♪ ♪ >> you are watching 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 how your code is provided. ♪ >> , we are featuring tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend c-span2. tonight we focus on history. first, john hocking explores black women to win the right to vote. david david provides a history of the first wheelchair basketball team comprised of world war ii veterans.

later, a book about the federal government forced migration of native americans in the territories west of the mississippi in the mid 19th century. applicants 8:00 p.m. eastern. enjoy book tv this weekend every weekend on c-span2. >> my name is karen, thank you for joining us here at the national security. we are delighted to bring you, closer. with me today, chris, award-winning author, documentary maker, his new book is the spy masters. can you see it? shaping history of the teacher we're going to talk a lot about this today but first, what is welcome, chris. thank you for joining us. >> thanks so much for having me be back this is a wonderful read. i started it, i was like zero no, this is going to be too much information, i won't be able to take an but it's fantastic.

in addition to your own knowledge and research, it is based on over 70 interviews and you interviewed among those, the directors of the cia, except for the current one and just going to say it, it is not so much about the cia directors, it's about cia directors in relationship to the white house and the president. would you agree? >> thank you for the kind words about the book because one of the things i have tried to do maybe above all else, is dehumanized these directors. i was lucky, there's a cast of characters that he would never have dreamt up. in the 60s, the cia director, bob gates described to me as a james bond character. a dry martini in one hand, walked into the oval office and tell lbj the siri was flawed.

going forward kobe, the corleone of the cia and then you got bill casey and an amazing cast of characters all the way up to the first woman to run the cia but you're right, the book focuses a lot on the relationship between the president and cia director. it's an almost impossible act for cia director because he or she, on the one hand past to tell the president hard truths. while also keeping the presidents year. that is a really tough challenge and in the current times, it is practically mission impossible. >> i don't know if you saw the film over the weekend --

>> yes. >> it is one of the things that becomes clear, hard that particular relationship is generally and how much harder it was under trump. just going down the line a little bit, who had the worst relationship? i mean, i've read the book so i know what you're going to say. and who had the best relationship? >> the worst relationship, rosie i think is a fascinating character to me, brilliant guy. as we all know, on a spectrum, he was well to the rights but he loved to joke about the fact that he was president from mccarthy and 68. not for the reasons mccarthy did but because he thought it was

winnable and we weren't doing enough. anyway, he becomes cia director but bill clinton and woolsey like oil and water, as one source put it to me. clinton did not like him after the first briefing, which went on and on, evidently at some length. woolsey left, bill clinton learned, turned to an advisor and said i never want to see that man again. he almost never did. woolsey had literally one meeting with president and at one time, there was a freak accident on the south lawn of the white house, a plane crash and killed the pilot. "afterwards", woolsey said to the press, that was me trying to get an appointment with bill clinton. >> oh my god. >> who is not a very productive relationship and woolsey, at his demise over the james scandal,

ames that case is the most serious moral since filby in american intelligence history. it happened on his watch and it essentially ended their. >> what about that relationship? >> he contended with that, probably. i would say bob gates and george h to be bush had a very good relationship. leon and barack obama, very good relationship. john brennan and obama, certainly. here is an alert, for those who know i wrote another book called a gatekeeper about the white house chief of staff, some of the attributes that make a great

white house chief of staff also served cia directors well. it is no coincidence, in my view, that he was the gold standard at both. there were certainly other great white house chiefs and cia directors but he was right up there with the best. that is really because it had a lot to do with the fact that annetta, when he became cia director for obama, who is 70, 80 years old. he been around the block and served in congress, he was comfortable in power, he knew the white house he could walk into the oval office, closed the door and tell barack obama what he didn't want to hear. that is essential in both jobs. >> you portray him as being not just an honest broker but like a brilliant strategist. >> he was.

