Transcripts For CSPAN2 Annie Jacobsen Surprise Kill Vanish 20240714

Pass around. And the signing will be in the folding table beside me. Books are available for purchase. Today our guest is investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen. She has written several books. And most recently the secret hit of the cia. Which creates a pageturning narrative on the in department narrative. It was called a wellsourced, wellpaced and full of surprise. Mess hem me become Annie Jacobsen to politics and prose at the wharf. [applause] how is my sound . First of all, politic and prose, thank you for having me. Always wonderful to be here. And thanks everybody for coming. Im here tonight to talk to you about the surprise, kill, vanish about the cias paramilitary capacity, which is something that many people arent even aware exists. Im often asked how i get the idea for the books, and this one began for me ten years nothing 2009 so i had a source visiting me at my house, his name is brett, and he was on his way back from the middle east and he brought back with him a challenge coin. I dont know if you know that it, a bar drinking coin, and on one side of ited says cab gull, afghanistan, and then other side it said u. S. Department of state, and my source, brett, has nothing to do with diplomacy, he is weapons trained so i hadn idea, while he constant say what he was dog in the middle east, it was clear itself was some kind of an Intelligence Organization operation. My two boys at the time were young, and i had a number of we rad junior yesterday all over the garden from the revolutioner in war to the they had little weapons and messed them all up, and brett said to the boys, let me show you how this works and he was explaining to them, they were fascinated. They were five and ten at the time. And afterwards he said, listen, if its okay with your mom and dad, i will show you a real weapon. Now, i know brett is a licensed safety weapons instructor so i said that was fine. And he opens up this case and inside of it puts together this rifle with a scope and i live up and hollywood in a canyon, and he set it up on the dining room table and through that scope i could see across the canyon, and i could see the veins on a life. Leaf and i thought myself now i know what brett does in afghanistan. The boys went off and the was another case the. That he never opened. A couple of different weapons he showed them but the one he didnt open, i was very curious about. Im a journalist. So when we were alone i said, whats in that case . And he opened it up, and inside there was a large knife with a serrated edge, and i said, whats that for . And immediately realizing noaa and she says system its my job required quiet. I wanted to write this book not as much what operator does overseas but as much about my reaction to it. In other words, i could accept brett or anyone were if the clinical idea of a sniper rifle but the idea of using a knife, slitting someones threat or sticking it in their ribs gave me pause. And i was interested in that idea. I was interested in why we as citizens differentiate between different forms of killing, pass judgments on what others are doing about that, from the president to theground pounder. The ground pounder and i tried for a long time to write about the cias paramilitary. I heard from another source that brett was with, very elite, very specialized wing of the cias special Activities Division, which is called Ground Branch, and almost no one knows about it or talks about it and took me a very long time as a journalist to find sources who were willing to speak with me about Ground Branch and the special Activities Division, and that is how i came to write this book. Now, surprise, kill, vanish. So, the story begins in world war ii, in the motto of the oss edburg the precursor organization to the cia, was surprise, kill, vanish. And it is involved operators jumping out of aircraft into nazi occupied france and elsewhere. They would land on the ground, they would team up with indigenous force partners so the jedburgs worked in france and team if one French Partners and surprise their way in kill nazi with a knife, they had a specialized knife to do so, and then they wouldish would vanish and thats book us about that idea is war a gentlemans game or is it something that one must do the dirtiest, as they call it back in world war to, most dastardly things possible to win. And when we think of the nazis, i think many of us are we find it easier to imagine throatslitting because theyre nazis, but if you move forward to today we ask yourselves, why is little that we are making those judgments. My main character is a guy called billy wa, the longest serving cia operative in its history that is known. So there may be someone thatting long he but we dont know about it. And his story is interesting because he was a young soldier in the korean war, and and he was ground pounder and he havent it and thought war was dreadful and boring, and after that he learned about this secret unit inside the army that wag being started and that would become the green berets and so through his story, i demonstrate that most of the operators who work in this world theyre called operators north not soldiers theyre military train so they become what are called tier one operators, delta, green berets, seals, all in the present tense. Pjs, and they retire and they go over and work for the agency. So, many of the individuals who work in this world are older, and i found that very interesting and im jumping ahead to the end of the book, because i write history, i write chronology so i take you through the different wars and the different transformations of the crys Paramilitary Army but when i land in the present day i found it fascinating and i want you to think but this particularly if when we have a discussion about this, the second half, which is that most of the kids ive also interviewed soldiers who are working for the military and theyre much young examiner theres that idea when