybody who went to the school as i did -- but it was considered all white male and yale for decades, and there was, diversity was certainly a huge problem at the cia. and i think it helped blind the cia many ways. i think we have been

historically for many, many decades failed to understand these other cultures and lack of diversity certainly is a part of that. that's vastly improved now. i think the cia has improved in many other ways, , too. >> interesting. i just want to do either one if you have any questions feel free to put them in the chat, q&a, whichever you like and i will work them. i have worked if you in the conversation already but i will work them in. i have another question that speaks to the evolution of the cia which is more structural, that is the dni, the odni, office of the director of national intelligence, creation of both 9/11, reorganization of government to enhance the intelligence and national security priorities of, and abilities of the country. admit the director the cia was

not the head of the intelligence community the way sort of was understood to function before. what do you make of that and what do other cia directors make about? >> funny story about that. because i was fortunate, very lucky in my book was launched. i had a zoom party and john brennan and jim clapper attended by zoom. i was asked this question about the dni and what i thought of it, and i proceeded to say that, you know, after 9/11 congress essentially felt that had to battle in the intelligence community and do something. so they created this office called the director of national intelligence and essentially it models on to authority and confused everyone. at which point jim clapper screen started pulsating and he

started waving his hand, and he jumped in and defended the restructuring of the intelligence community and, of course, the dni office that he occupied there and then brennan came in and jumped on me, too, and said he could never have run the cia. he was a 24/7 job, without having someone like jim clapper to take care, coordinate all the other intelligence services. i finally conceded that they have a point. it really, i do think that relationship worked with jim clapper as dni and john brennan at cia director. because they figured out how to make it work. clapper was the perfect guy gon that job, and my opinion as dni. he didn't want to step on brain and toes, the cia director turkey wanted to help -- he wanted to buy leaving brennan to

do his job as he saw fit. it worked. they got along. it was very rocky in the beginning and i gave an example of leon panetta and danny blair earlier where in the beginning quite frankly when the dni showed up at langley it was like he was greeted as -- at the gate. nobody at cia wanted to be meddled with by the dni, but it's a system, a restructuring that is working much more successfully now i think than it used to. the problem of course now currently, is that we have a director of national intelligence, in my opinion, john ratcliffe who is a partisan hack who frankly has really been serving the president's partisan purposes rather than being an

honest broker of intelligence. so that is a serious problem. >> we have lots of questions, one, is about torture. would you talk about enhanced interrogation techniques as you refer to it in your book? you talk about it a lot. i guess my question is, how now d.c. the cia reflection on that. mac of time and what happened? do you think there's a general sense that no, it's illegal and we should have gone there and maybe we're going through it again? what's your thought? >> first of all, when i referred to those techniques, i'm simply using with the cia's term was. it's not the term i would use. mark ms. esty give you a hard time for supposedly referring to it that way.

what's fascinating to me is that, first of all, what michael hayden said in an accord the later became famous, he first said to me for our documentary, that if the president wants to waterboard anybody ever again, he better bring his own bucket because this agency isn't going down that road again. i think he's right. one thing it's illegal. in my view it should be illegal. in my view it's immoral. it's not something that the united states of america should be doing if you talk to david petraeus who has some experience with who was in charge of more detainees probably than anyone on the face of the earth, instead of centcom, he will take

it the way you get information is i having interrogators bombed with their subjects. you don't get it, , you don't gt effective intelligence through torture. having said that, i felt that it would be, it was important to get inside the heads of the directors on whose watch that took place. if you talk to george tenet, he will give you an impassioned argument that he believed that these techniques were the only way to prevent what he thought was a second wave of attacks that were imminent after 9/11. that second wave attacks never occurs. he would argue that some of the techniques that produce the intelligence that disrupted

plots and saint lives. and mike morrell, to cite another acting director, not exactly an archconservative, the odds on favorite to become hillary clinton's cia director, mike morrell will tell you that there's no question in his mind that so-called enhanced interrogation techniques provided actionable intelligence that resulted in the apprehension of terrorists. and he gives specific examples. he is not arguing therefore that we should be doing it anymore but he simply saying it's not as simple at it has been portrayed. the last thing i would just say about it is that the senate majority report which was so damning and in many ways very thorough and convincing about

the inefficacy if you will of those techniques, they never interviewed any of the directors on whose watch it happened. that's george tenet, michael hayden. none of them were interviewed. if you want to get a sense of what they were thinking inside their heads, you can find it in my chapter of "the spymasters." >> in addition to being illegal and immoral park, we should probably mention that part. a number of people have asked about our relationship other powers. like starting right now with trump and our relationship with the five eyes with the rest of the world is one of the questions pick another question that can be bundled with that is, what about happy talk to these directors about activities

that are with non-allied powers, bestway paraphrasing this. just sort of how does the cia see his position vis-à-vis what risk is been going to take over time to do with foreign powers? and in the question of what about a relationship with other coordination of intelligence sources, services, et cetera in the current context? >> you know, it's a tough question, a good question, a very hard question to answer, particularly because we have cia director currently who flies under the radar, gives no interviews, is really very much, she was trained as a covert operative. it seems to be in her dna and she doesn't talk a lot about what they are doing.

