Thank you for having me. When i started it this will be too much information i cannot take it in is based on your knowledge and research over 70 interviews. And billy it is not so much about the cia director but the relationship to the white house and the president. Do you agree . Thank you for your kind words because what i really tried to do above all else is to humanize these directors and with his cast of characters those that were the quintessential cia director is a james bond character cigarette in one hand and the dry martini and another to walk into the oval office to tell lbj the domino theory was god and then Going Forward to me was the corleone of the cia and then you have okc and an amazing cast the characters all the way up to gina haskell the first woman to run the cia. The book focuses a lot on the relationship between the president and the cia director its almost an impossible balancing act for a cia director because he or she have to tell the president a hard truth will also keeping the president s ear that is a tough challenge in the best of times and in the current times is practically mission impossible. I saw the call me from over the weekend . But its one of the things that the relationship is generally and how much harder it was under trump. So going down outline a little bit, is the worst relationship . I think i know you will say who has the best . And that is a fascinating character to me who is a brilliant guy and on the ideological spectrum he left to joke about the fact he was president for students of mccarthy and 68 and with the vietnam war because he thought it was winnable and we were not doing enough to the clinton and where is he would like when water is was to me the clintons just is not like him after the first briefing which went on and on evidently at some length goals the left and bill clinton turned to one of his advisers and said i never want to see that man again. And he almost never did. Literally had one meeting with the president and at one point a freak accident on the south lawn of the white house a small plane crashed and killed the pilot and afterwords was he said to the house that was me trying to get an appointment with bill clinto clinton. Is not a very productive relationship and had his demise over the james scandal that case is the most serious and the american intelligence history. It happened on his watch and essentially ended his tenure. What about the relationship . There are a number of contenders for the best. I would say that bob gates and george h. W. Bush had a very Good Relationship. A great white house chief of staff also served cia directors well. Its no coincidence, in my view that its the gold standard. There were other great chiefs and cia directors but that was right up there with the best. Thats partly because it had a lot to do with the fact that the director for obama was 70 years old, hed been around the block, he served in congress, he is comfortable in the power and knew the white house and he could walk into the oval office and closed the door and tell barack obama what he didnt want to hear. That is essential in both jobs. You portrayed him as being not just an honest broker but like a brilliant strategist. He was. One of the Great Stories i felt in that chapter is about the time the director of National Intelligence made the mistake of trying to take on leanne bureaucratic struggle over who would appoint the chiefs. I guess you could, on paper, make the argument the director of National Intelligence outranked leon and therefore they ought to make that appointment but in the real world, blair should have known that was turf jealously guarded. They knew that and blair sent out a directive without informing them to all the stations saying he would be appointing the new station chi chief. They waited about a half hour and set up another message saying disregard the previous message. This was not a fair fight. He went to the white house but leon knew exactly who had his back on this one. Not only barack obama but Vice President joe biden who have nothing to referee on this one. As they went into adjudicate, leon turned to him and said joe, is it still 9 30 a. M. Tomorrow biden said yes and blair knew he was a dead man walking. This book is not just about the white house cia directors but its also a chronicle of American Foreign policy and not just things we are learning from behind the scenes but the major events taking place in American Foreign policy over 45 decades. Number of things obviously event on our minds lately, 9 11, perhaps the most obvious one but the killing of bin laden but there was one incident that i think a lot of readers in our audience knows that much about, i just wanted to know if you were to that store because i felt like i am so embarrassed i dont know this story so now i am grateful. Dont be embarrassed because a lot of people dont know it. In fact, the first half of the story i tell in the book about him has never been reported before and its an absolutely unbelievable story the last three or four decades. He was far and away, the most wanted terrorist in the middle east by both the cia going all by the way back to the worst day in cia history which was tommy of beirut of the embassy in beirut which killed so many cia officers and other americans at the time. Subsequently, it was determined was probably this operation, the dawn of that whole era of truck bomb terrorism that was the beginning, a really pivotal time and from then on, he had more american and israeli blood on his hands than anyone. The operational genius of hezbollah. They call it terrorism because he was so elusive, literally had one photograph with him and they could never keep up with him. He was wearing disguises, he developed pioneer use of shakes charge, a sophisticated ied that essentially drove the israelis out of lebanon and it was that lethal and he killed the israeli general, figuring he was withdrawn. In short, is the most wanted guy and the other two most wanted guys were the general of syria and an iranian general named soleimani whose name may bring about since he was killed in january this year. In any event, cia tried to track down him and i tell the story of an operation on