it comes to morality and what is at stake and why are we doing what were doing issue was constantly confronted with at the idea that young soldiers are heading into war at 18, 19, often really not knowing what they are in for, and the operators at the agency who are working for the special Activities Division, are veterans of decades, and they are the ones who are saying, in essence, send me. And they are willing to surprise, kill and vanish. What were talking about here with this paramilitary capacity is calledte rtia, opti, means third option. So up until right after world war 2 the president had two options. There was diplomacy, the fitter option. Trying to work things out with our foreign partners or our foreign adversaries from a diplomatic standpoint, and the second option is when that doesnt work, war. So the third option is the cia. And that idea is really that once diplomacy failed and war is unwise you rely on the third option. Its also called the president s hidden hand. Everything done by the cias paramilitary is meant to be applause by denied. Also called covert action , and for this reason, we as the citizenry learn about a lot of the cias mistakes because they become public, and so one of the extraordinary things for me as a journalist and as an author is piecing together what is on the record so what we for example, many people in this room may know about guatemala, the cias meddlings in guatemala or iran or the by a of pigs, the failed paramilitary operation, but what you dont know is the operations that were successful because they are meant to be applause plausibly denied. I weave together this story of how and why the president s guerrilla warfare corps came to be am fast facing thing happened during vietnam irlearned, and that is that so, the pentagon operates under what is called title x and there are rules of engagement that soldiers must adhere. To the cia operates under title 50 and both are elements of the National Security code that came out of the creation of the pentagon and the National Security apparatus in 1947. But title 50 and title 10 are very, very different. And what i learned in looking through jfks archives, was that the bay of pig impacted the president so greatly. I mean, he was humiliated in his first 100 days as president , after having won the election on a very specific position that communism must be defeated, and sort of cuba and vietnam were at the top of his target list. And to be to have that failure at the bay of pigs infuriated president kennedy and he did something which in my opinion has not really been looked at or reported before, what he did was he switched the authority of the covert operations from the cia, working under title 50, to the Defense Department, working under title 10, and it got very messy there in terms of these covert paramilitary operations that were happening in the very, very early dives vietnam. Long before war was declared by president johnson or Congress Declared war. That was very interesting from 0 historical opinion of view because you see that same thing today, or should i say do you see that same thing today . And of course i let readers decide are i try to let rathers decide and come the their open concludes but bigger, sweeping issues that affect us as citizens. After the vietnam war, the any kind of paramilitary or military force was so looked down upon, the special forces was gutted. The cias paramilitary was essentially reduced to nil. The Church Committee took the cia almost down, and this idea was no one wants anything to do with the guerrilla war fey, paramilitary, dark, dirty, no a gentlemans game, not a gentlemans warfare game, and really the citizens of the United States didnt want anything to do with war, period. But it was a very, very important point in the cias history because you had a whole bunch of operators without work, and i write about that in the become, about this moment where sort of theyre not needed and theres this lull in a lot of activity until reagan attacked reagan takes office. Im going to interrupt myself and tell you, the tip of you often hear the tip of the spear, special forces. The tip of the tip of the spear is assassination, and it is the ultimate guerrilla warfare capacity thats cia has and has existed since 1947, since title 50 was created. Lots of mythology around it. I explain very clearly through declassified documents and first interviews firsthand interview with sources how this has evolved over time, but to give you an indication of how specific it is, president eisenhower called his assassination capacity the health Alteration Committee. So you can i have located documents in National Archive that refer to this is a mission for the health Alteration Committee. President kennedy called it executive action. Jumping forward to reagan, he called it preemptive neutralization, bush called it lethal direct action. And obama called it targeted killing. So, going back now to after the vietnam war, you had president reagan developing a capacity for preemptive neutralization because we saw the first rise of terrorism. What i also found very interesting, and i interview a gentleman name lewis for this book, and he is he was the 189th director of the secret service. He went on the record in this back to explain to us how the capacity to protect the president of the United States is kind of the flip side of the coin of this executive action capacity, or preemptive neutralization capacity, if you will and that comes from the fact the cia director richmond helms if you have the capacity to take out someone elses leaders, why wouldnt they take out yours . Im paraphrase but thats what he said. You begin to understand how serious this all gets behind the scenes. President reagan develops preemptive neutralization with a cia director who is a fascinating man named bill casey, and where did bill caseys experience come from . He was with the oss. So one of the reasons why i love writing history we begin to see how all of these threads pull together