i wish that she and mike pompeo had given interviews for the book. because ideally that the cia director has to be the honest broker of intelligence, not only to the president but to the american people. and that cia directors should give interviews. the really great ones were not afraid of tough questions, richard helms, panetta and bob gates. that's my little speech about their unwillingness to give interviews. having said that it's hard to know very much about how much the trump era has affected the cia's relationships with the five eyes. gina haspel has a very close relationship with british intelligence. she was a two-time station chief in london, and so and i have a great story in the book about

how she come when she was rising through the ranks, haskell formed a friendship with the unlikeliest mentor imaginable, and that was josé rodriguez, the architect of the black sites and the enhanced come so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. he became her sort of feminist mentor. he was one who would say to her when she was thinking about becoming station chief in geneva, he would say to her, listen, girl, that's not good enough for you. you have got to go to london. that's where it is happening if you want to advance your career. and she did. so that's a little digression there but i do think british intelligence and cia have a pretty good relationship. hard to know with the others in hard to know what the effect of the trump presidency has been. but we all remember the time

that donald trump met in the oval office with russian officials, including lavrov, and he blurted out details about a very sensitive israeli operation in the middle east. there is real concern among allies and other countries that this president can't be trusted with intelligence. that's simply a fact. as a root in the "washington post" there are of the big problems which is that this president is essentially unbreakable. he doesn't read turkey doesn't read the president's daily brief. he thinks he knows everything worth knowing. and he thinks he can share stuff with vladimir putin. that's a problem. there are, i will tell you that

woodward reports that dan coats was concerned that this president, that russia might have something on this president. i can simply tell you that coats is hardly alone among very high-ranking intelligence officials who believe the same thing. and especially after helsinki. i had one person i used to run russian operations for the cia tell me that after that press conference in helsinki, he could think of no other rational possibility, except that the russians have some sort of compromise or financial relationship with trump. none of that is a good thing when it comes to the cia's relations with other intelligence services. >> we have a ton of questions but two of them i just want to give together that unnecessarily

related but you will relate to them, which is they have to do with now. one of them is china, which is not a huge part of what you have written about. how do you see china in terms of the extra burden that it puts e cia for right now, how robust do think the cia is in or to handle that? the second thing is, the issue could write a whole book about, which is the doj increasing role in all of this as it is gotten close to the intelligence community after 9/11 but now it's unusual position inside this administration. i'm sure you have given some thought to those and because our listeners are asking, i'm asking you. >> so on china, just briefly, i think there's no doubt about that china is a huge challenge

for the cia. and china has been unusually successful in rolling up cia assets in recent years, and that's been kind of an all told story. there's been some "new york times" reporting on that. china is coming on strong as a competitor. as everyone knows. i think that it's a huge challenge for the cia going forward, may be the biggest challenge. as for the doj's role, i think that this is a case where i think gina haspel has to be really, really careful. the way in which donald trump has succeeded in politicizing the top levels of the intelligence community, would make richard nixon blush.

he has really compromised intelligence and a letter sized it -- politicized it and left many top jobs simply unfilled or empty, and he has installed a partisan sixpence in john ratcliffe as a director of national intelligence. that makes gina haspel job as the honest broker of intelligence not only to the present but the congress and the american people that much more difficult, and so much more important and critical at this time. and the fact we have a doj investigation, led by john durham, that seems specious at best, that seems aimed at trying to prosecute intelligence officers for doing their jobs is

something that gina haspel has to be very, very careful about. she really needs to have the backs of her employees, and a record is really mixed on that. i have to say, when donald trump through his intelligence briefer under the bus, saying that, the first year of the virus was on january 23 and that is briefer said it was, , quote, no big de. we all know now her name was that standard. she evidently by the way is on her way out and is not at all clear who's when replacer -- vet standard. gina situs was deafening when trump to her under the bus, mip neither i i think this a directors responsible as a say to the public, and this was a case where there was so many things wrong with that statement. everything in the pdb by definition is a big deal, and if

