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we are delighted to bring you this afternoon's conversations. with me today, chris whipple, award winning author, journalist, documenter maker. you see it? cia director, shaping the future. we are going to talk about this book today. welcome, chris, thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> this is a wonderful read. when i started, i was like zero no, this would be too much information and won't be able to take it in. in addition to your own knowledge and research, based on over 70 interviews and you are intervening among those, directors of the cia except for the current one, it is -- i'm just going to say out loud, it's not so much about the ca

directors as about the ca directors in relationship to the white house and the president. would you agree with that? >> thank you for the kind words. one of the things i've tried to do maybe above all else is dehumanized directors. i was lucky because they are characters they could never have dropped up. from helms in the 60s, it was the cia director, bob gates showed as a james bond charact character. a dry martini in one hand and could walk into the oval office and tell lbj the domino theory was flawed. going forward through the veto corleone of the cia and then you've got bill casey and an amazing cast of characters all

the way up to gina, the first woman to run the cia. you are right, the book focuses a lot on that relationship between the president and cia director. it's almost impossible balancing act aci director because he or she the one hand as to tell the president hard truths. while also keeping the president year. that's a really tough challenge even in the best of times and in current times, it's practically mission impossible. >> i don't know if you saw the coming film over the weekend -- >> yes. >> one of the things that becomes clear, how hard that particular relationship generally and how much harder it was under trump. just going down that line a little bit, who had the worst relationship? i read the book so i kind of

think i know what you're going to say. then who has the best relationship? >> it would have to be the worst relationship with the president. it's a really fascinating character. he's a brilliant guy. as we all know, on the spectrum, he was well over to the right but he loved to joke about the fact that he was president of mccarthy and 68. the vietnam war 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 will see were 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 at some length,

woolsey left, bill clinton turned to one of his advisors and said i never want to see that man again. he almost never did. he literally had one meeting with the president and at one time, there was a freak accident on the south lawn of the accident white house, a small plane crash and killed the pil pilot. "afterwards", woolsey said to the press, that was me trying to get an appointment with bill clinton. >> oh my god. >> was not very productive relationship. he met his demise over the james scandal. that case is the most serious in american intelligence history. it happened on his watch and it

essentially ended the. >> what about that relationship? >> there are a number of contenders for that probably. i would say bob gates and george h.w. bush had a very good relationship. leon pannetta and barack obama had a very good relationship. john brennan and obama, certainly. a spoil alert, for those who know i will another book called the gatekeeper is about the white house chief of staff, some of the attributes that make a great white house chief of staff also served cia directors as well. it is not coincidence in my view that leon banana with the gold standard at both. there were certainly other great cia directors but pannetta was

right up there with the best. that's partly because it's a lot to do with the fact that when he became cia director for obama, he was 70 years old and had been around the block. he served in congress and was comfortable, he knew the white house he could walk into the oval office until barack obama what he didn't want to hear. that is essential in both. >> you could train as being not just an honest broker but like a brilliant strategist. >> he was. one of the great stories i tell in the leon pannetta chapter is about the time who was the director of national intelligence made the mistake of

trying to take leon pannetta in a bureaucratic struggle over who would appoint the cia chiefs. you could put on paper make the argument that the director of national intelligence outlined leon blair ought to make that appointment but in the real world, blair should have known that was jealousy guarded and then a new that. he sent out a directive without informing pannetta to all the stations saying he would appoint the new chiefs. pannetta waited about a half an hour and sent out another message saying disregard the previous dosage.

