And by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Mike morell is here, he is the cias former Deputy Director and acting director. He retired from the agency in 2013 after 33 years of service, he has played a central role in some of the most pivotal events in recent history. He was with president bush on september 11th 12001 when terrorists attacked parker. He was also in the white house situation room on may 1st, to 11 the day bin laden was killed. He writes about his experiences and also about Counterterrorism Missions in a new book. The book is called the great war of our time the cias fight against terrorism from al qaeda to isis. I am pleased to have mike morell back at this table. Welcome. Thank you charlie. It is always great to be here. Yeah. Why the title the great war of over time . Because i think in some ways this challenge we face against islamic extrial extreme imp ideology is in some way a akin to the cold war. And i call the great war for that reason am i also call it the great because of the time frame were tacking about here. I believe that my childrens generation and grandchildrens generation are still going to be fighting this fight. What is our goal containment if. I think our goal is to get to a place where this is no longer a military problem or a paramilitary problem it is a Law Enforcement problem. And i think when we move from the military parapill tear face to the Law Enforcement phase, we can say victory. How do we get there . We get there in two ways. And i talk about this in the chapter that lacks ahead. One way that weve talked about at this table before and that is that one of the real Lessons Learned in dealing with terrorists since 9 11 is that you have to keep the pressure on them. When you have the pressure on them, you mick it very difficult for them to plan to train, to raise money to plot. When they have to worry about their own security they can do less damage. And so you got to thats what happens when you put the pressure on. As soon as you take the pressure off they rebuild they put things together again, and they do that very very quickly. So one lesson is the terrorists who already exist you got to keep the pressure on them all the time. The other part is something we do not do very well at all. And that is stop the production of new terrorists, right . We stop the radicallization process. And that is really tough to do, really tough to get your arms around. And where is that battlefield . That battlefield is is in the schools in muslim countries. It is in the mosques in muslim countries it is in the homes in muslim countries, right. Rose and online. And online and online. I talk in the book about indonesia as being a place where that has had quite a bit of success in this regard. With programs in schools with programs to support programming on television an on the radio programs to support the arts. All with a passage of tolerance in religion. All with a message of looking at both sides of an issue. And one of the interesting facts is that the number of indonesians who have gone to fight in syrian and iraq for isis is less than the number that have gone from United States canada australia. Its remarkable for the largest Muslim Country in the world. Rose it makes them not lacking theyre not seduced by the argument. One of the things theyre doing in school when they talk about the palestinian problem theyre talking about it theyre providing the palestinian perspective which they always did but also providing the israeli perspective. So this is very important for these countries to get their arms around. There is not a lot we can do about this as a country because we dont have a lot of credibility talking about these issues. So it requires an accelerated effort by mugs limb countries. Yes. And by Muslim Leaders by president s by Prime Ministers, by leading clerics. One of the places where this is starting to happen is president sisi in egypt is starting to talk about these issues with his public. Really, really important. Rose and king abdul a in jordan has done this. Yes. I want to talk about politics as well. Let me stay with isis for a second watch. Do we foe about the leadership and is it changing . Because i read today that they that the leader of isis was injured in a strike. Yes. Rose is has that been confirmed by the United States . I dont know if its confirmed but you know one of the questions out there. Rose we on the know. One of the questions is is he alive or is he dead. I think if he were dead we would all know it because they would stand up and announce it because they what pant to want to portray him as the draet martyr that is the model the precedent we have seen before with these groups so i think hes been injured. I dont know how seriously. You about i think hes been injured. This is a pretty tight knit leadership team. A lot of command and control. So taking out leadership here is really important because, because its so small and so tight knit and such command and control you can do real damage. At what level do the former iraqi who work for saddal hussein. Probably secondtier. When you turn to them in the he cutement and all this they are doing re recruitment and all this they are doing whose responsibility is it to fight that. What part of government should do that . So state department has an effort thats focused on this right. It has never been particularly wellfunded. It has never been particularly well resourced. You know, for a couple of good reasons. One is that you have to your first instinct, your First Priority is to deal with the guys who are coming at you to kill you right . That has to be priority number one. And so the dealing with longer term radicalization always becomes a second priority. The other reason is as i said earlier, this is not something the United States can do on its own. I think the best we can hope for is to kind of is to kind of put out best practices and talk to arab leaders, offline president to president president to Prime Minister about whats working and whats not. And kind of organized effort in an informal way. Rose you seem to be in all that you write and all that i know from you increasingly alarmed about the possibility of a 9 11 