one of the great stories i tell him that chapter is about the time that the director of national intelligence made the mistake of trying to take on annetta in a bureaucratic struggle over who would appoint cia chiefs. well, i guess you could, on paper, make the argument that the director of national intelligence out ranked eon and therefore, he ought to make the appointment but in the real world, blair should have known that was turf jealously guarded as langley. he knew that and blair sent out a directive so now you all the

stations saying he would appoint the new chiefs, pannetta waited about half hour and sent out another message to all the stations saying disregard the previous message. well, this was not a fair fight. it 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 ended up being the referee on this one and walk into the office to adjudicate this was biden, lions turned to him and said joe, his tee time still 9:30 a.m. tomorrow? biden said yes and blair new he was a dead man walking. >> 's book is not just about the white house, cia directors but

also a chronicle of foreign policy. not just things we are learning from behind the scenes but the major events taking place in american foreign policy over four to five decades. a number of those things obviously have been on our minds lately, 9/11 being perhaps the most obvious one but the killing of bin laden but there was an incident that i think a lot of readers in our audience won't know that much about, that is ahmaud, i was wondering if you wanted to tell that story because i felt like i am so embarrassed know this story so now i am so grateful i know this story so tell us. >> don't be embarrassed because a lot of people don't know it. in fact, the first half of the story i tell in the book about

him has ever been recorded before and it is absolutely unbelievable story that's left for three or four decades. he was far and away the most wanted terrorist in the middle east by both the cia and mossad going all the way back to the worst day in cia history, the bombing of the embassy in beir beirut, which killed so many cia directors and other americans at the time. subsequently, it was determined that this was probably the mcneil operation with that whole area of terrorism that was really the beginning, it was a really difficult time. from that day forward, he had more in american and israeli

blood on hand, the operational genius of hezbollah. the operational chief, he was so elusive, they had one photograph of him, the cia and they could never keep up. he would with disguises, he developed pioneered the use of the so-called shaped charge, a sophisticated ied that essentially drove the israelis out of lebanon. ...

since he was killed injanuary of this year . the cia tried and tried to crackdown and it's a story of an operation on bill clinton's watch at the end of his presidency and georgetown's watch as cia director in which they tracked him down to beirut. he was visiting his mistresses flat and he would visit her and he would beat her as it turned out. the cia enlisted her, set him up and grabbed him and bundled him down to the boat and off to a battleship offshore . it all went south. the operation failed in a number of decades went by before the cia tracked him down in damascus so i tell that story in hair-raising detail how in a joint cia

mossad operation they tracked him as he was driving around damascus and in a injurious suv. they decided they couldn't plant the bomb, they been discarded too often but he always had his suv and they wound up the cia building a bomb. it was a technical marvel because they had replaced the whole back door of the suv with without his bodyguards noticing and had to match the paint color exactly, even the age of the paintjob . they did all this and mossad wound up pulling the trigger and at one point , one moment while they were surveilling mcneil and waiting for the moment to strike , they

realized there was someone leaning on his car messing with the gas and guess who, it was general soleimani and realize theycan take them both out . permission was denied and neil was the only legitimate target. they waited and soleimani went off. so it's just anunbelievable story . and the whole, also the whole delicate negotiation because assassination quote unquote is, has always been a front position at the cia. it's been prohibited since 12 triple free for decades. in this case, they went through contortions over the

israelis would pull the trigger rather than of the americans. bush signed off on thedeal as long as nobody ever talked about it . nobody does talk about to this day except in part to me for this chapter that i wrote in the book >> you have old page where you excerpt from your interviews where you ask a number of cia directors what happened and there's no comments, no comment which again comes with the territory but it's one of the stories you eventually get to know. >> i just add that in the end , john brennan who finally got frustrated with asking him repeatedly for comment what happened to mcneil, he finally looked atme and said he died quickly .period. >> that's more than you got

from any of the others . one thing i wanted to ask, you don't really talk about the use of military generals as they head of the cia and how, can you talk about that and how others have thought about that, thinking of general petraeus because there are authorizations for using force and what did you learn about that particular, that mixing of expertise. >> it's a mixed bag. it's been of course the two directors that i did with our general petraeus, each of them arecapable and the

really interesting characters . and hayden tells the story about how he when he arrived he run the nsa of course, national security agency. he was still the general, not quite retired but when he arrived at the cia, he went through the ball, the so-called bubble the cia runs to make his first address to the troops as it were. and as he was speaking when he 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 famously eloquent and articulate, was challenged for a minute. he did not answer and finally he said whatever makes you comfortable. don't call me general.

call me whatever you want to call me. and he said in retrospect it was the most important thing he said that day. there is what some wags at the cia call something called four-star general disease. and what it means is that military people sometimes arrived at the cia and arrived on occasion with a well-developed sense of entitlement . i used to have a staff of 50 people as david petraeus did when he was in afghanistan. and this was a little bit of aproblem for petraeus when he arrived . it was a culture shock, just cultures and when you've been a commanding general like petraeus, you're accustomed to a different way of life

and way of operating and having people at your back and call. i think he adjusted to the cia culture but in the getting 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 . in the book there's the nice i asked him point-blank about that. and it's fascinating. >> you used an excerpt from her which i thought was interesting. what about when directives or asked by presidents to break the law. what did you learn about that process and how that plays out. with all these different directives.

