History matters. Go to booktv. Org for the complete weekend schedule. I will be your hoshost for the evening. Bear with me for a few House Keeping rules. Please silence anything that might make noise so we can avoid awkward interruuptions during t event. Step up so the audience and author can hear you and cspan and our recording can hear you as well. I speak for everyone who has attended the events before that you put your question in the form of a question and when the event is over we would appreciate it if you could help out the staff by folding up the chair and leaning it against something sturdy. We are pleased to welcome anatomy of terror. He was responsible for supervising and investigating significant terror cases for the bureau. He provides Intelligence Services to governments and national organizations. His first book, the black banner, was a New York Times top 10 best seller. His latest book is in many ways of a continuation of the work in the first volume. He explores the ways in which bin ladens ideology far from dying with the terrorist has grown in the years with his death ultimately leading to the creation of this Islamic State. Without further ado, please join me in welcoming our guest. [applause] i would like to have a more interaction relationships and hearing your questions. I am sure you have a lot on your mind especially with what we are seeing today in manchester and other places. I was an fbi agent. I started in 1997 with the bureau and was assigned to the new york office and did something done at the time. I wrote a memo about a guy i believe is going to be dangerous and his name was Osama Bin Laden. At the time, my immediate supervisors didnt know much about bin laden but it made it all the way to the new york fbi office to john oneill and john knew he had an ongoing case, very closely held in the u. S. Government between the fbi and cia in monitoring the activities of this guy who has been trying to create some problems. I was focusing on iraq at the time and we considered iraq as the state sponsor of terrorism so working this here yt United States and joined by the tax force. Also, i worked alqaeda and bin laden. I found myself in the middle of a lot of big investigations and at one point, you know, some of my commanders if you want to call them in alqaeda say you are in charge of this investigati investigation. A lot of these things ended up in 9 11 and east africa bombings and i was involved in so many operations around the world that disrupted terrorist plots. We were successful in stopping alqaeda and networks from conducting terrorists plots in manchester, actually, in the uk, morocco, saudi arabia, jordan they wanted to assassinate the pope and blow up a couple hotels and border crossings israel. I had experience in the Organization Group and men tally. And the organization that effect us on 911 sees no more. We destroyed the command and control in afghanistan. Many leaders escaped afghanistan, some were killed, some are spending the rest of their life in Guantanamo Bay although we are able to go to different locations and setup affiliates for the organization and hear about all that today. Some people want to assist with the shabob and others want to assist in the establishment of alqaeda and iraq and so forth. So after we finished 911 and the investigation of 9 11 and the invasion of iraq, alqaeda is no more an organization. It became a message and that was a potent message. By the time bin laden was killed he had affiliates in places like yemen, north africa, algeria, down to molly. They had places in indonesia and southern philippines and even organizations that pledge allegiance to alqaeda in the balkans and so forth. The organization was spreading but it wasnt spreading as a terrorist and i think if we dont counter the ideology, bin laden will be more poplar dead than alive. He will become a martyr. I wrote my concerns in a New York Times because they contacted me saying can you write something, bin laden just killed, what do you think about it . Unfortunately, john oneill died on 9 11. He left the fbi to become the head of security for the World Trade Center and he was getting out people from the building when the building collapsed. So i was happy to see bin laden dead because i lost friends and mentors and i lost a lot of people along the way who fought to stop this guys narrative and blood shed. I stand before you here and dont feel better about it. 16 years after 9 11 we dont have a comprehensive strategy that puts all of our assets together focusing on eliminating the threat. It is fine and dandy to arrest people now and then and it is fine and dandy to even, you know, use drones and special operations and those guys did a phenomenal job and god bless them. But it is not fair to just stress that military or intelligence. The diplomats have something to do here. People who work in aid programs have something to do here. Law enforcement has something to do here. We have since 9 11 a lot of tactics and most of them have been phenomenally successful. That is why 16 years after 9 11, 20 years almost bin laden declared war on the United States, we have a threat that is way more dangerous today than it used to be back when bin laden did 9 11. On the eve of 9 11, bin laden had 400 members pledging allegiance to alqaeda and 19 died on 9 11. In iraq and syria alone, they have 20,000 people alone. Today, alqaeda in yemen, which is alqaeda in the Arabian Peninsula have between 45,000. Today aqim, an organization that was not able to get their act together, they always fought with each other based on boundaries, ethnic boundaries, the blacks wont work with the arabs and the the organizations was also fragmented. They got together and pledged alenga allegiance and all of them pledged it. We see the organization growing. Now why is the organization growing. Because it is taking advantage of the chaos happening in the middle east and that didnt happening because they the current leader is a genius. It happened because bin laden ordered it to happen before the bullets took him down. He was watching the arab springs from his hideout. He told commanders forget