>> rose: welcome to our program. toninight a conversation with actor matt damon and dector cameron crowe about their new film "we bought a zoo". >> to me it was... it wasn't even about the animalstor zoo it was about this guy who... it was this epic love story about this guy who... just the person he was in love with was gone and he was trying to... he's trying to... struggling desperately to keep his life together and family together and help his kids through that transition while he going through it. and there was something that seemed really heroic about that and wonderful and resonated with me. >> reporter:. >> rose: we conude with ali soufanny who interrogated key al

qaeda detainees. >> if you look at the efficacy. it said padilla was caught in may of 2004. so if you brief anyone in washington about the time line of waterboarding it makessense. we start waterboarding in abu zubaydah in may, 2002. we arrest padilla in may, 2003. however the kaefsy memo is wrong. padilla was arrested in mae of 2002. months before waterboarding. so date brs r being changed. >> rose: matt damon, cameron crowe d ali soufan when we continue.

captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york

city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: in 2006, a journalist named benjamin me moved his family to a house in the british countryside. it had 12 bedrooms and a lovely garden. the catch: it also contained 250 exotic animals. despite logistical challenges, mee and his family preserved the zoo, which is currently still open. the story of his adventure is a new movie. it is called "we bought a zoo" and here is the trailer. >> hustle, hustle, we're late. all right, oh, hi. all right. bye. >> bye, dad. >> i thought maybe dinner for three. >> thank you. >> or four. >> hey, rosie, am i doing anything right?

>> you're not like other dads. lots of them don't havehair. but that's good. >> attempt to start up. >> i shall try to start over. >> sunlight. joy. >> i salute you and the great times we had together and i quit this is exactly what we've been looking for. it could get complicated. >> what's so complicated about this place? (lion roaring) >> it's a zoo. >> daddy! i want to live here! >> welcome to your zoo. >> this is what you want, it's not what i want. >> at the risk of stating the obvious, you're insane. >> you don't even need any special knowledge to run a zoo. what you need is a lot of heart. you argoing toove your new enclosure.

>> we need somebody who can take charge of this place or else we and all these animals are gone. >> i'm trying to give the kids an authentic experience. >> stop before zebras get involved. >> there's two zebras, there's a lion, there's 47 animal species. >> it will never last. >> if you stick with me, i will give this everything. >> well, that's good enough for me. >> i think you're incredibly pretty. please don't take offense i don't hit on you. >> i'd be offended if you did. >> thank you. i think. >> i like the animals but i love the humans. >> all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage. and i promise you something great will come of it. >> you coming? >> rose: with me is cameron crowe the director and matt damon who stars as benjamin mee,

i am pleased to have them both at this table. welcom >> thank you. >> rose: you should be embarrassed. this is so heartwarming, isn't it? >> we put our hearts into it, definitely. it's a story from the soul, i think. >> rose: how did you find it? was it your... i read the book "we bought a zoo," but benjamin mee and it struck me as one of those stories about the human adventure, you can't really make it up. the guy follows his instincts and finds the whole world opens up to him. and that kind of story really depends onhe kind of performances that we had and matt and i really made the journey together. >> rose: but you said... i think i read this. you wanted to put joy in the world. >> yeah. i thought it was time to just... >> rose: we need some joy. >> put a little piece of joy out there. >> rose: and you? he calls you up and says this is the character, this is the story and you said... >> but that was one of the things he said to me. one of the first things about joy. he said "i want to put a piece of joy out into the world." he said "this is a good time to do that. and that's what i want to do."

so that was what... that was one of the this that really gripped me about this idea of doing this. obviously i was worried that was a kind of a lifetime channel version of this movie that would be too saccharin and wouldn't be something that i'd want to spend six months of my life doing but ceron is... that's where he... he lives in that place of emotion and humor and walks that line better than anybody and so if i was going to take a shot on material like this, it would be with him. rose: did you rewrite the script? you had to work on the script and make it less... >> i did. i did. i thought we'd go from the inside out and just make it about real characters and the choices that you make and there's, like, such a wonderful authenticity about matt's work and i just wanted to work with him so much and i thought two of us together kind of hammering out the path on this. we make a movie that would leave

a feeling with you so you'd leave that theater and it's just kind of... it's surrounding you. >> rose: did you tell him... i read a story that you told him... he told you not to read the script in the beginning? >> well, he gave me script but he also gave me about an hour and a half worth of music that he had put together. you can't call it a mix tape anymore, because they're not tapes. but it was a c.d. that he left me with and helso gave me the film "local hero." >> rose: i love that. peter regert. >> peter regert. and he said "these three things, digest all of them, that's the feeling i want them to be. ". >> rose: hoping you would be on the same page she was in >> yeah. it really just a way to give me more information to make a decision because the real thing as an actor is when you say yes, that's t moment and then

