"That memory of going to arlington to bury one of my officers from the c.i.a., elizabeth hanson, is one that will be with me for a long time." "they put their lives on the line to serve this country, and that's what elizabeth hanson did." "i knew that the c.i.a. officers were there because i ordered them to be there." "i had to bear some of the responsibility for having taken this risk." "initial reports indicate the bomber was being recruited by the c.i.a. as a source." "this was the worst, single loss of life for the c.i.a." "since 1983, when a truck bomber blew up the american embassy." "this person obviously turned out to be a double agent and had blown himself up, as well as our officers." "it's hard to find the words when suddenly you're told that seven of your officers have been killed and others seriously wounded." "what went through my mind was the families out there who, within a few hours, were going to be informed that someone who... who they loved had been killed." "we spent a lot of time trying to figure out who were the ones who pushed that button." "we have a lot of sources that we rely on, spies." "and so we immediately asked the question, "who the hell was involved in this tragic suicide bombing?"" "we were able to get pretty good intelligence." "and so, we knew who the individual was." "this was a bad guy, and he was clearly a leader." "had been involved not only in going after our officers, but in killing members of our own forces in afghanistan." "and it was on the day of elizabeth hanson's funeral that i got a call from our operations center." "they thought they had pretty good information about where this individual was." "unfortunately, this individual had family and wife and children around him, and so one of the tough questions was, you know," ""what should we do?"" "standby." "do not engage." "do not engage the mosque." "roger." "if there were women and children in the shot, we normally would not take the shot." "i remember calling the white house, and they were aware how tough a decision this is and basically said, "look, you know, you're going to have to make a judgment here."" "so i knew at that point that it was a decision that i was going to have to make." "i mean, i'm the one who's going to have to say hail marys here." "i was raised a catholic, i believe in my faith, and i rely a great deal on my faith throughout my life." "i've always carried a rosary and always said a hell of a lot of hail marys in tough situations." "and suddenly, you know, i found that i was making decisions on life and death as director, and those decisions are never easy, and frankly they shouldn't be easy." "i felt it was really important in that job to do what i could to protect this country, so i passed on the word." "i said, if you can isolate the individual and take the shot without impacting on women or children, then do it." "but if you have no alternative and it looks like he might get away, then take the shot." "let's go." "roll it in." "wildfire, we're cleared on the building." "we're cleared on the big square building." "go ahead and level it." "roger that." "yeah, direct hits right there." "and it did involve collateral damage, but we got him." "it's done." "these are tough decisions, and you're damn right, they are tough decisions." "but, you know, this is a war." "this is a war." "9/11, these people didn't hesitate a moment to kill 3,000 people and take down the trade centers and hit the pentagon." "these are individuals that would not hesitate to attack us again." "in the end, what you do i think has to be based on what your guts tell you is right." "that's really what it's all about." "you have to be true to yourself as to what you think is right and hope that ultimately god agrees with you." "narrator: inside the c.i.a... i'm forced to make decisions every day." "narrator: director john brennan carries the burden of command." "a lot of decisions that we recognize have risks associated with them, significant risks that sometimes can result in deaths." "the c.i.a.'s actions a decade ago are a stain on our value and on our history." "you can't claim that tying someone to the floor and having them freeze to death is not torture." "torture was what the al qaeda terrorists did to 3,000 americans on 9/11." "i wish the world were simpler." "i wish we didn't have these complex challenges that we face" "where there is not a right and wrong answer, where it's not black and white." "on those days when i'm thinking about the things that worry me most, there is the biological agent, there is the devastating strategic type of terrorist attack, because we know that these individuals are so determined to cause as much" "havoc and destruction and death as possible." "how do you deal with this phenomenon that we're facing as far as terrorism, like isis and their wanton, murderous activities?" "isis rules with brutality and fear, publicly executing those who offend its strict version of islamic law." "well, we can let these terrorist organitions thrive and not take action against them, or we can try to take action that's going to disrupt their plans." "narrator: in a conflict against a ruthless enemy, what are the rules for america's spymasters?" "go for the vehicle." "you are now free to engage the moving vehicle." "narrator: does the c.i.a. go too far... (unintelligible commands) narrator: ...or not far enough?" "killing people, no matter how bad they are, is not something that should ever rest easily in anybody's soul or in anybody's brain." "sometimes i think we get ourselves into a frenzy, into believing that killing is the only answer to a problem." "and the truth is, it's not." "narrator: only 12 men alive today have made the life-and-death decisions that come with running the world's most powerful intelligence agency." "let me bare my soul just a little bit more." "narrator: the keepers of america's secrets, the spymasters and their top operatives share their convictions and, for the first time, their passionate disagreements, about the agency's past, its current mission and its future." "it is a battle for the soul of the c.i.a." "when you're confronting an enemy that's prepared to blow up and kill innocent men, women and children, you have to go at them using the capabilities that we have." "for me, that's the basic rule:" "do we protect our people or do we not protect them?" "narrator: did the white house ignore the c.i.a.'s warnings about 911?" "3,000 americans had been killed." "there was an emotional piece of this because we had woken up every day of our lives trying to stop what just had happened." "narrator: what's fair game against terrorists hell-bent on attacking us again?" "black sites, indefinite detention?" "you're director of central intelligence and somebody comes forward and says to you, "we got these bad guys, we know they're bad guys." "what would you like us to do with them?"" "well, the old traditional way would have been to put them in the back of the truck and shoot them." "well, that's not a very good idea, is it?" "narrator: are brutal interrogation techniques ever acceptable?" "the senate report has publicly revealed graphic new details." "...and the report says detainees were kept in total darkness, shackled to the wall in 45-degree temperatures." "we were asked to do some very hard things." "are we happy we did them?" "of course not." "would we do them again?" "i would hope so if we found ourselves in those circumstances." "i just don't think a country like ours should be culpable of conducting torture." "i just think it's beneath our dignity." "i think it's poor for our reputation and the world." "i'm not going to ever accept the use of the word "torture" in front of what happened here." "i'm not going to fall to that." "narrator: has the c.i.a." "become a secret army, a killing machine?" "you're sitting there in the middle of nowhere in nevada, and you're looking at a screen that is televising what looks for all the world like a big video game." "and push a button and a pickup truck explodes half a world away." "i mean, if they're bad guys and they're doing us harm, i have no problem with that." "now the dark side." "you know, you can't be perfect." "there is collateral damage." "(crying)" "we feed the jihadi recruitment video that these americans are heartless killers." "we may have to use these kinds of weapons, but, in the end, let me tell you something--if we fail to do this and god forbid this country faced another 9/11, you know what the first question would" "be: why the hell did you let this happen?" "why the hell did you let this happen?" "if you are a terrorism" "analyst for long enough, you will have many moments where you will feel responsible." "responsible for not having stayed long enough, not having stayed late enough, not having thought hard enough." "not having plowed through enough data to connect those proverbial dots." "and you'll see on the other end of that individuals who are hurt or killed." "i gave birth to my first son in what was a very emergency c-section." "he was quite early." "i was lying down in my hospital bed, still trying to get over some of the pain." "my phone rang, and i heard my boss screaming on the other end," ""your people did this, your people did this."" "and i had no idea what she was talking about, but i knew she meant something bad had happened." "and i turned on the television, and i saw, and i knew what she meant." "narrator: february 26, 1993." "we heard a tremendous explosion." "the entire building." "narrator: in an underground garage in new york city, a van packed with explosives detonates, killing six people and injuring more than a thousand." "it would be the first attack on the world trade center." "the fact is, at this hour, police simply don't know who did this or why." "the big message that comes out of the 1993 trade center bombing is that a threshold has been crossed." "they've hit us here." "but you know, thinking back on it, i'm not sure that message was as powerfully absorbed as we can see it in retrospect." "narrator: the trail would lead to a shadowy network of jihadists in afghanistan that the world would come to know as al qaeda, and a charismatic saudi multi-millionaire." "i had likened osama bin laden at the time to-- i know this is horrible to say, but to donald trump." "you know, he was like the donald trump of the terrorism underworld." "he had the wherewithal and a vision that was clearly controversial and different from everybody else, but, you know, the tenacity