everything i told you. Just hit the United States, hit the head of the snakes. We can kill all regimes if we destroy america or make them so week or scared to be involved in the middle east. Now i am telling you something totally different. I am telling you dont send people to go to afghanistan because we are ready according to his words when we said defeated and broke the krauz in afghanistan. Now we have to focus on the middle east because what we are experiencing today lets focus on regimes and when they are falling in libya and falling in tanesia. Let us guarantee that nobody is going to come and fill that vacuum. Most importantly, lets guarantee that there is no democracy because got forbid the people have the ability to chose. Democracy is against sharia so the believers and unbelievers have the same vote and they are equal in their election of what kind of governments they want. There is something called the management of strategy. It is a strategy that has been out create a vacuum, dont allow anybody to fill the vacuum because whoever fills is the dictator working on behalf of the americans as they see it. Manage that chaos that is happening over there. Declare a state and after you declare a state you can start that. It means a lot of muslims will die and we continue to say to what . We have to kill them to save them. It changed the whole power structure in the east in a phenomenal way. You see the terrorism is different than it used to be on 9 11. Now the terrorist threat is embedded in very complicated few political wars. What is happening in syria is not only a civil war in syria. Lets not fool ourselves. It is not only people who want liberty and freedom. That was the very beginning. It is an international conflict. That is why we are there. That is why the russians are there. That is why the iranians and gulf states and turks are there. It is not about the syrian people. Regionally, secretarism is being used to score points against Regional Power against iran and saudi arabia. We see it all across these conflict zones. Who is benefiting directly from that . Extremist groups on the shiite and sunni side. May 2nd, 2011 we killed bin laden. We did not kill alqaeda. Those navy seals took down the messenger but unfortunately our Political Leadership did not take down the message. And that is what we have today. So why did i write this book . I wrote that book because even 16 years after 9 11, we still dont have a deeper understanding of the enemy. What do i mean by that . Across the ages, they said if you know your enemy and you know yourself you will win a hundred times in a hundred battles. Do we know our enemy on that level . If you watch television we are still fighting 16 years after 9 11. What do we call the enemy . Islamic . Radical extremist . Or this one losers . That indicates we have no understanding of what the enemy is. We talk about the gods and we cannot imagine Something Like this happening. We could not imagine. Why . Our imagination is limited. Our imagination is limited with our experiences. It is limited by with our own x expertise and experiences. How do we expand our imagination . I mean empathy in the clinical sense understanding their reviews of history, understand their views of religion, understand their views of their own history. This is what gives us a better understanding of how they operate. This is what gives us a sense of predictability of what they will do. I hope in a small way i contribute to that understanding. I didnt want to write another terrorism or black banner book like many of these. This is not what this book is all about. This book is about diving in the personalitys and characters of people who want to do us harm. Many who cause so much bloodshed and suffering and understanding them not only on a personal level but also on ideological level. This book tells you the history of the terrorist organizations and the terrorist message we deal with today from the beginning until today. I start with bin laden escaping bora bora and talk about his relationships with his family, his commanders, and his other senior members of alqaeda. How he was micromanaging alqaeda. A lot of people say he was in a cave. No, he was micromanaging the organization and the way he negotiated hostages and the training manuals that they brain washed new recruits with. He was micromanaging the organization. And how the views changed. They changed after 9 11. It became a message and how you control affiliates. He was so concerned his brand needed to be in tact that he sent an order to the islamic order saying you have no idea what i am talking about because you dont speak arabic so the arm of alqaeda sends everything to french when he sends it over there and says i want them to understand what i am talking about. This is kind of, you know, he was a micromanager in so many ways. Bin laden, i go from the time he left afghanistan until the time he was killed by the navy seals. And then the new leader, they appointed was an interim leader to get all the allegiances from the affiliates and commanders for the one who was known to be the number two alqaeda. That was an egyptian and was with alqaeda and i cannot say why he is still alive. He has been with alqaeda from day one. He was one of the founding members and involved virtually with every operation alqaeda did against anyone. So, to clear all that against the u. S. Interest. He thought 911 could be a disaster for taliban. Only the free loaders, egyptian free loaders who came from dij told him no. Bin laden didnt get the votes for 9 11 but went with it anyway. He is collecting all the allegiances because he is well known among the leaders of alqaeda and trusted. Through safe, i introduce alqaeda from the beginning until he is collecting all the allegiances and then i go to all the different affiliates and what we know about the leaders of affiliates. It is not a terrorism book as much as it is a nashville with characters who created a lot of damage and bloodshed. So understanding the organization, understanding the history of the organization and understanding all the internal divisions inside the organization. The head