>> guest: the last occupant of the job was george tenet.in that role he supposedly had oversight over all the spy agencies in the government and one of the central findings of the 9/11 commission was that didn't work and that job needed to be eliminated and replaced by a director of national intelligence and the cia director who would be responsible just for the cia and that came to pass. >> host: it is hard to know if that resulted in a more fleet floated, multi intelligence operation more engaged with itself than it was before. >> guest: there are people concerned is just another layer of bureaucracy. >> host: what happened? >> guest: the commission goes out of business in august of 2004. president bush is reelected in november of 2004. he removes colin powell as secretary of state to serve with condoleezza rice and she quickly sets in place her new team at the state department and names philip zelikow as her all-purpose counselor. he will have her here on all national-security issues. >> host: was that a reward? >> guest: i wouldn't say

had convinced him of it george tenet didn't think there was that big a nexus. with dick cheney i think it was a while iraq right now is sitting on probably two hundred billion barrels maybe three hundred billion barrels that's a racks on all of the ports that surpasses the. yes if iraq is sitting on three hundred billion barrels of oil if that turns out to be true it will be more than saudi arabia now you know why dick cheney went to war in iraq it also was the low hanging fruit north korea was far more dangerous but too difficult one hundred thousand casualties were predicted by the pentagon on both sides so would be destroyed iran was too difficult seventy million people not fractured like the iraqis and the sunni and shia and christian and other so the low hanging fruit was a rock just use the moment in the wake of nine eleven they use the moment in in the wake of nine eleven to divert from afghanistan a real target should have been our real target and go to iraq that's exactly what they did you said they would testify if they put someone like dick cheney on

the way to program -- the way the program works was the agency came in primarily george tenet and the director of the cia came in. he talked to me and talk to it couple of other people. basically he wanted to know how far they could go in terms of interrogation of the individuals that we captured. and, for two -- you really needed to sign off, one with the signoff by the president and secondly was the ruling from the justice department which is where that line was that you could not cross. and, we saw it and obtained both of those. the president signed up to it as did the other members of the national security council. some of my colleagues may have forgotten that, but in fact everybody who was a member of the national security council was informed about the essence of the program and signed up to it. so you had the proper governmental authorities agreeing that this was necessary and worthwhile, and we had the key people over in the justice department, people like john yoo who has been severely harassed because of the fact the legal opinion he and others issued but they were legitimat

. >> delong: george tenet calls me one morning and said, "we've got our target." i said, "okay, we're good, i'm going down to the uav room." >> narrator: the unmanned aerial vehicle room was in tampa, florida. a drone was flying over yemen. the target was in an suv. >> i got a vehicle moving out. >> are the vehicles moving right now? >> delong: i'm sitting back like this, looking at the wall and talking to george tenet. and he goes, "you going to make the call?" and i said, "i'll make the call." he says, "this suv over here is the one that has ali in it." i said, "okay, fine. you know, shoot 'em." >> you are clear to engage it. >> delong: they lined it up and shot it. >> score. roll it in. ( gunfire ) oh! hey! >> good shot. >> delong: it's a pretty good- sized explosive. in an suv, you can imagine a big explosion. ( gunfire and explosion ) so we knew everybody in the vehicle was dead. ( gunfire and explosion ) >> an attack in yemen this week killed a top al qaeda leader. >> the us government officials called the attack highly successful. >> priest: the cia had fir

the program came really from mike hayden and his people at the national security agency, and george ten tenet was involved as well there had been a conversation between the two of them, within a couple of days of 9/11. the two of them talked, and george mentioned it to me. basic question being, are there additional things we can do with our capabilities, our capacity to read the mail, that would help us deal with the situation we then faced. that led to a meeting in my office, as i recall, where mike came in, then general hayden, then head of nsa, later head of the cia, and george tenet, and the three of us talked, and there were things that nsa thought they could do if they had additional authority. and i took that package, that proposal, basically, and went to see the president, and set down and went through it with him, and he signed up to it, but with a caveat that he wanted it very, very carefully managed. he wanted to make certain he personally approved it each step of the way and they had to come in for approval on a regular basis. what emerged out of that was a significantly enhanced

