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Trilogy of William Karrel about the history of the CIA.
This three-part documentary series takes an in-depth look at the anatomy and functioning of the CIA, its failures (the Bay of Pigs, the Watergate Scandal) and its chronic shortsightedness (inability to foresee the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, the fall of the USSR, or the 9/11 attacks).
The film identifies and dissects the CIA's true power base and gives us a rare inside glimpse at the inner workings of the US intelligence agency and American government.
This three-part documentary series takes an in-depth look at the anatomy and functioning of the CIA, its failures (the Bay of Pigs, the Watergate Scandal) and its chronic shortsightedness (inability to foresee the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, the fall of the USSR, or the 9/11 attacks).
The film identifies and dissects the CIA's true power base and gives us a rare inside glimpse at the inner workings of the US intelligence agency and American government.
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00:12The Central Intelligence Agency was a bastard, deformed child from the day it was born.
00:18And that's true.
00:20It has never outgrown the problems of its birth.
00:47I will keep America moving forward, always forward, for a better America, for an endless enduring dream and a thousand
00:57points of life.
00:58This is my mission, and I will complete it.
01:03This was a country whose whole culture was one of, hey, let's relax and have a good time and make
01:11money,
01:12and the world's problems are largely solved. The Cold War is over.
01:17What was clear to us as the Soviet Union collapsed was that the world, in many respects,
01:24was going to be a lot more turbulent and a lot more difficult to deal with than during the highly
01:29structured period of the Cold War.
01:31Robert Gates, as brilliant as he was, was trapped in a system that says there was only one main enemy,
01:38the Soviet Union.
01:39So the CIA felt, and the United States and the West felt, triumph, but they won the Cold War.
01:45And as a result, they lost vigilance, let's put it this way, because the enemy came from the other side.
01:52We'd been struggling with this dragon for over 40 years, the Soviet Union,
01:56and finally slew the dragon and found ourselves in a jungle full of a lot of poisonous snakes.
02:02The snakes were harder to keep track of than the dragon, and the snakes were Iran, Iraq, North Korea, terrorism,
02:09Islamic terrorism.
02:10And we were obviously adjusting to the end of the Cold War, which is exactly when Saddam and Iraq invaded
02:17Kuwait.
02:17I was actually in Baghdad at the time, and I was in charge of the embassy in Baghdad.
02:23We had a number of indications that Saddam was menacing Kuwait.
02:30Late July 1990, the CIA and U.S. intelligence services warned the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein is poised to
02:38invade Kuwait.
02:39Satellite photos show a massive buildup of Iraqi assault troops just over the Kuwaiti border.
02:45He was sending logistic lines heading toward Kuwait.
02:48He was putting in fuel bladders. We saw this.
02:51They had satellites. They had electronic means of intercepting communications.
02:56But what they didn't have is the intelligence to understand Saddam.
03:01So all the indicators, things like movement of troops, movement of trucks, logistics, fuel trucks, supply trucks, things like that,
03:09that they were looking at,
03:10it was ambiguous as to what Saddam's intentions were.
03:14CIA had tracked the deployment of his forces and their preparations for the invasion very carefully and had that very
03:21closely documented.
03:22But people in Washington, we told the White House that he's putting in logistics lines to Kuwait.
03:29He was sending troops.
03:31People in the White House, this Republican White House, remember, said, we know Saddam. He's just threatening Kuwait.
03:38They were listening to leaders of Iraqis, the Jordanians, and the other people in the area who said, oh no,
03:47Saddam would never invade a fellow Islamic country.
03:52All the leaders in the region were telling us and telling President Bush, he won't invade.
03:59This is all a bluff to get the price of oil up.
04:02Mubarak said it. King Hussein of Jordan said it. The Emir of Kuwait said it.
04:07We were advised by or asked explicitly by other members of the Arab League, friends of ours in the region,
04:14not to do anything.