kind of attack whatever variation it might be on the United States, of which i assume the ultimate attack would be some kind of dirty bomb or something. Right. So i am concerned about an attack in the homeland tomorrow. Why are you more concerned . What is it that makes you see a rising fear of that attack . A couple of reasons rightment one is one is whats happened so the most significant threat today to our homeland comes not from isis but it comes from al qaeda in the arabiya peninsula, al qaeda in yemen. Because they focus on us. We talked about that before. Because they focus on it because they have this particularly highly skilled bomb maker who can make bombs that can be hidden in things, right. So theyre the biggest threat today. And whats happening in yemen is giving them greater room to maneuver. Were having a harder time collecting intelligence. Were having a harder time denying them safe haven. Were having a harder time taking them off the battlefield. Were still conducting Drone Operations in yemen. That is a good thing as far as you are concerned. That is a good thing as far as im concern. And we can come back and talk about that if you want. But by virtue of the civil warnd way, the chaos under way in yemen they will gain strength, right. And they have the capability today, i believe to bring down an airliner give them some more room, and they could have the capability to do something more significant. Isis right isis today doesnt have the capability to conduct a significant attack here. They can motivate people. They can direct small scale attacks. But given time theyll be able to do something larger here. And you know, if you look at whats happening in iraq right weve taken back about 25 of the territory that they took when they did their blitzkrieg across iraq. So were having some success in iraq. We should feel good about that. We took back tikrit. We took back tikrit but weve had virtually no success in syria in taking back if i territory. And so whats happening is youre having progress in iraq. No progress in syria. You have a hammer in iraq but no anvil in syria. So as you put increased pressure on these guys in iraq theyre going to come back across the border and go into syria. And unless you have a plan to deal with them in syria theyre going to have safe haven there, where they will get stronger. So whats the plan. The plan at the moment is to train moderate opposition fighters, right to train and equip them to take on isis and then take on assad right, but were having a very difficult time finding moderate opposition guys to actually train. And even if we could find them, we could not train them in my view in the numbers that we would need to train them by. So what do we do . I dont have an answer to that. Thats the questionment right, because the air strikes only take you so far. Right . And the air strikes stop in advance. They strengthen a ground force as youre going in and trying to take back territory. But air strikes by themselves cant take back territory. You have to have a ground force. We have that in iraq right in the way of the iraqi troops and shia militia trained by the iranians. We dont have that in syria. I want to talk pore about saudi arabia later and changes there. But one reflection of the change in leadership from the new king new crown prince and new deputy crown prince, seeming to be a more aggressive military posture. You saw it in yemen. And you see it in terms of how they view the conflict with iran. My question is what are they prepared to do in syria to build up moderate forces to take on isis and the assad see assad removed. So theyve been focused on that for quite some time right. They were providing funding large amounts of funding and some arms to the moderate opposition in syria. And how about to islamists. It wasnt enough. The saudis no. Others, yes. But the saudis no. What happened in syria is really that big chunks of the moderate opposition left the moderate opposition to go fight for alnusra largely and isis why because they were being effective against assad. And the moderate opposition itself was not. So they they, a bunch of guys stood up and said im going to go fight for somebody thats making a difference. Rose so they went to alnusra. So the moderate opposition got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. Rose when i talk to american officials you hear more the word alnusra than i have ever heard it before in talking about syria. Uhhuh. Rose is that part of the reason . Cuz they are having effectiveness against assad and therefore yes, yes. Rose and theyre growing in strength because of that. Theyre growing in strength. And they are theyre concerning to me because they are aligned with al qaeda in pakistan. And because they have this group that is focused on external attacks. Thats connected in some way back to yemen and getting sophisticated explosives. So thats a very serious group. And the stronger you know back to my 9 11 condition the stronger alnusra gets and the more they think about external attacks, the more comfortable they get the more dangerous they are to us here in the homeland. I want to connect this in the development of isis and alnusra to the arab spring. What you write about in this book is an indictment of the cias failure well, let me finish. Failure to appreciate how the arab spring would play itself out. And you are they were optimistic that some how this might be a wedge in the battle against terrorism. Yes. Okay. And then it didnt work out that way. Right. Because isis alnusra and others, al qaeda saw an opening. Right. Rose at the time of the arab spring. Right. Rose and in a sense turned it into some say the arab winter, including you and you think the cia should have been able to see that yes . So yes but let me say a few things okay. So yes the arab spring was a huge boon to al qaeda and ive actually titled that chapter the al qaeda spring right. We had two two analytic calls, right, to make. One analytic call was on the arab spring itself. And there we did well strategically and not so well tactically. What did we do well strategically. For a number of years our analysts were telling policymakers in this administration and the Previous