>> to me, that might be the most fascinating scene in the book. and it's because it's a continuous thing from the beginning, all the way up to our current cia director. and i had the privilege of getting to know the widow of richard helms who previously mentioned quintessential cia, old-school cia director. i spent a lot of time with her, right 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 a flawed character, he was smooth and he was you

know, i loved the stories about him holding his own on the dance floor, fred astaire, this 1975 station over the shah of iran. helms was dancing with cynthia and fred astaire was dancing with the shah of iran . quite the character but flawed. he is relationship was always fascinating 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 no uncertain terms he wanted intelligence showing that domestic

protesters against the vietnam war were being controlled by foreign communist powers. he held helms protested, said that's not what the cia doesn't lbj says i'm aware of that, i wanted. he wanted the intelligence. helms should have known better but he bent the law. he set up an operation called operation chaos, it was illegal domestic surveillance of protesters who had every right to protest and at the end of the day came up with absolutely no evidence of any foreign communists at all. so helms was flawed, but at the end of the day helms stood up to nixon as the most important time when the crunch came during the war, and hr haldeman was white house chief of staff, called him in 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 to the rule along and he arguably save the cia. so helms was the earliest example of a cia director who had to deal with that under pressure. but so many of them have had this and simon again, presidents will ask them to do stuff they shouldn't be doing. including i love the way bob gates put it. they said usually you've got to a really difficult problem. the state department says what the military hamlet, the military says let the diplomats hamlet and they all say let's letthe cia do it . cia is one former director told me that he could never get rid of the cia, never abolish it because they would have no one to blame. so the fact of the matter

over the last five or six decades is 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 they actually get in trouble or is it. >> i've certainly been blamed time and again. the other classic lament at langley which i love is in this town only policy successes and intelligence failures . certainly cia was blamed for 9/11 . it was called a failure of imagination, it was called all kinds of things but basically the cia was the black towards which debbie said people would come up to me and say hey, how's it feel

to have the worst intelligence agency since pearl harbor. the truth is and i have a really detailed chapter on this, in july 2001, george tenet, covert black and rich head of the al qaeda unit went over to the white house. tovar slammed his fist on the table. it said we got to go in a work putting now. and he was with condi rice. eventually they blew the whistle and nobody heard it. this was the case, this was in my view less of an intelligence failure and more of a policy failure. it was awhite house failure . fast forward to 2020. and we are now suffering the catastrophic consequences of the president who ignored

warnings in the president's daily brief throughout the month of january and 200,000 americans aredead . >> one of the things you talk about which is a little different and is the abandonment of procedural norms under this resident. particularly in terms of the principle committee meetings, can you talk a little bit about that because you talk about getting them to come to talk about the presidency and the cia. >> this is the white house thatnot only is as declared war on process and , this is one that essentially declared war on jonah from day one. i'll never forget that moment, the ongoing white

house chief of staff for obama telling me when the prospect new on january 20 was sitting in his office waiting for rants previously chief of staff and his staff arrived and nobody showed up. and he waited an hour or more and finally just turned off the lights. and left. to me, that's the method for this presidency so it's not the first time that process and norms have been abandoned. and in one case in point is 9/11 and let's get back to that for a second because one of the thingsthat i learned in the book , i did a documentary in 2015 called the spymaster's. in which we told the story of that july 10 meeting, 2001. >> and talked to a number of really persuasive sources in the white house and the cia

said essentially that all you have to do in july 2001 was called up and supposed to enforce principles being the heads of cia, fbi, vice president or national security advisor and all of those department heads and you get them around the table and you shake the tree and when you shake the tree with all those people at the table, things fall out and a number of people told me they think that had condi rice called the principals meeting , that they would have discovered that to of the hijackers were on the highest level 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 found out when you go through that kind of process. so it's just 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 the kind of time work. they just couldn't believe a bunch of guys would cave from afghanistan. he said you know, they got terrorists were a bunch of yuppies who stay up allnight, drink champagne and blow stuff up during the day . >> there were people who as pointed out tried to get that message. and so i think it's one of those things we haven't quite enjoyed as a country and we need to reflect on and you say so well were on government, the war on government.