04:15And so the United States took that at face value.
04:19So the attack on Kuwait was really a surprise to a certain extent to everybody.
04:25Not that we could have done much else to stop it.
04:27But it wasn't until the last 18 hours that the indicators began to turn positive.
04:33Richard Kerr, who was my deputy, advised the deputies committee 12 hours before the invasion,
04:42that in the opinion of the CIA, Saddam Hussein would invade Kuwait within 12 to 24 hours.
04:51Oh, I don't know about William Webster being informed, but we certainly informed the president.
04:57The disparity between what Washington understood and reality was huge.
05:03Because, I mean, I was watching battles going on, and they were denying they were happening.
05:08I said, well, I'm not crazy. I'm watching this.
05:10I was on the satellite telephone.
05:12I said, we're watching the shelling, we're watching the tanks, we're watching all this stuff.
05:16He said, well, we don't see it.
05:18And on August 2nd, Iraq invades Kuwait, occupying the country.
05:23No one at the Pentagon heeded warnings from CIA agents working along the border.
05:27They'd even forgotten to tell the main man in charge, Robert Gates.
05:33I was on vacation, and we were in Washington State, and we were sitting by the water.
05:41And one of my wife's relatives came to have lunch with us, and she said, I'm surprised you're still here.
05:48And I said, what are you talking about?
05:49She said, the invasion.
05:51I said, what invasion?
05:52She said, Iraq has invaded Kuwait.
05:55Well, CNN gets news pretty quickly.
05:57Saddam invaded Kuwait on August 2nd.
06:00I met with him on August 6th, and we met for about an hour and a half,
06:04during which time he offered up what I called the deal,
06:10which was basically, you let me keep Kuwait,
06:12and I will assure you of a steady supply of petroleum at a reasonable price,
06:17and I will serve as essentially the dominant power in the northern Gulf region.
06:24It was very glaciado.
06:27I had not slept in about four days.
06:30I had my own agenda for him, which was, get out of Kuwait.
06:35Our strategy to go after this army is very, very simple.
06:38First, we're going to cut it off, and then we're going to kill it.
06:41The Gulf War doesn't last long, with Saddam Hussein's army buckling in the matter of days.
06:46But the crucial question remains, should Operation Desert Storm be halted while the Iraqi leader
06:51is still in power?
06:52The CIA wants to move in and eliminate Saddam Hussein, but President Bush refuses.
06:58Before the first bullet was ever fired, we had explicitly told ourselves regime change was not going to be one
07:06of our objectives.
07:07I don't believe that we would have been able to put together the coalition we put together
07:12if overthrowing Saddam Hussein had been our objective.
07:15In fact, I'm quite sure we wouldn't have been able to.
07:16But there were also the practical problems.
07:19Saddam was not just going to sit on his veranda waiting for the 24th Mechanized Division to drive up and
07:24arrest him.
07:25I don't think anyone would have shed a tear if Saddam Hussein had been killed along with the many troops
07:34who died in that battle.
07:37If Saddam Hussein walked in the way of a bullet, too bad.
07:42But there were limits.
07:43There were very strict limits on what they could do in terms of bringing about the death of a foreign
07:49leader.
07:49We lit a candle every night praying that Saddam would be in one of those bunkers that we hit
07:54with a bomb.
07:56Although we knew in our hearts he was probably sleeping in a school or a hospital or a mosque
08:00since he knew we wouldn't bomb those.
08:03And they just couldn't find him.
08:04In January 1993, Bill Clinton takes over the Oval Office after winning the election against George Bush Sr.,
08:11who is denied a second term in office.
08:13My fellow Americans, I want to build the bridge to the 21st century
08:17that makes sure we are still the nation with the world's strongest defense,
08:22that our foreign policy still advances the values of our American community and the community of nations.
08:32Bill Clinton's disdain for the U.S. Secret Service soon becomes clear.