this was not a fair fight. leon knew exactly who had his back on this one. not barack obama but vice president joe biden who wound up being reverie on this one. as they walked out of the office to adjudicate this with biden, lions turned to him and said joe, is it still 9:30 a.m. tomorrow? biden said yes and layer new he was a dead man walking. >> this book is not just about the white house president cia director but also a chronicle of american foreign policy. not just things learned from behind the scenes but major events taking place in american foreign policy over four to five decades. a number of those things obviously have been lately, 9/11

and perhaps the most obvious one the killing of bin laden, there was one incident that i think a lot of readers in our audience know that much about, i wonder if you want to tell this story. i felt so embarrassed about this story so now i'm so grateful. >> 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 reported before and it's absolutely unbelievable story that lasts 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 cia history which was the bombing of the beirut embassy in beirut which killed cia officers and other americans at the time. subsequently, it was determined was probably of making a operation, john of that era of truck bomb terrorism, that was really the beginning, a very pivotal time. from that day forward, he had more american israeli blood on his hands than anyone. the operational genius of hezbollah, the operational chi chief, they called him the school of terrorism because he was so elusive. one photograph of him, the cia and they could never keep up with him. he would wear disguises, he

developed pioneered the use of charge, a sophisticated ied that essentially grows israelis out of lebanon's. it's effective and people would cut through a tank. he killed the israeli general triggering the israeli withdrawal. in short, it is the most wanted guy and they were a general alimony of syria and iranian syria got soleimani whose name may ring a bell since he was killed in january this year. in any event, cia tried and tried to track him down and i told the story of an operation on bill clinton's watch, the end of his watch, they tracked him

down to beirut and discovered he would visiting his mistresses flat and he would visit her and beat her, as it turned out. the cia listed her, they grabbed him and bumbled him down onto a boat and off to a battleship offshore. it all went south. the operation failed and another decade went by before cia finally tracked him down in damascus. i tell that story in detail in a joint cia operation. they finally got make mia, tracked him in damascus, in his suv. they decided they couldn't plant

the bomb in a phone. he always had his suv and they wound up, the ca build a bomb. it was a technical marvel because they had to replace the back door of the suv without the bodyguards noticing and had to match the pink guard and even the age of the paint. they did all this and he pulled the trigger and at one time, in one moment while surveilling and waiting for the moment to strike, they looked and looked again and realized there was someone leaning on his car and talking to him, it was general soleimani. they got it is a twofer, we can take them both out. they got permission but

permission was denied. they waited and soleimani went off and they finally did get h him. it is an unbelievable story. also the whole delicate negotiation because assassination, quote unquote, it's always been a fraught proposition at the cia. it's been prohibited by three decades. in this case, you went through contortions so the israelis would pull the trickle rather than the americans. bush signed off on the deal as long as nobody ever talked abo about. 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 exit from your interviews

where you ask a number of cia directors what happens and there's no comment, no, which i guess comes with the territory but it's not a bad story to eventually get to know. >> john brennan who finally get frustrated and is asked repeatedly for, he finally looked at me and said he died quickly. that was his comment. >> interesting. one thing i wanted to ask, you don't really talk about, what are your thoughts on the use of military generals to be head of the cia and whether you know how

we should think about that and how others have thought about that. there is a way in these authorizations in these activities and learning about that particular, that mixing of kind of expertise is. >> it's a mixed bag. again, the two directors and i get into it, hayden and david, each of them are really capable and very interesting characters and hayden tells the story about how when he first arrived, he's running the nsa, national security agency prior, he was still a general. not quite retired. he arrived at the cia and went to the bubble, the so-called

bubble cia to make his first address to the troops, as it were. as he was speaking he came to the end of his remarks, he took questions and somebody's name shot out and said what would you like us to call you? hayden, who is famously eloquent and articulate, he did not answer. finally he said whatever makes you comfortable don't call me general, what every you call me, call me whatever you want to call me. he said in retrospect, is the most important thing he said at the. there is what some call, something called four-star general disease. what it means is that military people sometimes arrived at the

cia and certainly directors arrive on occasion with a very well developed sense of entitlement. i used to have 50 staff, david petraeus did when in afghanist afghanistan, this was a little bit of the problem when he arrived. with such a culture shock. when you have been a commanding general like the trailers, you are accustomed to the different way of life and operating in having people at your beck and call. he got over that and i think adjusted to the cia culture but in the beginning it was rocky for him. he had only really just adjusted when he met his untimely demise

by sharing classified information with his mistress. in the book, i asked him about that and it's fascinating. >> there is an interesting part from her, that can be a teaser in that section of the book. what about when directors are asked or told to break the law? what have you learned about that and how that plays out looking at these different directors? >> 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. i have had the privilege of getting to know the widow of

richard, the previously mentioned cia, old-school cia director, he died last summer but i spent a lot of time the summer before, she was 95 and full of terrific untold stories about her husband. she said you know, chris, they were all asked to do things they should not have done. i said like what? we got into it and talked about the fact that helms was a flawed character, he was brilliant smooth and i loved the stories about them holding his own on the dance floor, 1975 the dinn dinner, in iran.

