condoleezza rice or richard clark? as the bush white house in spring and summer of 2001 responding quickly and appropriately to terrorist threats as condoleezza rice kept insisting or had they ignored them as dick clark kept insisting? philip zelikow took a particular interest in the work of that team. >> host: talk about the other things about this, because for those of us covering terrorism in the tail end of the 1990s when clinton was in office and the beginning of the next decade, there was a change in the way the white house prioritized terror in ranking foreign policy challenges. talk to is a little bit about how the change this to the question of clark's roll. wikipedia it is remarkably 18 if you look at the bush a administration you can level criticism of the bush administration for the way it dealt with terrorism. it didn't end the bin laden threat even though it had eight years to do it. dick clark during that time when he was counter-terrorism adviser to national security council have almost instant access to

talked to me about richard clarke. just go clarke and o'neill were sold brothers. they really thought each other as having the same kind of drive, same obsessiveness, the same intolerance of bureaucratic resistance and people are shufflers. they wanted to get to and consequently the also had in common the fact that they had a lot of enemies. it was clerk who spotted o'neill and began to promote him. actually offered him his own job as a counterterrorism czar at the nsc in the white house. it could well have done that was a prompt in fact are that caused someone in fbi hierarchy to torpedo o'neill. they would never have wanted to report to him in the white house. it would have been intolerable for them. it was hard enough being his boss. romeo was irascible and tumultuous. he had at least three women who thought they were going to marry him, do you propose to and yet he was married to my fact he didn't disclose to many people. he had two children, grown children. of course, his funeral was a catastrophe of coincidences that he can keep an advance whole life. >> host

and richard clark acknowledges that most people at that time never heard of al-qaida. he says they would have said hezbollah or hamas, most people wouldn't have known there was an al-qaida. not john. he knew what al-qaida was and he understood how it worked and delivered a warning to richard clark. bin laden's network extended inside the united states, inconceivable they're not here. john o'neill. >> if i may move forward a little bit. in that speech, in chicago, chicago athletic association, continental room on michigan avenue. i write here that he traced a chillingly accurate picture of the danger posed by islamic fundamentalism and his potential to release a virulent strain of terrorism on the world. old ideas had to be updated. he explains to the spellbound gathering old risk assessment model was advised. understood in the context of muslim thinking and had to be factored into our thinking of how twisted people could use this theme to create large acts of violence. he wrote at the time of the world trade center bombing, they were putting most of the eggs into the b

england france israel and russia were warning us that something big was coming all the while richard clarke and others were running around the national security system when to use clarke's term their hair on fire because they knew something big was coming and cheney was too busy with vacations in wyoming and lunches with his oil be industry buddies to bother with worrying about an attack that might happen and did happen on his watch joseph tweeted after that segment i saw you got a big a bit of emotional during your debate regarding dick cheney's war crimes i have to say is it's about. well joseph this is a topic that always gets me riled up all the way back to the one nine hundred seventy s. and cheney and rumsfeld helped start the committee for the present danger and began us lean fear as a way of getting political power and getting rich this means been a curse on this country i'll tell you how i really feel at the end of the show tonight and i still take our next comment is also from twitter i'm sure by now you've all heard that president obama agreed to move his address to a joint sessi

. >>> let's bring in richard clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, now an abc news consultant. richard, when you hear about this threat, and it's a little confusing to some people because it's credible yet not confirmed. explain exactly what that means. >> credible, robin, means this is something that they've been expecting. something that could plausibly happen. unconfirmed means they have only one source. the source is very detailed. bubuthat doesn't always mean it's true. sometimes people make up stories and pass them on to cia in great detail. that could be the case here. we don't know. so, what the cia and fbi are trying to do right now is to see if they can find any of the details in this report and prove them to be true. >> that al qaeda is damaged, and fragmented, how desperate are they at this p pnt, richard? >> they are very desperate for an attack. bin laden himself, in his own handwriting, said he wanted an attack around now, on the tenth anniversary. the new leader, zawahiri, has said he wants an attack to avenge bin laden and to prove al qaeda central, is still ali

and the intelligence and his special forces did the job that bush didn't really want to do, as richard clark others in his administration said, within a day or two, they were already talking about invading iraq. >> i want to come back to the wars a little later and come back after the break and talk about your parents. who are pivotal figures in this book and fascinating in their own right. but what they did to you as a young man to be what you are today, mr. trouble. [ beep ] [ mom ] scooter? the progresso chicken noodle you made is so good. it's got tender white meat chicken. the way i always made it for you. one more thing.... those pj's you like, i bought you five new pairs. love you. did you see the hockey game last night? [ male announcer ] progresso. you gotta taste this soup. [ gnome ] awwwwwwww. i just feel bloody awful. she told tiffany, stephanie, jenny and becky that she was coming to a place like this! but somebody didn't book with travelocity, with 24/7 customer support to help move them to the pool daddy promised! look at me, i'm swimming! ♪ [ gnome ] somebody, get her a pony!

