i'm going to start on my immediate right in introducing them. after my introductions, i'm >> >> enclave meteorite his book predator the secret origins of the drug revolution is the book wes are discussing today.ere he cut his teeth that us a rallied observer and in moving over to defense. i happen to be a fan of hisitteb earlier book called the dream machine and he had written this book predator both of which i wouldar contend are remarkable biographies. a remarkable book. into mine left the author just recently two weeks ago a received an award of the most outstanding english-language john ford affairs given by foreign policy magazine in university of toronto and global affairs. i remember staffer my time at the naval academy rating for "the baltimore sun" troyring a number of issues like the breakup of the soviet union in his most recent book is about the assassination so we start with the origins of thears to a technology of the drone warfare in the way andin the lastly that is for thehe drawer where fault -- warfare that is another tremendous book. a true academic serving as an adviser to the most important operations froman special operations command to revising people in general petraeus also the experting counterinsurgency but he has an entire generation the key has my time impacted. >> as i look around my time in the marine corps to talk about these issues here is one of the guys bureau is talking about in with that i will turnover for mark to talk of raw his book predator. >> i am honored to be a part of this distinguished panel in to talk about my book creditor. it is the book that tells what i thank you will agree is a surprising story about the predator cover how it was invented and how it changed the world.ors can stalk this is after all the first weapon in history beckons stocking kill a single individual on the other sidevu of the planet from a position of total ambush.le whoe >> my book is largely based on first person interviews with our resources. i tell in detail how they are under creditor 2001 and air force pilots and ground control station tucked away are thus yeah a campus begin using this exotic weapon. >> i have been writing about surprises.itary for threee decades but in the five years it took me to research iran into a lot of problems first was not invented by the usual suspects but by this may and a former as a israeli aeronautical engineer that is considered a genius a couple of years later he emigrated to the united states, the land of opportunity 71 to work in military who and he went bankrupt trying to sell his ideas to the u.s. military who was not interested in droves and the '80s but a pair of billionaire brothers who decided to get into the drug business heard about have bankruptcy hired him in the top engineers to good work for them. the private owners of the san diego company now in their late seventies are fascinating in their own right and in 1957 in the early twenties they made the cover of "life" magazine by a flying a small plane around latin america during summer vacation a trip they decided to take before they ever took there first flying lesson because they were notss standing -- traveling for five and they're traveling around latin america to look for a business opportunity to pursue after college did as a result after theycreated a graduated the began starting with the banana and cal plantation in partnership of may with their ruth finley. italy last a couple of years but the first of many the by a.d. 80's had made them an uncommonly well feet to buy general atomics is 65 million. beginning as a nuclear energy company but i got into the drum business bought it from chevron andns 86.ent. the number of reasons they may be a good businessin investment but how to look at the rebels over nicaragua to overthrow the business partners gps navigation was brand new in those days ofd the cia could package gps node -- knows with -- sanives to support meighen's cruise missile on behalf of the sandinista that went nowhere but if necessity is the mother of invention war is the mother of necessity mitt few years later and the difficulty of that artillery in 1993 led to the birth of the predator from smaller less capablelts. 1983 they bought to to use as biplanes in bosnia and got good results that inspire them to develop the predator the flu for the first time july 1994. in the first as it could be thrown by -- full by satellite there is a satellite dish inside. it was not armed shoppers just carrying video camera in sensors that could beeillance used for the acronym of intelligence surveillance. ne as long as 40 hours at a time without landing to refuel. and all the while sending its video back to its ground control station. partly for that reason in the spring of 2000, an innovative air force general named john jumper decided to arm the predator. jumper assigned that project to a very special air force unit that goes by the exotic nickname big safari. in my book i describe big safari as a real-life version of q branch, the technology shop in the james bond movies. and that's where the cia comes into the predator story. because as big saw farly was starting -- safari was starting that project to arm the predator, richard clark, the counterterrorism director at the national security council, and charlie allen, a very senior cia official, had come to the conclusion that the united states needed to kill osama bin laden before he killed more americans as al-qaeda had done in bombing our embassies in kenya and tanzania in 1998, and as it would do again by bombing the uss cole on october 12, 2000, killing 17 american sailors. but if they were going to kill bin laden, first the