you're off and running and you're completely committed at that moment and you're committed until the day the movie comes out. it is... and you have to commit to it that way. you're in the fox hole at that moment and you can't get out and so we obviously... they're all educated guesses for us. you've got the director and the material and the role and the rest of the cast and who else is on the crew but, you know, those pieces don't always add up to.... >> rose: what was it about benjamin mee that you wanted most of us to make sure that we got, understood, that made him interesting beyond the fact that it was senate this environment. >> because to me it was even about e animals or the zoo it was about this guy who it was this epic love story about this guy who just the person he was in love with was gone and he was trying to... he's trying to...

struggling kind of desperately to keep his life togethernd keep his famy togethernd help his kids through that transition while he's going through it and there was something that seemed really heroic about that and wonderful and resonat with me just as somebody who has kids and has a wife and i don't know what the hell i'd do without her and so in talking with cameron, that was really where we felt like that was our center. and if wead that... >> rose: find the place where the mother was not there. >> yeah. find... find this kind of desperate struggle to... this fight for your family that just really was a very life-affirming thing at the center of it. >> rose: how do you do that as a director? >> well, we had conversations early on that were incredibly inspiring because matt who knows family and love in the home very well as guy wanted to tell a

love story that is about a figure who's no longer alive when scene one happens. so how do you do a love story where the person isn't there? well, you play it in every scene. and it's a version of that love. and how much are you going to carry with you of the memories and how much do you have to move on? and these new impulses and these new people that i'm meeting. how much can i connect with them? and what kind of instit am i going to follow to go forward? and what happened is we made this movie where the whole journey is revealed in the last two words where we see the woman that he's in love with the whole movie, she appears in a flash back that he acts out for his children and the last two words of the movie tell us that the woman has guided the entire journey. and that's the love story matt plays in the movie. >> rose: take a look. this is an excerpt where benjamin talks to his kids. here it is. >> it's a zoo! >> well, yeah. look, these animals need somebody to rescue them

>> animal need to be rescued? dad, my friends and my whole life is here! man, you got expelled, all right? what am i going to do? wham am i supposed to do? am i going to home school you? >> no. >> right, so what did we talk about? a new place. a new start. >> this is what you want. it's not what i want. >> what? >> the zoo. i'm moving to a zoo. >> we bought a zoo! >> yes, we did. we did buy a zoo. it needs some work. >> rose: just tell me about the scene, both of you. how you saw the scene, what was interesting about the scene. >> it's the father starting an adventure th usually would belong to the kids. so the father is saying yes, we bought a zoo! what's wrong with that? >> totally logical choice. >> rose: doesn'tven want to zoo. >> we shoot the scene where the kids said idn't you tell me sometimes zoos are a prison for the animals?"

"well, yes, but not this zoo. this zoo is about taking care of endangered species." so is the beginning of father and son story that happens roughout the movie. it's powerful. >> rose: has parenthood changed the way you approached acting at all or is it only a scene where you're doing a scene that involves children. >> no, i'm... i've become fond of saying... and it's kind of a silly thing to say but the story "the grinch who stole christmas" there's the mont at the end where his heart grows like five sizes. that's what it felt like happened when i met my four kids you know? and so what... as a result i just find... i mean maybe i've gone soft or something but just everything i find emotion in general is much more readily available to me than it ever was before. >> rose: and especially a film like this where there's an element of that? >> there's a lot of crossover, yeah, something like this

with my life and and we were sitting out there at that zoo kind of ruminating about this stuff and, yeah, it was... we were all very, i think open. i think everybody, the crew, too. there were a lot of parents and a lot of... we were all there for the right reasons. >> rose: there's also this theme of taking risk. >> yeah. well, at the center of cameron's movies, all of them, the central character doesing? the first act that seems totally crazy to everybody else but it's something they that they need to do. their inner voice is telling them do it. and the whole movie becomes an exploration of that decision and the consequences of that decision and ends up being a celebration of the person who listened to that inner voice. d i think that that's just something that you probably did to choose the life that you chose and i know i did to choose the life that i chose as opposed to being a doctor or lawyer. >> rose: an inner voice that