toward the present tense because you have individuals running the show, not the cia in particular is a organization really run by individuals, as opposed to the pentagon which is really an organization that functions like a bureaucracy. Lou explained for the back about a very interesting, unreported, largely unreported Organization Called the counterassault team. Cat team, and what i found fascinating about this, lashly unknown, is that starting after president reagan was almost killed by an asass sunshine 1981 assassin in 1981, the cat team shadowed the president 24 7 and still do and all of the cat Team Operators are tier one trained so some of them would would go over to cry crays paramilitary instead going to cat team, lou being one of them, like billy wa he was a green beret in vietnam, and he went on to work to protect the president and wa is moving forward working offensive operations for cia. The period of time what i also find interesting is that we as citizens tend to think that republican president s act one way and democratic president s act another way. And i found in reporting this book that was not true. The cias Paramilitary Army work at the president s behest. So there is no such thing as a rogue cia operation that as far as i know. They are directed, the order comes from the president , through the cia director on down. And there was one exception and that was president clinton, who really opposed executive action, preemptive neutralization, health alteration, call it what you will. Is a report in the become based on the cias attorney who was writing up these memos and a number of the operators working on the operations for the president , whenever they would request that an individual be preemptively neutralized it would go up the chin of command to president and president clinton would reject that, and why i found this interesting is ones own morality, going back to that initial spark that made by want to write this book. One of the people that billy august was my main character was targeting for the cia in sudan was Osama Bin Laden, and this was in 1992. And there are couple of different versions of the story that i report in the become, but waugh took the first severallance photographs of bin laden to and requested to kill Osama Bin Laden and this went up the chain of command to president clinton who was very against preemptive neutralization and he said, please dont ever ask me anything like that again. So, it really makes you think about these different consequences that come out of this shadow world of hidden hand operations. In conclusion, sort of as i get to the end of the back, what really just sort of sent things off interest a completely other direction, knowing all this history as i had learned through the research and reporting, was seeing what hand after 9 11. The paramilitary capacity of the cia had been reduced dramatically in the clinton era, and in bush administration, on september 17th, theres a very famous memorandum, parts of which are now declassified. I spoke to the mother who wrote the memorandum, and it gave the cia capacity like it had never had before, and this is where we are now. The special Activities Division has transformed from a smaller element of the agency with a lot of people who they themselves call knuckle draggers, to now being what is called a the special activities center, an Interdisciplinary Center and its bigger than it has ever been. We operate as far as i understood, we, the cryies paramilitary capacity operates in 134 countries around the glen. The hallmark of that guerrilla warfare capacity is the able to work with the indigenous force partners. What we did in as i told new any beginning with did with the oss in france and elsewhere, in vietnam, all over the globe. And so that is a primary driver, working with partners, and is a report in the become this where is it gets very dark and disturbing the partners we have in the current wars in iraq and afghanistan are very difficult and troublesome partners. And while i expected in reporting it to see a lot of sort of darkness and complexity in the early years russian really found it was in the latter years because i also found a sense from some of the operators working multiple tours for the agency, this sense that they almost can no longer work with their partners. I get interest the detail into the detail in the become but has to do if fundamentally different ways of life and also has to do with a lot of drug because, for example, thal partners and becomes incredibly complex for cia, paramilitary operators who are highly trained. One thing that all everyone i interviewed and i interviewed 42 guys from the special Activities Division who are working the current wars, and one thing they must do is take polygraph test regularly. They cannot lie and must maintain a physical capacity where they can do things like halo jump into behind enemy lines or interest the war theater, halo being High Altitude low opening. Thats the surprise. They must kill and then they must vanish without being caught the degree of training they have up against the degree of training and commitment that our indigenous force partners have is a great paradox and a difficult conundrum. So ill leave you we this last thought. That first time that the source came to me in 2009 and i saw that stiletto knife and i realize third way in which the paramilitary capacity works, that one has to be willing to do a job that requires quiet, very close up. And method me ask, is it miss own self, is this uncomfortable in die think its right or glock and what it left me with is a real desire to know, is it necessary . And for that reason i traveled with billy waugh, my main source, to two of the last communist countries in world bus this all began during the cold war, the guerrilla warfare the president s guerrilla warfare corps, the president s military army, was created to beat back the russians to defend against communism. So billy waugh and i traveled to cube pa and vietnam and the reason we went to both places was in cuba we met with the son of che geoff vara he was killed by the a cia mission so it was bolivian rangers no when i would che, but the officer on the ground, Felix Rodriguez i interviewed nor book and that was in 1967. 