Administration that pressures are building in arab societies for change. That that citizens in those countries are concerned about where their countries are going. Theyre conditioned that their children are not going to have a better future. And they were fueled by the fact that social media told them what was going on the rest of the world. Absolutely. Rose and there was no they said to themselves, i have a bad place here im in a bad place, why am i doing better and participating. Absolutely. They were getting more and more frustrated. We were covering all that and reporting on it, so in a strategic sense we got that call right right. We didnt call the turning point, right. We didnt say, not that it was possible to call tunesia some guy sets himself on fair and starts this whole thing. But it what was possible in my mind was to say mr. President , the pressures are rising to unprecedented levels. Were really concerned about what is going to happen over the next six months to 12 months. We didnt do that. So yes, strategically we called it. I would say no tactically we missed the arab spring okay. Once the arab spring start, the analysts said we think this is going to spread like wildfire so they got that call right. Once the arab spring started we made another call. And this was the one you referred to. We said we think this is going to undercut al qaeda. And we think its going to undercut al qaeda because this will undercut their narrative that violence is necessary for political change. Why didnt it . Because and we were wrong about that. Because the arab spring had created two dynamics that benefitted al qaeda. The first dynamic was it made countries unwilling to take on extremists inside their borders. Giving you the best example is egypt under morsi. So my counterparts in egypt that i worked with for years still have the capabilities to deal with extremists inside egypt but they didnt feel like they had the political top cover. And so they eased off. What happened, al qaeda came back to egypt for the first time in 25 years very very quickly. Rose in the person as al qaeda not the muslim brotherhood. As al qaeda. An theyre still there. Largely in the sinai today so they still havent gotten rid of them that is how hard it is. But the other dynamic was it actually reduced the capabilities of countries to take on extremists inside their border. The best example of that is libya. So under cad avi with his intelligence service, his security service, he was very effective at dealing with extremists inside his border. When his government fell and those institutions fell apart, there was no capability any more to deal. So the arab spring was a boon to al qaeda because it reduced either the willingness or the capability of countries to deal with extremist extremism. Now the one difference i would have over the call we made is i dont think it would have made any difference had we made the right call. I didnt think it would have made any difference had we said mr. President we think the arab spring is going to be a boon for al qaeda. The outcome would have been exactly the same so we got the call wrong but the consequences, not that significant in my view. There is a feeling in some quarters in the middle east that we are less relevant today and have less capacity to influence events. Yeah, so i think we have all the capacity we need. There is a strong feeling among our allies in the middle east that we are not showing the necessary leadership, that were not using capacity that we have. Rose these are mostly sunni countries. These are arab sunni countries this is what everybody is talking about in terms of king salman not coming to camp david. Is he sending a message right. But all of those countries all of those countries are scared to death of eye rab iran. They are much more worried about iran than they are about isis or qool al qaeda. They believe they can deal with isis and al qaeda effectively just a matter of time. Theyre much more worried about irn over the longterm. They think they see charlie, they see iran as a strategic threat to them. Rose so what is the threat they see . They see which is which i agree with they see the iranians wanting to dominate the region. They see iranians, they see iran as wanting to the hedge mondayic power in the middle east. They see iran as wanting to reestablish the percent empire. They see iran as trying to overthrow. They see iran as trying to overthrow them. You know. Rose are they . Is iran trying to overthrow the royal family in saudi arabia. Exactly what we saw in yemen, right. They backed the and overthrew the hati government the iranians provide support to shia shia militant groups in bahrain. Rose and the saudis supported the government if bahrain. And they provide support to shia insurgent groups in the eastern processes of saudi a yab arabia. Rose what is wrong with i ran wanting to exert exert its influence. Two things. One is you really have to remember, i think that islamic extremism and islamic terrorism started in iran. Really began in iran. Rose but its mostly sunni now. Its mostly sunni now but believe me there are shia there are shia terrorist groups and hezbollah is at the top of the list. And hezbollah wouldnt exist without iranian support. So. Rose but hezbollah is more than just a terrorist group too. They are part of the government, engaged in education. Social, blah blah blah. Rose blah, blah, blah makes them more affective. But they have a social they have a military terrorist wing correct . Right. And it was utilized well in syria. But iran has. Rose right . Yes. But iran has this has this same kind of view in some ways not as harsh right, but the same kind of view as oom quitea in terms of a religious dominated government right sharia law dominated society. Very very similar. And then the second, and you cant forget this right it is iranian government policy for israel to be wiped off the face of the planet. That is their stated policy. Rose sworn policy. Sworn policy by the Supreme Leader himself. And you know that is not in our interest. And they cant i mean when you look at the nuclear negotiations, do you believe that part of that for example negotiation is the fact that if in fa