and the intelligence and his special forces did the job that bush didn't really want to do, as richard clarknd others in his administration said, within a day or two, they were already talking about invading iraq. >> i want to come back to the wars a little later and come back after the break and talk about your parents. who are pivotal figures in this book and fascinating in their own right. but what they did to you as a young man to be what you are today, mr. trouble. an accident doesn't have to slow you down. with better car replacement available only with liberty mutual auto insurance, if your car's totaled, we give you the money for a car one model year newer. to learn more, visit us today. responsibility. what's your policy? >>> we just came down from flint where we filmed a family being evicted from their home the day before christmas eve, a family that used to work in a factory, would you be willing to come up with us and see what the situation has been? >> i've been to flint and those people, i feel sorry about it. >> the family is being evicted from their homes. >> i'm sure general

and the intelligence and his special forces did the job that bush didn't really want to do, as richard clarknd others in his administration said, within a day or two, they were already talking about invading iraq. >> i want to come back to the wars a little later and come back after the break and talk about your parents. who are pivotal figures in this book and fascinating in their own right. but what they did to you as a young man to be what you are today, mr. trouble. at bayer, we're re-inventing aspirin for pain relief. with new extra-strength bayer advanced aspirin. it has microparticles, enters the bloodstream faster and rushes relief to the site of pain. it's clinically proven to relieve pain twice as fast. new bayer advanced aspirin. the nascar nationwide series, to relieve pain twice as fast. i know pleasing fans is a top priority, 'cause without the fans, there'd be no nascar. just like if it weren't for customers, there'd be no nationwide. that's why they serve their customers' needs, not shareholder profits. because as a mutual, nationwide doesn't report to wall street, they repor

the clinton and bush administration heeded the warnings of al qaeda that came from people like richard clarkl done with covert operations. most of us, if we look at the opinion polls, we would say we are not that different now from the way we were ten years ago before the attacks. maybe in that sense, t 9/11 wasn't that big of a deal. i think american opinions are radically different ten years on. the affects of 9/11 on the countries who produced it like egypt, saudi arabia and their neighbor would be huge. without 9/11, we wouldn't have seen that expansion of u.s. power, in afghanistan and iraq and elsewhere. it's transformed the great mideast for the better. i think 9/11 had a bigger impact than the united states. >> another point you make, you say this, in the past ten years the u.s. has directly or indirectly overthrown three governments in the muslim world. americans today feel less powerful than they did then. in 2001, the u.s. had a less important role as a world leader than ten years ago. the latest figure is 41%. >> interesting. >> yeah. >> we lost faith in ourselves even as we have

to prevent the death of american citizens, he had richard clarke called the emirates and warned themt we knew they were in the desert and say that osama bin laden was there also and it would be good for them to leave, and they did leave. mr. clinton on that particular opportunity -- one dead prince was not going to make a difference, but one dead bin laden with debt made a difference for those thousands of people killed during 9/11. host: next up is alabama, howard is on our line for republicans. caller: thank you. i appreciate you taking my call. am in on? host: go ahead. caller: years ago, i remember the only people allowed in this country or those who wanted to be americans. the progressives, they changed all of that and made it in open country with open borders and allowed everybody in that wanted to come in. that is why we had 9/11. years before, those people could not get into this country. besides that, all of the millions of dollars we have had to spend protecting ourselves from the people they allowed in here. none of us feel safe when we go to the airport, when we go to chi

to prevent the death of american citizens he had richard clarke called the emirates and warned them that we knew they were in the desert and say that osama bin laden was there also and it would be good for them to leave and they did leave. mr. clinton on that particular opportunity -- one dead prince was not going to make a difference, but one dead bin laden with debt made a difference for those thousands of people killed during 9/11. host: next up is alabama, howard is on our line for republicans. caller: thank you. i appreciate you taking my call. am in on? host: go ahead. caller: years ago i remember the only people allowed in this country or those who wanted to be americans. the progressives, they changed all of that and made it in open country with open borders and allowed everybody in that wanted to come in. that is why we had 9/11. years before, those people could not get into this country. besides that, all of the millions of dollars we have had to spend protecting ourselves from the people they allowed in here. none of us feel safe when we go to the airport, when we go to chicag

