Lets welcome him on the stage. [applause] good evening. Thank you for being here, we are very excited at the conversation you are about to see. Not just because its on other celebration or successful book fair that miamidade book fair put on every year but its rare to have professionals with the type of firsthand knowledge that they bring to this discussion shared with you and have the opportunity to engage. Rest assured theres going to be an opportunity for all of you to ask questions of our panelists but we thank you for being here and with that, let me introduce the first of our authors this evening. Josh campbell is a correspondent for cnn and prior to joining the network, he did a very distinguished tenure at the federal bureau of investigation where he served as a special assistant fbi director james comey, hes worked with former special counsel on fbi director robert malik and hes the author of the brandnew book, crossfire hurricane inside Donald Trumps work on the fbi, lets give a warm welcome to Josh Campbell. [applause] our next author is also an alumni of the fbi and also the Central Intelligence agency but most important to those here in the room, hes a 305 till you die kind of guy because philip is actually native, he went to school down here, hes also the author of the book back site, the cia and the post 9 11. [applause] and last but by no means, by no means least, a man whos taken on the legendary persona, you see him up and down the Cable Television ill offering his clues to the world, more than anything else, a navy chief and a proud one at that, the author of New York Times bestselling books including his latest, the plot to betray america, how trump embraced our enemies, compromise our security and how we can fix it. Welcome to the stage, malcolm. [cheering] s. [cheering] thats what we call bipartisan cooperation. We got to get another one. I think theres one missing. Having said that, gentlemen, theres a tremendous amount of interest in your books and i think part of the reason why is not just because of the information you offer to the country and the globe but this backdrop of strange times that i dont think anyone would argue we are living in. Josh, i would like to start with you first, crossfire hurricane, your book the curtain on a lot of people wondering what was going on within the fbi and preludes of the 2016 election and aftermath that culminated in the dismissal of your boss, comey. Whats the number one most Important Message you are hoping readers of your book come away with in writing this . Thanks to all of you for being here, one thank you may not know, we know youre out there but we never get to see you. As we stare into this camera so the best part for me is doing the book tours and interacting with people and see people who care about these important issues. To answer your question thank you. The take away from this book is that there are real consequences to Public Safety when any elective leader tries to destroy the reputations of Law Enforcement and Intelligence Community agencies. Weve seen over the course of a moment investigation since the beginning of the russia investigation that not every agency has operated one 100 correctly. There have been issues that the department of justice Inspector General has found but in the agencies staffed with patriots who go to work every day, trying to protect this nation from external threat. Mac thank you. So what i fear and the purpose of writing this book is happy American People actually start to believe this nonsense, these agencies are filled with corrupt stake, im to get any elective leader, how many people will lose confidence in the answer to that require this in order to do their work . I try to take you behind the scenes as an agency tries to grapple with something, i was having People Associated with president ial campaign under investigation with ties to a foreign adversary. It might have been an ultimate title because thats the center of the storm you had to endure both as professional and Central Intelligence and later on during Deputy Director but you wrote your book, the cia and the post 9 11 work to address the controversies around the enhanced interrogation program. Again, so much passionate debate on both sides of the issue, what was your message you wanted to convey to your readers and your book . I witnessed the Senate Report not very positively, but by the way im not happy to be there, i would prefer to be out on south beach. [laughter] the answer is, we dont usually tell you the truth. But id rather not be here. I witnessed this and ive heard a lot of people attack their american right, people on a different side of the political spectrum say you represented our interest after 9 11, you saved us. Neither side on the conservative and liberal side was able to talk to the 35 or 40 people i spoke with, most of whom will never speak to you and say the book is not meant to be defensive of what many people hate, thats what the cia did to detainees. Its meant to say if you want to live our life so you understand why it happened, you might have ammunition to say thats fine, you might have ammunition to say i think what you did was right for you all to live the life you live to at least say if i want to attack what they did or supported, i have an understanding of 17 years ago to understand what people like me live through so you can understand on either side why we did what we did. Thats it. Bill talked about trying to explain the past, your trilogy of books has predicted events that have become transpired directly supported by the futu future. In your book, the plot betray america. You sounded the warning in july 2016 as it unfolding in real time and a lot of people wanted to dismiss the at the time, they thought it might happen a little fear mongering and yet i think there. That out. What is the message of the plot to betray america . What should americans and people of good faith be taking away from your book . First, let me pause my two colleagues here