cia had to find him. so in september of 2000, the big safari crew and a ground control station at an air base in germany flew an unarmed predator over a place near kandahar, afghanistan, called tarnac farms. the cia believed bin laden was living there as a guest of the taliban and, indeed, the air force predator crew found him. at that point, big safari's product to arm the predator -- project to arm the predator went into high gear. they quickly figured out how to put a missile called the hellfire on the predator and wired it so that the ground control station could aim and fire the missile from the other side of the planet. starting with a test launch from a predator strapped down to a concrete pad on january 23rd, 2001, the big safari team, the predator team, launched test shots from the air and at a target tank and then into a building the cia ordered constructed to find out whether hellfire missiles -- which were designed to destroy tanks -- would kill osama bin laden if fired into his residence in afghanistan. the arizona contractor apparently misread the specifications and built an adobe brick structure that bore little resemblance to the mud houses of afghanistan. so the testers nicknamed it taco bell and hung this sign on it. [laugher] they were in a hurry at this point, so to help measure the hellfire's lethality inside a building, they had to dispense with the usual mannequins filled with ballistic jelly. instead as you can see in this photo, they used watermelons to simulate people in test shots. now, i was surprised to learn that in those days, before 9/11, the defense department didn't want its people to be the ones who pulled the trigger on a predator hellfire strike that killed osama bin ladennen. so at first they had big safari create a trigger that was connected to the air force flight crew's control panel by a long, white cable but was to be operated by someone from the cia. then the cia argued that they shouldn't be the ones to fire a military weapon, especially in something that would count as an assassination. for years there had been executive orders banning assassinations. so an air force master sergeant who was working for big safari dubbed this remote trigger "the monkey switch." excuse me. whoa, i lost my slide. with where's the monkey switch? i had it, sorry. i'll dig it up later. [laughter] they called it the monkey switch because they figured that maybe they could just train a monkey to press the trigger, and nobody would have to take responsibility. but while big safari and people at the lower levels of the cia were getting prepared in that summer of 2001 to send an armed predator at osama bin laden p, richard clark was having trouble getting the bush administration to focus on the threat he and others saw in al-qaeda. the bush administration national security council held its first meeting to discuss sending the armed predator after bin laden on september 4, 2001. many of the preparations had been made. i'm not sure how well you can see it in these google earth photos, but this is the happeningly campus at the cia in early september, 2001. the inset shows a double-wide mobile home that was put there to is serve as a command center for an air force predator team. the small rectangle ajays are sent to it is a -- adjacent to it is a ground control station painted white to make it look like an ordinary construction bin. but at that september 4th national security council meeting, neither the cia, nor the military wanted to take responsibility for pulling the trigger on this unfamiliar new weapon, even using the monkey switch. so they decided to wait. one week to the day later, of course, everything changed. and the day after that, three armed predators were on their way to a base in uzbekistan where they could take off and land for missions over afghanistan. predator 3034, flown by big safari's captain scott swanson and master sergeant jeff with quaw, launched the fist lethal drone -- first lethal drone strike on the first night of the war there, october 7, 2001, a story that i tell in great detail in my book. three days later president bush, at another national security council meeting, said why can't we fly more than one predator at a time? we ought to have 50 of these things. and in december of that year, bush gave a speech to the corps of cadets at the citadel in south carolina where he said, "before the war the predator had skeptics because it did not fit the old ways; now it is clear the military does not have enough unmanned vehicles." i think that's when the drone revolution began, and now i'll leave it to my fellow authors, scott shane and mark moyar, to talk about how the cia's initial reluctance changed in succeeding years quite dramatically. thank you. >> thank you very much, richard. [applause] i want to, i'm going to give a quick personal vignette as i turn it over to scott shane. i had the great honor to serve as a research assistant for admiral turner when i was in graduate school in the early 990s. he was the director of the cia in the carter administration, and you mentioned during your talk, richard, about the executive orders banning assassination. in the aftermath of the church committee hearings which some in this room are not old enough to remember, there was a lot of consternation about some cia programs that had as their aim to assassinate political leaders. and executive order 11095 was signed by jimmy carter in february of 1976 that banned political assassination. president carter expanded on that two years later, in january of '78, that banned any sort of assassination. and then ronald reagan, in his first year in office, used that same language