08:37Botched CIA operations and judgment errors, from the Bay of Pigs to the rise of Fondamentalists and Khomeini,
08:43from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to Iraq's occupation of Kuwait,
08:46have tarnished the agency's image.
08:48Clinton finds the list of mistakes a little too long and decides to fire all the White House's CIA advisors.
08:56When he was elected, the first thing the CIA did was send two briefers to brief Clinton
09:03on the latest intelligence all over the world.
09:06And he sent them away from the governor's mandate.
09:10He said, go away, I'm not interested.
09:11He wouldn't see them.
09:14That's bad enough, but what's worse was we knew that in the CIA.
09:20So what everybody was saying, that our main client, the president, doesn't like our stuff and won't read it.
09:25Shortly after taking office, Bill Clinton chooses virtually unknown figure, James Woolsey,
09:31to take over the helm of the CIA.
09:32We have to do some things differently.
09:36I'd never had anything to do with the CIA or espionage until I went out there at the beginning of
09:42the Clinton administration.
09:43I had a meeting with President Clinton.
09:46We talked about the CIA job, but we mainly talked about what it was like to grow up in Arkansas
09:51and Oklahoma,
09:52where he grew up and I grew up.
09:53Clinton had an ingrained fear, in a way, of the intelligence services.
10:02He grew up in the 60s.
10:04It was the time of beating up on the intelligence services.
10:08That probably gave, to his mind, a distasteful taste about the intelligence and security business.
10:17He didn't really understand what we were doing or what kind of things we could provide for him.
10:22There are some presidents who are much more into the sort of underworld of secret services and covert operations.
10:29I think there are a number of explanations as to why, in President Clinton's case, it may have been less.
10:34First of all, the Cold War was over.
10:36That kind of covert operation that was so much the staple of some of his predecessors was no longer there.
10:43And there had to be a whole new adaptation of the CIA and of the secret services.
10:47His decisions and his lack of interest, his lack of support, contributed to the weakness that brought about some of
10:55the problems, sure.
10:56If the CIA director doesn't have access to the president, he's nowhere, because the CIA is under the White House.
11:03I had only two meetings in two years.
11:07So when, in the fall of 1994, when that little Cessna airplane crashed into the south lawn of the White
11:16House,
11:16the White House staff joke was, that must be Woolsey, still trying to get an appointment.
11:22And although I wasn't happy with that joke at the time, as time has gone on,
11:28I've decided it's a reasonably accurate characterization of my tenure.
11:33I did not have the presidency here, and the president was not particularly interested in intelligence.
11:37Clinton never met, almost never met with Woolsey, did not listen to his advice, did not listen to the intelligence.
11:43He wasn't interested. He was interested in other things.
11:46Clinton wanted to know the gossip.
11:49He wanted to know who the president of France was sleeping with.
11:53He was more interested in extramarital affairs than he was, I think, in what we were doing.
12:00Monica Lewinsky saw Clinton more often than Jim Woolsey did.
12:05Because Woolsey was never right.
12:07He'd come in with information that was always wrong.
12:10Clinton stopped reading those CIA briefings.
12:12He said, I could get more out of the New York Times.
12:16Ask Woolsey about that.
12:18I don't think I failed at all.
12:22I failed to establish a working relationship with the president.
12:27But on the other hand, if he had wanted one with me, he had many opportunities.
12:31I asked for many appointments.
12:32I think I was cordial.
12:35I was very candid.
12:36Woolsey basically failed to be relevant.
12:39He didn't have the personality, he didn't have the character, and he didn't have the grasp of intelligence.
12:44That would have allowed him to go to Clinton and say, look, there are these big disasters shaping up.
12:51And if you don't pay attention to them, your place in history will be ruined.
12:57So, Woolsey was ignored because he allowed himself to be ignored.
13:00I felt like the perpetual bringer of bad news.
13:04We say the skunk at the garden party.