quite a character. his relationship with lbj, he admired her for his domestic achievements and great society, he was exasperated by the vietnam war. he wanted lbj to succeed. lbj leaned on him very hard as only lbj could do and told him he wanted intelligence joni showing against the vietnam war were being controlled by foreign communist powers. he processes and said, lbj said i'm aware of that and wanted it. helms should have known better but he bent the law and set up an operation called operation mh

chaos, it was illegal domestic surveillance, protesters who had every right to protest. at the end of the day, he came up with absolutely no evidence of any foreign communist contr control. helms was flawed but at the end of the day, helms stood up at the most important time when crunch came during that scandal and hr and white house chief of staff called him into the white house and told him to shut down the fbi investigation into watergate. helms was having none of it. he stood up for the rule of law and arguably saved the cia. helms was the earliest example of cia director who had to deal with that kind of pressure but so many have had to.

time and again, president will ask them to do so they should not be doing including, i love the way bob gates put it, usually you got difficult problem. the state department says that the military handle it. the military says let the diplomats handle it. they all say let's let the cia do it. the cia is one former director told me 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, when the cia gets in trouble, it's usually because presidents have asked them to do stuff they shouldn't. >> do they get in trouble?

do they get held accountable or get in trouble? >> there's certainly been blamed time and again. the other classic language, in this town, there's only successes and failures. certainly cia was blamed for 9/11, failure of imagination and all kinds of things but basically the cia, people would come up to me and say how does it feel to have the worst intelligence failure since pearl harbor? the truth is, and i have a detailed chapter on this, in july 2001, george and rich lee, head of the al qaeda unit, went

to the bush white house, he slammed his fist on the table and said we've got to go into war footing now. essentially, they blew the whistle and nobody heard it. this was the case in my view, less of intelligence failure and more of a policy failure, the white house failure to heed their warnings. fast-forward to 2020 and we are now suffering catastrophic consequences of a president who ignored warnings in his presence daily brief throughout the month of january 9,200,000 americans are dead. >> one thing you talk about in the story, i'd like to hear your thoughts on it, the abandonment

of procedural norms under this president particularly in terms of the principal committee meetings, can you talk about that? you talk about this throughout when talking about trump presidency. >> this is the white house that not only declared war on process in norms, essentially declared war on government from day one. the outcome white house staff, the clock struck noon january 20, we are sitting in his office and waiting for staff to arrive and nobody showed up. he waited an hour or more and finally just turned off the lights and left. to me, it's a metaphor for this

presidency but not the first time process and norms have been abandoned. one thing was not 11. one thing i learned in the book, i did a documentary in 2015 called the spy masters in which we told the story of the july 10, 2001 meeting. in the book i went deeper and talked to a number of really persuasive sources in the white house and cia who said essentially that all you had to do in july 2001 was called in schools meeting and of course, parental meetings, the heads of eia, fbi, vice president for national security advisor and

all the department heads and get them around the table and shake the tree. when you shake the tree with all those people at the table, stuff falls out. a number of people told me they think had rice called the principles meeting, they would have discovered to of the al qaeda characters were on u.s. soil and had been for months. this was, as we all know 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 not the first presidency, terms is not the first presidency to fail, to follow some of those norms. in this case, the bush white house, they were living in a kind of time warp, they couldn't believe a bunch of guys beards

in caves in afghanistan would blow up the world trade center. as it is put to me, they thought terrorists people who blow stuff up during the day and stay up all night drinking champagne. >> there were people in which you pointed out, trying to get that message to the national security council so i think it's one of the things that haven't quite learned and we need to reflect on. as you so well say the war on government. another part in the book, every director time and time again has to be iran almost always in crisis situations or more than once crisis situation. soleimani and others.