in executive order 12333 that banned any agent of the united states from taking part in any assassination. lawyers within the government revisited that decision in 1998 after the embassies in kenning ya and tanzania were bombed and determined that anyone who was confirmed to be a terrorist could be the target of an assassination. and that was the legal logic behind those tomahawk strikes against those camps of bin laden in afghanistan in 1998. boy, where have we come from there. the story of not just that, but also specifically the assassination of an american citizen is the story that scott shane has told, and so with that, i want to turn the floor over to him, and i look forward to hearing your few minutes. thank you, scott. >> thank you, scott. so my book is called "objective troy," and the subtitle is "a terrorist, a president and the rise of the drone." and if rick's book is the biography of the machine, the predator, mine is really the biography of a guy who got killed by one of these machines. anwar al-awlakiment one of my reasons for writing this book was actually to understand how somebody becomes a terrorist, how somebody in this case, anwar al-awlaki, who had had a happy life for quite a few years in the u.s., an american citizen, a very successful imam, muslim preacher, condemned 9/11, called for bridge building after 9/11 from his post at a big mosque outside washington, d.c., how he ended up spending his last years with al-qaeda in yemen trying to to kill americans. and so i'm going to sort of fast forward really to the second half of my book to where anwar al-awlaki has moved to yemen, has joined al-qaeda, and i'm really going to start with the moment when al-awlaki is essentially, he's become essentially the leading spokesperson, certainly in english, for al-qaeda and for the cause it represented. looks like we're having a little bit of trouble. should with play it through the microphone up here? >> [inaudible] >> okay. well, while he works on that, i will tell you what you would have seen. in march -- the first video is in march of 2010. anwar al-awlaki, this guy who was a, you know, sort of peace-loving preacher in the u.s. shows up, he's dressed in a camo jacket with a traditional yemeni dagger in his belt, and he speaks right into the camera and says that it is -- he's speaking english, and he's addressing muslims in the west and in the u.s. in particular. and he's saying it is your obligation, your religious obligation to join the violent jihad against the united states, that the united states is at war with islam and every muslim's obligation is to attack america. and this comes on top of, first, he sort of comes to public attention in november of 2009 after nidal hasan, a army psychiatrist, u.s. army psychiatrist and major, opens fire on people at fort hood. and it turns out they were in communication, and the next day anwr with al-awlaki, who was a very tech-savvy guy, put on his blog that nidal hasan was a hero and did exactly what you're supposed to do as a muslim in america. then the second thing that happened was on christmas day in 2009 some of you will remember the underwear bomber who tried to blow up an airliner as it came into detroit. the bomb, fortunately, didn't go off, it burned him. but when he came off and eventually was interviewed by the fbi, he told the fbi that anwar al-awlaki, this guy in yemen, had recruited him, vetted him, coached him and prepared him for his mission blowing up a plane. so when, you know, when he has been proven to be not just a propagandist, but an operational terrorist, president obama asks the justice department can i put this guy on the kill list. will it be legal and constitutional to kill a u.s. citizen in this circumstance. and the answer comes back in february of 2010 in secret memos written by the justice department that, yes, it will be, it is legal and constitutional based on, first, the idea that it's infeasible to capture this guy in the wilds of yemen, and secondly, that he poses a continuing and imminent threat to the national security of the u.s. and to the safety of americans. so that's the order he gives. what follows is, essentially, an 18-month manhunt involving all 16 intelligence agencyies, nsa, the national security agency, essentially drops an electronic net over yemen. the cia's offering $5 million to family members and anyone else who can tell them where this guy is. and eventually, after some close calls, they catch up with him at the end of september 2011, and they fire some hellfire missiles at the vehicle that he's in, and he's killed along with a young american named samir khan, another member of al-qaeda and two yemeni al-qaeda guys. they're basically incinerated in their vehicle are. so the -- at that point on that day, obama mentions publicly that al-awlaki is dead and mentions that the brave men and women of the military and intelligence agencies deserve, you know, it's a special achievement for them or something like that but doesn't quite say how this man came to die. because they're still being very secretive about the drone program. a couple years later in a big speech on drones at national defense university, obama makes the killing of this more than citizen for the first time -- of this american citizen for the first time sort of the centerpiece of his argument in favor of drones. maybe you can queue up the next video if it works. down on the left-hand corner. oh, no, go back. >> forward or backwards? >> hit the left arrow, and you'll go back to the other one, and then go down to the left-hand corner. you have to use the cursor to go down to the left-hand corner -- >> yeah, which slide? >> the next