13:11On February 26th, 1993, just one month after Bill Clinton moved into the White House,
13:17a truck explodes in the underground garage of the World Trade Center in New York.
13:21Six people died, 1,000 a herd.
13:23For the first time in its history, the United States is attacked by terrorists on its own soil.
13:29The CIA and the FBI blame each other for the intelligence breakdown.
13:33The FBI considers itself not responsible if the attack was hatched on foreign soil,
13:38an operating ground reserved for the CIA.
13:40The CIA, for its part, stresses that it is not allowed to investigate or operate on U.S. soil.
13:46Well, it should have been taken as a warning, of course.
13:50We could have lost 15,000 Americans in that first trade center attack against one building.
13:58And only a misplaced charge, explosive charge, saved us.
14:04The first World Trade Center bombing was a huge warning and we missed it.
14:08The war has been going on for years.
14:10We didn't recognize it.
14:11I think the first World Trade Center attack was the wake-up call.
14:15We didn't pay attention.
14:16The Muslim extremists have been recruiting in Washington since the 1970s.
14:22We were a bit naive about the determination of the groups to inflict catastrophic harm upon the American people.
14:33We could have been much more vigilant following that than we were.
14:38After the first World Trade Center bombing,
14:40they captured an entire room of Arabic documents about bombing the World Trade Center.
14:47And they did not translate those documents.
14:50There was one man who spoke Arabic in the FBI's New York office.
14:55They didn't have the money with which to, and he didn't want to do it.
14:59He wasn't about to spend his time translating documents.
15:02He was too important for that.
15:04The second thing is they didn't have the money with which to pay for a private sector effort to translate.
15:10And the third reason is they didn't think it was important.
15:12The FBI had the same policy for many years.
15:16They like to watch, to observe such people for a long time.
15:22Because the longer they observe them, the more they find out about their operations,
15:27the more people that they can catch in the end.
15:29And so they wait and wait.
15:32And in the case of the World Trade Center in 1993, they may have waited too long.
15:37Because the FBI is ignorant, it finds a new source not credible.
15:43This to me is just absolutely amazing, absolutely astonishing.
15:47And that is not to excuse the CIA, which failed to penetrate terrorism worldwide.
15:52But the FBI blew it on a World Trade Center because it is a bureaucracy.
15:58And because it is a very naive, arrogant bureaucracy, it wasn't taking all of this seriously.
16:07Then comes the Ames Affair, turning years of infighting between the CIA and FBI into an all-out war.
16:12Aldrich Ames, head of the CIA Counterintelligence Unit,
16:15is accused of working as a Soviet mole since 1985 in exchange for $3 million.
16:20Ames is suspected of unmasking 30 agents and causing the death of another 10 executed by the KGB.
16:27Rick Ames was a loser.
16:28He shouldn't have been in that position.
16:30He shouldn't have been given access.
16:33They should have caught him early on.
16:34And Aldrich Ames, who was known to be an incompetent case officer
16:43and an alcoholic who was way over the top in terms of drinking,
16:48and the clandestine service drinks a lot.
16:50Ames was an alcoholic within an alcoholic organization.
16:54He was put in charge of Soviet counterintelligence.
16:59A loser, an incompetent, and a drunk, was put in charge of Soviet counterintelligence.
17:07Now that tells me everything I need to know about the death of the clandestine service.
17:13The CIA conducts an internal investigation, but comes up with nothing.
17:17The case is closed.
17:19Convinced it has uncovered the worst espionage case in U.S. history,
17:22the Clinton administration turns over the investigation to the FBI.
17:26DeBuro reopens the case and exposes Aldrich Ames as a spy a few months later.
17:30It is a slap in the face for the CIA and a resounding victory for the FBI.
17:36We were not able to find anything.
17:38We were not cooperating particularly closely with the FBI.
17:42They were really getting nowhere.
17:45They were reviewing the same old pieces of paper, and they were getting nowhere.
