Embattled contested arena and certainly they saw Political Parties like we have today they would faint dead away. If they saw seniority in the senate they would faint dead away. If they saw women voting they would faint dead away. If they saw an africanamerican president. They didnt expect the future to be frozen in 1787. So i think we should stop arguing about what the man who wrote the constitution meant and what they wanted and Start Talking about what we want and what we need. Host i think thats a perfect note on which to end this discussion. It was a pleasure to talk to you professor berkin. Guest thank you, thank you. I enjoyed it. Michael morell is next on booktv. He talks about the successes and failures on the war on terror and its current fight against al qaeda and isis. Michael morell has a 30year career in the cia. He was with president bush and briefed him shortly after the 9 11 attacks and also with president obama during the bin laden raid in may of 2011. He is the author of the new bestseller, the great war of our time the cias great fight against terrorism from al qaeda to isis. He is going to be interviewed tonight by cbs reporter david brian. Ladies and gentlemen director Michael Morell and dave bryan. [applause] [applause] thats for you. With your permission i would like to ask first of all thank you for being here. Absolutely, thank you. We are going to talk at length about the book and you will get a chance to answer questions. I will want to see how many people the book is just my recently but how many people a better chance to read the book . And how many of you have gotten a copy of the book . Thats great. You are going to have a great time. Its an easy read and a fascinating book and theres a lot of Important Information there are some of which is very controversial. We are going to start her interview tonight with some very Current Issues taking place right now and i mean today. There are reports on fox news and cnn today that the advisory on terrorism on the military bases and military personnel was raised to the bravo level because of information about a possible attack within the United States from isis. Who better to ask about this than the former Deputy Director of the cia . Tell me if this is something we need to be seriously concerned about. We hear these advisories being raised from time to time. Whats the significance of this one and how concerned should we be . I think its just a matter of time before theres another isis inspired attack in the United States. We have now had to. The first one was in new york several months ago which was an attempted attack with a hatchet on two new York City Police officers and a couple of weeks ago an attempted in. Both of those were inspired by isis. Individuals who had never gone to iraq never gone to syria but who were hearing the isis narrative and the isis message and decided to act. We are going to see that again. I think what we saw on the last couple of days as a result of a couple of things. One is that isis has repeatedly said that we are going to attack the United States because of what the United States is doing against us in iraq and to the persistently called on people to attack u. S. Soldiers and to attack u. S. Military installations so i think that is where it came from. I think we need to take it seriously absolutely. Another issue thats current about a federal law that will run out on sunday at midnight unless the Senate Takes Action to prevent that before that time and that is the phonorecord Surveillance Program the nsa program. Its something you wrote about in your look. You are appointed committee by president obama to look at this when it became public with Edward Edward snowden that revealed a lot of details about the program. If this runs out on sunday night what impact will that have . I think this is a very Important Program. This is the socalled section 215 telephone metadata program. What metadata means is the phone number there received a call and made the call and duration of the call. Thats the information that nsa has. This is a very Important Program because it fills a gap that existed prior to 9 11. I cant prove this to you but i believe if the word inspired and live and we may have seen the communications between the 9 11 hijackers and we may have disrupted that plot so its a very Important Program. But i also believe thats the Security Side of it and thats where i come out this. I also believe in the importance of privacy and civil liberties. There is given the amount of data in here and the type of data in the database there is the potential for government abuse. We know from our history that there have been times where the government has abused its power so we have to take that very seriously. What we recommended to the president for their review group recommend to the president was keep the program but dont have the government hold the data. Have the phone Companies Hold it. The government accepted that recommendation. The president accepted that recommendation and thats what they recommend to congress. Thats what the house passed almost two weeks ago now the usa freedom act and i hope the senate followed suit in passes it. Its important. Lets move on to the next important issue that is current at that has benghazi because last week the first batch of emails of the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton were made public. There are 50,000 or so emails involved only a few hundred were released at that time so there will be more releases in the coming months. First of all heavy look to the emails that were released and is there anything in there thats worthy . The pile of emails that everybodys focused on are the emails from a friend of the clintons