we turn to the former secretary of homeland security, michael chernoff, former director of the cia, michael hayden, who now both work as principals of the chernoff group and security firm. new york city s mayor at the time of the 9/11 attacks, rudy giuliani. mr. hayden, i want to start with you. the news mr. donald talked about, this is the largest trove of information that the government has found. what did you learn from this? the first is you want to find out a thread of information. the second detail you want to find out is locational information and al-qaeda leadership, and then the third, and this is the long-term effort, you re essentially creating an encyclopedia of how al-qaeda operates, what the system is, their tactics, their techniques, their procedures. this is wonderful not just in its size, but we have not gotten what we call sse, sensitive site
information ops, demonstrating to the enemy that we are in control of the data. also, it is impressive if you think about the scale of this, it is on the order of a small college library. a lot of the material is encrypted. it is all in foreign languages. the good news for the american public to know is that we have got some of the best code breakers in the world and we have also got machine language translation skills to try to triage through this. chad, walk through that process or some of the processes that might be going through right now. as we go through that huge amount of data they have got right now, encryption as you mentioned, also if they were pulling live information when the s.e.a.l. team was on the ground, versus what they might be getting now. go through some of that for us if you would. it is called sensitive site exploitation or sse. they ll do a three-pronged approach. all hands on deck interagency effort where they have the best in the intel community on this. w
likely consequence of osama bin laden s death? there are two or three things that are happening, fareed. one is the treasure trove of documents, and frankly i can t remember the last time we did what s called sse, sensitive site exploitation, against the leading al qaeda figure. it s been years. so this will be very, very important. the second thing is, al qaeda now has to go through a succession crisis. the word is out that they ve got a succession plan. it s ayman al zawahiri, the number two. no plan survives contact with reality the way it was originally developed. i ll enjoy watching how al qaeda deals with this. finally fareed, and this is really important, any member of al qaeda, particularly prospective members of al qaeda have to remember this mission. they have to think about what happened here. these americans have great reach, have great precision, and
consequences. you talk about the treasure trove of documents. what do you see as the most likely consequence of osama bin laden s death? there are two or three things that are happening, fareed. one is the treasure trove of documents, and frankly i can t remember the last time we did what s called sse, sensitive site exploitation against the leading al qaeda figure. it s been years. so this will be very, very important. the second thing is, al qaeda now has to go through a succession crisis. the word is out that they ve got a succession plan. it s zamary, the number two. no plan survives contact with reality the way it was originally developed. i ll enjoy watching how al qaeda deals with this. finally fareed, and this is really important, any member of al qaeda, particularly prospective members of al qaeda have to remember this mission. they have to think about what
terrorist that the government has found. what are you learning now that we didn t know before? well, i think they re going after several things, david. the first thing you want to find out is imminent threat information. the second layer of detail you want to find out is locational information and al qaeda leadership. and then the third, and this is the long-term effort, you re essentially creating an encyclopedia of how al qaeda operates, what their system is, their tactics, their techniques, their procedures. this is wonderful not just in its size, but we have not gotten what we call sse, sensitive site exploitation, going in and getting materials on al qaeda leadership for several years. so, it s big and it s new. it was the understanding of the intelligence community, secretary chertoff, that after 9/11, he no longer became operationally involved. now, we re seeing these videos difficult to know, but you heard donilon say, no, we think he was more directly in control.