17:50They needed to have an investigative effort.
17:53Then the FBI, which has the authority to work domestically against U.S. citizens,
18:00then they took up the case, and that's when they finally caught him.
18:04And then it let the FBI into the CIA,
18:07and they had this mess with counterintelligence where everybody's under suspicion.
18:12There's no question that the relationship between CIA and the FBI was terrible, very hostile.
18:18They took the Ames case, the Russian mole, and said,
18:21Well, there's hundreds of moles out in the CIA. Let us go after them.
18:25And they were let loose inside the CIA.
18:27The agency suffered, and it suffered very bad and much damage.
18:34It was very serious damage.
18:36I think that the arrest of Ames was the end of the CIA, in a sense, the CIA I knew.
18:43At a time when people said, You know, who needs the CIA?
18:48This is 1994. The Cold War is over.
18:51Nobody had ever heard of bin Laden.
18:54In 1995, the investigation on the World Trade Center attack points to the Al-Qaeda network
18:59and Osama bin Laden, a Saudi national born in Riyadh.
19:03The personal fortune of the man, nicknamed the Holy War's bank roller, is put at $2 billion.
19:08The Washington Post underscores the extremely close ties between bin Laden and the Saudi royal family
19:14and recounts how he was recruited, trained, and armed by the CIA during the war in Afghanistan.
19:19At the time, bin Laden had full support from the U.S. as well as Saudi Arabia,
19:24which supplied him with the means to fulfill his ambitions.
19:28America was literally, for many years, completely unaware that the Saudi Arabian royal family
19:35was funding terrorism as a price for internal stability.
19:40But by the time Clinton left office, he knew darn well that money was going from the royal family
19:46to bin Laden. They'd seen the evidence.
19:47Both parties, the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party,
19:51decided to tolerate this state-funded terrorism because the Saudis had the oil.
19:59That's why we don't look into it. That's why we don't spy on it.
20:02That's why we don't challenge Saudi Arabia on human rights.
20:06They still stone people for adultery. Do you hear a word here?
20:11What we have unleashed with this policy of supporting an extremely repressive regime
20:17and giving them the money to keep this, basically sucking the lifeblood out of Saudi Arabia
20:25is we have fed the Islamic revolution.
20:30And I think that is a geostrategic mistake of the first order.
20:35We allowed ourselves to become unethical and stupid over oil
20:40because if you take Saudi Arabia and you cause a revolution
20:46and its oil is taken off 25%,
20:49the price of oil will hit $150 a barrel and this country will collapse.
20:54We act timid and with fear around that royal family
20:58because we're afraid they'll cut off the oil.
21:06America's political leaders and successive presidents
21:08turn a blind eye to the oil-rich monarchy,
21:11which applies Quranic law to the letter,
21:13but reimburse the U.S. for the Gulf War's $55 million price tag.
21:19Powerful American oil groups vive for royal favors
21:22and their share of a cake worth $150 billion every year.
21:27Several board members of the Saudi Aramco company are U.S. citizens.
21:38People who ran U.S. foreign policy
21:41are reliant on the royal family for money.
21:44You know, you just assume to be allied with American petroleum companies.
21:49If you're, you know, whether you take money from them directly
21:52or have their stock, you cannot challenge Exxon's position today
21:57in Saudi Arabia, for instance.
21:59They are buying the politicians and feeding the politicians information
22:04that allows decisions to be made in the favor of the corporations
22:08that are looting the country.
22:09Diplomats, when they leave the service, retire and go work for Saudi Arabia
22:15or for another Gulf country.
22:17And if their future after office is to be in the oil industry,
22:22then they should be disqualified for a post in the Middle East, in my view.
22:26The word in town is if you're nice to Saudi Arabia,
22:29you're a senior politician, you can fly to Riyadh
22:32and get a million dollars for a speech.
22:34When Bill Clinton says something nice about Saudi Arabia,
22:37you have to understand he gets paid to go make speeches there.
