Later, a book about the federal government forced migration of native americans in the territories west of the mississippi in the mid 19th century. Applicants 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Enjoy book tv this weekend every weekend on cspan2. My name is karen, thank you for joining us here at the National Security. We are delighted to bring you, closer. With me today, chris, awardwinning author, documentary maker, his new book is the spy masters. Can you see it . Shaping history of the teacher were going to talk a lot about this today but first, what is welcome, chris. Thank you for joining us. Thanks so much for having me be back this is a wonderful read. I started it, i was like zero no, this is going to be too much information, i wont be able to take an but its fantastic. In addition to your own knowledge and research, it is based on over 70 interviews and you interviewed among those, the directors of the cia, except for the current one and just going to say it, it is not so much about the cia directors, its about cia directors in relationship to the white house and the president. Would you agree . Thank you for the kind words about the book because one of the things i have tried to do maybe above all else, is dehumanized these directors. I was lucky, theres a cast of characters that he would never have dreamt up. In the 60s, the cia director, bob gates described to me as a james bond character. A dry martini in one hand, walked into the oval office and tell lbj the siri was flawed. Going forward kobe, the corleone of the cia and then you got bill casey and an amazing cast of characters all the way up to the first woman to run the cia but youre right, the book focuses a lot on the relationship between the president and cia director. Its an almost impossible act for cia director because he or she, on the one hand past to tell the president hard truths. While also keeping the president s year. That is a really tough challenge and in the current times, it is practically mission impossible. I dont know if you saw the film over the weekend yes. It is one of the things that becomes clear, hard that particular relationship is generally and how much harder it was under trump. Just going down the line a little bit, who had the worst relationship . I mean, ive read the book so i know what youre going to say. And who had the best relationship . The worst relationship, rosie i think is a fascinating character to me, brilliant guy. As we all know, on a spectrum, he was well to the rights but he loved to joke about the fact that he was president from mccarthy and 68. Not for the reasons mccarthy did but because he thought it was winnable and we werent doing enough. Anyway, he becomes cia director but bill clinton and woolsey like oil and water, as one source put it to me. Clinton did not like him after the first briefing, which went on and on, evidently at some length. Woolsey left, bill clinton learned, turned to an advisor and said i never want to see that man again. He almost never did. Woolsey had literally one meeting with president and at one time, there was a freak accident on the south lawn of the white house, a plane crash and killed the pilot. Afterwards, woolsey said to the press, that was me trying to get an appointment with bill clinton. Oh my god. Who is not a very productive relationship and woolsey, at his demise over the james scandal, ames that case is the most serious moral since filby in american intelligence history. It happened on his watch and it essentially ended their. What about that relationship . He contended with that, probably. I would say bob gates and george h to be bush had a very good relationship. Leon and barack obama, very good relationship. John brennan and obama, certainly. Here is an alert, for those who know i wrote another book called a gatekeeper about the white house chief of staff, some of the attributes that make a great white house chief of staff also served cia directors well. It is no coincidence, in my view, that he was the Gold Standard at both. There were certainly other great white house chiefs and cia directors but he was right up there with the best. That is really because it had a lot to do with the fact that annetta, when he became cia director for obama, who is 70, 80 years old. He been around the block and served in congress, he was comfortable in power, he knew the white house he could walk into the oval office, closed the door and tell barack obama what he didnt want to hear. That is essential in both jobs. You portray him as being not just an honest broker but like a brilliant strategist. He was. One of the Great Stories i tell him that chapter is about the time that the director of National Intelligence made the mistake of trying to take on annetta in a bureaucratic struggle over who would appoint cia chiefs. Well, i guess you could, on paper, make the argument that the director of National Intelligence out ranked eon and therefore, he ought to make the appointment but in the real world, blair should have known that was turf jealously guarded as langley. He knew that and blair sent out a directive so now you all the stations saying he would appoint the new chiefs, pannetta waited about half hour and sent out another message to all the stations saying disregard the previous message. Well, this was not a fair fight. It went to the white house but leon knew exactly who had his back on this one, not only barack obama but Vice President joe biden who ended up being the referee on this one and walk into the office to adjudicate this was biden, lions turned to him and said joe, his tee time still 9 30 a. M. Tomorrow . Biden said yes and blair new he was a dead man walking. s book is not just about the white house, cia directors but also a chronicle of foreign policy. Not just things we are learning from behind the scenes but the major events taking place in American Foreign policy over four to five decades. A number of those things obviously have been on our minds lately, 9 