i don't know how to ask this but i want to know, where do you think and what period of time do think we have the best understanding of and relationship with aaron? >> we certainly have a very close relationship with the wrong guy in iran. that's one of my favorite chapters in the book because it happened on his watch has cia director but it was arguably the greatest intelligence failure of the 20th century. it was certainly a huge fiasco but in terms of children's failures, failure to see iran as

weak as he was in the 1879 and verge of collapse, it was a fiasco. one of the reasons, quite frankly, we had almost willfully blinded ourselves and part of that was because henry kissinger had a deal in which he basically said if you will give us access to your posts on the soviet union, we look the other way, we will not pay any attention to your political comments and we typically rely on all of our intelligence. i get into all of this in the book and that whole relationship between stan turner and jimmy carter and all of that to me is

fascinating. one of the caveats about all of this, i suppose, one of the great sources i spoke with, stu, a brilliant guy. some of you may know him, he's still very active and really persuasive voice on foreign affairs. he was saying our intelligence was terrible during this whole. we often just completely misunderstand other societies in this was a classic example. certainly vietnam before iran was a classic example of just understanding society. at the end of the day you have to wonder had no the shop was on the verge of collapse, what

would policy makers have done with that knowledge? what exactly could we have done to have changed that pivotal moment in history would there have been any way to arrive at this? i'm not sure the odds are that great that we would have been smart enough to figure out what to do. i am a great packer fan, i left book and richard holbrook, my first boss emma by the way. just about how badly we have misunderstood so many of these complex from vietnam to iran to bosnia to our current situation.

we are obviously, human beings are terribly flawed and 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 were certainly a lot of, no offense to anybody who went to this school but it was considered all white male and male who were, for decades. diversity was certainly a huge problem at the cia and i think it helped lined the cia in many ways. i think we've been historically, for many decades, failed to understand each other's cultures and lack of diversity was certainly part of the period that has vastly improved. i think improved in many other

ways, to. >> interesting. i want to tell everyone if you have questions, feel free to put them in the chat q&a, which ever you would like. i worked a few into the conversation already but i will work them in. i have another question speaks to the evolution of the cia the dna, office of the rapture of national intelligence creation of post- 9/11 the organization of government enhance the intelligence and national security priorities and abilities of the country. director of the cia, the intelligence community was understood to function before. what you make of that and what do other cia directors make of that? >> funny story about that because i was very lucky when my

book was launched, i had a zoom party and they attended by zoom i was asked a question about the dni and what i thought of it and i proceeded to say that after 9/11, congress essentially had the intelligence committee do something. they created this office called director of national intelligence and essentially it goes on with authority and confused everyone. at which time the screen showed pulsating and he started waving his hand and then he jumped in and defend the restructuring of the intelligence committee dni office was occupied. they jumped on me, too and said

he could never in the cia, i was a 24/7 job without having someone with jim klapper to take care of intelligence services. i finally conceded that they had some points. i do think that relationship worked jim klapper and john brennan and cia director because they figured out how to make it work. klapper was the first strict perfect guy in that job, he didn't want to step on brennan's toes, he wanted to help by coordinating other agencies and leaving brennan to do his job as he saw fit and it worked they got along. it was very rocky in the beginning and i gave an example of pannetta and blair earlier where in the beginning the dni

showed up, is like gates office, nobody at cia wanted to be meddled with the dni but a system, a restructuring working much more successfully now i think than it used to. the problem of course now, currently, we have a director of national intelligence, in my opinion, john ratcliffe, a partisan hack who frankly is really serving the president partisan purposes rather than being an honest broker of intelligence so that is a serious problem. >> we have a lot of questions but one is about torture. would you talk about techniques, as you put it in your book and

you talk about it a lot. i guess my question is, how do you now see the cia reflection on the period of time and what happened? do think there is a general sense that it was illegal and shouldn't have gone there? maybe we won't do it again? what is your thought? >> first of all, when i worked those techniques, and simply using the cia terms, it is not the terms i would use. mark gave me a hard time in a review for supposedly referring to it that way. what is fascinating to me is that first of all, michael hayden said to me in a quote that later became famous, he first said it to me for documentary, if the 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 is right. for one thing, it is illegal. in my view, it should be illeg illegal. in my view, it is a moral, it is not something the united states of america should be doing. if you talk to david petronius, who has some experience, who was in charge of more detainees probably sent anyone on the face of the earth, he will tell you the way you get information is by having interrogators with their subjects and you don't get affected intelligence through torture.