to follow it." "i definitely drew a lot of snickers from my... from my colleagues who thought i was making a mountain out of a molehill and blowing him out of proportion." "narrator: august 7, 1998." "suicide truck bombers strike american embassies in tanzania and kenya, east africa." "224 people lie dead, two of them c.i.a. officers." "after the east africa bombings, i sat at home and furiously drafted a memo called" ""we're at war."" "enough swatting at flies; we need to put a worldwide plan in place where we can start demonstrating that we can penetrate this adversary, get into the sanctuary, penetrate his major operational hubs and set us up for really providing" "policymakers with hard intelligence with which they could make decisions." "narrator: cofer black, a legendary operative, had escaped an assassination attempt by al qaeda while serving in khartoum." "the first week that i was in the counterterrorism center, new chief comes in, and they stick you in a conference room, and people start coming in and briefing you on all their areas of activity." "i don't shock easy, but i was shocked." "this was a wave of threats coming at the united states." "there was no doubt in my mind that the united states was going to be struck and struck hard." "lots of americans were going to die." "sandy berger, the national security advisor at the end of the clinton administration, asked us for a very important piece of paper." "we called it the "blue sky paper."" "he said, "i want you to imagine that you had all the authorities you needed and all the resources you needed to take down al qaeda." "what would you do?"" "getting into the afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation-- we knew exactly what to do." "we were ready to do it." "the important part is, no action was taken." "it was not advanced." "narrator: as al qaeda grows more lethal, c.i.a. director george tenet faces a test that will define his place in history: can the c.i.a. stop bin laden before he strikes the united states again?" "on september 28, 2000, we were testing drones over afghanistan when we saw a very tall man in white robes who we assumed at the time was bin laden." "i mean, i love this." "this is such a washington thing." "our instructions were to capture him, and that's what we attempted to do." "and the difference between capturing, i would think, and the alternative is significant." "and the gap is large." "killing bin laden in the time period we operated was never an option because the attorney general of the united states could only be killed in theat he context of a capture operation." "did you tell the white house, did you tell janet reno, "look, you don't get it." "we have to kill this guy." "we have to take him down"?" "no." "i'll tell you why." "i have an institutional responsibility; i play in a process where the president of the united states and the attorney general have to accept responsibility for the actions we're going to take." "narrator: but the east africa bombings in 1998 had changed the calculus for president bill clinton." "he launched cruise missile strikes in an effort to kill bin laden, but they missed." "the clinton administration spent eight years learning to appreciate this threat, and only at the very end did they get it." "i, george walker bush, do solemnly swear that i will faithfully execute the office of president of the united states." "there's no doubt that policymakers across two administrations understood from me, and understood from cofer and all of our analysts and people who briefed them, understood the magnitude of the threat in front of them." "in the spring of 2001, we submitted authorities to the incoming bush administration and essentially advocating a paramilitary operation." "and the word back was, "we're not quite ready to consider this we don't want the clock to start ticking."" "what did that mean to you?" "that the administration was not quite ready to consider what its options were with regard to terrorism." "i think they were mentally stuck back eight years ago." "when they were in power, they were used to terrorists being euro lefties-- drink champagne by night, blow things up during the day-- and it was a very difficult sell to communicate the urgency to this." "for us, the system was blinking red in the sense that we thought what we were uncovering was a top-down plot, something being ordered from afghanistan out." "but it was very difficult for us to figure out what it was." "narrator: the crisis comes to a head on july 10, 2001." "richard blee, the head of the bin laden unit, barges into cofer black's office." "he comes and he goes, "okay, roof's fallen in."" "i said, "great, what'cha got?"" "the information that we had now compiled was absolutely compelling." "it was multiple-sourced, and it was... it was sort of the last straw." "picked up the phone, called the secretary, "have to see the director, i'm coming up with rich."" "she says, "well, i'm sorry, he's in with the head of some foreign intelligence service."" "i said, "we're coming up." "kick the guy out." "we're coming now." "tell him to get ready."" "george tenet is a very smart guy." "chewing on his cigar, going back and forth, jumping up and down." "his eyes are flashing." "wish i had a film of it." "he got it, all right." "it's not just red lights." "red lights and chatter is a convenient way this is portrayed." "there were real plots being manifested." "the american embassy in sana'a is going to be bombed, british and american schools in jeddah are going to be bombed." "the world was on the edge of eruption." "[parent explosion] now, what happens then in this period of time in june and july, the threat continues to rise." "public pronouncements by people in al qaeda was, there would be eight major celebrations coming." "the world was going to be stunned by what would soon happen." "terrorists were disappearing." "camps were closing." "threat reporting on the rise." "and this started building to a crescendo." "we decided the next thing to do was pick up the white phone, call the white house, "we're coming down right now."" "i said, "condi, i have to come see you."" "it was one of the rare times in my seven years as director where i said, "i have to come see you." "we're coming right now."" "narrator: present at the july 10 white house meeting are national security advisor condoleezza rice and other top officials." "so rich started by saying," ""there will be significant terrorist attacks against the united states in the coming weeks or months." "the attacks will be spectacular." "they may be multiple." "al qaeda's intention is the destruction of the united states."" "and i said, "this country's got to go a war footing now."" "i slammed my hand on the table." "after it was over, rich blee and i sort of congratulated each other in the sense that, "i think we finally got through to these people." "we have executed our responsibilities."" "what happened?" "yeah." "what did happen?" "yeah." "what happened?" "essentially, nothing happened?" "yeah, that's right." "narrator: condoleezza rice would later write that her memory of the meeting was "not very crisp because we were discussing the threat every day."" "having raised the alert levels for u.s. personnel abroad, she added, "i thought we were doing what needed to be done."" "if on the 10th of september we'd been able to walk into the president of the united states and say, "we think u.s." "airliners are going to be hijacked tomorrow," just think about it." "if we had been able to give him that very specific piece, as the president, he may very well have held all the airliners from flying, until when?" "we might have stopped 9/11 from happening on 9/11, but i think it would've happened on the 10th of october or the 12th of november." "if you don't put a system of defense in place, if you don't button up your airports, button up your buildings, change your visa policies, have some knowledge about what's going on in the united states, create a" "mechanism where there's a... where there's a quick swivel between foreign and domestic, you're going to get hurt." "you know what really does piss me off?" "when people call this an intelligence failure." "we knew this was coming, american interests are going to be attacked, and it could very well be in the united states." "it's serious, it's coming." "sometimes when i drive my car i think about it, and to me it remains incomprehensible still." "i mean, how is it that you could warn senior people so many times and nothing actually happened?" "it's kind of like the "twilight zone."" "you almost sometimes feel like you want to pinch yourself." "at the end of july, we were sitting in my conference room just thinking about all of this and trying to figure out how this attack might occur, and i'll never forget this till the day i die." "rich blee looked at everybody and said, "they're coming here."" "and the silence that followed was deafening." "you could hear a pin drop." ""they're coming here."" "the head of my security" "detail came over to me to say a plane had hit one of the towers of the world trade center." "my instinctual reaction was," ""this is al qaeda." "i've got to go."" "there are fire crews just streaming into this area from every conceivable direction." "and we all looked around and we thought, "oh, my goodness." "tragic accident."" "and people were talking about a private aircraft had flown into... into the tower." "i thought, "geez, this must be the world's worst pilot."" "i jumped in the car." "it was the world's longest car ride." "it took 12 minutes, but the phones weren't working." "looking up at the tv, in real time we saw the second plane hit the other tower." "we knew, we all knew, "we're under attack."" "holy shit, the first one we thought was an accident." "when we heard there was a second one, we definitely thought it was terrorism." "and i heard a roar, and i looked up and saw the second plane hit." "people were crying, holding on to each other." "stay calm." "stay calm, stay calm." "please, god." "you're doing a good job." "and somebody said, "my god, they hit the pentagon, they hit the pentagon."" "ladies and gentlemen, let's keep move... away from the building." "let's get away from the building, ladies and gentlemen." "so director tenet said, "okay we have to evacuate headquarters."" "everybody out, everybody out." "if they stay, they could die." "i said, "we're needed." "that's where our computers are." "we need to respond." "if that's the case, then we'll just