of alqaeda and the horn of africa, the person who basically was instrumental in establishing the movement, haroon in the old days was involved in the east africanamerican Embassy Bombing and was the chief of staff for this guy. He told them i think the lottery guy is a free loader. You know, he is not one of us just because he fools bin laden. Suddenly he was killed at a checkpoint by the somalia forces. I dont make judgments on who killed him. I keep it up to you to decide by reading the novel. But the most rogue affiliate that gave alqaeda so much headache is alqaeda in iraq. Especially that guy who established quiet in iraq. There is a lot of idealogical differences in how the two viewed alqaeda. One wasnt a member of alqaeda in afghanistan. Later he became a member. So, his view is to basically kill anyone who disagrees with you including shiite and sunnis. In iraq alone, in the biggest sunni province in iraq they killed 250 sunni scholars to evacuate iraq and sunni towns from any religious scholars. Most of the hinge men were from north africa. It didnt start after the arab spring but was always there. Alqaeda established a committee in afghanistan just to focus on the actions. They sent him a letter saying what are you doing. Take it easy about the killing like this and guess what . Why do you behead people . A bullet can do the job. They are not arguing with him about the killing. They are all for the killing. But how do you do it . Beheading . Man, it makes people just dont like us. Think about the brand. We are brand for that. So, the difference between the leadership in afghanistan is actually the root of the division and the Global Jihad Movement we see later on between alqaeda and isis; right . Because isis is the group that was established in iraq. Hopefully after you read the chapter, you know everything about the iraq war and then you can make our own judgment was the iraq war worth it or not because i look at it from their perspective; right . Then we go to look at this old man who has been active in the Jihadi Movement in the middle east for a long time. So, he introduces the modern middle east and then with the modern middle east we have syria today, we have yemen today. You see how syria and the war in syria gave a new blood line for alqaeda and isis because when alqaeda went to iraq, sorry went to syria, the affiliates in iraq went to syria. What is now isis, the Islamic State in iraq at the time, sent commanders to setup an affiliate in syria and then they decided those guys in syria that the syria jihad is different than iran jihad. Two different things. We need our own affiliates. Alqaeda and iraq said you are under our own control. They said well, lets go to the leader and ask him. They went to the leaders and said, yeah, syria and iraq are different. Oh, you trader. You believe in divisions between iraq and syria . No, no, no. By the way, we established a state and we are going to raise you a caliphate and you have to give us we will not give you. We are the two followers of bin laden. You are a trader. The reason i am telling you this story is because now we see that it is a message. It is more and more message. If you hear isis or alqaeda does it really matter . It is the same ideology that was planted in the heads of many of these people by bin laden. Right . So what we have today is a message that directly, directly benefits from the chaos that exists. If you want to drown the narrative of extremism, you cannot do it with the war in iraq, and yemen. If you want to do that it is like trying to put down a small kitchen fire with the stove still on. It is providing imagery and places where people can go and train and feel part of a group. They are losing territory left and right in iraq and syria, so in the same time al qaeda is laying low, rebuilding the network, benefiting greatly from the civil wars as i mentioned earlier, so al qaeda is happy to have a ice is take the credit for anything that is happening lets not focus on ice is a little build until we are ready and when isis is no more and when their is no caliph, that allegiant will cease to exist. So, whats going to happen to these people that are members of isis . I think many of them will go back to the Mother Organization. Now, they wont go back to the Mother Organization if he is still the leader because they really hate them and i dont blame them. The guy so boring. I try sometimes to watch his 45 minute video tapes. I want to blow myself up just to stop listening to him, i mean, hes the most boring human being you can imagine. At no charisma whatsoever. He never did anything successful failed at every corner of his life, but i think what will happen is, which a qaeda wisemen if you want to call them, the older men of al qaeda i think they have a trump card to play, no pun intended. [laughter] i swear. Figure of speech. They are losers, bigtime. So, anyway what they are going to do is, i can see after isis ceases to exist i can see them bring in their allotted to be the new leader. First, he jean, hes a millennial. He was trained for the last seven, eight years by some of the top commanders, people his father did not have access to their counsel because they were in house arrest in the same place. He married to the number two person in al qaeda daughter who has been involved in virtually every terrorist attack that happened against us and in the world. Masterminded east african Embassy Bombing himself, so i think he will be the person. He already had about five different messages. At the very beginning in the last message that announcement and a message both referred to him as it shake which indicates a promotion because you cannot be the leader of al qaeda without having the title shake, so i think if you listen to his statement and i have been listening to all of his statements, you will see something interesting. He never attacks isis or mentions the caliphates. He actually says whats happening in iraq and syria and libya in somalia, whats happening everywhere, all these guys are the followers of Osama Bin Laden and he says look, you people in the west we are now everywhere and his town, he tried t