and then had george tenet accompany him for the presentation to the united nations. turned out obviously, a lot of it wasn't true. >> sean: you go into this in some detail. you said that the president was, as he was making that z he turned to george tenet, how good is the intel on wmd? his answer? >> george's answer in a meeting in the oval office was it is a slam-dunk mr. president. we can go back and argue about intelligence and it is a tough business. got a lot of sympathy for the problems the community is faced with. it would be nice if it were all meat packaged. but it rarely is. this was a case obviously where it was some of it was flawed. >> sean: you think a lot of this comes from, especially as it relates to colin powell, i was a little surprised, thought it was a little rude he kept saying mr. cheney, rather than mr. vice president, but secretary powell. take that as a slight on his part? >> no. this isn't a book to defame colin powell. the president has written a book many secretary rumsfeld has written a book, george tenet, condi rice is writing a book. t

and george tenet was involved and there was a conversation between the two of them this is within a couple of-- and as i recall the two of them had talked and george mentioned it to be a is there additional things we can do with our capabilities of our capacity fifth that would help us deal with the situation?l, that led to a meeting in my office where mike came then, there ahead of that nsa and later cia and the three of us talked.ld d there were things nsa thought they could do if theydi had additional authority. tied to it that proposal and went to see the president and he signed up to it with the caveat to make certain he personally approved its each step of the way and they had tohe come back in four approvals on a regular for basis. would be merged out of that is significantly enhanced capacity to intercept communications originate outside the united- states often what we refer to as a dirty number. h a computer or a rolodex andg you want to know who he was talking to and the - safeguards and of the fact every 300 or 45 days the director of the cia and the nsa all had to sign off on

of the bush administration members deserve to be put on trial and he would be ready to testify george tenet told dick cheney what cheney wanted to hear oh yes it's working mr vice president we're getting great information and we're stopping terrorist attacks there is order. the fact that there hasn't been a terrorist attack on the scale of nine eleven on the u.s. soil is often attributed to the harsh methods used in the last decade of war on terror but counterterrorism experts say the fact that terrorists are successfully recruiting thousands of new members these days does not add to security in the u.s. and the whole world for that matter we've also seen other extremist networks like. us well in response. to that. so in some ways with the patient and the other organization in pakistan u.s. drone strikes have killed thousands of civilians and made it only a handful of actual terrorists. many of the victims' loved ones seek revenge by joining radical groups others like this young man who lost both of his legs and three family members in a drone strike gather in protest asking when will the k

administration members deserve to be put on trial and he would be ready to testify george tenet told dick cheney what dick cheney wanted to hear oh yes it's working mr vice president we're getting great information and we're stopping terrorist attacks that is order book in pakistan u.s. drone strikes have killed thousands of civilians and made it only a handful of actual terrorists many of the victims' loved ones seek revenge by joining radical groups others like this young man who lost both of his legs and three family members in a drone strike gether in protest asking when will the killing stop we have made much more than a cottage industry out of the what my former boss colin powell has called the terrorist industrial complex lots of people are making lots of money off of this so-called global war on terror our war on terror. begins without god. but it does not in there listening to george bush's declaration of war on terror from ten years ago one is left wondering whether it was the beginning of a vicious circle where the revenge would take more innocent lives and would start a n

s george tenet when they asked him these questions on b.b.c. he just let it all hang out and the actual truth came across. recently also sent shock waves around the world when he told the b.b.c. that most traders really care if and when the economy is fixed personally i've been dreaming of this one for three years i have a confession which is i go to bed every night i dream of another recession the b.b.c. interview has now gone viral if you can see the people around me jewels of collectively drop so what you just saved perhaps there. jaws wouldn't have dropped they only read not tell you these july two thousand and nine a rolling stone article the great american bubble machine in it he famously described goldman sachs as a quote great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money t.v. discussed with us recently how although people are unaware of it the big bang has profound power in society how much you're paying for gas how much you're paying for electricity how muc