have to die."" "narrator: that day, michael morell, the president's briefer, is with george w. bush in florida." "it was our job to prevent an attack, and we didn't do it." "on our watch, this happened." "we went back to "air force one."" "there was a ring of secret service agents around "air force one" with automatic weapons." "we took off." "we went up at a very steep ascent." "and i remember saying to the president's military aide," ""where are we going?"" "he said, "we're just going to be flying around for a bit until we figure out what's going on."" "we were watching television images from new york, and it was in there that we saw the two towers collapse." "wait a second." "is this a live picture?" "this is a live picture." "we're seeing the second world trade tower center." "the second world trade center has just collapsed " "today, our fellow citizens, way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts." "the victims were in airplanes-- the city i grew up in had been blown up." "secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal," "neighbors." "nobody comes to our town and messes with our people." "in his office on "air force one," the president said to me," ""michael, who did this?"" "and i said, "mr. president, both iran and iraq have absolutely nothing to gain and have everything to lose from doing this." "i would bet my children's future that this is al qaeda." "this is bin laden."" "and certainly, looking at the flight manifests, that corroborated the fact that it had been al qaeda." "narrator: it takes only moments to discover what has been years in the making." "there, in black and white, on the passenger manifest of the plane that hit the pentagon are known al qaeda terrorists-- nawaf al hazmi and khalid al midhar." "two of the hijackers on board the airliner which attacked the pentagon had been identified more than a year and a half before as suspected terrorists, yet nothing was done to stop al-hazmi and al-midhar from entering the u.s, and no" "attempt was made to find them until just three weeks before september 11." "why didn't the c.i.a., why didn't somebody pick up the phone to the f.b.i. and say," ""hey, these two guys are here?"" "at root here is, we didn't have the seamless interaction." "we didn't have the ability to fuse things quickly." "our policies were out of date." "the information that the c.i.a. had about the two hijackers in the united states should have been routinely shared with the f.b.i., and it wasn't." "narrator: two government agencies charged with protecting the united states were barely communicating." "intelligence officials acknowledge both the c.i.a. and f.b.i. failed to follow up on leads that could have pointed them in the direction of the" "9/11 hijackers." "in essence, al qaeda being a smart intelligence organization, looked at our banking policies, our border policies, our airline protection policies, our infrastructure policies and came to a conclusion that the country was absolutely unprotected." "i think there's huge failures at the c.i.a. and the f.b.i." "the c.i.a. missed the chance to nab two suspects after they entered the united states." "our government failed to protect the american people." "an elected official came up to me and said, "so, cofer, how does it feel to be responsible for the largest intelligence failure since pearl harbor?"" "this was a failure of policy, management, capability, and, above all, a failure of imagination." "none of the measures adopted by the united states government before 9/11 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al qaeda plot." "above all else, 9/11 was a failure of our imagination." "we all knew something was going to happen; we just found it very, very hard to conceive that what happened on that day was going to happen." "i've never liked this" ""failure of imagination" thing." "i think 9/11 is a national failure." "it actually took 9/11 for the american people to get to the point where they would agree with all the defensive measures that needed to be put in place." "there was never a moment in all of this time when you blamed yourself?" "well, look, there... i'm... i still look at the ceiling at night about a lot of things-- and i'll keep them to myself forever-- but we're all human beings." "i do remember the whole emotional impact of 9/11 struck me very hard as i sat on my front lawn after thanksgiving one day." "the horror of what happened hit me." "there was no time between 9/11 and that moment." "i just didn't have any time." "narrator: no time, because the c.i.a. would now be called upon to put its war plan against al qaeda into action, that audacious "blue sky" memo that had been ignored before 9/11." "on september the 15th, we essentially outline our plan-- seal the borders of afghanistan, go after their leadership, shut off their money, destroy al qaeda." "we're saying, "take our plan." "let us go first."" "and i said, "mr. president, when we're done, these guys are going to have flies walking across their eyeballs."" "and i could see the president was thinking, "wait, flies on eyeballs..."" "then he got it." "and he says, "we'll use the c.i.a. plan." "c.i.a. will be first boots on the ground."" "narrator: 110 c.i.a. officers and 300 special forces sweep into the tribal areas... niner four five over." "copy that." "narrator: ...where they will join with warriors of the northern alliance and uproot the taliban and al qaeda from their safe hold in afghanistan." "(unintelligible communication) narrator: the c.i.a.'s message: if you are with us, you'll be rewarded... our officers often slept on millions of dollars of cash at night." "narrator: ...but if you are against us... you were more than likely to get a 2,000-pound bomb down your throat." "there was never a general on the ground." "there was never a command structure on the ground." "this was a real counterinsurgency." "[gunshots] we've got the airplane on that target first." "over." "we're not seeing any taliban at this time." "over." "in about nine weeks, all cities controlled by the taliban had been overthrown." "all al qaeda in afghanistan had either been killed, captured, were running for the border, or crossed the border." "narrator: bin laden's sanctuary, tora bora, is blown to pieces, but the c.i.a.'s lightning victory is fleeting because the terrorist leader crosses the border into pakistan and disappears." "i'm not sure i ever saw the president get mad except this one occasion, and he was furious." "narrator: and now the agency's finest hour is about to be followed by one of its darkest chapters, because the white house is eyeing another target: iraq." "there is no doubt that saddam hussein now has weapons of mass destruction, and he had established relationship with al qaeda." "there was a relationship between al qaeda and iraq that stretched back ten years." "that's not something i thought of, that's what the director of central intelligence was telling us." "this connection did not exist." "we intervened on numerous occasions to say so." "everybody knew what our point of view was." "and i remember once going to the president and saying, "look, we... this has got to stop." "we can't support this language."" "neither c.i.a. nor any other government agency ever found any evidence that iraq played any role at all in 9/11." "we stuck with that view that saddam was not involved in" "9.11." "narrator: but on the central question, does saddam hussein have weapons of mass destruction?" ", the c.i.a.'s answer is yes." "in the oval office, director tenet reassures george w. bush with a metaphor that becomes infamous." "i said, "we can make this better." "it's a slam dunk."" "it was tenet who assured president bush the question of iraq having weapons of mass destruction was a slam dunk." "a "slam dunk."" "now, the way it was portrayed was, this was the seminal moment in the president's life in terms of deciding whether to go to war or not, and that's not what happened at all." "the decision to go to war and orders to send troops had already been signed." "i mean, we... we were way down the road here." "what i wanted to convey is there was probably a better way for us to make this a better public case." "narrator: that public case to go to war will be made by secretary of state colin powell in a pivotal speech vetted by the c.i.a. and george tenet." "we worked as hard as we knew how to make sure that the secretary was going to speak to the world on the basis on the truth as we understood it." "now, we were also living in a time period where there was no outside intelligence service or experts or anybody who believed he did not have weapons of mass destruction." "we know that saddam hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction;" "he's determined to make more." "leaving saddam hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option." "narrator: and colin powell makes a startling claim about biological weapons that comes from a dubious source, a source some in the c.i.a. knew was unreliable." "we have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails." "he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction." "it should've never been in the speech." "this was an internal failure of some proportions inside c.i.a." "our senior officer in germany was writing cables in that there were problems with the source," ""don't use this source."" "never surfaced to us, ever surfaced to us." "you know, we let him down." "and he knows how i feel about all this." "my fellow citizens, at this hour, american and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm iraq, to free it's people." "from grave danger." "it's been 21 months since president bush launched the invasion of iraq based in large part on the faulty intelligence that saddam had weapons of mass destruction." "the senate intelligence committee has issued a scathing report on c.i.a. intelligence failures on the threat level of prewar iraq." "we went to war in iraq based on false claims." "we were all very surprised, frankly, that there were not weapons of mass destruction found." "we got w.m.d. very wrong." "our blame in this was not just that we were wrong." "we were and that's bad, but we did not communicate our ambiguity." "we did not communicate that we had anything except full confidence in our estimates to the policy-makers, and that's really the issue." "our analysts were good and honest people." "there's no political motivation here." "we basically came to those conclusions." "nobody cooked the