the fact that the only person in the administration who had thought of something like this was richard clarke and that's because he read a tom clancey novel where that same thing occurred. you can see it in commentaries about the arib spring where people can't imagine how al qaeda could capitalize on that. al qaeda is trying to do just that. you've heard we're safer, al qaeda is on the ropes. whereas all the external evidence you see is in the other direction. who are you going to believe? me or your lying eyes? you can look out in the world and see that al qaeda in terms of geographic scope has gained ground. yes, there are areas where they're more unpopular but they've always been a vanguard movement. their support has often by small -- soft support. setting up with a small group 10 years ago and remains a small group today. what is our capacity to deal with them? it's so clearly lower. >> i'm going to exercise the chair's discussion and have one concluding question. peter, what would it take to maintain the safety that we've achieved since 9/11 and for david to answer the same question aft

the fact that the only person in the administration who had thought of something like this was richard clarke and that's because he read a tom clancey novel where that same thing occurred. you can see it in commentaries about the arib spring where people can't imagine how al qaeda could capitalize on that. al qaeda is trying to do just that. you've heard we're safer, al qaeda is on the ropes. whereas all the external evidence you see is in the other directio who are you going to believe? me or your lying eyes? you can look out in the world and see that al qaeda in terms of geographic scope has gained ground. yes, there are areas where they're more unpopular but they've always been a vanguard movement. their support has often by small -- soft support. setting up with a small group 10 years ago and remains a small group today. what is our capacity to deal with them? it's so clearly lower. >> i'm going to exercise the chair's discussion and have one concluding question. peter, what would it take to maintain the safety that we've achieved since 9/11 and for david to answer the same question after

the fact that the only person in the administration who had thought of something like this was richard clarke and that's because he read a tom clancey novel where that same thing occurred. you can see it in commentaries about the arib spring where people can't imagine how al qaeda could capitalize on that. al qaeda is trying to do just that. you've heard we're safer, al qaeda is on the ropes. whereas all the external evidence you see is in the other direction. who are you going to believe? me or your lying eyes? you can look out in the world and see that al qaeda in terms of geographic scope has gained ground. yes, there are areas where they're more unpopular but they've always been a vanguard movement. their support has often by small -- soft support. setting up with a small group 10 years ago and remains a small group today. what is our capacity to deal with them? it's so clearly lower. >> i'm going to exercise the chair's discussion and have one concluding question. peter, what would it take to maintain the safety that we've achieved since 9/11 and for david to answer the same question aft

person in the administration who thought of something like this, using high- tech plants, was richard clarke because he read a tom clancy novel. you can see a failed imagination right now. the you can see it with parents bring more people cannot see how al qaeda could capitalize on this. they are doing just that. you can see it in the notion that we are safer -- al qaeda is on the ropes. you have heard that with peter citing multiple figures. all of the evidence to see is in the other direction. who are you going to see, me or your lying eyes? you can look out in the world and see that al qaeda has actually gained ground. yes, there are areas where they are more unpopular. it's always been a vanguard of movement. it had never commanded millions of muslims. it to the extent they have had support has always been soft support. this was a tent -- this was a small group 10 years ago and remains a small group today. what is our capacity? so clearly, it is lower. >> i will exercise the chair's discretion to have one concluding question. peter, what would it take to maintain the safety we have achie

administration who had thought of something like this within terrorists uses hijacked planes was richard clark. that's because he read a tom clancy novel when it occurred. you can see it until the various commentaries about arab spring where they can't imagine that they capitalized on this. you can see it also in the notion that we are safer, al qaeda is on the ropes, you've heard that peter is siting multiple figure. all of the evidence that you see is in the other direction. one of those things, who are agoing to do? me or the lying eyes? you can look out and see the geographic scope has gained ground. there are areas where they've been more unpopular. they have never commanded millions of muslims. to the extent that they've had support, it's soft support. we're looking at within the small group ten years ago and remains a small group today. what is the capacity to deal with them. the capacity so undoubtedly, everyone can see it, it's lower. >> i'm going to exercise the chair discretion to ask one concluding question. peter, what would it take to maintain the safety that we've achieved since