one. >> [inaudible] >> that guy. [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> there could be a little caret down there in the left-hand corner of the image. if you get your cursor down to the left-hand caret, it should play. there we are. >> for the record, i do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any u.s. citizen with a drone or with a shotgun without due process. nor should any president deploy armed drones over u.s. soil. but when a u.s. citizen goes abroad to wage war against america and is actively plotting to kill u.s. citizens and when neither the united states nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot, his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a s.w.a.t. team. that's who anwar al-awlaki was. he was continuously trying to kill people. he helped oversee the 2010 plot to detonate explosive devices on two u.s.-bound cargo planes. he was involved in planning to blow up an airliner in 2009. when farooq abdul mat lab went to yemen in 2009, al-awlaki hosted him, approved his suicide operation, helped him tape a martyr video to be shown after the attack, and his last instructions were to blow up the airplane when it was over american soil. i would have detained and prosecuted al-awlaki if we captured him before he carried out a plot, but we couldn't. and as president, i would have been derelict in my duty had i not authorized the strike that took him out. >> so that's president obama's, you know, articulation of his thinking in ordering this extraordinary act which hadn't happened since the civil war of a u.s. president giving the order for an american citizen to be killed without criminal charges, without a trial. still a very controversial decision. but after he was killed, many people at that time thought that he was the most dangerous single individual to american security, and there was -- i remember in the days after that at the end of september 2011, you know, the white house and counterterrorism agencies there was a real sense of accomplishment, of victory, and people were quite pleased with themselves. that lasted for about two weeks, because if you could put up the next slide, please -- that's just a slide. so two weeks after anwar al-awlaki was killed, there was another strike in yemen. killed seven guys on the ground, one of them turned out to be anwral anwar al-awlaki's 16-year-old son and also his 17-year-old cousin. some of the others were probably linked to al-qaeda. but it was, you know, the drone strike was essentially described to me privately, u.s. government has never said anything about it publicly, as a mistake. they didn't know this kid was there, they didn't know his cousin was there, and obama was reportedly furious when he heard about this because this guy, too, the kid was another american citizen. he was born in denver when his dad was living there, and while they'd gone through this legal process on the first case, they had not gone through any legal process, and they had no intention of killing him. he had no history of terrorism. by all accounts, a sweet kid, and obama knew that there'd be a huge backlash against this in yemen. and, indeed, when i went to yemen in 2014 to report the week, you know, this was what was on people's minds. they kind of understood the killing of anwral awe backly. he was with al-qaeda, he was trying to kill americans. the kid was a different story, and it generated a lot of anger and sort of bafflement, i would say, in yemen. that was in the short run. in the long run, if we could have the next slide, please, there was something else that cast a shadow over this whole operation. anwar al-awlaki, as i said, was the leading recruiter and propagandist for al-qaeda in english. when you kill a guy who is that big on the internet, you do not actually kill his most important presence. and his, you know, his importance was not as a bombmaker, his importance was a speaker for this cause. and when they killed him, his presence on the internet did not go away. not only did it not go away, but islam, like christianity, has a long tradition of martyrdom, and his fans began to see him as a martyr. and so the number of videos of awlaki and audio, illustrated audio that his fans kind of cut up and put up and posted and reposted has actually risen. when i was writing the book, they're up to about 40,000 hits on youtube, that went up to 60,000, now it's 71,000 last i checked about a week ago. and it covers everything from his early mainstream stuff about the life of the prophet muhammad a always way through his call to jihad at the end of his life where he basically says go blow something up, go kill some americans. and it's had an enormous impact. many of these sort of small scale terrorism cases that you probably haven't heard of, when the fbi looks at the laptop of the person involved, they'll find a long history of watching awlaki's material and also some of the most famous attacks of recent years. the boston marathon bombers, the cher january brothers who blew up the boston marathon, big fans of awlaki and got not only their ideology, but their bomb-making instructions from an english-language online magazine that awlaki put out. "charlie hebdo", the shootings in paris, those guys were not even english speakers, but big fans of awlaki, and one of them had been to yemen to see him before he was killed. and even in san bernardino, that couple that shot up the husband's workplace meeting back in december, it turns out a neighbor -- they were killed by police, but a neighbor who had plotted with the husband said that they had sat and watched anwar al-awlaki videos for hours and hours. so he actually speaks