books?" "no." "look..." "look, if we wanted to cook the books, if you wanted to cook the books, all you needed to do was say "iraq was directly involved in 9/11."" "game, set, match point, over." "we never did that." "so we were wrong, and we have to take responsibility for that." "but at the end of the day, policymakers need to be a little bit more forthcoming about what their own motivations were-- in this instance, perhaps, how to remake the middle east." "narrator: the war rages on for eight years, sowing chaos and destruction... no electricity, no water," "everybody is suffering." "my country, not british or american." "narrator: ...and leaving nearly 5,000 americans dead," "30,000 wounded and hundreds of thousands of iraqis killed." "an intelligence failure such as that that took place in 2003 changes history." "narrator: rising from the ashes of iraq, a terror group known as isis." "ruthless and barbaric, they will be a formidable enemy in the years ahead." "but in the aftermath of 9/11, the c.i.a. faces a more immediate threat: al qaeda is poised to strike america again." "we could not afford to be hit again." "everything that we hold dear was at risk." "the greatest worry was if they were that committed to the attack that took place on 9/11, and they had that much hate in them, would they resort to a nuclear weapon someplace?" "after 9/11, we received a report from a foreign service that said that in august of" "2001, bin laden and zawahiri sat at a campfire with pakistani nuclear scientists representing a non governmental organization." "these nuclear scientists had talked to al qaeda about the practicalities of developing a nuclear weapons capability." "the pakistanis said, "well, you know, the hard part about this is acquiring the fissile material."" "and then, bin laden looked at him and said, "well, what makes you think we don't already have it?"" "narrator: the c.i.a. believes bin laden has the design, materials and target for a nuclear weapon." "we began to receive reporting that al qaeda had placed a nuclear weapon in new york city." "narrator: intelligence points to subways, buildings, bridges-- all targeted for destruction and chilling evidence that the east coast of america was not the only target al qaeda had chosen." "the 9/11 plot had also a plot to attack the west coast of the u.s. simultaneously using airplanes hijacked from asia." "bin laden turned down this part of the operation because he considered it too complicated." "narrator: but now, that plot to attack america's west coast is given new life." "the c.i.a. goes into overdrive, knowing that the cost of another" "9/11 would be beyond measurement." "this period of time, with what we knew about their interest in weapons of mass destruction and what we knew about the conventional threats that we were seeing every day made it feel as if we were living a ticking time bomb every" "single day for a period of three years." "they never stopped plotting" "against us." "we captured people all along for the next ten years, and there was always a plot involved." "rashid rauf was the pakistani end of a plot going on in great britain called the wide-body plot-- incredibly significant attack, multiple explosions on multiple wide-bodies almost simultaneously flying out of great britain to a variety of cities in north america." "can you imagine ten airplanes full of innocent people disappearing en route to cities like new york, washington, miami, chicago, los angeles, montreal?" "it would have rivaled 9/11." "narrator: british intelligence, mi5, tracks rashid rauf's al qaeda cell, his plans and his improvised weapons of destruction." "they had gathered up an awful lot of hydrogen peroxide in a homemade recipe, turn it into an explosive and then put it into sports bottles." "so we had great concern on our side of the atlantic about" ""let's break this up."" "the british wanted to build up as much physical evidence as possible, so we're saying, "they bought the hydrogen peroxide."" "and they're saying, "we need to build up more evidence."" "the plotters had already selected the ten flights they were going to blow up, and i said to myself, "this is imminent."" "narrator: with the london plot heating up, rauf is in pakistan and so is the c.i.a." "so, now i'm on a trip in pakistan in august 2006 with my head of the national clandestine service, jose rodriguez." "i was called in by the chief of pakistani intelligence and told, "we may have a chance to capture rauf tonight." "he's going to go from point a to point b, and in between there is a police checkpoint." "we can stop the bus, and we can grab him."" "our headquarters personnel had pledged to mi5 that very day that we would not capture rauf, and i was told that prime minister blair had spoken with president bush that day, and they had agreed that they needed more time." "i was sitting in the car with chief of station." "he gets a call saying, "the bus is coming." "we need authorization to go in."" "and the chief of station turns to me and says, "what do we do, boss?"" "so jose, in a very short period of time, has to make a really big decision." "if i took the time to call headquarters, it would be the equivalent of saying no to the operation." "had airplanes fallen from the sky, i could see myself being hauled up to the congress." ""let me get this straight, mr." "rodriguez." "you had a terrorist that wanted to blow up u.s. airliners within your grasp and you did not make a decision?" "off with your head!"" "the decision he made was, "i can't pass up the opportunity to grab rashid rauf."" "so he does." "we stopped a major attack against us." "since then, of course, we can't take more than-- what is it" "3.6 fluid ounces on airplanes, but that's a small price to pay." "narrator: the plots keep coming, with osama bin laden still at large." "where the hell was this guy that was our number one enemy?" "every lead led nowhere for almost ten years, and it was pretty frustrating." "but then we had an indication from jordan there was a doctor, that if they were able to get him in to pakistan he might... he might be able to lead us to zawahiri, who was the second in" "command." "narrator: the c.i.a. believes it has struck gold." "humam al-balawi, a jordanian doctor, now promises to lead them to the mother lode." "he had been a jihadist." "the jordanian intelligence operation thought they had been successful in flipping him." "so there was a lot of excitement and, obviously, you know, officers who spent their whole life in intelligence and working on these kinds of issues felt that, "boy, this might be a big break."" "narrator: c.i.a. officers like 30-year-old elizabeth hanson and station chief jennifer matthews, a 20-year agency veteran." "jennifer matthews was in charge of the officers who were there." "i wouldn't have hesitated a moment to put her into that position because of her capability and her proven record." "jennifer i met in the late 1990s when i first came to the counterterrorism center." "we were both working on understanding the support network to al qaeda in afghanistan, and we were also pregnant at the same time, multiple times." "she had three children." "her three tracked with my... my third, fourth and fifth." "she was chasing bin laden before chasing bin laden was cool, and she had actually based her professional career on tracking al qaeda and identifying its adherents." "narrator: but to get to osama bin laden, matthews and her c.i.a. team want a face-to-face meeting with al-balawi." "it's a gamble that must be approved by director panetta." "we at the c.i.a. felt we had to establish our own credibility with this guy, and, to do that, you really have to sit down with him and do a meeting to really gain some insight as to who" "we're dealing with." "the vehicle comes in to the base." "they brought him through some of the checkpoints." "they make the decision that they are all going to go out to greet him." "one of the mistakes that was made was there was no body search." "there was no check." "they thought that it would show that, you know, that they were friendly and that they were all anxious to be able to work with him." "narrator: but al-balawi is not about to turn into a c.i.a." "spy." "we will beat you, c.i.a." "team." "inshallah, we will beat you down." "don't think that you just pressing a button, killing mujahideen, you are safe." "inshallah, death will come to you." "narrator: this is the video he made laying out his plans, his martyr suicide video." "look, this is for you." "it's not watch." "it's detonator to kill as much as i can, inshallah." "this is my job, to kill you." "narrator: al-balawi is an al qaeda agent ready to kill, ready to die." "and you will be sent to the hell." "his hands were hidden." "they demanded that he take his hands out." "they kept yelling at him." "and before they knew it, he had detonated his suicide vest." "it blew up everyone who was in the area, and the ball bearings from the vest actually went under the vehicle and tore the legs of several other officers who were there so that almost everybody who was in that" "semicircle was wounded or killed." "it was a very, very grim reminder about just how much our officers put themselves at risk." "that was a terrible, terrible loss for the agency and really, really shook it." "narrator: seven c.i.a." "officers are dead, including elizabeth hanson and her friend, jennifer matthews." "i have one memory of jennifer that is the one i choose to recall." "one time, jennifer and i were traveling overseas, and we were in a tiny little beat-up car." "she has the radio up, all crackly and horrible." "but you hear the unmistakable piano intro to gloria gaynor's" ""i will survive," which any woman can tell you is one of our anthems." "and jennifer cranks that radio all the way up, belting out, "as long as i know how to love, i know i will survive," just dancing." "as long as i know how to love i know i'll stay alive that's how i remember her living, larger than life." "she just was all heart." "as much as al qaeda thinks they destroyed her that day, they made her immortal." "she will always survive." "it was very personal, personal for me, personal for the other officers at the c.i.a." "narrator: it isn't long before leon panetta makes that life-and-death decision, calling in a deadly drone strike on the mastermind of that suicide bombing-- the strike that also killed his family." "probably the biggest consequence was that the gut feeling in every officers' inner being that that their goal was