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talking among our friends. when we hear this term, a lot of chatter going on, what exactly does that mean? >> i sort of -- i really hate that term. it's a term that's been created by politicos that don't do counterterrorism for a living. it's representing that they're seeing things possibly in the intel world, whether in human reporting or in signals intelligence that indicates that there's communications going on and something's being planned. it's not an accurate term. it shouldn't be used. but the reality is they have some sense some sort of attack or some operational planning is going on and they're responding to it. but it's a terrible term to use. the president shouldn't use it. none of his policy makers should use it. it sounds foolish actually. >> well, that's why i'm not going to use it anymore, gary. i'm going to stay away from it completely. >> yeah. >> there's a new threat that we face.
defeat, and bin laden is dead. defeat, and bin laden is dead. >> al qaeda has been decimated. >> osama bin laden is dead. >> well, throughout the president's campaign for re-election last year we heard him talk about the decimation of al qaeda. but here's what the president said in his press conference on friday. >> core al qaeda is on its heels, has been decimated. but what i also said was that al qaeda and other extremists have metastasized into regional groups that can pose significant dangers. >> last week the state department closed 19 american outposts in the mideast and africa, and they evacuated the u.s. embassy in yemen. this week they warned americans not to travel to pakistan and they evacuated non-emergency personnel from the u.s. consulate in pakistan. all because of terrorist threats. gary burn son is a decorate d
but the whole issue of liquid explosives is a very very damning and dangerous thing. and if we're not careful, we can get beat, and if we get beat on this we lose a lot of people because al qaeda and the al qaeda franchises and offshoots continue to have a preoccupation with airlines and going after aircraft. >> wow. gary, i'm thinking we did with the shoes, we take our shoes off. the underwear bomber. they put their hands all over us. what are they going to do next, open us up at the tsa checkpoint and surgically look us over? i'm not sure. it's really scary stuff. >> it's hard, but look, governor huckabee, when i was in afghanistan in the early years, we had a guy who had a grenade that they inserted literally inside his body cavity, inside his rectum, and he was attempting to detonate it in a surgical ward, trying to kill the doctors that were working on him. >> wow. >> shocking. they will go to any means to kill our people. >> that's a scary thought. gary, thank you for being here. it's a pleasure to have you on the show today. >> it's a great pleasure to be with you, sir. >> thank you.
as we go forward. it's not decimated. that's the first issue. second issue is those embassies really aren't closed. they're stating they're closed. they're closed to the public. we don't want people online in case a car bomb goes off and we lose a couple hundred foreign service out there trying to get visas. principal officers are still working in those embassies. many times almost all the americans are working there. so if they continue to close embassies because there's a threat and they announce a closure it looks very, very bad and it looks like al qaeda has sort of got us on the run or defeating us. so they're going to need to come out with a new sort of language for the status of embassies. like number one, status -- status number 1, functioning fully. status number 2, principal officers only. status number 3, you're extreme, you're evacuating people. but we don't want to say we're closing the embassies because they really aren't closing them. but they've made themselves look very bad, governor huckabee. >> gary, we hear this word "chatter," they heard a lot of chatter going on and that's why they closed them. a lot of people in the general public, to us chatter means
former cia officer who served as station chief on three separate occasions and led several of the agency's most important counterterrorism deployments. he spent his career hunting down al qaeda. he's also the author of a book, "jawbreaker: the attack on bin laden and al qaeda." gary joins me now. gary, thanks for being here. i appreciate getting to visit with you. we closed all these embassies and consulates all over the middle east and africa. good idea? bad idea? >> well, when the initial statement came out that they were closing the embassies, it was purportedly based on intelligence that indicated there were threats against a wide variety. "the new york times" then released a report that it looked very, very specific. so the administration may have gone overboard in terms of just trying to protect themselves from criticism because of their mishandling of benghazi. but part of the problem is that it's a communications problem too for this administration. they demonstrated that they're not really adept in handling this. firstoff, you're going to have continued threats from al qaeda