i'm very pleased to have dennis blair back on this program. welcome. >> nice to be back. >> charlie: having understood the position that you've served both as a naval officer and then at the whitehouse as direc of national intelligence. tell meow you see this, how you see the wayother played out and who should we be talking about? >> yes, i think it was really done wel on all sides. the thinking about it that was so good was it a team effort with everybody playing this position, nobody trying to run anybody else's position. the intelligence community,cia, national security agency, national geo spacial agency, they practice, practice, practice, rehearsed more than intelligence. the president gave the go ahead. i give full credit to the president for making the decision to make that raid. >> charlie: tell us y it took a lot of sort of intelligence and courage on the part of the president. and what could be, go wrong and what are the ramifications of that for someone who is planning these kind of missions and soone o has to pull the trigger. >> i

. >>> and challenges in the middle east and libya, dennis blair and john negroponte. i'm candy crowley and this is "state of the union." >>> despite fears a debt crisis will undermine the u.s. economic recovery and rattle the world, just 19% of americans told gallup pollsters they want congress to raise the debt ceiling. 47% no and 34% said they didn't know enough to say. minority leader senator mitch mcconnell, thank you for being here. first question out of the box -- what would happen if the debt ceiling is not raised? >> well, i think we ought to look at this as an opportunity. an opportunity to bring a democratic president who's been leading a spending binge over the last couple of years and a new much more republican congress which believes the american people want us to reduce spending significantly. bring those two together and get something done born on a bipartisan basis. you know, it is interesting that some of our biggest accomplishments in the last quarter of a century have been when you have divided government. think of ronald reagan and tip o'neill work

even last year in 2009, dennis blair was talking about is this a success? i think this shows that indeed it was. we had no penetration into al- qaeda prior to 9/11 nor right after. now we have cross agency sharing of information, foreign, domestic, local, we're seeing on the national side here, domestically we stopped every terrorist incident sense for hassan at ft. hood and now we have an acceptance at the work that we've done and i think that's really important. and the president is embracing that last night in the way he talked about 9/11. >> so indeed do you think it's fair to say that the changes in how we handle this information are -- is partly responsible for what we're seeing now? >> i hope so. i think so. i do not think that we could have made it this far and done this work as quietly as we did as a nation and taken him out as we d. he managed to keep himself in an enclave very well protected for so long and thumbing his nose at us the whole time. so i think that this is a real boon for the intelligence community, they needed this shot in the arm

have us as our sole witness today the immediate past director of national intelligence admiral dennis blair. admiral blair is an extraordinarily talented and dedicated public servant who has had an exemplary career as a senior military commander, and of course, as a continuing consumer of intelligence, before he overtook its production in one of washington's, i would say, most challenging jobs, the director of national intelligence. therefore, he is uniquely qualified to help us answer the questions we have about how the the and i has performed. -- how the dni has performed. peres is for being here today. this committee create -- thank you for being here today. this committee created the terrorism prevention act of 2004 at the recommendation of the 9/11 commission, which concluded that basically no one was in charge of the intelligence community. and that lack of leadership resulted in the dysfunction and disunity that left as vulnerable to the attacks that occurred on 9/11. the nature of the threat has changed, certainly from the post-world war ii. -- post-world war ii period. there has be

with us as our sole witness today the immediate past director of national intelligence, admiral dennis blair. admiral blair is an extraordinarily talented and dedicated public servant who has had an exemplary career as a senior military commander, and, of course, as a continuing consumer of intelligence before he overtook his production and one of washington's, i was the most challenging jobs, the director of national intelligence. therefore, he is uniquely qualified to help us answer the questions we have about how the dni has performed, and his willingness to testify today i think is in keeping with admiral blair's lifetime of service to our country. so i thank you for being here today. the committee, this committee committed to deny as part of the intelligence reform on terrorism prevention act of 2004 at the recommendation of the 9/11 commission, which concluded that basically no one was in charge of the u.s. intelligence community. and that lack of leadership resulted in dysfunction and disunity that led us vulnerable to the attacks that occurred on 9/11. the nature of the threat has ch

. >> up next, former director of national intelligence dennis blair talks about some of the challengesing the u.s. intelligence community. then at former virginia -- tom davis on the 2012 elections and the presidential primary. >> history is much more than just politics and soldiers. social issues. it is also medicine and science and arts and music and theater and poetry and ideas. we should not lump things into categories, it is all part of the same thing. part one ofght's, two weeks with david mccullough on the americans who made the greatest journey. 8:00 on c-span. >> next, former director of national intelligence dennis blair testified about u.s. intelligence operations. he left his job last year after two failed terrorist bombing plot. he recommends structural changes. this committee hearing is about an hour and 20 minutes. >> the hearing will come to order. this is our second hearing on the topic 10 years after the 9/11, intelligence reform working? part of a continuing series of hearings that our committee is convening this year on how well the security reforms enacted after th

next, dennis blair testifies but u.s. intelligence operations.here were to fail -- two failed terrorist plots. this committee hearing chaired by senator joe lieberman is about one hour and 20 minutes. >> this is our second hearing. this is part of a series of hearings that is convening this year. we explored a variety of issues. we are focused on any single issue. they have the authority is needed to feed our strong intelligence community. we are honored to have with this the director of national intelligence. he is had an exemplary career. this is before he overtook the production in one of washington's most challenging jobs. he is uniquely qualified to help us answer the questions we have about how they have performed. it is keeping with the lifetime of service to our country. i thank you for being here today. it is the act of 2004. no one is in charge of it. it resulted in dysfunction. the nature of the threat has changed. it is a cyber threat to our security. our intention was that it would bring the necessary demand and efforts to our team a

later, the former director of national intelligence, dennis blair, will talk about the reform of the intelligence agencies. the will testify at a hearing of the homeland security committee. what's it like that 1:30 eastern. >> this weekend on booktv, the gaithersburg book festival alive with authors on the gulf oil spill, wall street, and the universe. plus a panel discussion of the book industry. the former ambassador to yemen on the u.s.'s counterterrorism efforts. afterwards, the most significant standoff of the cold war era -- the berlin wall. look for the complete schedule at booktv.org. >> history is much more than just politics and social issues. it is also medicine, science, art, music, theater, poetry, and ideas. we should not lump things into categories. samuel morris, harriet beecher stowe, thomas edison, henry adams -- sunday night on "q&a", part one of the americans who made the greater journey at 8:00 on c-span. >> at the pentagon today, defense secretary robert gates said there is no evidence that senior pakistani leader's new osama bin laden was in pakistan. secretary

talks with mitch mcconnell, paul ryan, former director of national intelligence, retired admiral dennis blair and john negroponte. at 4:00 p.m. eastern, hear "face the nation" from cbs. host interviews john boehner and more from the cbs town hall meeting this week with president obama. the five, in -- network t.v. talk shows are brought to you as a public service by the networks and c-span. 2:00 p.m., fox news sunday, at 3, cnn's state of the union and at 4:00, face the nation from cbs. listen to them all on c-span radio, xm satellite channel 119 or listen online at cspanradio.org. >> how do these people become transformed, what series of choices do they make to kill hundreds of thousands of people? >> in his new book, "mastermind," richard minite looks at the architect of the 9/11 attacks. >> now that bin laden is dead, this is what we have to fear, terrorist entrepreneurs like khalid sheikh mohammed. >> "q&a" is one of our many signature series available online at c-span.org/podcasts. >> this weekend, michael dukakis the master politician calvin coolige and how he evolved into a popular pol