to go after the leadership of al qaeda." "we needed to get real-time information as fast as we possibly could to protect the country and ensure there wasn't another attack on the homeland." "narrator: the c.i.a. under george tenet now embarks on a controversial interrogation program that will come back to haunt it, one that begins with a single prisoner." "abu zubaydah was a major terrorist facilitator and planner on the part of al qaeda." "we believed that he had important and significant information to provide." "and through an incredibly difficult targeting effort, we were able to finally capture him in march of 2002." "there was a firefight and abu zubaydah is severely wounded, so we needed to take him somewhere where we could interrogate him ourselves, away from the public light." "we needed a place to talk to them." "where's that going to be?" "if you're going to do it a jailhouse in pakistan, you're going to get a hugely bad outcome because: a, nothing's going to be secret and probably nobody is going to survive the session, plus there will be a" "riot on the main street in about 15 minutes." "should we bring them back to the united states?" "give them the full protection of the u.s. constitution?" "allow them to have lawyers present to protect their rights as if they were american citizens?" "i'd like to know, what are you going to tell the director of central intelligence to do?" "narrator: in order to interrogate their prisoners, the c.i.a. creates a network of so-called black sites, secret prisons that eventually will hold at least 119 suspected al qaeda terrorists." "in charge of the sites is jose rodriguez." "the black sites were instrumental in helping us gain very invaluable information." "some critics might say," ""well, wait a minute, you wanted to be able to abuse this guy." "you didn't want any rules." "you wanted to..."" "well, that's..." ""...torture the guy."" "that's bullshit." "we get accused by human right activists that we created this black site in order to abuse people." "in fact, by accepting prisoners, we actually became responsible for them, for their health, for them totally." "abu zubaydah had provided some early useful information, and then he stopped talking." "george tenet was going to the white house every day and the president was asking george," ""what is abu zubaydah saying about the second wave of attacks and about all these other programs?"" "well, he was not saying anything, and we knew we had to do something different." "and over the summer months of 2002 put together what became the enhanced interrogation program." "narrator: to run its program, the c.i.a. hires two psychologists who had trained u.s. airmen to resist enemy torture." "they have no experience in interrogation and no knowledge of al qaeda, but their company is paid a staggering sum of $81 million." "a lot of people talked about" ""just have tea with the guy and establish some sort of rapport."" "i get it." "i get that if you've got time." "we didn't have time." "we needed to accelerate the process." "what we were trying to do was to move individuals from a zone of defiance into a zone of cooperation, and then the intelligence gathering began." "narrator: under c.i.a." "supervision, detainees would be slapped and grabbed; deprived of sleep; forced onto liquid diets;" "even confined in a coffin-like box with live insects." "there was nudity." "there was water dousing, cramped confinement, stress positions." "narrator: and then there is a technique made infamous by hollywood: waterboarding." "where was the last time you saw bin laden?" "where was the last time you saw bin laden, huh?" "when you lie to me, i hurt you." "the opening scene of "zero dark thirty," where you see all these prisoners being abused by c.i.a. officers, spontaneous waterboarding with a pail-- total bullshit." "made up stuff." "waterboarding as practiced by the chinese, the nazis, the spanish inquisition is torture and has always been torture." "but the waterboarding that was applied was different, okay." "how is it different?" "it's different because it doesn't use as much water." "they don't drown anybody." "the body responds as if the body thinks its drowning." "am i happy we had to do it?" "of course not." "we had doctors there to make sure that no harm came to the individual." "i'm not trying to minimize how unpleasant this technique was." "it is not torture." "you know, lawyers looked at this." "had they said, this is torture, we would not do it." "the most important thing that happens here is these techniques and the proposal to use these techniques on any human being are sent to the department of justice immediately because we want to know that it is legal under u.s. law and does not in" "any way compromise our adherence to international torture statutes." "and the attorney general of the united states told us that it did not." "it's also important to know that the president of the united states authorized these techniques." "the president read the memo, looked at the techniques and decided he was going to take two techniques off the table himself." "i do not know nor do i recall what techniques were taken off the table." "only three detainees were ever waterboarded, by the way." "three killers that had american blood on their hands were waterboarded by us." "give me a break." "give me a break." "narrator: but there are some inside the c.i.a. who have grave doubts." "there were a number of those techniques that i personally felt were inappropriate, not necessary, beyond the pale." "i was not in the... in the chain of command, but i was a c.i.a." "officer." "i was a senior c.i.a. officer at the time, and i had expressed my... my discomfort and my... my concerns about these techniques, believing that they were going to come back to haunt us, the c.i.a." "i did that with individuals, colleagues at the agency." "did he ever come and complain to you about the enhanced-interrogation techniques?" "nope." "he never came to you and said, "hey, you know what, george?" "i think this is wrong"?" "nope." "he never did?" "nope." "it's not as though i went up and down the halls of the c.i.a." "and said, "we shouldn't be doing this, we shouldn't be doing this."" "looking back on it now, should i have spoken out more loudly about it?" "maybe." "i think about that a lot." "now you say that this program was carefully managed." "yes." "did anybody die?" "at the beginning of 2002 when we started to take prisoners, we just did not know what we were doing." "we are not jailers." "we don't have those skills." "and abuses were made, and we have 'fessed up to those." "early on in the program, there were terrible mistakes made." "there were immediate justice department referrals made." "and two people did die, and it's regrettable." "narrator: one detainee, severely injured during his capture, is left untreated during a c.i.a. interrogation at an iraqi prison and dies." "another is shackled half-naked on a cold floor at a c.i.a." "black site in afghanistan." "he is found dead of hypothermia." "no charges are ever brought against the officers involved." "it's awful that those things happen, but happen... shit happens, you know." "i mean, you know, we were at war." "the fog of war." "narrator: some c.i.a." "officers who witness the interrogations are so disturbed they break down in tears." "my personal view is, "thank god," all right?" "i would not want anyone in that room doing this to another human being if they were not emotionally disturbed by what it was they felt they had to do." "look, he's a terrorist, but he's also a person, and i would never want agency officers to forget both realities." "narrator: george tenet says that abu zubaydah, his resistance weakened, gives up a valuable lead to the whereabouts of an al qaeda terrorist second in importance only to osama bin laden himself." "khalid sheikh mohammed, the architect of 9/11, was captured as a result of an elaborate human operation that was informed by data that interrogated detainees gave us." "we took him to a black site where we would have the opportunity to debrief him on what he knew about threats against our homeland." "he was smart, scary smart." "hannibal lecter." "pure evil." "the type of individual that is able to dream up different ways of killing us." "we asked him, "what do you know about plots against the u.s.?"" "and his answer was, "soon you will know," which was a chilling response because we also knew that he was planning a second wave of attacks." "my name is daniel pearl." "i'm a jewish american." "he eventually confessed to the killing of daniel pearl, the" ""wall street journal" reporter." "and it was like a matter of fact." "he said, "look, i killed him." "i slaughtered him, cut him into pieces." "i put him in a shallow grave."" "he actually didn't have a problem with waterboarding." "he withstood waterboarding." "khalid sheikh mohammed knew that in all likelihood we would stop at ten seconds, and he would count with his fingers." "he would go and then look at us like, "you know, hey, it's time to stop."" "had it not been for the accumulation of techniques... and i think sleep deprivation finally led him to become compliant." "afterwards, he wouldn't stop talking." "narrator: waterboarded and sleep-deprived, khalid sheik muhammed would inadvertently help point the c.i.a. to its ultimate target: osama bin laden." "it was only when a number of detainees after interrogation revealed that indeed bin laden had sent a message to his operations chief via this courier that flagged this courier and caused him to rise to the top of the many" "candidates of people we could follow." "we then raised abu ahmed al kuwaiti as a name to khalid sheik mohammed, who, at that point, had become largely cooperative." "and then, since we've got the place wired, we hear k.s.m. tell other detainees, "don't talk about the courier."" "and our folks in the bin laden cell go after abu ahmed one grain of sand at a time, identify him and follow him eventually to abbottabad." "narrator: the mission that would kill osama bin laden-- operation neptune spear-- would be a c.i.a. covert operation, the chain of command going straight from the president to c.i.a. director panetta to the navy seals." "tonight, i can report to the american people and to the world that the united states has conducted an operation that killed osama bin laden, the leader of al qaeda... u.s.a., u.s.a., u.s.a.!" "hearing people outside the gates of the white house chanting, "u.s.a., u.s.a., c.i.a.," it