told you... >> i've got to do that. >> rose: yeah, exactly. >> somebody told me recently that they had an extension of that theory which is that if you don't listen to that little voice it goes away. and then you don't have that anymore which i completely believe. >> rose: boy, that's a terrifying thought. >> it is. because to be out there just free and easy with no little instincts guiding you or giving you a tip, that's truly scary. >> rose: do you think everybody if they listened carefully would find it? would hear it? or do you have to... i mean, is it easily unheard i guess is the better question. >> i think it probably depends on who you are. i just watched this documentary about u2 and saw the young bono and he's just singing in just this, like, the force of... just beautiful everything that was pouring out of him, whether he was channeling it or whatever was happening it was awesome and clearly and even the other band membs say, like, we met this guy ango, like, yeah, man, i want to ride with that guy.

you can feel it. so i think for some people it's pouring out of them and for others it might be a softer kind of voice. >> rose: when did it happen to you? was it at school or before school? >> you know, i was... my mother is a professor of early childhood education and she was very... we had a very creative household and a very... she was very careful about urging us how to play and very open... the play was very open ended and from a very early age... she tells me now when i was two she knew that i was going to do this. i was constantly in this world of make believe and dressing up as one superhero or one person with an army helmet and running around or whatever it was. i was playing these roles and my brother is an artist, he's a painter and sculptor, he was building me cosmes or the bionic arm and speing hours drawing it so i could wear it

around and go bash it around in the backyard and so i think those signs were there and we were both very lucky to have the kind of parents and the kind of teachers who didn't squash that out of us. >> rose: who told you to follow your passion and encourageyou. how about for you? >> i loved writing. >> rose: writingwasirst. >> just loved the written word. had to follow that path. write it. you feel it, write it down my mom's a teacher and she encouraged me to do that and also took me to movies and say this is mike nichols, this is a very talented man. it's like okay, there's als this. these two things come together. rose: but was there also the sense that... from writing to directing, was that inevitable? >> not in the beginning. it was kind of... that was the dream beyond the dream. i think the first time i got published in olling stone" and particularly when they sent me a

copy of a story i did on led zeppelin and it arrived in the mail and it was on the cover. >> how old were you? >> 16. >> rose: the led accept lin story at 16 was on the cover of roling own? >> it was bizarre to think about it but i wasn't second guessing anything i loved that music. >> rose: this was conicled in what movie? oh, that's right. >> so it ended up being the subject of the movie i was able to make later. so i'min blue sky sailing now. it's all good. >> rose: so talk about people you've worked with. clooney. how competitive did you find him? >> he's unbelievably competitive. unbelievably competitive. i talked with jn about that all the time because john and i are working on something together and john did leather heads with george and john's 6' and quite an athlete but george is very, very, very serious

about basketball. >> rose: and about winning how was he as a director? i know you haven't been directed by him. >> phenomenal, if you look at what he's done it's fantastic. >> rose: do you want to do that? >> oh, yeah, yeah. that's what john and i are working on. we'vwritten something i'm going to direct next year. definitely. george... george is a... it's incredible, actually, what he's done with kind of coming from e.r., from being the handsome guy on "e.r." and he was just smart enough to know "if i just get my foot in the door." if you look at where his career is now versus where it was 15 years ago, it's remarkable what he's done. but it's because he's believably talented and he's so much more talented than ople realize. >> rose: that's ma what actors tell me about his directing. >> well, yeah, he has such a beautiful touch. just a great, great director. but he's very smart. he's seen every movie, read

everything. he's been underestimated for... i don't think anymore because he's now with "good night and good luck" and everything that's happened but even when steven soderbergh worked with him he's halfway through his first movie with george and said "let's start a company together." and everybody went "why is soderbergh doing a company with the guy from e.r.?" they're not saying that anymore. >> rose: what does this mean? "a brand new damon. why isollywood's smartest actor changing careers?" >> by being referred to as hollywood's smartest actor i'm sure george is going to... (laughter) >> rose: rivalry here, sir? >> i'll get an e-mail. >> what do you mean you're the smartest actor. because i'm going direct. >> rose: it's about directing. it's a bit like bono, i think it

was... i believe it was ed bradley doing a profile on "60 minutes" of bono and he said "look, you guys are one of the greatest rock 'n' roll bands. and bono said "one of?" (laughter) >> exactly, exactly. "watch your step." >> rose: so what are you going to do next >> i want to direct a movie in the spring or early summer. >> rose: you want to? you know what it is? >> i do. i've been writing it and kind of inspired by our experience on "we bought a zoo." i just loved the cast and i've been writing for a while and now i just want to start directing. >> rose: did you learn something about directing from being part of the process with this guy? >> sure, yeah. yeah. well, the biggest thing that i'd never seen before was the music, was incorporating that into the tual process. i'd never seen anybo do that and it really worked. for me, i've always been interested in what works on a practical level. the there's serious theory but if you're going to ma these things, then what actually helps?