on the stage. I read both of their books, i love crossfire hurricane. I then fbi story. [laughter] youre sitting in there, going meeting to meeting, why are we being attacked . You prattvilles story, which i was involved with because i had testified about all of these things. We are in this secure site and stuff, we have no windows in there. We rarely use the televisions, we are doing whatever it is we do and guys like this whether its counterterrorism, they have a perspective you cant have. You have to appreciate if they did something good, you will never learn about it. If you do something bad, you will probably learn about it. Its the good that they do, its the people who fill out travel claims and issue your checks and do all the things that many of us would think of as thankless, you cant think them. You will never go into the buildings and you will never be around them and watch these people try to struggle with the popcorn machine at 1 00 a. M. When theyre watching activities in the middle of the night because daytime in the middle east. They have thankless lives. They are the true patriots of this nation who they defend us all. It offends me [applause] it offends me even though i have fought my entire career for the right, american citizens, i have defended against terrorists to say any stupid things that comes to your mind. Thats your right but thats why i reelect the terrace. They will take that away from you. Those two books were brilliant and that let me to my book which was finally writing about russian intelligence activity russian measures, how putin is essentially taking over europe to democracy. Hes destroy democracy by getting government to vote themselves out of power, to vote in and we have been attacked so my book was designed to give you a warning about the very people that right now are deep in the impeachment. The difference is, none of us here on this stage who have written books are journalists. We are intelligence professionals, National Security professionals and we write to inform you. Thats all i do in my book and my favorite chapter of that book is the good guys lose. Guys like Josh Campbell and call me in all of them are trying to help this nation in decent manner with what has happened and now we have 40 of this country who will believe every word out of the mouths of the National Counterterrorism syndrome, you wont believe anything we believe but we can tell you youve been attacked by russia and the attack is ongoing and continuous in all of u. S. Intelligence moves it, you call people like that conspiracy theorist. The Conspiracy Theory is you will not believe what is before your own eyes and thats all i have done in that book, teach you what you actually see before your own eyes before fox news grabs you. [applause] it seems that we find ourselves in, you cannot do an event without breaking news happening in real time. As we took to the stage, a Major Development happened and if i werent home, i would turn on the television and look for commentary. I have the ability to do that in real time now but the Washington Post is reporting, so those of you unaware, the chief of the pentagon has asked for the resignation of the secretary of the navy amid the controversy over the navy seal explosion. Malcolm is our navy man on the panel, should we be concerned . I will keep this short. As the navy chief, i get very upset. This morning i did a segment where i spoke as a chief from the chief from a long family of navy chief. Are they out of their minds . The secretary of the navy does serve the pleasure of the u. S. But he has a good order and discipline of every sailor down there and when he makes a decision for the commander of special warfare makes a decision that someone should not be entitled to their work perfect or whatever, the president of the u. S. Needs to stay out of navy business. [applause] he had his chance five times to serve this nation and he cowered it out and got out of it. [applause] the president of the u. S. Right now has damaged good order and discipline and even though the secretary of the navy said he didnt make that statement about thinking of resigning, they should have set that out loud and probably. They have every sailor in this country and every soldier was thinking i can commit more crime and if trump gets me up, i can get away with it. [applause] this is for phil and josh you want me to follow that . [laughter] both of you served again under dual bipartisan administrations, republican president s or democratic and the word unprecedented overused a lot these days. From your perspective, have you ever seen anything like this where the president of the u. S. Will go out and attack the integrity of institutions designed to protect the American People in your case, the ci of your investigation. I served from 85 to 2010, five president s, i think the opportunity is to take you to the water cooler and offer you not necessarily what i say on tv but a perspective you cant share, i dont remember conversations among colleagues. I spent five years and. I joined at an entry level and finished out the teller, i dont remember that many conversations about what a president did. The president is having this approach to iran or north korea or russia, you might talk about it over cocktails but one way to characterize, to give you a perspective thats a little different than just saying yes, thats a weird time, i dont remember in 25 years, conversation saying, how do we end up saying turkey and egypt and philippians our friends and nato the g7 our enemies . This is not only weird policy, these are people who dont represent American Value and places the filipinos are remembering people without due process and we dont talk about it. Ill have a president i dont have a problem with the president talking about north korea, i do have a problem saying its odd, i never witnessed this in 25 years, to sit back and say why is it that we like people who oppose Democratic Values to the point that they murder the opposition