11 being perhaps the most obvious one but the killing of bin laden but there was an incident that i think a lot of readers in our audience wont know that much about, that is ahmaud, i was wondering if you wanted to tell that story because i felt like i am so embarrassed know this story so now i am so grateful i know this story so tell us. Dont be embarrassed because a lot of people dont know it. In fact, the first half of the story i tell in the book about him has ever been recorded before and it is absolutely unbelievable story thats left for three or four decades. He was far and away the most wanted terrorist in the middle east by both the cia and mossad going all the way back to the worst day in cia history, the bombing of the embassy in beir beirut, which killed so many cia directors and other americans at the time. Subsequently, it was determined that this was probably the mcneil operation with that whole area of terrorism that was really the beginning, it was a really difficult time. From that day forward, he had more in american and israeli blood on hand, the operational genius of hezbollah. The operational chief, he was so elusive, they had one photograph of him, the cia and they could never keep up. He would with disguises, he developed pioneered the use of the socalled shaped charge, a sophisticated ied that essentially drove the israelis out of lebanon. Since he was killed injanuary of this year. The cia tried and tried to crackdown and its a story of an operation on bill clintons watch at the end of his presidency and georgetowns watch as cia director in which they tracked him down to beirut. He was visiting his mistresses flat and he would visit her and he would beat her as it turned out. The cia enlisted her, set him up and grabbed him and bundled him down to the boat and off to a battleship offshore. It all went south. The operation failed in a number of decades went by before the cia tracked him down in damascus so i tell that story in hairraising detail how in a joint cia mossad operation they tracked him as he was driving around damascus and in a injurious suv. They decided they couldnt plant the bomb, they been discarded too often but he always had his suv and they wound up the cia building a bomb. It was a technical marvel because they had replaced the whole back door of the suv with without his bodyguards noticing and had to match the paint color exactly, even the age of the paintjob. They did all this and mossad wound up pulling the trigger and at one point , one moment while they were surveilling mcneil and waiting for the moment to strike , they realized there was someone leaning on his car messing with the gas and guess who, it was general soleimani and realize theycan take them both out. Permission was denied and neil was the only legitimate target. They waited and soleimani went off. So its just anunbelievable story. And the whole, also the whole delicate negotiation because assassination quote unquote is, has always been a front position at the cia. Its been prohibited since 12 triple free for decades. In this case, they went through contortions over the israelis would pull the trigger rather than of the americans. Bush signed off on thedeal as long as nobody ever talked about it. Nobody does talk about to this day except in part to me for this chapter that i wrote in the book you have old page where you excerpt from your interviews where you ask a number of cia directors what happened and theres no comments, no comment which again comes with the territory but its one of the stories you eventually get to know. I just add that in the end , john brennan who finally got frustrated with asking him repeatedly for comment what happened to mcneil, he finally looked atme and said he died quickly. Period. Thats more than you got from any of the others. One thing i wanted to ask, you dont really talk about the use of military generals as they head of the cia and how, can you talk about that and how others have thought about that, thinking of general petraeus because there are authorizations for using force and what did you learn about that particular, that mixing of expertise. Its a mixed bag. Its been of course the two directors that i did with our general petraeus, each of them arecapable and the really interesting characters. And hayden tells the story about how he when he arrived he run the nsa of course, National Security agency. He was still the general, not quite retired but when he arrived at the cia, he went through the ball, the socalled bubble the cia runs to make his first address to the troops as it were. And as he was speaking when he 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 famously eloquent and articulate, was challenged for a minute. He did not answer and finally he said whatever makes you comfortable. Dont call me general. Call me whatever you want to call me. And he said in retrospect it was the most important thing he said that day. There is what some wags at the cia call something called fourstar general disease. And what it means is that military people sometimes arrived at the cia and arrived on occasion with a welldeveloped sense of entitlement. I used to have a staff of 50 people as David Petraeus did when he was in afghanistan. And this was a little bit of aproblem for petraeus when he arrived. It was a culture shock, just cultures and when youve been a commanding general like petraeus, youre accustomed to a different way of life and way of operating and having people at your back and call. I think he adjusted to the cia culture but in the getting 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. In the book theres the nice i asked him pointblank about that. And its fascinating. You used an excerpt from her which i thought was interesting. What about when directives or asked by president s to break the law. What did you learn about that process and how that plays out. With all these different directives. To me, that might be the most fascinating scene in the book. And its because