and i found that that personally really helped me. and so it's something that i'll do. >> rose: were you looking for property that... you've been thinking about this for five years, ten years and all of a sudden something came and you said yeah, that's it. that's where i'm prepared to do. >> yeah, i just started working with john and it was very easy and fluid and reminded me of writing with ben. it was very fast and easy and he's just a... john krasinski is like george in the sense that he's known for being on this t.v. show "the office," and he's great on that. but the perception of him i would bet my house on the perception of him in ten years being very different than it is ght now. >> rose: is what happened to you anben sort of the way you imagined it might or dreamed that it might or... >> i don't even know if we dreamed it would be like that. it was likwinning the lottery and having your best friend win it, too. it was really beyond... and then

you know... i think the rose-colored glasses came off pretty early in the experience as we started to realize how competitive it is, how you have to kind of keep proving yourself and it's a rough business but i feel like we're in that next phase where we've kind of weathered that decade of... we've made it through that and i feel like we're set up to kind of go the distance now. >> rose: how would you define... i'm writing a book about friendship and if i came to you and said tell me wha.. take your friendship with ben, what's it about. what is it that makes a great friendship? >> i think for one thing, when it starts. i think... it was our teenage... when he got to high school... i was two years ahea of him. i was a junior when he was a freshman. and we just locked on each other. we both wanted to be professional actors and we both

knew it. it was weird because nobody in our families did this, you know? and there was something about this kind of crazy thing, this voice that we were listening to, but we had the same goals and the same... and at that age. i think it's very powerfuat th age, you're changi a lot, the whole world is opening up to you and we started going toew york together from boston. my parents didn't want me to do it professionally. they were happy that i was doing theater, they said we want you go to college, we want you to do as much theater as you can and when we're done then go into it professionally. and i think they were rightly concerned that had i gotten a big job at 16 it might have derailed things that i did need to kind of live through. but long story short, ben and i were having these incredible adventures and i have my own bank account with my own money when i was 16 from local

commercials and ben and i had literally a joint bank account and we would go dip into it to take trips down here and audition for stuff. >> rose: the point is you started early. >> is he always that age to you now when you're together? >> rose: that's a great question. >> yeah. yeah. >> interesting. >> and always will... there's a short hand. he can say something i haven't heard in 25 years, a line, and i'll remember the girl who said it to us and where we were, the thing and it just... it's just a way to... there's a short hand you end up having and when we went to write together that short hand really served us well because we just... all the diplomacy that you kind of go through in a lot of these creative experiences we chucked that out of theindow and we're brutally honest with each other and when thing we always felt early on was judge me for how good my good ideas are not f

how bad my bad ideas are. then you keep those ideas open. >> rose: but is there part of both of you that want to do mething? >>h, yeah. wee been dying to do something together and ben... we had a whole conversation about this last year as ben finally sai "look, i finally made it back." (laughter) it's like that mountain climber. oh, you went up the north face? wow, man. i walked. i just... you kno he's got his crampons and is really haggard and tired. but he said, you know, we've got to really be actively looking for stuff. we're finally in this place where these are the salad days and so we've already identified one piece of material that we really like. this idea of whitey bulger, this... >> rose: of course. of course. >> up in boston and terry winters is writing the script for souse hopefully that will come together. it could be great. ben would direct... >> rose: and you'd be whitey? >> yeah.

>> rose: great to see you. >> are we done already? i think i talk too much. >> rose: thank you, pleasure. >> so great to see you again. >> >> rose: ali soufan is here, as a former f.b.i. agent he interrogated key al qaeda detainees at the height of the war onerror. since his departure fro the f.b.i., he's become an outspoken critic of enhanced interrogation techniques. his new book is called "the black banners: the inside story of 9/11 and the war against al qaeda." i'm pleased to have him at this table obviously for the first time. welcome. >> thank you, sir. >> rose: let me talk about the f.b.i., about you. born in lebanon? >> yup. >> rose: came to the united states earlly. >> uh-huh. >> rose: what? 14? 15? >> i was about 16, 17 years old. i joined the bureau in 1997. the call happened in october of 2000. >> rose: so three year later you're a case officer. >> t lead case agent on the u.s.s. "cole" investigation.