having said that, i felt it was important to get inside the heads of the directors on who's watched that. if you talk to george tenet, he will give you an argument that he believed these techniques were the only way to prevent what he thought was a second wave of attacks that were imminent after 9/11. second wave of attacks occurred. he would argue that some of the techniques did produce intelligence that disrupted saved lives. mike morel, to give you another acting director, not exactly an

archconservative, hillary clinton's cia director, mike morel will tell you there is no question in his mind that interrogation techniques provided actionable intelligence that resulted in the apprehension of terrorists and get specific examples. morale is not arguing therefore that we should be doing it anymore but he's simply saying it's not as simple as portrayed. last thing i'll say is senate majority report which was so damning and in many ways, mary laurel and convincing about an efficacy, if you will, of those techniques they never interviewed any of the directors on whose watch it happened. michael hayden, none of them

interviewed. so if you want to get a sense of what those directors are thinking inside their heads, you can find it in my chapter on this remark in addition to being illegal, the immoral part we should probably mention that part, a number of people have asked about our relationship with other powers. starting right now with trump in our relationship with the rest of the world is one of the questions. another question that could be bundled with that is, have you talked to the directors about activities with non- allies powers? my best way of paraphrasing th this. how does the cia position in a world that it takes over time to

deal with foreign powers the question of, what about our relationship with other coordination of intelligence sources, services and etc., in the current context? >> it is a tough and good question, a very hard question to answer. [silence] -- >> she doesn't talk a lot about what they are doing. i wish she and mike pompeo had given the interviews for the book. i believe the cia director has to be honest not only to the president but the american

people cia directors give. they're really great ones have a lot of questions. the pannetta's and bob gates so that is my speech about their unwillingness to give intervie interviews. having said that, it is hard to know very much about how much the trump era has affected the cia's relationships. gina has a very close relationship with british intelligence, she was to time station chief in london and i have a great story in the book about when she was rising through the ranks, forming a friendship unlikeliest mentor imaginable, josé rodriguez, the

architect of the black sites so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. he named her sort of a feminist mentor, he would say to her when she was thinking about becoming station chief in geneva, would say to her, listen, grow, that is not good enough for you, that is where it happening. if you want to vent your career and she did. a little digressions that but i do think russian intelligence and the cia have a pretty good relationship. hard to know what the others and what the effect of the trump presidency has been for we all remember the time that donald trump met in the oval office with russian officials and he blurted out details about a very

sensitive israeli operation in the middle east. there is real concern among allies and other countries this president can't be trusted with intelligence. that is simply fact. as i wrote in the washington post, there are other big problems, this president is essentially unbelievable. he doesn't read, he doesn't read the president daily brief, he thinks he knows everything worth knowing and thinks he can share stuff the vladimir putin's of the world. that is a problem. i will tell you that bob woodward reports that this was concerned this president, that russia might have something on this president. i can simply tell you he's hardly alone among very

high-ranking intelligence officials who believe the same thing. especially after helsinki, i had one person who used to run russian operations for the cia, told me after that press conference in helsinki, he could have no other rational possibility except that the russians have some sort of financial relationship with trump. so 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 to just want to get together necessarily related you will relate them. they have to do with now. when is china. not huge part of what you have written about, how do you see china in terms of the extra

burden it puts on the cia for right now, how robust do you think the cia is? the second thing is, the d.o.j.'s increasing part in all of this much closer to the intelligence community after 9/11 but now it is unusual positioning inside this administration. i'm sure you have some thoughts on those and because our listeners are asking, i am asking you. >> on china, just briefly, i think there's no doubt china is a huge challenge for the cia. china has been unusually accessible and rolling up cia assets in recent years and that's kind of an untold story.