its a continuous thing from the beginning, all the way up to our current cia director. And i had the privilege of getting to know the widow of Richard Helms who previously mentioned quintessential cia, oldschool cia director. I spent a lot of time with her, right 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 a flawed character, he was smooth and he was you know, i loved the stories about him holding his own on the dance floor, fred astaire, this 1975 station over the shah of iran. Helms was dancing with cynthia and fred astaire was dancing with the shah of iran. Quite the character but flawed. He is relationship was always fascinating 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 no Uncertain Terms he wanted intelligence showing that domestic protesters against the vietnam war were being controlled by foreign communist powers. He held helms protested, said thats not what the cia doesnt lbj says im aware of that, i wanted. He wanted the intelligence. Helms should have known better but he bent the law. He set up an operation called operation chaos, it was illegal domestic surveillance of protesters who had every right to protest and at the end of the day came up with absolutely no evidence of any foreign communists at all. So helms was flawed, but at the end of the day helms stood up to nixon as the most important time when the crunch came during the war, and hr haldeman was white house chief of staff, called him in 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 to the rule along and he arguably save the cia. So helms was the earliest example of a cia director who had to deal with that under pressure. But so many of them have had this and simon again, president s will ask them to do stuff they shouldnt be doing. Including i love the way bob gates put it. They said usually youve got to a really difficult problem. The state Department Says what the military hamlet, the military says let the diplomats hamlet and they all say lets letthe cia do it. Cia is one former director told me that he could never get rid of the cia, never abolish it because they would have no one to blame. So the fact of the matter over the last five or six decades is 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 they actually get in trouble or is it. Ive certainly been blamed time and again. The other classic lament at langley which i love is in this town only policy successes and intelligence failures. Certainly cia was blamed for 9 11. It was called a failure of imagination, it was called all kinds of things but basically the cia was the black towards which debbie said people would come up to me and say hey, hows it feel to have the worst Intelligence Agency since pearl harbor. The truth is and i have a really detailed chapter on this, in july 2001, george tenet, covert black and rich head of the al qaeda unit went over to the white house. Tovar slammed his fist on the table. It said we got to go in a work putting now. And he was with condi rice. Eventually they blew the whistle and nobody heard it. This was the case, this was in my view less of an intelligence failure and more of a policy failure. It was awhite house failure. Fast forward to 2020. And we are now suffering the catastrophic consequences of the president who ignored warnings in the president s daily brief throughout the month of january and 200,000 americans aredead. One of the things you talk about which is a little different and is the abandonment of procedural norms under this resident. Particularly in terms of the Principle Committee meetings, can you talk a little bit about that because you talk about getting them to come to talk about the presidency and the cia. This is the white house thatnot only is as declared war on process and , this is one that essentially declared war on jonah from day one. Ill never forget that moment, the ongoing white house chief of staff for obama telling me when the prospect new on january 20 was sitting in his office waiting for rants previously chief of staff and his staff arrived and nobody showed up. And he waited an hour or more and finally just turned off the lights. And left. To me, thats the method for this presidency so its not the first time that process and norms have been abandoned. And in one case in point is 9 11 and lets get back to that for a second because one of the thingsthat i learned in the book , i did a documentary in 2015 called the spymasters. In which we told the story of that july 10 meeting, 2001. And talked to a number of really persuasive sources in the white house and the cia said essentially that all you have to do in july 2001 was called up and supposed to enforce principles being the heads of cia, fbi, Vice President or National Security advisor and all of those Department Heads and you get them around the table and you shake the tree and when you shake the tree with all those people at the table, things fall out and a number of people told me they think that had condi rice called the principals meeting , that they would have discovered that to of the hijackers were on the highest level and had been for months. This was as we all know a failure to communicate between cia and fbi but thats the kind of stuff that gets found out when you go through that kind of process. So its just not the first presidency, trumps is not the first presidency to fail to follow some of those norms. And in this case in the case of the Bush White House frankly they were living in the kind of time work. They just couldnt believe a bunch of guys would cave from afghanistan. He said you know, they got terrorists were a bunch of yuppies who stay up allnight, drink champagne and blow stuff up during the day. There were people who as pointed out tried to get that message. And so i think its one of those things we havent quite enjoyed as a country and we need to reflect on and you say so well were on government, the war on government. We go through the book and this is a rant, every director time and again has to deal with iran. Almost al