bill clintons watch at the end of his presidency, cia director in which they track them down beirut and discovered visiting his mistresses flat and he would visit her and he would beat her as it turned out, the cia listed her set him up and grabbed him and bundle him down and onto a boat and off to a battleship offshore. The operation failed and another decade went by before the cia finally tracked him down in damascus so i tell that story in detail how the joint cia operation, they finally got him and tracked him as he was driving around damascus in his suv. They decided they couldnt plant the bomb in a phone, he discarded phones too often but he always had his suv and they wound up, cia building a bomb, they had a technical marvel because they had to replace the whole back door of the suv without the bodyguards noticing and mesh paint color exactly. They did all this and pulled the trigger and at one time, in one moment while surveilling him and waiting for the moment to strike, they looked and looked again and realized someone leaning on his car talking with him was guess who, general soleimani and they thought my god, it is a two, we can take them both out. They said permission, permission was denied. His only judgment target. They waited and soleimani went off and they finally did get him so it is an unbelievable story and also, the whole delegate association because the assassination has always been a fraught proposition as the cia, it has been prohibited for decades. In this case, it went through contortions to the israelis pull the trigger rather than the americans pushed signed off on the deal as long as nobody ever talked about it. And nobody does talk about it, to this day except in part, to me for this chapter, as i wrote in the book. You have a whole page you exit from your interviews where you ask a number of cia directors what happened and its just no comment, no comment, no, which i guess, that comes with the territory its a story to eventually get to know. John brennan who finally gets frustrated being asked repeatedly for comment, he finally looked at me and said he died quickly. That was his comment. Thats more than you got from the others. From many other directors. One thing i wanted to ask you dont really talk about the use of military generals to be head of the cia. I was under how we should think about that. Just kind of, there is a way in which these are distinct authorizations for the activity and what did you learn about that particular mixing of expertise . It is a mixed bag. And the two directors get into it, each of them really capable and really interesting characters. Hayden tells the story about first when he arrived, he runs the Nsa National Security agency and he was so general not quite retired. When he arrived at the cia. Went to the socalled bubble, the auditorium of the cia to make his first address the troops and as he was speaking when he came to the end of this is remarks, he took questions and somebodys hand shot up and he said what would you like us to call you . Hagan, was famously eloquent and articulate, he was thrown for a minute. He didnt know how to answer. He said whatever makes you comfortable. Dont call me general, call me whatever you want to call me and he said in retrospect, that was the most important thing he sa said. There is, the cia calls, something called fourstar general disease and what it means is that military people sometimes arrived at the cia certainly directors have arrived on occasion with a very well developed sense of entitlement. Used to have 50 people, when he was in afghanistan to cater to his every win. This was a bit of a problem, it was a culture shock. Different cultures. When you are a commanding general, you are accustomed to the different way of life, operating in having people at your beck and call. He got over that and i think the cia culture but in the beginning, it was rocky for him. He had only just really adjusted to the cia culture when he met his untimely demise by sharing classified information with his mistress. In the book, i ask him about that and it is fascinating. You have excerpt from her which i thought was interesting, that could be a teaser for the next section of the book. What about when directors are asked or told by president to vote for locke . What did you learn about that process and how it plays out, they could be different directors . To me, that might be the most fascinating theme in the book. Because its a continuous thing from the beginning all the way up to our current cia director and i am privileged of getting to know the widow of rachel helms, previously mentioned essential cia, oldschool cia director, sent these last summer but i spent a lot of time the summer before, she was 95 and full of terrific stories about husband and she said you know, they were all asked to do things they shouldnt have done and i said, like whats . We got into it and we talked about the fact that helms was a flawed character, he was brilliant and smooth and i love the stories about holding his own on a dance floor, 1975 station in a room, they were dancing with iran. Quite a character but his relationship with lbj is fascinating because domestic achievements and the great society, he was exasperated by the vietnam war. Lbj leaned on him very hard, as only lbj could do and told him on no uncertain terms, he wanted intelligence showing the domestic protesters against the vietnam war being controlled by foreign communist powers. Helms protested and said its not charter and lbj said im well aware of that, i wanted. Helms should have known better but he but the law and set up an operation called mh chaos. It was illegal domestic surveillance of protesters who had every right to protest. At the end of the day, he came up with no evidence of any foreign counters control so it helps with fraud but at the end of the day, helms stood up to nixon as the most important time when the crunch came during the watergate scandal. Nixons white house chief of staff called him into the white house and told him famously to shut down the fbi investigation into watergate. Helms was having none of it and he stood up for the rule of law and arguably saved the cia. That was the earliest example