and the people who stood with us to oppose oppression since world war ii and the creation in 1947 are somehow enemies on twitter . That dude is weird. [laughter] [applause] in that spirit, you had a birds eye view of what its like to be on the other side, all of us in this room who havent served in the federal investigation there is this sense that at the end of the day, the adults are charged, theres a plan, a contingency and surely there has to be a scenario where the patriots of the fbi have had to have this scenario plan for the president tax them on a daily basis. Surely that plan exists. The truth is, i dont think it does in the sense that you mentioned before how unprecedented these times are and i dont think we hear that word used a lot but i dont think that is an overstatement because these are unprecedented times in different ways. As a reporter on the panelists, my job is to report on actions and leave the value judgments to our viewers and listeners to make up your mind about what this means but all you have to do is look to the past and compare it to the present. What i did in my book, i went back and looked since watergate, in instances where you had a white house that was in conflict with the department of justice, in doing research for this book, of all the president s since Richard Nixon with the exception of obama, the only president who didnt have someone senior in his white house under investigation by the justice department, there has been instances of conflict between the white house and institutions of justice. You go back from every president except obama since nixon, theyve had special counsel or someone being investigated. We saw especially under president clinton a robust effort, the independent counsel at the time but what you didnt see is any of those instances was an attempt to burn down an entire institution, trying to destroy the credibility of these institutions of justice and the Intelligence Community. It was always offlimits. There was a system of norms in place, so called guardrail you couldnt go this far. Every president , every person in the u. S. Who finds themselves accused of something is entitled to a robust one. Trump is the same. A robust defense. We are now fair game to destroy reputation and credibly ensure political survival which is a dangerous place. The knocks on someones door and they need help investigating. The willingness of that person to help is directly correlated to the agency. Is this an honorable person standing before . I trust them asking for help. They testify that jury, their willingness to believe their view on the agency. Is that present a truthful person from a truthful and trustful agency . This continued erosion will impact all of our impacts in a negative way. I went back and did research looking at polling data and what was fascinating is that if you look at republicans in 2014, a survey of Public Confidence in the fbi and among republicans, the numbers were in the high 70s. The day that number is less than 50 . That tells me people are out there that are leaving this narrative that these agencies are corrupt and that will make us less safe. Whether theres a plan on the shelf that they can deal with, how they grapple with this, its an unprecedented time, they have to deal with this before so i think they are just a shell shock now as the rest of the country when you continue to hear this narrative day in and day out. These agencies are imperfect. I cover them every day as a reporter, my job is to unearth them in the main, which you are being told. You use the word shellshocked in the breaking news broken again. Resignation was asked for, its no turned into a fullblown firing. They are having questionable on the american media. The american Intelligence Community and now its over into the american military. It as anonymous as we think it is . Yes. You have a fullblown one in the white house. You go through policies and you have robust discussion, hes doing topdown fingerpointing. I dont like you, youre fired. Heres a tweet. This man actually refuted what he has said but thats not good enough. I worked against many of these in the world and this reminds me of those trials that they would have for everybody would be sitting there and say gay saddam and they would say theres a traitor in the audience and they would point up there and he would plead for his life and they would be dragged out. This is a malfunction. That is all there is to it. [applause] but that malfunction is the constitutional process. We all defend with our lives. I take this very personally. The constitutional processes we all wheel know and believe in, one cant decided he is king george the fourth. King george the third wasnt good enough. Im waiting for him to start ordering troops into our houses and pay for it. Everything we have known since 1776 is in danger. When you point to a secretary of the navy, yes he served but you should have enough common sense to understand people other have duty to the constitution, to our sailors and soldiers and marines and airmen. When you destroy that by saying im appointing a guy whos convicted of a crime, im giving a convicted war criminal for murder and he gets to go on fox news and lecture all of us. This has destroyed good order. There will be robust debate happening at every level. The chief of Naval Operations right now, they had better decide whether you stand with my navy, you stand in the tradition of John Paul Jones and doc him off the ship and drop your anchors in front of the president and tell him what the navy is about or resign yourself. [applause] shall i come back to you . [laughter] this crisis in a row doesnt seem to be limited to one of the agencies, we just have come off two weeks of an impeachment inquiry where one side tries to make the case for why president ial use of power and high crimes were committed and how that was documented by Public Servants in the federal government. The other side was focused on the whistleblower. A whistleblower that many s