50 years ago. 52 years ago. And so there we were, billy waugh and i, sitting with our Ernesto Guevara in a cigar club with photographs of the wall of che and castro plotting the downtown fall of the United States the downfall of the United States, talk out war, guerrilla warfare and really made my wonder, its not is it right or wrong. Is it right or wong but is it necessary . I had that same feeling when billy waugh and i traveled to vietnam to meet with the son of general who was the commander of the north vietnamese army, who so many people lost their lives in that vietnam war, it was a turning point in American History. I was a turning point in the cias military car and there was billy waugh and i me with the generals son. Waugh had been suspectly assigned to lead the team from the air that killed the general, they failed, he general died a few years ago at the age of 103, i think. And we sat there, billy waugh and the man who had been assigned to kill billy waugh and his colleagues in this garden, of this home, owned by the general, and again, i asked myself, not as it right or is it wrong, but is it necessary . So, ill leave you with that thought. Ill open up for questions and i look forward to what you guys have to say. Thank you so much. You mentioned the Ground Branch and i was wandering look at the cover, do you address an air branch or Marine Branch . Good question. You have some information that not everyone in the room has. There is so the cias paramilitary capacity is called Ground Branch, air branch and Maritime Branch, and i wrote an entire book about air branch without even knowing it. I wrote a book called area 51 but the cry contracts early Spy Plane Program out of area 51, the u2 and a12 ox cart and i interviewed 75 men from the agency, air force pilots, not knowing it was called air branch. So the nomenclature is jealously guarded. I look forward to the person can write about Maritime Branch because i know of a few operations that are just stunning, that were that took place in the water, on the water. So, to answer your question, this book really deals with Ground Branch. The guys on the ground, but there are other books to be written and i look forward to reading them. Yes, back here. Hard to find a parking place so i was late. I only heard the last few minutes but when i sawow would be here and i want to buy your book and read it. I was immediately taken back to fact that were always in a court of law system, where if im charged with a crime, i get my day in cower, i get a lawyer, i im innocent suppose but this people are outlaws, theyre criminals this is my opinion, not speaking for anybody else. They should bring in somebody who they think is a murderer or criminal and charge them. Im sure that on the other side, in vietnam, and cuba, indonesia, they want to put people like kissinger on trial for crimes he committed in their country. So im looking forward to reading your book but i still maintain the cia is an outlaw outfit, not under anybodys control, run by individuals. John keir, the withle blow from the cia and spoke but venezuela and the south dakota idea came up with someone going in and said we need to invade venezuela, put our pup nut there and went to the doj. Got permission, the president signs of, goes back to cia director and now we have an illegal coup going to sprouted you and answer you question but the letter of the law. What i write in the become is every operation i write about no matter how shocking, is legal and that has to do im sorry you missed the beginning over the talk but in the bookhas to do with the fact that the cia is working under what is called title 50 and that give the cia the authority do what i does. Why i think that is it important has to do with we as citizens, so, people often ask me, how do you get these guys to talk to you . And i work from the eisenhower principle and i talk but that with all my sources. Its wellknown that on eisenhowers Farewell Speech he spoke of the military Industrial Complex and warned against it. He also said, the way to balance the military Industrial Complex is an alert and knowledgeable citizenry. I really believe that information is what we all need to be good citizens, and thats why i write the become is write. So, when we, the royal we, me, Annie Jacobsen, learns what i did, writing this become, i i was really it was amazing for me to learn this is a capacity that is allowable by the president to have the cia function this way, and the little caveat here you could say i understand your position about outlaws. So, people whenever assassination comes up, its all reported the press, 12333, prohibit assassination. Well thats not really accurate if you read youre willing to read the longer version that i explained the book, which is that is an executive order, not a law. Congress never passed a law against assassination. They had an opportunity do so in 1975 during the Church Committee hearings and did not. And so any eo, executive order, can be overwritten by another president s executive order as it says in the Church Committee hearings, and guess what it . Has and continues to be and that is why we have what we have and the president ial findings also called a memorandum of notification allows for that. So these guys are not outlaws. One may not like what they do, and that is a very important and valid position, but its not illegal. In the back . This might not be kind of like the central piece of the book. Youre looking at how these have been conducted and executed. What is from your interactions with the people themselves, people behind the actions, how do they see their role in sort of the grand scheme and not necessarily the grand scheme. How do they see their role as the executor . You hear whats his name the guy who killed