we go through the book and this is a rant, every director time and again has to deal with iran. almost always in a crisis or normal crisis situation. have to deal with irancontra , and others. so i don't know exactly how to ask this question but i want to know where do you think and in what period of time do you think we had the best understanding of and relationship with iraq. >> we certainly had a very strong relationship with the wrong guy in iran, the shop ( as he turned out to be and that one of my favorite chapters in the book because again, stansfield happened on his watch at cia director.

he was arguably the greatest intelligence failure of the 20th century. it was certainly a huge fiasco but in terms of intelligence failures quote unquote, failures to see the shaw of iran was as sick as he was in late 1979 after the class, that was just a fiasco . and one of the reasons, quite frankly we had almost globally blinded ourselves and part of that was because henry kissinger had set up the old shop in which he basically said if you'll give us access to your listening posts, we will look the other way. and we will not pay attention to your political comments and we simply relied on the

shaw's complete silence for all of our intelligence. so i get into all of this in the book. and that whole relationship to stand turner and efficiency and jimmy carter and all of that to me is really fascinating. but one of the caveats about all this i suppose is one of the great sources is just a brilliant guy me know. he's still very active and a really authoritative voice on foreign affairs and a book on carter recently. eisenstadt was saying that our intelligence was just terrible during this whole time and that we often just completely missing other

societies. this was the classic example, certainly before iran was a classic example of us just not understandingsociety . but at the end of the day also have to wonder if we had known that the shopwas 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? would there have been anyways you arrived at some notice. with the ayatollah? i'm not sure the eyes are all that great that we would have been smart enough to figure out what to do and i think i love his our man, richard holbrook was my first lock by the way about just about the

human, about how badly we have misunderstood so many of these complex things from vietnam to iran to nausea to our current situation. so we are obviously human beings who are terribly flawed and diplomats are as well. >> are you suggesting there's not much of a learning curve ? >> i think the cia is probably much more capable today and it was in 1979 . there's certainly a lot of ill effects to anybody who went to this school as i did but this sort of all white male and yale for decades. and there was diverse city was certainly a huge problem at the cia and i think it

helps to blind the cia and in many ways i think we've been historically, there are many decades failed to understand these other cultures and lack of diversity was certainly a part of that.and that vastly improved now. and i think the cia has improved in many other ways to. >> interesting. i just want to tell anyone if you have any questions feel free to put them in the chat, the q and a, whichever you like and i will let it come in. another question that kind of speech to the evolution of the cia which is dnr. the office of the director of national intelligence, a creation of post-9/11 reorganization to enhance the intelligence and national security priorities and abilities of the country.it

works that the director of the cia is not head of the intelligence community in a way that was understood the function before. what do you make of that what do the other cia directors make of that? >> funny story about that because i was fortunate, very lucky when my book was launched, i had john brennan and clapper dependent and 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 it had to meddle in the intelligence community and do something . so they created this office called the director of national intelligence that was essentially, it's modeled in its authority and confused everyone. at this point, jim clapper's

screen on pulsating and started waving his hand and jumped in and defended the restructuring of the intelligence community and of course brennan came in and jumped on it too and said he could never have run the cia, it was a 24 seven job without having to live like jim clapper to take care of and coordinateall the other intelligence services . and i finally conceded that they have a point. it really i do think that relationship works. but with jim clapper at the dni and as cia director because they figured out how to make it work and clapper was the perfect guy in that job in my opinionat dni. he didn't want to step on

brennan's toes, his cia director . he wanted to help by coordinating the other agencies and leaving brennan to do his job as he saw fit work. i think he was relaxing to be around and i gave an example earlier where in the beginning quite frankly, when the and i showed up at langley it was like he was greeted as visigoth at the gate. this was nobody at cia wanted to be middle with by the dni. but it's a system of restructuring is working much more successfully now i think bennett used to area of course now, currently we have a director of national intelligence in my opinion in john radcliffe who is a partisan hack who frankly is

really has been serving the presidents purposes rather than being a broker of intelligence . so that is aserious problem . >> we have a lot of questions but i one is about torture. and when you talk about enhanced interrogation techniques as you put it that you took them a lot. iguess my question is , how never do you see the cia's reflection on that period of time and what happened and you think there's a general sense that no, we shouldn't have gone there and we wouldn't do it again,what's your take on it ? >> first of all when i worked with enhanced interrogation techniques i'm simply using what the cia turned. it's not a term i would use. and? that he gave me a hard time for airmail for some