22:39That's the way it works.
22:41People from the White House go work for Saudi banks.
22:44They become consultants.
22:45The influence of corporate money, oil money, on American foreign policy is enormous.
22:52That is at the heart of all of this.
22:54The petroleum lobby is the important thing that you've got to understand
22:58is much more important than the CIA.
23:02You know, it's a hierarchy in Washington.
23:05And if the petroleum lobby is here, the CIA is down here.
23:09And you maybe have State Department.
23:11And then you've got the lobbying firms, and you've got the consultants.
23:15And you've got the petroleum, and then the White House and Congress.
23:19By mere coincidence, Robert Baer discovers how oil lobbies are helping Bill Clinton finance
23:24his re-election bid for the U.S. presidency within the very walls of the White House.
23:28Baer runs into Roger Tamra as the head of several oil companies,
23:32who has been invited to a barbecue with the president for the modest sum of $300,000,
23:36which goes directly into the Democratic Party's coffers.
23:39I watched this Lebanese man put money in, and Don Fowler offered him a list of services.
23:47Tete-a-tete with the president, a night in the Lincoln bedroom, a ride on Air Force One,
23:55tea with the president, cufflinks, anything was for sale.
24:00There was a price list, you know, you'd go to a catalog.
24:03I thought he was lying.
24:04He realized very quickly in his first term that he had to listen to oil and he had to listen
24:09to Wall Street.
24:11The only thing I blame myself for is the stupidity, my stupidity, of not knowing the way the system works.
24:18Because what happened was, as I was sending in reports about campaign financing,
24:23the CIA doesn't spy on Americans, let alone spy on the president of the United States.
24:27I was passing information about the president of the United States to the director.
24:31And they were just horrified.
24:33Look, I was hired by the CIA to tell the truth, and I wasn't going to stop them.
24:37I don't, you know, I don't give a damn about the politics.
24:39That was the truth.
24:41I had really crossed the Rubicon River when I started writing reports about the president of the United States.
24:47It's not done in the CIA.
24:49I did this consciously.
24:53I went to Congress and told them what had happened, not knowing the way Congress worked, but I had to
24:58tell somebody.
24:59And I told a friend in Congress, who, by the way, had since was found dead in a motel room
25:06with a shotgun, his head blown off.
25:10But that's another story for another time.
25:13Bob Bair decides to put his foot down.
25:15He testifies before Congress, describing the weight and role of lobbies in U.S. political life and the presidential election,
25:20and the rather unorthodox methods used by Bill Clinton's entourage.
25:24The day I went to the grand jury to testify on campaign financing, my apartment was broken into.
25:31Nothing was taken.
25:33And the grand jury was thoroughly, they didn't even raise campaign financing in the grand jury.
25:43Not at all.
25:44It wasn't a word.
25:46And every time I tried to say something about the way the system worked, the U.S. attorney just cut
25:51me off and threatened me with contempt.
25:54She called a recess, she called me out, she says,
25:56One more time, you bring up campaign financing before the grand jury,
26:00and this court's going to hold you in contempt or we're going to send you to jail.
26:04The system's crazy.
26:06It was dementia.
26:08Once they saw they couldn't shut me up, what they did was turn the investigation on me.
26:15It was pure intimidation of a police state.
26:18This is inside the CIA.
26:20And then the medical office came back and said he needs a psychiatric exam.
26:24And so I said, you know, fuck you, I'm not going to do it.
26:27I'm not going to take it.
26:28I knew it was becoming Stalin-esque, because then what they do is they move you,
26:33they give you a psychiatric exam, a controlled psychiatrist.
26:36They can do anything with you.
26:38They can put you in St. Elizabeth's.
26:40That's a mental hospital in Washington.
26:42They could fire you.
26:43They could send you home, anything.
26:44I said, forget it.