pin bin laden, opeel. Theres lot of people behind me. Were just there to be the final stroke in this process. How do they see what their role is and how do they see their action within the grand scheme of our politics and the geopolitics surrounding their role. A great question. So, to clarify first, the bin laden mission. Although that was their those guys were seals that was not a Defense Department mission. That was a cia mission. Because it needed to function under title 50. It had to be able to kill someone in pakistan, a sovereign nation, with whom we are not at war, that had to happen under tight title 50 authority. So if you look photographs of inbin laden raid, which very rare few, you will notice that the seals are not wearing Defense Department insignia because they war made cia operators for the night. So thats a team. And the seals function as a team, but in this world of special operations, the special operators in cia, some work as what is called a singleton, that was billy waugh. Almost always alone. Some of them work in a small unit, and some of them work as a team, and then over in afghanistan and iraq, and syria, we have units that are functioning as a small army so the might by four cia guys and 100 afghan indigenous force partners and thats what is called a Counterterrorist Pursuit Team and all have a very different take another whan they do and how they do it and why they do it, but they really so what youre talking but a trigger puller. Most of the gay nets the cia that i interviewed do not see themselves as thing are pullers. They see themselves as executing the mission and so they do have they work very closely with what is call the paramilitary Operations Officer to craft the mission and do the mission, which comes in at the present day comes off a high value target list because theyre always going after high value targets elf i thought was interesting the situations where you have the guys go in as a team to get somebody, a target, and as they say, i said why . Why dont hey just use a drone, and annie says, sometimes the president wants a expertheyll go in this dangerous situation, maybe lose a guy or two not get the target go back to the base, be called into a room and then watch a drone strike take the guy out. [inaudible] when you say that everything the cia does is legal, thats according to american law. Not necessarily international law. One of conundrums for me of the present situation is why the groups that that we are executing targeted killings against, al qaeda, taliban, alshabaab, doesnt hasnt responded in kind . Send somebody over their assassinate one of our leaders. Can you make a guess why thats the case . I mean, im thats a question that im continually asking and i believe i dont get into the in the book but i believe that homeland security, liaisonning with fbi and pentagon and cia works very hard through biometrics to keep individuals out of this country, and [inaudible] you asked a question of seems like a horrible question, is it necessary, but another horrible question i wonder about is, is it successful in some longrange way about how were viewed and how other people view us and the blowback, like you mentioned about the German Village was wiped out as a result of an assassination. Is that a successful assassination are those methods do they fail more often than they succeed in some grander way . Thats a question that i think is a reason to write a book. Certainly for me. In other words youll come to your own conclusion. I have mine. Sometimes its even changes. You can never look beyond this idea of consequences or unintended consequences. What i do know is im not the one making those decisions and im very grateful for that. I write history. I am a National Security reporter. That does not have the same psychological or moral based load that people in positions of decisionmaking have to bear or the trigger pullers, the people on the ground. Ill can go would to eisenhower principle that we are democracy. You can go to plato and everyone has different role, the teacher, the priest, the journalist, the electrician, firefighter, the president. So i think thats the beauty of at least for me the beauty of reading, because i must ask myself these questions to be a good citizen and to live in this world with meaning and purpose. About the bin laden operation. Correct me but every time we do a black bag operation in the foreign country, seals im not sure how it applies to the cia it is our u. S. Ambassador has to inform the host government. So all the actionable intelligence but only the president can kell tell the ambassador dont do that, sticking his neck out when we got bin laden because if we inform the pakistanis were going to get him, guess what, never would have got him. But i give him a lot of credit for that. That was a gutsy call on his part. Question here. Salute you for what youre able to do to talk to these dozens and dozens of people that live in a secret world and you managed to reach them is a testament to your skills an historian. I dismissed worked in laos. William colby was quoted saying this talked about the operations that are really to the media. He said but in the case of laos it was a success. How do you measure success in laos . Over 2 Million People are estimated to have been killed. They were not people who were targeted by the cia on an individual basis. They were killed in massive bombing, laos was taken on in the level of me most bombing measured in tons of ordnance than in any war in American History so i have to wonder about that. Also, as quickly, about Osama Bin Laden, he was on dialysis for nine years before he was allegedly officially killed. How did he live in a cave on dialysis for nine years . So to answer the first part of the question i will give you this to think about. Just the other night a discussion people were asking me, suggesting i was condoning cia paramilitary operations, and im neither for nor against. Just reporting the news thats say. But as a thought, i did mention that