Sid Blumenthal who was sending emails about libya prior to the benghazi bombings and benghazi after the benghazi bombings. I have looked through all those. I have to tell you i was underwhelmed by them. I dont think there is any there are, here. Most senior officials in government including me get emails from friends and former colleagues providing you with this thought at that thought or please read this or think is as important. It happens to all senior officials. Happened to the secretary. Its not unusual. Sometimes you pass those on to your staff and say take a look at this. Those emails from Sid Blumenthal never made their way into the highest levels of discussion. I never saw them until i read them two days ago. They never showed up in a deputys conversation or principles conversation. I dont know conversation. I dont know if i analyst saw them or not. I will tell you of my analyst did see them they would put absolute no credibility into the information in there because they would have no idea where the information came from. I dont think they are big deal. Were there and if your man emails were there any viewer emails . One of the issues about this and you talk about it in your book. I want to read you a section of your book. Those arguing against believe by saying thereve been a protest. As one of the issues. Was their protest before the attack on benghazi or was this a planned terrorism attack whacks those who believe by saying there had been a protest cia and dying conspiracy with the white house were trying to hide the hand of al qaeda in the attack and thereby protect president obamas Campaign Theme that hugh is tough on terrorism. Now i think the issue in question was the first part of the analysis that the cia did two days after the attack and they said the assault on the tmf, thats the facility which is what the consulate there was called and benghazi had been a spontaneous event evolved from a protest outside of the tmf. That was the issue i think that people were concerned about. Was it his continuous sort of eruption from a protest or was this a planned terrorism attack . That is what my analyst thought create two days after the event when the analysts that down to say tell the person president what they thought happened i thought this this was a protest that evolved into an attack. That was wrong. They did not get that right. But they didnt get it right because they were trying to be political. They didnt get it right because they didnt have the right information. They didnt have the right information was not presented to them so thats what they thought that they were doing their job calling it like you see it being a referee, being an import umpire. All the judgments they made that day that the only one thats turned out to be wrong. All the other judgments that they made two days after turned out to be right. Thats significant because the administration was saying we are tough on terrorism and winning the war on terrorism. At this was a planned terrorist attack that wouldnt have looked good for the administration. The things they said in those first two days, one of the things they said and they still believe today is there was very little preplanning. This was not an attack that had weeks or months of planning. This was an attack that probably had hours of planning and you can actually see that. We talk about that in the book you can see that in the disorganization of the attack the lack of a military style assault. Release the first attack on the state Department Facility. You had guys run through the gate running all of the compounds looking like they were happy to be in the compound. You had them try to kick down doors in almost a comical farcical fashion and they failed to knock the door down so they would walk away. You have them successfully it inside some buildings were there americans hiding and they dont look for americans. One guy walks out with an xbox and somebody else walks out with a suit. You have them randomly setting fires. This is clearly an event with not a lot of preplanning. The other two attacks that night there was more, they were more like a military assault rate there were two attacks on the cia facility in benghazi which were separate and i think there was more those were more of a military assault because they have more time. They have additional hours to plan those attacks. Two questions flow from that. First of all it seems to me since you had not one but three attacks is harder to believe that this was something spontaneous that wasnt planned in the other thing is it seems to me what you were saying is the original attack on the mission was a just a people that came over with guns who spontaneously decided lets jump over the fence and attack . Is a very good question. The analysts believe and i believe that the analyst believes so im with them on this. Its me too but what the analysts believe is the guys in benghazi saw what happened in cairo earlier in the day and what happened in cairo earlier in the day wasnt a joke guys went to our embassy got over the fence and set fire to vehicles and did a lot of damage. What my analyst believe is the bad guys in benghazi extremist terrorists saw what happened in cairo and said lets do the same thing to the state Department Facility. And they did the assault on the state Department Facility and then they followed the state Department Facility to the cia conducted an attack immediately on the cia facility and were dashed by my security guys. They came back four hours later with much heavier weapons. One of the questions they want to ask yourself is people have pointed to these as this is evidence of preplanning. This is evidence and the effectiveness of the mortal fire. One of