26:46Once this politics had set in, because I knew I had done nothing wrong,
26:52I was understanding how the system really worked, if you're off message.
26:58And I knew at that point it was time to leave.
27:01Bob Baer resigns and is awarded a prestigious medal honoring an exemplary career in the service of the CIA.
27:11If it were legally permissible, the CIA would blow up my house with me in it.
27:18The CIA has located bin Laden, who has moved into Sudan.
27:22But Bill Clinton is in the middle of an election campaign and doesn't want to repeal the presidential order
27:26given 20 years earlier by Gerald Ford, forbidding assassinations.
27:30In February 1996, Clinton signs a top-secret order authorizing the CIA to use any means necessary to get rid
27:37of bin Laden.
27:39Believe me, if we could assassinate Osama bin Laden, we would.
27:42Clinton gave the order, kill him.
27:45They couldn't find him.
27:48Clinton wanted Osama bin Laden dead.
27:50They couldn't find him.
27:51The agency could not find him.
27:53One month later in March 1996, under UN pressure,
27:57the government of Khartoum decides to expel bin Laden and his secret army
28:01and send him back to Saudi Arabia, but the royal family declines.
28:05The Sudanese then turned to Bill Clinton, making him the same offer.
28:10The United States and the Saudi government went to the Sudanese and said,
28:17bin Laden is a problem.
28:19And the Sudanese were eager to improve their relations both with Saudi Arabia and with the United States.
28:25And they said, okay, what do you want?
28:27Do you want him?
28:28And the Saudis said, we don't want him.
28:31They didn't want bin Laden to come back home.
28:33They want him just to disappear.
28:34The Sudanese offered to turn bin Laden over to Saudi Arabia in order to jail him.
28:44They had to give it from one Muslim country to another.
28:47In other words, he would have been in jail in 1996, February.
28:52The Sudanese were desperately trying to surrender to the United States.
28:58Then the Sudanese said, we'll give him to you.
29:02And the Sudanese said, no, or the American side said, no, we can't indict him.
29:07We have no crime that we can charge him with, so we can't take him.
29:11And that's a fact.
29:12You had to have charges.
29:14You had to have either an indictment or a complaint or an arrest warrant.
29:17And as I recall, in 96, we were not there on the evidence to bring him back to the United
29:22States to prosecute him.
29:24And the United States put no pressure on Saudi Arabia to accept him.
29:28I know exactly when the meetings occurred.
29:31And they said, if it's going to cause you problems taking bin Laden, we don't care.
29:38I'm quite aware of the correspondence on that.
29:40And then so the Sudanese kicked him out and he went to Afghanistan, and we know the rest of the
29:44story.
29:48The American government decides to strengthen its counterterrorism cell, hoping to re-energize it.
29:54It merges units from the FBI and the CIA, two enemy agencies, into one intelligence service.
30:02It asks Dale Watson, the FBI's terrorism chief, to join the ranks of the CIA.
30:12When I said, what was the job, he said, we need somebody to go out and work with the CIA.
30:18And I said, well, for your information, I don't know those people, I don't like those people, and I don't
30:23want to go out there.
30:25And he basically said, well, you are going out there.
30:28And I was forced, basically, as we later laugh about it, it was a hostage exchange program where people from
30:37the FBI were forced out of the CIA.
30:39And at the same time that conversation happened with me, there were two individuals in the CIA who were called
30:46in and basically told,
30:47one of you two guys are going over to the FBI.
30:50And they responded, I know this is true.
30:52They responded, we don't like those people, we don't know those people, we don't want to go over there.
30:57Because FBI stinks at counterintelligence.
31:00Its most important mission was to destroy the CIA.
31:04They talk about the paramilitary case offices in CIA as knuckle draggers, like they're baboons or something, you know?
31:13So that's how it initially started, the cooperation between the CIA and FBI and counterterrorism.
31:20In August 1998, terrorist attacks against American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya leave 224 dead, including 12 Americans.