was something that will be a memory that i'll have for the rest of my life." "the c.i.a.'s enhanced interrogation techniques were not an effective way to gather intelligence information." "the c.i.a. provided inaccurate information to the white house, the department of justice, congress." "the c.i.a. program was far more brutal than people were led to believe." "the country deserved a thoughtful assessment of what happened in the immediate years after 9/11." "that's not what we got." "they did things which i really consider immoral." "c.i.a. interrogators used brutal techniques that went well beyond the limits of the law." "some of these practices amounted to torture." "we were very careful to stop short of torture." "in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong." "we did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks." "we did some things that were contrary to our values." "narrator: after a five-year investigation of more than six million pages of c.i.a." "documents, the democratic majority of the senate select committee on intelligence issues a scathing indictment." "it says the agency misled congress about the brutality of its interrogation program and that no evidence was produced that disrupted plots or saved lives." "the effectiveness and morality of the program would trigger an impassioned debate among the directors." "people are throwing the word" ""torture" around, you know, as if... as if we're... we're torturers." "i'm not going to ever accept the use of the word "torture" in front of what... what happened here." "i'm not going to fall to that." "if you think somebody knows something that would help you save american lives, how far should or could you go to get that information?" "of course, the terrible word" ""torture" comes to mind." "the term "torture" is a very, very loaded word." "if you don't believe that there is a distinction between enhanced interrogation and torture, the conversation is over." "you can slice and dice the semantics a number of different ways." "i think it's hard to not describe some of the techniques that were used as torture." "if i were captured by an adversary and somebody slapped me in the face, would i come back and say i was tortured?" "no." "if somebody waterboarded me, would i come back and say i was tortured?" "yes." "i think it was torture." "i really do." "history will judge us by our commitment to a just society governed by law and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say "never again."" "i think it is a hopelessly incorrect conclusion based on flawed information." "our review was a meticulous and detailed examination of records." "none of the principals involved in this were interviewed, which is rather important because the alleged motive of this study was to find out how this came to pass, what happened and make sure it never happens again." "enhanced interrogation techniques without any doubt in my mind produced unique intelligence that stopped plots, saved lives, took additional senior al qaeda officers off the battlefield." "we took 20 examples that the c.i.a. itself claimed to show the success of these interrogations, and not a single case holds up." "they are virtually wrong in all 20 of the cases." "one of the 20 cases is a senior al qaeda operative telling us that al qaeda had moved to a particular city in pakistan." "that's what he told us before enhanced interrogation techniques." "after enhanced interrogation techniques, he actually sits down with satellite photography and points out the actual building where senior al qaeda operatives are, which allows us to go and deal with them." "the value in my estimation as i sat at my 5:00 meeting every night and as we were using this information to break up plots, capture leaders, stop further attacks against the united states, was enormously high." "without this program, heathrow airport would've been bombed." "other facilities in great britain would've been bombed." "buildings in new york would've exploded." "suspension bridges would've been taken down." "narrator: and tenet insists that intelligence from the enhanced interrogations leads to the capture of a terrorist planning a spectacular attack." "he had already recruited 17 southeast asians to engage in an airline plot against the west coast of the united states." "the value is... the report says you had that information from other sources." "the report is dead wrong on every account, period, end of paragraph." "the bin laden operation would not have been possible without the courier in question being highlighted as prominently as he was by detainees." "narrator: director john brennan, who was troubled by the brutal techniques, says the jury is out." "what i'm saying is that there's no way to know whether or not khalid sheikh mohammed would have provided that information if he had not been waterboarded." "that is unknowable because that scenario never happened." "director brennan is a good friend of mine and i have the utmost respect for him, but i would just respectfully disagree with that." "i mean, that strikes me as a dodge wrapped in political correctness." "narrator: answers to some of these questions might have been found by watching videotape." "the waterboarding of two prisoners was actually recorded, but the videotapes were destroyed." "while i was still the director in a morning briefing, at the end of the briefing, someone said, "oh, by the way, the tapes were destroyed."" "and i rose out of my chair and said, "what?"" "my primary motivation in destroying the tapes was to protect the people who work for me." "they showed people naked, being waterboarded and going through the enhanced interrogation techniques." "jose knows how i feel about it." "he left me in a horrible, horrible spot." "my concern was, it would cause a firestorm on the hill politically because everybody would assume there was something to hide rather than something to show." "i knew that the tapes would play as if, you know, we were all psychopaths, and that's something that we didn't want." "so, you had the director of national intelligence, the director of the c.i.a., a member of congress all saying, "we don't want these tapes destroyed," and you did it." "now i was not stupid; i didn't one day decide to get out of bed and destroy tapes." "i got approval to do this." "i consulted with our lawyers." "the videotapes were destroyed shortly after c.i.a. attorneys raised concerns that congress might find out about the tapes." "narrator: a necessary evil or a betrayal of american values?" "somebody has to stand up and be willing to say, "this is not what our country is about."" "yes, we're facing a terrible enemy, one who doesn't care about who gets killed, but the united states is better than that." "our constitution does prohibit "cruel and unusual"" "treatment." "if it's cruel, we shouldn't be doing it." "we've got to have people who are prepared to say, "mr. president you can't do that." "it's illegal."" "let's have a c.i.a. director being interviewed here after the second wave and... and you get to ask him the question, "now, look, the department of justice said it was legal but yet you refuse to do it." "how do you feel about your decision now?"" "and so let's not pretend that this is the forces of light and forces of darkness." "these are two damn ugly decisions." "as the commander of the multinational force in iraq, we actually had 27,000 detainees at the high watermark of our operations." "my view, quite simply, is that if you want information from a detainee, you become his best friend." "you have to have very skilled interrogators, very skilled analysts and so forth." "it's a long process." "these are the hardened, worst terrorists responsible for the deaths of thousands of americans in a period where we simply didn't believe we had time to become their best friends." "i just don't think a country like ours should be culpable of conducting torture." "i just think it's beneath our dignity." "i think it's poor for our reputation in the world." "should a country, the united states of america-- which stands for human rights in the world, which stands for human dignity probably more than any country-- do those techniques to another human being?" "right?" "that's... that's a really reasonable question." "one is, it's wrong." "but if you don't accept that, don't do it because it typically will bite you in the backside later on." "you will pay a price for what you do, and it will be vastly greater than whatever it is you got out of taking this particular action." "you can judge us." "we made those decisions for good and valid reasons, and all i would be able to say is we sat where we sat." "we decided what we did." "we understood the implications." "i can stand here today as president of the united states and say without exception or equivocation that we do not torture." "given president obama's criticism of enhanced interrogation techniques, i think one of the interesting questions is: what would he have done had he been put in president bush's shoes when george tenet came to him and said, "you need to do this or" "americans are going to die"?" "and obviously i don't know what the president would've done, and possibly he doesn't know what he would've done." "how do we make sure we are not so caught up in the fear of an enemy that we begin to move away from the principles and the standards that represent what this country's all about?" "and, you know, that's not an easy... there's not... there's not an easy answer to that." "i mean, some people think that there is, but it's not." "the classic case, of course, is a nuclear weapon in downtown manhattan, hidden, and you have in your hands the individual who knows where it is." "would you waterboard him?" "let me turn it around." "would you?" "the reality is, you have to look at it in context." "i mean, if... if, in fact, you had credible intelligence that there was a nuclear weapon planted someplace in new york city or washington, d.c., and there was one person that would know where that bomb was" "located, it'd be very tough not to resort to every method possible in order to get that information." "i just have to be frank with you." "if a president tomorrow asked me to waterboard a terrorist, i would say, "mr. president, sorry, i do not believe that that is what is in our best interest as a country, as an institution of c.i.a." "and we need to find other ways to get that intelligence."" "if some future president is going to decide to waterboard, he better