from beyond the grave with greater authenticity and authority as a martyr than he did when he was alive. which is just to say that when you kill the messenger in a case like that, you do not kill the message. and, you know, it's an example of something that's happened again and again in the war on terror which is that something the u.s. does to promote american security and safety generates a backlash, has unintended consequences that play into the hands of the enemy. and i think in this case that drone strike, arguably, has done that. thanks very much. [applause] >> well, thank you, scott, and that's a perfect lead-in to mark mo to yar's book titled "strategic failure." be there's anyone that has -- if there's anyone that has taken a look and taken stock of this generation of drone warfare that's been going on now for, well, 15 years now, since the first strike on october 7th of 2001, it's mark. and so, mark, we'd love to hear more about your analysis of the balance sheet of drone warfare. >> thanks, scott. and great to follow up on richard whittle's remarks and scott shane's which i think provide you a lot of the context for what i'm going to talk about which is the use of the drone as a strategic instrument of u.s. national security policy. and this is mostly a story of the obama administration which is really the first administration to use them on a truly large scale. the bush administration possessed them but did not use them in anywhere near the frequency of the obama administration. but it is worth looking a little bit at what the bush administration did to provide some context for what follows. the bush administration certainly had the ability to use the armed drones. you've seen early on that capability was present. but in pakistan, which was the most likely place to use them where we couldn't go in on the ground, they were used very intermittently in the early years of the bush administration. it wasn't really until 2008 that the bush administration decided it's going to step up the drone campaign because there's a rising al-qaeda threat perceived in that country. so in the second half of 2008, president bush authorizes large scale use of drone missiles for the first time in pakistan. and we know that at least nine senior al-qaeda figures were killed in pakistan during that time period. is so pretty effective in that time x. we look back on this, this is really of the golden era of the drone. when president obama comes in, he learns of some of the details about the program, and he and his inner circle see this drone program as a way to showcase the president's commitment to fighting terror. he's talking about pulling out of iraq, and he's looking for ways to break the stereotype of the democrats being soft on national security. so this seems a good and fairly low cost way to do that. but unfortunately what's happened is, you know, in warfare you typically see when a new weapon is introduced, it's very effective at first because the enemy doesn't know how to deal with it. but by the time obama comes into office, the enemy's already starting to figure out some countermeasures. so one of the things they figure out is that, you know, there's homing devices that were used to target these weapons, and so they start searching people who are coming and going through these areas for devices. they figure out that gps technology's involved, and al-qaeda actually publishes a manual of gps devices to tip their people off. the most simple and effective way that they found was simply to move their people out of the areas where the strikes were taking place, because pakistan had restricted the area geographically where the strikes could take place. so a lot of the al-qaeda and other extremists simply moved. as it becomes apparent that it's not going to be that easy to target these al-qaeda guys, other options they use for the drones. one is to extend the groups that are going to be targeted by the drones. it happens that in obama's first year the pakistani government is ramping up operations against the pakistani taliban which is conducting an offensive, and that's one of the few extremist groups in pakistan that's actually trying to overthrow the government. and so they're happy to feed us lots of information on the pakistani taliban. the other thing it's done is that the criteria for targeting are loosened, and the administration starts to permit signature strikes which means you haven't actually identified who the person is by name, but they're doing things that would suggest that they may be a terrorist in terms of how they're traveling, how they're communicating, and so that allows us to strike more targets. we do, as a result of these things, the obama administration is able to hit and kill a lot more people than the bush administration did, and that's a fact that, you know, gets publicized. of previously the drone administration had been kept under wraps but, again, part of the political motive is to try to show the administration is getting tough on terrorism. when you dig into the numbers which, you know, the numbers are just presented without real context, but when you look at them, there's a couple things that stand out. one of them that most of those people who are killed are actually members of the pakistani taliban which is a greater threat to pakistan than it is to the united states. there's not a lot of people that we're most concerned about on that group. another thing that's ve there is not a lot of people we're most concerned about. and another thing that is interesting to most of the people that are killed or low level in surgeons of the terror masterminds that people were led to