the questions you have to ask yourself is that there was a lot of preplanning why would they bring those mortars to the first attack against the state Department Facility for the first attack against the cia facility. Why did they wait until nine hours later . The answer to that question is because they went and got the mortars at the last minute for that attack. People say they brought five mortars and three of them were affected. Why did they only bring five . They had time to fire more than five. The answer is thats all they brought. Thats all they could find in the short trade of time that they planned this operation. The question here in the issue that you raised in the book is did you work in conjunction with the administration . Absolutely not. These were calls with the analysts and one of the things that Everyone Needs to know about analysts at the cia as they take great pride in calling things like they see them. They take great pride in telling policymakers you are wrong about something. They actually like to stick their finger in the policymakers eyes and say you are wrong about that. Theres absolutely no political influence on the analysis here. I didnt tell the analysts what to think of some folks have claimed. The analyst did their job. Director petraeus and i defended the analysts. We both believe that the animals had to say. Director petraeus defended at the next day at a principles meeting. He believed the analyst, i believe the analysts and like i said most judgments have held up including the fact that there are was a preplanned. Ive never seen significant evidence that there was a preplanned. We are going move on to the iraq war. You talk about secretary of state colin powell. A number of occasions in recent years secretary powell has a express chagrin that no one from the Intelligence Community has come forward and apologize to him for putting his welldeserved reputation at risk by arming him with bad intelligence to use as the basis of the u. N. Speech. The cia and the broader Intelligence Community clearly failed the American Public so someone in the chain of command at the time of the iraq wmd analysis provided i would like to use this opportunity to publicly apologize to secretary powell. Tell me about that create. At the time and the months leading up to the iraq war there were two big intelligence judgments to be made. One is what is the status of Saddam Husseins weapons of mass distraction program and the second was what was the relationship between iraq and al qaeda . On the first, what was the status of the weapons of mass distraction program . The analysts at cia and about the analysts in the entire u. S. Intelligence community, and that the analysts and every Intelligence Service on the planet that looked at the question came to the same conclusion. This guy has chemical weapons. This guy has a biologic weapons production capability and this guy is reconstituting his Nuclear Weapons program. That is what the analysts believe. They turned out to be wrong. All of these people who looked at this question turned out to be wrong and we can talk about why but it turned out to be wrong. The reason i apologize to colin powell was twofold. One is i think colin powell is a remarkable man. I think he served his country with great distinction in job after job after job after job. He deserves the stellar reputation that he had going into this u. N. Speech. This u. N. Speech and he did not say anything at the u. N. That the cia and the rest of the Intelligence Community did not believe. This u. N. Speech tarnished his reputation. Hes the first person to tell you that ive heard him say that the iraq wmd presentation at the u. N. Is going to be on his tombstone. He has carried this with them. Ive also heard him say that nobody from the cia ever apologize to me. I was the number three on the analytic side of the agency when we did this analysis that we got and so given all of that i wanted to apologize to him. I also didnt want to surprise him. I didnt want him to pick up the book and see that was in there so i sent him the chapter. He called me and we talked for 45 minutes and he was deeply appreciative of the apology. Would you agree that the war were sold to the American Public largely on the basis of wmd weapons of mass destruction . I wouldnt say sold. I think president bush would have to tell you himself but its very important. One the main job of an analyst is to put things into context so one of the things i try to do in the book is put some of these Big Decisions into context. What was the context in which president bush made his decision . 9 11 had just happened. The largest single attack on america in our history. 3000 people had just been killed killed. The cia was telling him that Saddam Hussein is one of our primary enemies, a sworn enemy of the United States had active weapons of mass destruction programs including a Nuclear Weapons program and we were telling him Saddam Hussein supports International Terrorist groups, not al qaeda but Palestinian Terrorist groups and so there sits president bush having faced this huge attack on the United States understanding job number one of the present is to protect the American People and we are telling him this guy has got weapons of mass destruction and provide support to terrorist groups. He is sitting there thinking if saddam uses these weapons against us or if saddam gives these weapons to a terrorist group and they use these weapons against us that could make 9 11 look small. I think that is what drove president bush to action in iraq and its exactly what led a majority of congress to support him for exactly the same reason. So absolutely the analysis on iraq having weapons of mass destruction playe