bring his own bucket because he's going to have to do it himself." "the agency is not going to do this again." "just as we were talking about this senate intelligence committee report on interrogation techniques and torture, if you will, the question people need to ask themselves is, ten years from now, will people be asking the same questions about the use of" "these drones?" "narrator: they are lethal, man-made birds of prey." "when you can stare at a target unblinkingly for hours, if not days, and then use a weapon against that target that has a 14-pound warhead in it and with an accuracy measured in inches, this actually makes" "warfare more precise, and that should be a good." "roger." "you are now free to engage the vehicle." "they give you the ability, actually, to minimize civilian casualties or collateral damage." "unintelligible order." "give me ten seconds." "roger." "direct hits." "right there." "now, the dark side." "the dark side is the ease with which a political decision maker can make the decision to do this." "people need to be careful about being so happy with the use of the term "kill."" "intelligence officers in particular have to worry about the use of that term." "there are many times when people are talking loosely about it or enthusing to me about it, and i will say to them, "have you ever killed someone?"" "narrator: it was on george tenet's watch in 2001 that drones, once just eyes in the sky, became killing machines." "i had a question, and it is a question that still needs to be asked today, as well: "do you want the civilian head of an intelligence organization firing a weapon outside of the chain of military command?"" "i needed to ask the question." "they needed to answer the question." "we never got the answer to the question, and off we went." "narrator: why aren't all drones operated by the military?" "one reason: when a covert c.i.a." "operation goes badly, it can be denied." "i obviously can't comment on whether the c.i.a. conducts operations that would be under the realm of covert action." "covert action is, of course, that you don't acknowledge them;" "what you do is you just don't talk about them." "narrator: in fact, the c.i.a.'s drone warfare program is so secret the agency does not even acknowledge that it exists." "yet some directors are surprisingly candid." "it's a covert action." "it's an activity designed so that the hand of the united states is hidden." "it allows you to do it in circumstances in which it would be more difficult for the military to do." "narrator: c.i.a. drone strikes were once rarely conducted outside of war zones." "the trouble was that was exactly where al qaeda was regrouping." "in the first half of 2008, c.i.a. made the case that we had to begin to go do some things-- targeted killings, for example-- outside of internationally-agreed theaters of conflict." "get this guy off the battlefield because "he's going to come kill you and your children" was absolutely compelling." "by mid-summer of 2008, our government decided on a new course of action." "narrator: president george bush gives the green light, but have drones given presidents and directors unchecked power?" "the power to decide who lives and who dies?" "(crowd protesting) drone attacks violate every human law because no law allows anyone to become judge, jury and executioner." "americans are ruthless people." "they are against islam." "they are the tyrants." "you know, it's curious that certain kinds of activity are called "assassination," others are not." "narrator: in 1976, president gerald ford signs an order prohibiting the c.i.a. from engaging in assassination." "for example, the use of drones going after particular targets is not termed an" ""assassination" in the sense of this executive order." "why not?" "why shouldn't it be?" "i don't know." "it's a question you could answer as well as i do." "there is a distinction between a political assassination and against a targeted killing of an enemy combatant after congress has declared war against al qaeda." "and the authorization for the use of military force is a declaration." "it's as close to a declaration of war as we will ever get in this country again, and we are going after enemy combatants consistent with the laws of armed conflict." "narrator: president barack obama takes office after a campaign critical of george bush's war on terror, but under the new commander in chief, drone strikes rise dramatically." "national security looks different from the oval than it does from a hotel room in iowa." "to be able to go in, to conduct surveillance, to target those individuals and then to conduct very precise attacks on those individuals was the most effective weapon we had." "(unintelligible commands) clear to engage all." "this administration prefers killing terrorists rather than holding them captive." "and the reason i think is because it's hard." "it's hard to capture." "it's... it's hard work." "and many would consider it dirty business." "they're killing a lot of people with, let's say, drone strikes that would better be captured and interrogated, that we might have a chance of learning what the terrorist group is going to do next." "you can't question somebody you've killed." "so in other words, the c.i.a." "is just, "we're taking no prisoners?"" "i don't know that that's the c.i.a.'s position; i think that's the president's position." "i... i think he is killing more people than he needs to, and we'd be better off capturing some of them and interrogating them." "we will do everything possible to see if we can prevent them from being successful, capturing them." "and when that's not possible, well, then i think the president should have the ability to... to take action." "end the afghan war!" "stop the drone attacks!" "end the afghan war!" "stop the drone attacks!" "narrator: yet some watchdog organizations claim that american drones have killed more than a thousand civilians, numbers the u.s. government says are greatly exaggerated." "u.s. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties." "those deaths will haunt us as long as we live." "narrator: the most controversial target in the history of drone warfare is about to enter the c.i.a.'s crosshairs." "to the american people, i say your security will continue to be threatened as long as your government continues with its aggression against the muslim people." "narrator: he is anwar al-awlaki, a sworn enemy of the united states and an american citizen." "he was born in the u.s. and was someone who was using social media in order to convey a message about jihad and doing it very effectively, and was someone who had gone to yemen." "there was no question in my mind that he was extremely dangerous and somebody that we had to go after." "as you send us your bombs, we will send you ours." "narrator: the charismatic cleric conspires with the so-called underwear bomber in a failed plot to blow up an airliner over detroit on christmas day 2009, and he inspires the jihadist militant who kills 13 and injures more than 30 in a shooting spree at" "fort hood, texas." "i was asking, "what were we interested in al-awlaki about?"" "well, someone said, "well, he's... he's a bad guy." "he's on the president's list."" "so i said, "what list is that?"" ""well, the goodbye list."" "narrator: the "goodbye list,"" "also known as the "kill list."" "it's the grim roster of terrorists targeted for execution by the u.s." "government." "i, for one, was born in the u.s. and lived in the u.s. for" "21 years." "we went through the process to make a case for why al-awlaki was dangerous, and the justice department, along with the our general counsel and counsel out of the white house, felt that a good case had been made to put" "him on that list." "narrator: the "kill list" is an open secret-- so open that al-awlaki's father goes to a u.s. court in a desperate effort to have his son's life spared." "i want decent american lawyer to tell me that it is right for the united states government to kill an american citizen on the basis that he said something against the united states or against american soldiers." "i mean, i don't understand." "narrator: the petition is rejected." "september 30, 2011: david petraeus is now in charge when c.i.a. drone pilots in nevada draw a bead on al-awlaki in yemen." "they have been watching him for days." "get back on those guys." "there you go." "i think you always do soul searching when you're putting individuals in harm's way." "you turn these over in your mind and... and there are occasions where you say, "let me mull this one." "let me think on it."" "but if you ensure that you're within the rules of engagement, then you press forward and make a decision." "narrator: moments later, anwar al-awlaki is dead." "awlaki was the leader of external operations for al qaeda." "narrator: not since the civil war has the u.s. government executed one of its citizens without an indictment, trial or sentencing." "the precedent of an american president being able to kill an american citizen under any circumstances, on just his signature, is dangerous." "there were nazis who were u.s. citizens." "does that make them less of an enemy?" "there are terrorists who are u.s. citizens." "does that somehow make them less of an enemy?" "i don't think so." "in my book, a terrorist is a terrorist." "i would prefer, under those circumstances, that there was some kind of external body where the president would present the evidence to somebody outside of the executive branch, to say, "i think this is conclusive." "do you think this is conclusive?" "i don't see that the president ever alone made a decision on something like this." "there are a lot of people involved in that discussion, debate and decision-making." "there's a process and there's certainly a discussion, but, at the end of the day, it's all president's appointees, and then it's the president's signature." "there is no outside review." "there is no external evaluation of the evidence." "this was an american citizen, and he was ultimately taken out, but it's not something that should be left to one person, no matter who that person is." "narrator: anwar al-awlaki was just one man, but the c.i.a.'s drones have killed scores, perhaps hundreds whose names are unknown." "(unintelligible commands) my worry is that there are too many of what we would call" ""signature strikes," which are at a group of suspected terrorists where the evidence may not be that clear of specifically what is going on." "what