>> yes, sir. >> rose: why did they make you an agent on that case? >> i was involved with the east africa embassy bombing. i was a case agent on an an important component of the investigation into the east african bombings which is the european components, the network, the logistical network that allowed al qaeda to function. even the claims of responsibility for the east africa embassy bombing came from that network was in london and it's called operation challenge and we worked closely scotland yard, the anti-terrorism branch on that. it was a very intesting case and from it i learned a lot because we found out the strong links between the egyptian islamic jiha network and al qaeda. >> rose: and so 9/11 you were where? >> i was in yemen. >> rose: what did you think when you heard that the planes had crashed into 9/11 and one plane had gone into pentagon and

another crashed in pennsylvania. >> we had no doubt in my mind... i personally had no doubt in my mind that it was osama bin laden. >> rose: and you believed that he and that organization at that time had the means and the ability toll do that? >> oh, absolutely. i mean, i've been working al qaeda for a few years before that. for about 40 years before that. and i tracked al qaeda not only from the east africa embassy bombing but i was in albania, i was in jordan, i was during the millennium plot i was in yemen before so we kind of like knew the network and the extent of thenetwork. i worked in many different countries around the world tracking al qaeda and so we knew how dangerous they are we knew how lethal they are and we knew that they definitely had it in their plans to attack the homeland. >> rose: but did you know that they had gone to manila looking for moy or to asia looking for

money? >> we knew about a meeting that tooklace in southeast asia. we knew that two people, actually, who were involved in the u.s.s. "cole," one of them later became the suicide bomber, one of t two suicide bombers on the "cole." and the other person we were able to aest him and i was able to talk to him with my colleagues in yemen. his name was fahad. his role was to help facilitate the logistics of the attack. his role also was to videotape the operation: so al qaeda can use in the their own propaganda. and fahad mentioned to me that delivered money to southeast area to one of the main people in al qaeda who was basically his boss in the organization. >> rose: and the money would be used to... >> he didn't know. he said they delivered $36,000

him and the suicide bomber. and at that time it was very curious. first of all, yemen is a poor country and they were supposed to meet in singapore, howeve they were not allowed into singapore because of... they didn't realize they needed a visa, so they ended up in bangkok. rose: and the singaporeans are pretty tough on this. >> absolutely, absolutely. and thank god that's why they didn't have the meeting in singapore, it ended up in another country. so it was for us it created a lot of curiosity. why $36,000 come from a very poor country, yemen, and go to a more affluent country in southeast asia? we had a lot of options on the table thinking about them. maybe it's leftover money from a failed attack that they wanted to do during the millennium, which they had a plot to attack

maybe there's an operation going on in southeast asia because he claimed he delivered the money during the millennium time, december 1999, january of 2000, the last week of december, first week of january. so if they were planning to do something in malaysia or bangkok or singapore or any of the southeast asian countries that were mentioned en most had probably failed and most probably they were repeated again because the sullivans failed a they had to repeat it again with the "cole". so we had many other options on the table and we asked everyone in the community and the intelligence community... >> rose: including the c.i.a.. >> absolutely. including our sister agency, as we call it, the agency. and unfortunately everybody said we don't know, we don't know anything about this. >> rose: and was that the truth? >> no, it wasn't. >> rose: this was crucial. >> yes. we found out ten days to the day

september 12, ten days to the day that some people in the agency at least knew that at least two terrorists who attended that meeting in southeast asia they knew that they had visas to come to the united states and they were... they were in san diego and this information was not passed until to us, at least, until september 12. >> rose: did this come out in the 9/11 commission report? >> yes. >> rose: it did. so that's when we began to understand there was an abysmal la of communication between the f.b.i. and the c.i.a. >> and it didn't only come out in the 9/11 commission report. it came out in if the c.i.a. inspector general report and the executive summary of the inspector general report has been dlassified and itlear says that the c.i.a. did n

pass the information... >> rose: has anybody acknowledged it was deliberate or just an overnight? >> i don't know. according to c.i.a., about 60 people in the agency had read the information about the two terrorists who we knew on september 11 they were on flight 77 that hit the pentagon. they read the traffic information about them and unfortunately the information did not make it to the f.b.i. >> rose: this is one of the best opportunities to have discovered the plot. >> absolutely. think about it this way. we had a team working in yemen under very dangerous circumstances trying to find those who are connected to the attack on the "cole" that resulted in the death of 17 sailors and here we find out that we're looking in the wrong place. they are actually here in the united states. and the.i