last year alone, in afghanistan, the pentagon dropped more than 7,000 bombs. So, cia missions are very small footprint, hence the knife to the throat, maybe a hell fire missile. But a pentagon 500 or more pound bomb does a lot more damage. We dropped more than 7,000 of them and thats a very hard statistic to offend and getting even harder to find out what the Defense Department is doing because theyre an enspeckor general who is threequarter numbers on afghanistan and this Administration Just took the job air. So well no longer harp have those numbers to your question. So, i was struck by the decline in euphemism over the course president ial history, from preemptive neutralization to targeted killing. Specifically its on first blush i think that would have something to do with a decline in the value of true deniability versus diplomatics deniable, and that which we know to be true and that which we can say with a straight face in front of a microphone, which is true. Did what were your thoughts on this and what does that speak to well, hold all from the nature of truth in this world but up to that point. I mean, i think you said it perfectly. It also thank you. On the upside it says we are actually becoming a more informed citizenry because no one is going to buy when if obama calling his drone struggles program halve Alteration Committee there we about outraged. And people would me like, do you think were stupid . So its called targeted killing, and i think that in the world in which we live today, while sometimes people argue we have try much information and not enough good information. I do think more information is better than less. In the back. You situate these three tiers, diplomacy, military action, dough vert action. Is there any way generalize in your research the reaction of the first sort of over time toward the fact that there was covert action taken . I mean just sort of, again, over the broad spectrum. Its hard but what does that show or lead to us believe about diplomacy and military action in terms of these thing arent silent. Theyre post a jumble of our engagement in the world andot maw may have learned. We talk fat before. Its exactly that. Thats competition. Thats rivalry. I think the state department really gets left out of that issue because of the first option being diplomacy, but once you move into the other realm, the pentagon and the cia have historically always had these conflicts with one another over who goes and we see that in the most what i would say tragic way right after 9 11 and also one of he most concealed ways inwas reading somewhere a think tank Defense Department aligned did a history of the Afghanistan War to date, and they were talking about how the war began on october 6th. The war did not begin on octobe. The war began right after 9 11 when the cia went to president bush and said, we, the cias paramilitary, special activitieses division, are the best guys in to do this war. And they went with 115 special Activities Division officers and operators, one of whom was billy waugh, age 72 by the way, and they were their forces were augmented by two thousand Delta Special Operations Forces and those guys were there killing taliban, killing al qaeda in the weeks leading up to october 6th when the Bombing Campaign started, and the real wore allegedly began. Yes, right here. You said just some kind of operational questions. In terms of loss of life on the operators side, were you able to kind of get a clear picture of what that would look like mission to mission, year year . And then also, big question. Do you think that this is necessary . So, to answer the first part of the question, the wall the cia wall of stars has a number of people but that is not everyone, and many, many of the guys on Ground Branch the majority of them are not blue badgers, not working theyre halve insurance isnt with the cia for ease, right . They are independent contractors. They are not contractors. But they are independently contracted by the cia, which means they have entirely different situations in the event they perish and youll never hear about them. I write but a couple of guys that were colleagues of my sources who died there, working for the cia, and their deaths are not reported as such. The send question, is it necessary . Thats a loaded question. As someone else said in the back, having written about world war ii and written a book called operation paper clip how we brought nazi scientists here, pulling them out of germi, that idea is its necessary is never anything i can answer dead onnot because im being coy but because its a rapidly changing situation. I think just when you think one thing, history reveals itself in a different way ski think that flexibility of the mind is important for all of us. One more question . Me again. I have a disexplanation for why we have again from executive action to targeted killings. In the days executive action the cia get the right guy nine couples of of ten with a knife or gun. Today when youre dropping a become from a drone, at 10,000 feet only a home you energy the target is in perhaps killing him along with his wife, kids this family dog, you dont like to admit that. Youd like to how many wedding parties have been bombed and school buss and whatnot. So i think thats give the illusion that we always get the man we want and only the man we wantment. Well, you raise an interesting point and thats because were in a swearings situation right now wherer where fighting a paramilitary war, like vietnam, guerrilla war, at the same time were fight can alleged lay allegedly a traditional war. The Ground Branch guys are going in at great risk to actually identify someone. So, yes, a lot of the press reports are of targeted killings where the wrong ohio target it and that happens but i have stories of guys going to really dangerous situations to take photographs of people, to maybe even get some biometrics, fingerprint, touch dna on them to confirm that they are who they are, and then they are killed that way