Mississippi in the 18th century. Enjoy book tv this week and every weekend on cspan2. My name is karen greenberg. Thank you so much for joining us here at the center on National Security at fordham law. Were delighted to be bringing you this afternoons conversation. With me today is chris whipple, Award Winning author, journalist, documentary maker. His new book is the spy masters. Can you see it . How the cia director shaped history and the future. And well talk a lot about this book today. First, i just want to say, thank you, chris, thank you for joining us. A pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. This is actually a wonderful read. When i started it, i was sort of like, oh, no, this is going to be too much information, i wont be able to take it in. Its fantastic. Its based on, in addition to your own knowledge and research, its based on over 70 interviews and youve interviewed, among those, the leading directors of the cia. Living directors of the cia. Except for the current one. And its really not so im going to stay it out there. Its not so much about the cia directors as about the cia directors and their relationship to the white house and the president. Would you agree with that . Yeah, well, thanks for the kind words about the book. One of the things i really tried to do, maybe above all, was to humanize these directors and i was lucky, because its a cast of characters that john la coray never could have dreamt up. Bob gates, prescribed him to me the james bondsion character, cigarette in one hand, martini in the other and walk into the oval office and tell lbj that the domino theory was flawed and Going Forward to bill colby who to me was kind of the vito korleone of the ceo and then bill casey and youve got a cast, an amazing cast of characterings all the way up to gina haskell, the first woman to run the ceo. Youre right, the book focuses a lot on the relationship between the president and the cia director. Its an almost impossible balancing act for a cia director because he or she, on the one hand, has to tell the president hard truths, while also keeping the president s ear. Thats a really tough challenge, even in the best of times, and in the current times its practically mission impossible. Yeah, and i donten if you saw the comey film over the weekend. Yes, yes. But its one of the things that becomes clear how hard that particular relationship is just generally and how much harder it was under trump. So, just going down that line a little bit, so, who had the worst relationship . And i kind of i mean, i read the book so i kind of know i think what youre going to say, and then who had the best relationship . And this is jim would have been for worst relationship with a president. Woolsey, a fascinating character to me, brilliant guy. He was, as we all know, on a spectrum, on an ideological spectrum he was well over to the right, but he loved to joke about the fact that he was president of yale students for Eugene Mccarthy back in 68. He opposed the vietnam war not for the reasons mccarthy did, but he thought if it was winnable, we werent doing enough. Anyway, he becomes cia director, but bill clinton and woolsey were like oil and water as one source put it to me. Clinton just did not like him after the first briefing, which went on and on and evidently at some length. Woolsey left, bill clinton learned turned to one of his advisors and says, i never want to see that man again and he almost never did. Woolsey had literally one meeting with the president , and at one point, there was a freak accident on the south lawn of the white house, a small plane crashed and killed the pilot, afterwards woolsey said to the press, that was me trying to get an appointment with bill clinton. Oh, my god. So it was not a very productive relationship and woolsey met his demise over the james scandal, ames, that case the most serious mole since kim fillby probably in american intelligence history. Intelligence history. Happened on his watch and it essentially ended his tenure. And what about the best relationship . There would be a number of contenders for that, probably. I would say that bob gates and george h. W. Bush had a very good relationship. Leon panetta and barack obama had a very good relationship. John brennan and obama, certainly. And here is the sort of spoiler alert for those who know that i wrote another book called the gate keeper about the white house chiefs of staff. Some of the attributes that make a great white house chief of staff also serve cia directors well and its no coincidence, in my view, that leon panetta was the Gold Standard at both. There were certainly other great white house chiefs and other great cia directors, but panetta was up there at the best in both jobs and had a lot to do with the fact that panetta, when he became cia director for obama, he was 70 years old. Hed been around the block. Hed served in congress, he was comfortable in the corridors of power, he knew the white house, and he could walk into the oval office, close the door and tell barack obama what he didnt want to hear. And thats essential in both jobs. Yeah, you portray him as cannot just an honest broker, but, like a brilliant strategist for oh, he was, he was, and one of the classic one of the great infighting stories that i tell in the leon panetta chapter is its about the time that are denny blair, then the National Director of intelligence made the mistake of trying to take on leon panetta in a bureaucratic struggle over who would appoint the cia station chiefs. Well, i guess you could on paper make the argument that the director of National Intelligence outranked leon and therefore denny blair ought to make that appointment, but in the real world, blair should have known that that was turf that was jealously guarded at langley. Panetta knew that and blair sent out a directive, without informing panetta, to all the stations saying that he, denny blair, would be appointing the new station chiefs. Well, panetta waited about a half hour and sent out another message to all the stations saying, disregard the previous message. Well, this went this was not a