referring to it that way. what's fascinating to me is that first of all, michael hayden said to me in a quote that later became famous he first said to me for a documentary that if a president wants to water board anybody ever again. he better bring his own bucket. because this agency isn't going down that road again. and i think he's right. so i think 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 start to talk to david petraeus who has some experience, who has had more detainees more than anyone on

the face of the earth as head of centcom, he'll tell you the way you get information is by having interrogators bond with their subjects and you don't get effective intelligence through torture . having said that, i felt that it was important to get inside the heads of the director and watch that take place and if you talk to george tenet, he will give you an impassioned argument that he believes these techniques were the only way to prevent what he thought was a second wave of attack that were imminent after 9/11 . that second wave ofattacks never occurred . he would argue that some of

the techniques did produce intelligence that disrupted plots and savelives . 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 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. morrell however doesn't say that we should be doing it anymore but he simply saying that it's not as simple as it's been portrayed and last thing i'll tell you about it is the senate majority report which was so damning in many

ways very thorough and convincing about the inefficacy, they never interviewed any of the directors. georgetown, michael hayden none of them were interviewed . so if you want to get a sense of what those directors were thinking, you can find it in my chapter on it. >> in addition to being illegal and immoral, based on their part. a number of people have asked about our relationship with other powers. and i think especially right now, and our relationship with those directors and another question is have you

talked to these directors about activities that are with non-allied powers. and how does the cia see its position in the world vis-c-vis what it takes over time to deal with foreign powers and then the question of what about coordination of intelligence, services etc. . >> it's a tough question, it's a very hard question to answer particularly with, because we have a cia director currently who flies under the radar and gives no interviews. is really very much, she was trained as a covert operative and she doesn't talk a lot

about what they're doing. i wish that she and mike had given me interviews for the book because i believe that the cia is the honest broker of intelligence not only to the president but to the american people and that cia directors should deduce, the really great ones were afraid of the press. richard helms and bob gates so that's my speech about their unwillingness to give in to these. having said that, it's hard to know very much about how much the trump era has affected the cia's relationships with these guys. gina haskell has a brilliant relationship with intelligence, she was a two-time station chief in

london and so i have a great story in the book about how she when she was rising through the ranks, haskell one day had a friendship with the unlikeliest mentor imaginable and that was josc rodriguez, the architect of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. he was the one who would say to her when she was thinking about becoming chief in geneva would say to her lesson girl, that's not good enough for you. if you want to advance your career, she did . so a little digression there but i think british intelligence and thecia have a good relationship . hard to know what the effects of the trump presidency has

been, but you all remember the time that donald trump met in the oval office with russian officials including lateral 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 i wrote in the washington post there are other big problems which is this president is essentially unpredictable area he doesn't read. he doesn't pay attention to his family brief, he's incurious, he thinks he knows everything worth knowing and he thinks he can share stuff with vladimir putin. at a problem. there are, i will tell you

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

but two of them i just want to get into, not necessarily related. which is maybe i can do it now and one of them is china. which is not a huge part of what you've written about. how do you see china in terms of the extra burden it puts on the cia right now, how robust you think the cia is and the other thing is another thing you could write a whole book about which is the increasing weight of all of this on the intelligence committee after 9/11 but now it's unusual position inside the station and so i'm sure you can answer and listeners are asking. >> so on china just briefly, i think there's no doubt that

china is a huge challenge for the cia. and china's been unusually successful in rolling up cia assets in recent years and that's been kind of an uphill story. china is coming on strong as a competitor as everyone knows and i think that it's a huge challenge for the cia going forward. maybe the biggest challenge area as for the doj's role, this is a case where i think gina haskell have to be 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 politicized it and left many top jobs simply unfilled or empty and he's installed a partisan sycophant in genre cliff as the director of national intelligence. that makes gina haskell's job as the honest broker of intelligence not only to the president but to congress and the american people, that much more difficult and so much more important and critical at this time. and the fact that we have a doj investigation led by lieutenant durham, it seems specious at best. it seems aimed at trying to

