former cia operative and that of the tracking unit michael sawyer. good to have you all with this. let me begin with you. the leader of this group of terrorists, he has appeared out of nowhere. what we know about them? >> not exactly a household name until now. we do know is that the northern part of mali, the northern half of the country has fallen under the control of three hardcourt al qaeda groups. this is the leader of the major one. he has one eye, lost an eye fighting in afghanistan, and he has known to be an unrepentant al qaeda terrorist. we can also pretty much deduce that based on the lack of a strong american response or frankly any american response to the courage in benghazi when we lost four americans, four americans killed, including the personal representative of the president of the united states, u.s. ambassador, that al qaeda leaders like this man had taken a signal that the united states is not calling to move aggressively in this kind of action. will we see coming out of benghazi, the failure to respond is an emboldened al qaeda, not just in mali and nigeria,