it is also briefed to the president verbally, it's an even bigger deal. so again i think this is, this is a perilous time right now for the intelligence community and off a lot is riding on gina haspel as the honest broker. >> so when you look ahead to the future, the november, the short future like the permanent afterwards, if somebody can do and said what is the top three recommendations to give the cia better tools or less tools on more restrained or more clarity or more of a voice at the table, any of those things, are there anything you would recommend, , which is a let's just go -- >> i have to start in november because this is not the first

time we have had a president who was convinced that the cia was a deep state full of liberal enemies hell-bent on bring him down here richard nixon thought that about the cia back in the helms era, and he thought dick helms was this martini sipping elitist who is out to get him. nixon was wrong. trump is wrong. trump takes it to another level. he's a delusional. he believes that the intelligence -- he is compared it to nazi german. he brings a level of contempt to the intelligence community in the presidency that makes it impossible to brief him, makes it impossible for him to have the right information when history making decisions are made. so the overwhelming priority has to be in november, finding a way

to get some into the oval office who respects intelligence and who respects the truth. because at the end of the day that's what the cia does. >> so that brings up sort of i think like a last substantive question which is, the last election versus this election. and the question of what did we know then and what do we know now your do you think we learned enough lessons about the interference from the point of view of the intelligence community in 2016 that this election really can be protected one way or another? >> we are certainly more aware of the nature of the soviet threat, and so that's obviously an advantage going into this. having said that, there are always surprises. in august of 2016, in my book

actually opens on this scene, john brennan is up burning the midnight oil on the seventh floor of cia headquarters looking out at the canopy of trees of langley and try to figure out what's coming. he realizes that i soviet -- russian, , sorry, attack on the u.s. election is coming. it at that moment in august of 2016 he didn't know about the whole social media component of it. what you knew at that time was they had hacked into 39 states electoral machinery and it later turned out to be 50. there are those including mike morel who says that's really 2016 was a strategic intelligence failure on cia's part in the sense they didn't see that extra component. of the russian attack. we don't know what the russians may try that's different this time around.

we can guess and obviously they are looking closely but it's a problem when the president of the united states denies the reality and pretends it is not happening. it's hard to mobilize a very effective effort to stop it russian attack. so that would be my answer. it's hard to know. i mean, they have a better idea but it's hard to know exactly how it will play out. >> so i all last question is always the same question, which is what brings you hope? what brings you hope or, yes, what brings hope is a topic of your next book, but what brings you hope? >> i do have another book in the works which i can't really talk about but would love to come back and talk about someday. >> okay. >> this will sound a little

corny maybe, at the risk of come i have a whole chapter on george h.w. bush cia director and there was no greater defender of the cia. he loved that job as a think everybody knows. but one of the things that strikes me having gotten know a lot of people out there is that at the end of the day, almost everybody, they are human beings, they have political opinions. there are vast differences between the analysts who tend to be some deprived, geeky, intellectuals who are stuck doing the work on paper, and the covert operatives who are out breaking laws in countries all over the world. but the vast majority of them really are very good at keeping their heads down and trying to

do their jobs and produce on his intelligence, and the don't pay a lot of attention to whoever is in the oval office at any given moment or any of the bluster that is coming their way. that may sound pollyanna-ish and a little bit corny, but you do take some hope away from that when you just see how dedicated most of them are. >> so institutional integrity doesn't have to rely on the person on top? >> well it helps, and you know there's a question about it that it's critical that people at the cia believed that the cia director has their backs. the great ones always did. leon panetta, bob gates, others of that kind.

>> well, chris whipple, thank you for wonderful conversation i know the the audience has liked it. you can buy this book on the invitation. there's a button you can push for a link you got today. you will like it, i can tell you that right now. chris, thank you so much. i'm sure we'll talk again soon. >> such a pleasure. thanks for having me. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2, and we can with the latest nonfiction books and authors. c-span2, to read about america's cable-television companies as a public service and brought to today by your television provider. >> weeknights this month we're featuring booktv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span2. tonight we focus on history.

enjoy booktv this week and every weekend on c-span2. >> i am delighted to welcome jennet conant who is an accomplished author who's also the granddaughter of the james bryant conant was an administrative director of the manhattan project and one of our nation's leading scientists of the 20 century. she's the author of the "new york times" bestsellers, the irregulars, and taxied apart, a wall street tycoon and the sacred palace of signs that changed the course of world war ii. she w