believe. in 2010 a u.s. official acknowledges the 90 percent are low-level fighters handed 2011 only 2 percent of the drug strikes are considered to be extremist leaders.drone campaign we also know that in terms of disrupting terror attacks the drone campaign is not what was hoped and as they were plotting the new york subway or to get behind the plot to blow up times square he actually got the truck there but the detonator did not work but both of those individuals were trained in the tribal areas during the peak of the drone campaign. over time our ability doing thin declines with the idea of us doing this in pakistan is a popular as more news comes out there is growing opposition. a number of events that lead to a souring of relations culminates with the killing of osama bin lot in. without notifying that pakistan needs in so they oppose a permanent home base employed other restrictions of the number of from - - drone strikes tapers off during 2011 so at the sameard time it is the time of great strategic change we have the changing of the guard with personnel career officialshem m like secretary of defense gates, general petraeus, a lot of them move out then you have a change of strategy spearheaded by the vice president by didn't. according to their argumentu co- argument, the counterinsurgency we did in iraq and afghanistan where you can send lots of troops to control the territory is too expensive and not necessary so instead we can use drones and special u operations to take care of the extremist up much lower-cost in smaller footprint the idea was tested originally in 2009 in shot down but now as people are out of the way obama decides to pick this up and used all through to justify cutting the of military he would rather do that they had a cat domestic programs at a time of pressure so at the end of 2011 he puts it in his national securityons strategy such use drones and special operations in much more drones statistically outside of afghanistan.fy retre there will have a lot of ramifications that is used to justify retrenchment there but the place where it has the biggest impact is yemen by 2012 is the epicenter of surgical counterterrorism if you already heard scott provide detail on specific events but in terms of strategically, by this timel there was a lot of discussion about the u.s. approach of special operations command with recommendations we need to help to counter insurgency we want to help them control territory natchez kill people but the administration chose not to do that and decided it was too much to not just use the drones so we ramp up that campaign when we decide not to be concerned of counterinsurgency then we have a smaller presence making a harder to get intelligence so that leads to errant targeting your reheard a little bit as women and children killed by mistake and al qaeda uses this very effectively to gain followers see you actually see the number ofd followers go from 300 to more than 1,000 can isns starts is in 2015 when the insurgents to overthrow the government that ruins whole counterterrorism program weinto put in place and we have to pull our people out there in hardware falls into the enemies he and have no intelligence for the drugones hn strike.benefit. they have been useful tactically is certaing targets. situations in to be counterproductive and they hit the wrong targets in the strategic instrument has been disproved and and if we don't have poods on the ground or our friends don't coming you cannot stop these groups if it has been problematic because we thought having drones as a strategy prevented us from adopting those strategies that our more effective. [applause]rones as a >> we have time for a couple of questions you talk about drones as the strategy was a term that you used the ballot by to ask each to be the same question but with a little context. drones were always be used as a tool i deployed right after 9/11 and we spent the better part of five months floating up the coast of yemen to find a young man who was one of the high-level al qaeda folks we's would have to go 300 miles inland to get him and that is day complicated mission in helicopters we never first iv executed the operation so we returned low and behold he was the first individual killed by airdrome ander outside of those areas. as the look to the tool we were looking at how we do incredibly difficult it was and as i continue to deploy to see the great efficacy of the tool could give you being over the target for nine hours of lot more than that f-16 in the election-year if you were you ging the next administration what's advice would you give if it is someone in charge of foreign policy transition team how you would change what we have seen in a true policy with the to the administration's? >> one thing that would say is within the military their shoes unanimous recognition in fact,.ition, and a lot they think the administration has reluctantly come around being forced into thateveryone i position but certainly is worth emphasizing that a surgical strike is simply sot a viable solution unique counterinsurgency and long term educational programsil and diplomacy our caution against thinking it is a silver bullet. >> as a reporter or probably get in trouble if i gave the president advice that i will make a point why obamars embrace the drone because hen he thought the big wars ins afghanistan and iraq werege, the disasters with the cost ofas human life in those countries was you june troops and financially and in both cases the years of fig to american security even after years of fighting in those countries did not make u.s. safer as a peoplt so he saw that as a tool that was suited to