prosecute intelligence officers for doing their jobs . it's something that gina haskell has to be very very careful about. she really needs to have the backs of her employees. and her record is really mixed on that. i have to say when donald trump holds this intelligence prefer under the bus came back the first he's heard of the virus was on january 23 and his briefer said it was no big deal, we all know now her name. she evidently by the way is on her way out and it's all here to replace her.gina haskell's silence was deafening when trump threw her under the bus. i think the cia director's responsibility, this was a case where there were so many things wrong with that

statement. everything in the cdc is a big deal and if it's briefed on the president verbally is an even bigger deal. so again, i think this is a perilous time right now for the intelligencecommunity . and an awful lot is writing on gina haskell as the honest broker. >> when we look ahead to the future, the future of november and afterwards, the top three recommendations to make it cia better tools or less tools or more incentives or more clarity or another voice at the table, any of those things. is there anything you would you would recommend? >> and has to be necessary in

november because this is not the first time we've had a president who was convinced that the cia was a deep state, full of liberal enemies all bent on bringing him down. richard nixon thought that about the cia in the helms era and he thought dick helms was this elitist was out to get him. nixon was wrong, trump is wrong, trunk trump takes it to another level. he's delusional area he believes these committees are compared to nazi germany. he has a level of contempt in the presidency that makes it impossible to brief him. it makes it impossible for him to have the right information when decisions are made.

so the overwhelming priority has to be in november finding a way to get someone into the oval office who respects intelligence and who respects the truth, because at the end of theday that's what the cia does . >> so that brings up i think the question which is the last election versus this election area and the question of whatdid we know that and what do we know now ? do you think we learn enough lessons from the point of view of the intelligence community in 2016 that this election really can be protected one way or another? >> where certainly more aware of the nature of the soviet threat so that's an advantage going into this. having said that, there are always in august 2016 in my

book actually opens on the scene, john brennan is up burning the midnight oil with at cia headquarters looking out at the canopy of trees trying to figure out and he figures out that a soviet russian attack on the us election is coming . but at that moment in august 2016 he didn't know about the whole social media component of it . what he knew at that point was they had hacked into 39 states electoral machinery. so there are those including mike gerard who said 2016 was a strategic intelligence failure on the cia's part in the sense that they didn'tsee that extra component . of the russian attacks.

so we don't know what they tried it differentthis time around . and obviously there working closely but there's a problem when the president of the united states denies reality and pretends that it's not happening. it's hard to mobilize a very effective effort to stop a russian attack. so that would be my answer. they have a better idea but it's hard to know exactlyhow it will play out . >> so our last question is always the same question which is what brings you hope ? what brings you hope and maybe that will be the topic ofyour new book about what brings you hope ? >> one thing that i can talk

about but would come back , this is going to sound a little corny maybe. i have a chapter on george hw bush as cia director and there was no greater defender of the cia. he loved that job as everybody knows. but i would say one of the things that strikes me having gotten to know a lot of these people out there is that at the end of the day, almost everybody they have political opinions. there are vast differences between the analysts who tend to be deprived, geeky intellectuals who are doing their work on paper and the covert operatives who areout breaking laws 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 to produce honest intelligence and they don't pay a lot of attention to who is in the oval office and any given moment or any ofthe bluster coming their way . and 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 area. >> institutional integrity doesn't have to rely on the person on top. >> well, it helps. and you know, there's no question that it's critical that people at the cia believe that the cia director hastheir back . the great ones always did. the bob gates, others of that

kind. >> thank you for a wonderful conversation. you can buy this book, there's a button that you can push today so you're going to like it, i can tell you that rightnow . you so much, i'm sure we will talk again soon. >> it's such a pleasure, thank you for having me. >> 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 companies as a public service brought to you today by your television provider. >> weeknights this month we are featuring book to the programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span2 and tonight we focus on history.

johns hopkins university history professor martha jones explores efforts by black women to win the vote and then journalist david davis provides a history of the first wheelchair basketball team comprised of world war ii veterans. later about the federal government's migration of native americans to territories west of the mississippi in the mid-19 injury . begin at 8 pm eastern. enjoy book tv this weekend every weekend on c-span2. >> i am delighted to welcome jennet conant who is an accomplished author and also granddaughter of james bryant administrative director of the manhattan project in one of our nation's leading scientists of the 20th century. she's author of new york times bestsellers the irregulars and the british spy ring in wartime washington and tuxedo park, wall street tycoon the secret palace of science