fair fight. This went to the white house, but leon knew exactly who had his back on this one, not only barack obama, but vicepresident joe biden, who wound up being the referee on this one, as they walked into the office to adjudicate this biden, lee turned to him and said, joe, is our tee time still 9 30 tomorrow . And biden said, yes. And blair knew he was a dead man walking. Yeah, just look at not just about the white house, the president , the cia directors, but its also a chronicle of American Foreign policy and not just things were learning from behind the scenes, but just the major events taking place in American Foreign policy over four to five decades and a number of those things, obviously, have been on our minds lately, 9 11 being, you know, perhaps the most obvious one. But the killing of bin laden, but there was one incident i think a lot of readers and our audience wont know much about, and that is that of ahmad mia, i wonder if you wanted to tell the stories, i dont know about others listening to you, but im so embarrassed that i dont know this story, but now im grateful i know this story. Dont be embarrassed because a lot of people dont know it. In fact, the first half of the story that i tell in the book were going to break away from the program at this point to keep our 40plus year commitment to congressional coverage. Well return to this event as soon as the Senate Pro Forma session is over. Now to live coverage of the u. S. Senate here on cspan2. The presiding officer the senate will come to order. The parliamentarian will read a communication to the senate. The parliamentarian washington, d. C. , november 6, 20. To the senate under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable roy blunt, a senator from the state of missouri, to perform the duties of the chair. Signed chuck grassley, president pro tempore. The presiding officer under the previous order, the Senate Stands adjourned until 3 00 p. M. Stands adjourned until 3 00 p. M. And the sin is finished its legislative visit until after the election. A short pro forma sessions are held every three days. No vote are expected to the senate will return for legislative business monday, november 9 at 3 p. M. Eastern to resume debate on a judicial nomination. We will have more live Senate Coverage when lawmakers return here on cspan2. Really essentially drove the israelis out of lebanon and it was that effectively full and it would cut through a tank. He killed the famous israeli general triggering the israeli withdrawal. In short he was the most wanted guy, and the other two most wanted guys were general soleimani of syria and then a rainy general named soleimani whose name may ring a bell. Since you skilled january this year. In any event, cia tried and tried to track down the dla tell the story of an operation on bill clintons watch at the end of his presidency on george tenet watches cia director and which they tracked him down to beirut. They discovered he was visiting his mistresses flat and he would visit her and he would beat her, as a turnout. The cia enlisted her to set him up and grabbing and bundle them down to the dock and onto a vote at all to a battleship offshore. It all went south. The operation failed and another decade went by before cia finally tracked him down in damascus. So i tell that story in hairraising detail how, in a joint cia mossad operation they finally got him, tracked him as he was driving around damascus in his luxurious suv. They decided they couldnt plant the bomb on the phone. He discarded phones too often but he always had his suv. They wound up, cia building a bomb. They had, it was a technical marvel because they had to replace the hold back door of the suv without his bodyguards noticing an and had to match te paint color exactly, even the age of the paint job. They did all this and mossad wound up pulling the trigger. And at one moment while they were surveilling him and waiting for the moment to strike, they looked and looked against and realized the guy, someone leaning on his car talking with him was, guess who, general soleimani. They thought its a twofer, we can get, take them both out. They got waited wait for pe. Permission was denied. It was denied. Soleimani went off and he finally did get him. Its just an unbelievable story and also the whole negotiation because assassination quoteunquote has always been a front proposition at the cia. Its been prohibited by executive orders including 12333 for decades. In this case they went through contortions so that the israelis would pull the trigger rather than the americans. Bush 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 that i wrote in the book. You have a whole page where you excerpt from your interviews where you asked a number of cia directors what happened, and is just no comment, no comment, no comment which i guess guess comes with the territory but its not a best way to eventually get to know. Can i just add, for terms very own john brennan who finally gets frustrated with me asking him repeatedly for comment what happened . He finally looked at me and he said, he died quickly, period. That was his comment. Thats more than you got any of the others. From any of the other directors. One thing i wanted to ask that you dont at least will talk about. Id love your thoughts on is the use of military generals to be head of the cia and whether you know how we should think about that and have others have thought about that come thinking of general petraeus, general hayden and just kind of like, because there is way which these are distinct authorizations for using force, for using covert activity here. You did learn about that particular, that mixing of expertise . Its a mixed bag. The two directors i get into with our mike hayden and David Petraeus, each of them really capable and really interesting characters. Hayden tells a story about how first when he arrives he would run the nsa, National Security agency prior. He was still a general, not quite retired when he arrived at the cia. He went through the bubble, socalled bubble, the auditorium at cia to make his first address to the troops, as