taking a small numbers of people so kill the people that try to kill us it with a smaller number of people summer doing this without turning the country upside down with long-termou know, it consequences and they stillar believe they're prevented attacks on the united states a it compared to the alternative very useful tool with a much larger target. >> you have to bifurcate as a way to target the killing it operates under title 10 of the u.s. code and i spend a lot of time talking to thes ai military people there was a wide recognition in the military they you're not going to win a war the idea of drove warfare is a nonstarter. bet they have become an essential tool of the insatiable appetite not for the ability to fire weapons for the ability to see what has happened on the ground in the drones are flying over iraq and syria of a manned time the way the military space targets in than guides the manned aircraft to them the drones are the eye of the sky that they did not have before because they could stay up for hours at a time. >> the drust use them drones for targeted killings raises a whole host of issues first of all, why did the administration go into that leon panetta expressed their attitude beautifully when he said it is the only game in town there was no better way to deal with al qaeda in thel, r islamic terrorists in theiroo bag of tricks when they decided to pull all troops out or most of them. who we are whether we want the executive branch to we areex willing to shoot to kill based on evidence based on a t process of deliberations why we don't wiretap with the fbi offering a reason that is necessary without having to present the evidence and say this is why. >> one more question. >> if this weapon is idc a possible future of this tool and how that might come back to haunt us? >> great question. >> the idea is to make them more automated.people abo there is nothing robotic about them but the drive is to make the flight more automated stock to be used in conjunction with male andfor, aircraft with the new fighter plane sometime down the road the pilot might be able to fly of those with similar capabilities and then to become his own little fighter group that idd ti heard the navy admiral talk create now let me just add a note think anyone is aiming to create the drones that is a myth that is out there because the defense department policy is against h a automated weapon killing as o target without intervention so that is a very vague cancer but one direction they are going. >> one additional answer is as you might expect to win the u.s. demonstrates a weapon many countries taken dash interest now half a dozen countries have used them now have dronedever critica programs most are forve said to surveillance but whenever critical things we may have said today about this weapon , you can bet it is a permanent part of many countries arsenals for better or worse we will see how they use that increasingly as the yearsudicios pass. >> and a lot of these countries will not be as careful or judicious for all the mistakes we have spentco made but there is potential use of terrorism within this country that is certainly troubling. >> a great point. >> we could go on and on it is a festive topic these men have done no wonderful job in telling the story so please join us where they are signing copies i recommend these thank you for your attention. [applause] [inaudible conversations] if simic i just finished a new thriller who does a great work and my daughter babysit for him in national also quite a few science-fiction books i have gotten into time travel right now reading time travel science fiction was just depends of how much time i get generally it is just on the airplane. >> can you always been a reader? >> i have. science fiction is my favorite followed by the political shot from spirit doesn't help you in your work in congress? to make it helps me unwind if there is a lot of reading to be done but it is bills and reports and a nonfiction but for fun i will break out a novel. >> everybody told me there is nothing better than being a grandparent is the best thing that could happen. but no one talks about the emotion is a kind of loving that is i'd like any other i want to find out what that was now i know with the surge of hormones and really truly changes us. >> the science in the buffet you talk about talk about your research. >> the was a big question from the beginning what is going on with me? i discovered a book called the female brain. she talks about the chemistry of women at every stage of their life children, teenagers, mothers and grandmothers and a grandmother part was very short so i did what i would do if it was 60 minutes and i called her on the phone to interview her and i said it is kind of crazy but i really feel that i have fallen in love and the classic sense in she said you did. because the pathway of the neurons of romantic love and baby love is the same so your feeling something very similar. >> then two years later comes more. >> i thought why have the same feeling for number two? i thought it doesn't happen twice but it did. and i bonded with her to. >>:to show a picture of the two of you together. >> it is more recent i find among the many changes, that we cannot say no to our grandchildren a matter how strict or critical we were as parents or of their case, grandparents love unconditionally and we never say no. it is always yes i hated going to the park with my daughter i did not like to push the diems swings back and forth and my grandchildren went to go to the park then i am pushing the swings and that is great . .

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