about the so-called signature strikes?" "i can't talk about signature strikes." "if they are even taken, i don't know what they are." "i'm not talking about those guys." "i don't believe these directors are talking about this stuff." "i'm not talking about them." "you have every reason to believe that there are bad guys there at the moment." "you don't quite know the name of the bad guy, but you know the van, you know the weaponry, you know the size of the group, you know what kind of meetings have been held there before, you know" "the other vehicle that pulled up and you make a decision." "narrator: january 2015." "c.i.a. drones strike a terrorist encampment in pakistan." "to the agency's surprise, killed along with the terrorists are two hostages, including a" "73-year-old american aid worker." "on the behalf of the united states government, i offer our deepest apologies to the families." "these were signature strikes." "the names of the targets were not known." "mistakes, sometimes deadly mistakes, can occur." "in some cases where people ended up dead, i don't know whether they were collaborators or innocent bystanders, and that's the problem with these kinds of remote button warfare games." "i would rather up close and personal." "this is hard, all right?" "and anybody who makes these kinds of decisions are going to lose some sleep." "but you'd also lose sleep if you failed to make these decisions and bad things happen to americans." "when people ask you, "what keeps you awake at night?" "," what i worried about a great deal was the potential for a crippling cyber attack on this country, a cyber pearl harbor attack which could paralyze our nation." "well, there are a number of different possibilities that could keep you up." "it could be everything from a loose nuke somewhere, to the employment of some kind of novel w.m.d. element in a densely populated area of the united states, to a very sophisticated lone wolf attack." "the homegrown terrorist bit is a huge threat, even though not in terms of fatalities in a massive event, but in terms of psychological warfare-- getting us to do things to restrict our freedoms." "i mean, if you shut down every mall in the country, you shut down the trains, the planes, the banks or whatever it may be, you've done... you've done something." "narrator: ongoing threats, unrelenting pressure-- the burden of preventing the next terrorist attack takes a personal toll." "i don't think you can go through that kind of experience of having to make life and death decisions, having to every day, every day read intelligence about all of the evil that's out there in the world and those" "that want to strike at us." "i don't think you can go through those kinds of days and not have it affect you." "i think it does." "it's hard to have a positive view of human nature." "there's an awful lot of dark forces afoot in the world." "it is your responsibility to look up at every plane and watch every train, and you think," ""what could go wrong?" "what could go wrong?" "i need to be thinking about what can go wrong."" "i don't have a husband anymore." "i think, over the years, i had just become such a robot in my approach to life because that was what was needed on the job." "i got all the trains off on time and all that sort of thing with the family, but they don't necessarily see me as having been emotionally present in their lives." "that's a hard thing to take." "the reason i'm so strong for c.i.a. is, i saw their dedicated men and women that work there get no credit." "not out in the open at all." "and i just admired their patriotism and their dedication to this country." "it was very, very hard." "you know, i always noticed something-- wives of c.i.a." "directors." "the wives are, to a person, of the view that the experience was not good for their husbands." "narrator: the spymasters are all too human-- their successes often secret, their mistakes exposed and magnified." "the scandal comes at a sensitive time for petraeus and the c.i.a." "david petraeus is not the first high-ranking washington official to have an affair, but he is the first c.i.a. director to resign because of one." "the petraeus indiscretions came to the attention of the f.b.i." "you were confirmed in the job by a vote of 92-0." "precipitous fall." "how tough was that?" "precipitous falls are very tough." "you know, there's a saying in the military, "the higher you go up the flagpole, the more chance you have to show your backside."" "and i was well up the flagpole and did just that." "narrator: some directors worry that the agency's mission has changed, that the c.i.a., once an intelligence and espionage service, has become too focused on lethal covert action." "there's no doubt that c.i.a." "today has a much larger paramilitary mission than it ever has, going all the way back to its roots." "there's no doubt that over the long-term that's not a healthy thing, because the primary job of the central intelligence agency is to collect secrets." "look, i'll be totally candid with you." "an awful lot of what we now call analysis in the american intelligence community is really targeting." "we're safer because of it, but it has not been cost-free." "i think there's too much of a tendency to get so caught up in the scintillating covert world, that we forget that it's on the analytical side and the espionage side that c.i.a." "actually earns its money." "i mean, just think about the past decade or more had we not gone to war in iraq, what the world would look like." "so... and that's an analytical failure." "it doesn't mean you don't kill." "it doesn't mean you don't protect yourself." "there's just a bigger issue that you have to get your arms around, which is the creation of terrorists in the first place." "look, let's be very candid." "this is about islam." "now, i'm not criticizing one of the world's great monotheisms." "it's not about the quran, it's not about the prophet, but it is about the way it is being misused." "my view of this, frankly, is that this is not so much religion as just evil, and we've always had to deal with evil." "i mean, people, people who do evil things, they may excuse what they do based on jihad, based on the power of the church, but deep down these are people who are evil." "civil uprisings quickly became a tsunami of citizens roaring for freedom." "there's been a transformation of sorts in the middle east because the arab spring, while it has regressed in some ways, they unleashed a series of forces that basically said, "we want a better way of life." "we want a functioning civil society."" "so, in part, the message has to be to islam itself, is, you have to create vibrant civil societies that work, that create educational opportunities." "but this is something they have to do for themselves." "dealing with this radicalization that's taking place among these young men and young women is the bigger problem, and until we get our arms around that, this war is not going away." "the harsh truth is, terrorism is right now worse than it's ever been." "it's the largest safe haven they've had in more than a decade with money, access, narrative and territory." "i've come to the view in dealing with bad guys that generally you should believe what they say." "most of them are going to try and do what they tell you they're going to do." "for now, i would say the isis' objective is to consolidate their position in this so-called caliphate, but unless they are stamped out, they'll come here." "they'll come here. our sensibilities and souls have been gerard by the horrific and wonton violence perpetrated upon the innocent in the streets, cafes and concert halls in the beautiful city of paris." "to say we're not in their gun sights reminds me a little bit too much of pre-9/11, where frankly the c.i.a. encountered, in much of the world, what i would call a climate of disbelief." "i wish we would just capture some people." "i've got more fingers on this hand than the number of people we've captured since i left government." "we've made it so legally difficult and politically dangerous to capture that we don't." "we do not know what the rules of engagement are." "are we dealing with enemy combatants?" "are we dealing with criminals?" "are we dealing with thugs?" "are the rules of engagement is, we shoot first?" "we only shoot if we get shot at?" "i do not believe that the... the remedy to terrorism is using the pointy end of the spear, kicking down the doors, taking action against the terrorist organizations." "this is not an issue we can kill our way out of." "you cannot kill your way out of this." "you cannot kill your way out." "you can't kill your way out of this." "that's a mistake." "it's a much bigger issue than just killing people." "it's much more complicated." "now we can live in a world where we all try to see who could be the toughest, the meanest and so forth, but it isn't going to be the kind of world that we believe we want" "for our children and for their children." "i may be a bit of a heretic because i don't really see terrorists or terrorism as a threat to u.s. national security." "to me, our nation's security is only threatened by us if we choose to change course and become something that we're not." "so, if you look back at the fight against al qaeda and isis, the big picture is a great victory for us and a great victory for them." "our great victory has been the degradation, decimation, near defeat of that al qaeda core that brought that tragedy to our shores on 9/11." "their great victory has been the spread of their ideology across a huge geographic area." "that's been their great victory." "i fear and i realize that we're not going to see an end to terrorism in my lifetime or my children's lifetime." "we're just going to have to" "continue to do our jobs every day to minimize to the greatest extent possible the ability of these individuals to successfully carry out these... these terrorist acts." "that's what intelligence is really trying to do." "we're trying to give time and space to policy makers, to our diplomats, to our negotiators to resolve some of these outstanding issues and tensions that exist in the world." "the reality is that intelligence or direct action only buys you space." "it rarely solves the problem on its own." "and if political leaders don't have the wherewithal or the courage or whatever it takes to use the space, you get into this loop where you get to kill people forever." "captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org"