china coming on strong as a competitor, as everyone knows. it is a huge challenge for the cia going forward, maybe the biggest challenge. as for the d.o.j.'s role, i think it's this is a case where i think she has to be very careful. the way in which donald trump has succeeded and politicizing top levels of intelligence communities would make richard nixon blush. he has really compromised intelligence and politicized it left many top jobs unfilled or

empty and he's installed a partisan and the director of national intelligence, that makes the job as the honest broker of intelligence only to the president but the american people that much more difficult and more important and critical at this time the fact that have a dod investigation and by john durham, it seems suspicious at best, it seems aimed at trying to prosecute intelligence officers for doing their jobs, something they have to be very careful about. she really needs to have the backs of her employees her record is very mixed on the. i have to say when donald trump

through his intelligence brief are under the bus saying the virus was january 23 she said it was no big deal, we all know now her name, she evidently, by the way is in her way out and it's not clear is going to replace. this silence was deafening when trump threw her under the bus, in my view. i think the cia director is a responsibility for the public in this was the case where there were so many things wrong with that statement. everything by definition a big deal if it's also briefed to the president verbally, it's an even bigger deal so again, i think this is a perilous time right now for the intelligence

community. an awful lot is writing on gina as the honest broker. >> so when you look ahead to the future, like november and "afterwards", if somebody came to you and said what are the top three recommendations to get the cia better tools or less tools or more strength or clarity or voice at the table, any of those things, is there anything you would recommend or what you say -- >> it has to start in november because this is not the first time we've had a president who was convinced the cia was a deep state, full of liberal enemies, hell-bent on bringing him down. richard nixon thought that about

the cia back in the helms era, he thought helms was this martini sipping elitists out to get him nixon was wrong. trump is wrong. trump takes it to another level, he is delusional. he believes the intelligence committee compared to germany, he brings a level of contempt in the presidency that makes it impossible for him to have the right information when history making decisions are made. the overwhelming priority has to be november finding a way to get somebody into the oval office respects intelligence and respects the truth because at the end of the day, that is what the cia does. >> so that brings up another

question which is the last election versus this election. the question of what we knew then and what we know now. do think we've learned enough lessons about the interference in the view of the intelligence community in 2016, this election really can be protected one way or another? >> we are certainly more aware of the nature of the soviet threat so is obviously an advantage going into this. having said that, there are always surprises in august 2016, my book actually opens on this scene, the seventh floor of cia headquarters, looking out at the canopy trying to figure out what

and he realizes a soviet russian attack on u.s. election is coming. at that moment in august 2016, he didn't know about the whole social media component. what he knew at that time was they packed into 39 states elect door machinery. ... united states denies this reality and pretends it is not

happening. it's hard to mobilize a very effective effort to stop a russian attack. so that would be my answer. it's hard to know. they have a better idea that it's hard to know exactly how it will play out. >> the last question is always the same question which is what brings you hope and maybe that is the topic of your next book, but what brings you hope? >> this is going to sound a little bit corny at the risk of a chapter on george hw bush the cia director and that there was no greater defender of the cia. he loved that job as i think everybody knows.

one of the things that i think strikes me, having gotten to know a lot of people out there is that at the end of the day, they are human beings with political opinions and differences between the analysts who intend to be deprived intellectuals doing their work on paper and the covert operatives that are out breaking laws in countries all over the world. but, the vast majority of them are very good at keeping their heads down and trying to do their jobs and produce honest intelligence, and they don't pay a lot of attention to whomever is in the oval office at any given moment or any of the bluster that is coming their

way. that may sound pollyanna -ish but you can take some hope away from that when you just see how dedicated most of them are. >> institutional integrity doesn't have to rely on the person. >> it helps and there's no question about it it's critical people at the cia believed the cia director has their back. the great ones always did. leon panetta, bob gates, others at that time. >> thank yo >> thank you for a wonderful conversation. you can buy the book on the invitation there's a button you can pay for the link that you got today.

you are going to like it i can tell you that right now. thank you very much. i'm sure we will talk again soon. >> thanks for having me.