of a cia director who had to deal with that kind of pressure but so many have asked and time and again, president will ask them to do stuff they shouldnt be doing including, i love the way bob gates put it, usually you got a really difficult problem, the state Department Says that the military handle it. The military says that the diplomats handle it and they also lets let the cia to. Cia is warm one former director said you should never abolish it because they wouldnt have anyone to blame. The fact of the matter, over the last five or six decades, when the cia gets in trouble, its usually because president s have asked them to do stuff they shouldnt be doing. Did they get in trouble . Do they get in trouble . You said, did they actually be held accountable in trouble . They have been certainly blamed time and again. The other classic language, in this town, there are only successes and intelligence failures. Certainly cia was blamed for 9 11, a failure of imagination, all kinds of things but basically the cia, the deputy said people would come up to me and say how does it feel job the worst intelligence failure since pearl harbor . The truth is, and i have a detailed chapter on this, in july 2001, george and rich, had of the al qaeda unit went over the bush white house, he slammed his fist on the table and said got to go on a war footing now. Essentially, they blew the whistle and nobody heard. This was, in my view, less of an intelligence failure and what about policy failure. White house failure to heed their warnings. Fastforward to 2020 and we are now suffering catastrophic consequences of a president who ignored warnings in his daily brief throughout the month of january and 200,000 americans are dead. One thing to talk about for both stories, which is a little different is the abandonment of procedural norms under this president , particularly in terms of the Principal Committee meetings, can you talk about that . It doesnt just come out of the blue. This is a white house that not only has declared war on process and norms, this is essentially declaring war on government from day one. Ill never forget the Outgoing White House chief of staff saying when the clock strikes noon january 20, we were sitting in his office waiting for the chief of staff and his staff to arrive and nobody showed up. He waited an hour or more and finally turned off the lights and left. To me, thats a metaphor for this presidency but it is not the first time process and norms have been abandoned one case is 9 11, one of the things i learned in the book, we did a documentary in 2015, we told the story of the july 10, 2001 meeting. In the book, i went deeper and talked to a number of really persuasive sources in the white house and cia who said essentially, all you have to do in july 2001, was called percival speech and thats the heads of cia, fbi Vice President or National Security advisor and the Department Heads and you shake the tree. You shake the tree with all those people at the table, stuff falls. A number of people told me they think had rice called the principals meeting, they would have discovered they were on u. S. Soil and had been for months. This was a failure to communicate between cia and fbi but that is the stuff like its found out when you go through that kind of process so this is not the first presidency to fa fail, follow some of the norms. In this case, they were living in a kind of time for. They couldnt believe a bunch of guys beards and caves in afghanistan would blow up the world trade center. They said they thought terrors were lefties, stay up all night, drink champagne and blow stuff up during the day. There were people trying to get that message to causal so i think its one of those things we havent quite known and we need to reflect on so the war on government. Going through the book, iran. Every director time and time again has to deal with iran. Almost always in a crisis situation or more than one is his situation. Soleimani and others. I dont know how to ask this but i want to know where you think and what period of time to think we have the best understanding of and relationship with iraq . We certainly had a very close relationship with the wrong guy around. That is one of my favorite chapters in the book because it happened on his watch at cia director but it was arguably the greatest intelligence failure of the 20th century. It is certainly a huge fiasco but in terms of intelligence failures, failure to see was as weak as he was in on the verge of collapse was a fiasco. One of the reasons, quite frankly, we had almost willfully blinded ourselves and part of it was because he had the deal with him in which he basically said if youll give us access to your listening post on the soviet union, we will look the other way, we will not Pay Attention to your political opponents and we rely on the secret for all our intelligence so get into all of this in the book and that whole relationship between turner and jimmy carter and all of that, to me is really fascinating. One of the caveats about all of this, one of the great resources i spoke to was still, a brilliant guy. Some of you may know him, hes still very active and very persuasive voice on Foreign Affairs our intelligence was terrible during this whole. And we often just completely misunderstand other societies and this was the classic example and certainly vietnam before iran the classic example. Its just not Understanding Society but at the end of the day, you have to wonder if we had known that it was on the verge of collapse, what would policymakers have done with that knowledge . What exactly could we have done to have changed the Pivotal Moment in history books with there have been any way to arrive at the it . Im not sure the odds are all that great that we would have been smart enough to figure out what to do. I loved his book on richard, my first boss, by the way. Just about the human just about how badly we have misunderstood so many of these complex from vietnam to iran to bosnia to our Current Situation so we are obviously human beings are terribly flawed and diplomats are as well. Are you suggesting there is not much of a learning curve . I think the cia is much more capable tod