it were. As he was speaking when you came to the end of his remarks he took questions, and somebodys hand shot up and they said, what would you like us to call you . And hayden who was famously eloquent and glenn and articulate glib was prone for a minute. He did not answer and finally he said, whatever makes you comfortable. Dont call me general. Whatever you call me, whatever you call me. He said in retrospect it was most important thing he said. That day. There is what some at cia call something called 4star general disease, and what it means is that military people sometimes arrive at the cia and certainly directors have arrived on occasion with a very well developed sense of entitlement. Used to having 50 staff, 50 people who, as David Petraeus did when he was in afghanistan, to cater to his every whim. Just a little bit of a a problm for the trace when he arrived. It was just a culture shock. They are just different cultures and when you have been a commanding general like petraeus, you are a custom to a different way of life in way of operating and having people at your beck and call. By trey is got over that and i think adjusted to the cia culture, but in the beginning it was rocky for him. He had only just really adjusted to cia culture when of course he met his untimely demise by sharing classified information with his mistress, paula. And in the book, i mean, i asked him pointblank about that, and its fascinating. And use an excerpt from her which i thought was also interesting and i can be a teaser for reading that section of the book. What about when directors are asked or told by president s to break the law . What did you learn about that process and how that plays out looking all these different directors and the relationships with president s . To me that might be the most fascinating scene in the book. Because its a continuous theme from the beginning all the way up to our current cia director gina haspel. I had the privilege of getting to know the waiter of richard helms, the previously mentioned quintessential cia oldschool cia director. Cynthia died last summer by spent a lot of time with her the summer before. She was 95 and she was full of terrific Untold Stories about her husband, and she said you know, chris, they were all asked to do things they shouldnt have done. And i said, like what . And we got into it and we talked about the fact that helms was come he was a flawed character. He was brilliant and he was smooth and he was, you know, i love the stories about him holding his own on a dance floor with fred astaire at the 1975 date dinner for the shah of iran. Helms was dancing with cynthia and fred astaire was dancing with the shaw avenue from iran. Quite a character but flawed. His relationship with lbj assassinated because he admired lbj for his domestic achievements and the great society. He was exasperated by the vietnam war. But he wanted lbj to succeed and lbj leaned on him very hard as only lbj could do, and told him in the Uncertain Terms that he wanted intelligence showing that domestic protesters against the vietnam war were being controlled by foreign communist powers. Helms protested, said thats not in the cia charter, and lbj said im well aware of that. I wanted. He wanted intelligence. Helms shouldve known better but he bent the law. He set up an operation called operation mh chaos. It was illegal domestic surveillance of protesters went and the right to protest. And at the other day he came up with absolutely no evidence of any form, his control. So helms was flawed but at the end of the day helms stood up to nixon at the most important time, when the crunch came during the watergate scandal and h. R. Haldeman, 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 he arguably saved the cia. So helms was the earliest example of a cia director who had to do with that kind of pressure. But so many of them have had to do, and time and again president s will ask them to do stuff they shouldnt be doing, including i mean, i love the way bob gates put it. He said usually you have a really difficult problem, the state Department Says that the military handle it. The military says let the diplomats handle it, and then they all say well, lets let the cia do it. Cia is one former director told me that you could never get rid of the cia, never abolish it because president s would have no one to blame. So the fact of the matter over the last five or six decades is that when the cia gets in trouble its usually because president s have asked them to do stuff they shouldnt be doing. Do they get in trouble . Do the given trip . You said the cia, do they actually get held accountable or get in trouble . Yeah, certainly have been playing time and again. The other classic lament added language which a love in this count the early successes and intelligence failures. Certainly cia was blamed for 9 11, was called a failure of imagination. It was called all kinds of things but basically the cia was, covert black, george tenet deputy said people would come up to me, congressman would come up to me and say hey come how does a field of the worst intelligence failure since pearl harbor . The truth is, and i have really detailed chapter on this, in july of 2001, george tenet, black and rich who is head of the alqaeda unit went over to the Bush White House, he slammed assist on the table, said where to go on a war footing. They met with condi rice. Essentially they blew the whistle and nobody heard it. This was the case, this was my gift last of it was a white house failure to heed the warnings. Fastforward to 2020, and we are now suffering the catastrophic consequences of a president who ignored warnings in his residence daily brief throughout the month of january, and 200,000 americans are dead. One of the things you talk about that goes above those stories which is all different and at like like to your thoughts on it is the abandonment of norms, procedural norms under this president , particularly in terms of the Principal Committee meetings. Can you talk a little bit about that . Its the thread you talk about, and just doesnt come out of the blue when youre