31:29Bin Laden becomes public enemy number one, a price is put on his head.
31:33Despite an annual budget of several billion dollars, the CIA didn't see either attack coming.
31:38It is even less prepared for a third one in Yemen in October 2000, one month before the U.S.
31:44presidential election.
31:45A suicide attack against the USS Cole in the port of Aden kills 17 American sailors and wounds another 26.
31:54The Clinton administration chose to accept that as minor attacks that did not require a major response.
32:03Those are things out there.
32:05They go on, that's overseas, that's not right here in this country.
32:08So there was a policy failure, which said, it's okay to kill Americans, just don't kill too many of them
32:14and do it overseas.
32:15History will reveal the failure of the Clinton administration to really get down to dealing with the problem of terrorism,
32:27of counterterrorism.
32:28In November 2000, contrary to expectations, George W. Bush, governor of Texas, wins the race for the White House by
32:36hair.
32:38Eight years after his father left office, George Jr. becomes president.
32:42His rival, Vice President Gore, bows to the ballot box results to save the American electoral system from discredit.
32:58He washes out the complexity and the nuances and I think convinces many people here, but also many people abroad,
33:08that he is not very well informed.
33:12I don't think he has the experience in foreign policy to do this on his own or the intellect to
33:20do it on his own.
33:21His inexperience and I would say lack of seriousness about the complexity of foreign policy.
33:29He has a tendency to simplify things.
33:33When you have a president that is a C-plus student and doesn't know very much about the world, you
33:40have a prescription for disaster.
33:42And I want to thank my dad, the most decent man I have ever known.
33:55All my life, I have been amazed that a gentle soul could be so strong.
34:00Dad, I am proud to be your son.
34:06Back in 1960, before becoming CIA director, then president of the United States, George Bush Sr. created an oil firm
34:14called the Zapata Company.
34:15The operation was tiny, but obtained the rights to prospect for oil in Kuwait.
34:19The American oil man made a fortune.
34:22His son followed his example, founding his own Texan oil company in 1979, Arbusto Energy.
34:28But the firm was so badly mismanaged, it had to be bailed out by Salim bin Laden, Osama's half-brother,
34:34who bought a good deal of the company's stock at top price.
34:37The bin Laden family already owned a Houston airport in Texas.
34:41Before he was elected governor, George W. Bush was paid $120,000 a year by the Harkin Energy Group for
34:47consultant services.
34:49The Saudis held a 25% share in the company.
34:52The firm's attorney was the law office of James Baker, secretary of state under the first president, Bush.
34:58Look, I mean, George Bush, the older George Bush, the first president, made it clear that it was our strategic
35:03interests that caused us to go to war against Saddam.
35:08Well, what does that mean?
35:10The only strategic interest we have in the Gulf is oil.
35:14Secretary Baker said, it's a very simple question.
35:18It's spelt in three letters, O-I-L.
35:21George Jr. made a fortune by selling his company's shares for $1 billion.
35:25Two months later, Iraq invaded Kuwait.
35:28An investigation opened to determine whether George Sr. had passed on inside information while president of the United States was
35:34closed for lack of evidence.
35:37You have the president of the United States, his father, the president of the United States, and the vice president
35:43of the United States,
35:44who've all done enormous business and become very wealthy in the oil business because of their relations with the royal
35:49family.
35:50And the people don't realize that the government that they're trusting to control crime is, in fact, in bed with
35:56the criminals.
35:57I can assure you there would be no negotiations with the Taliban if Unical and Enron didn't want negotiations with
36:03the Taliban
36:03and had not been major contributors to the Bush campaign.
36:07The way this administration is, I prefer the Clinton administration.
36:11I mean, these people are crazy.
36:15The Bush family has substantial relations with criminals.
36:19I believe Dick Cheney has substantial relations with criminals.
36:23Okay?
36:24There is a mafia connection.
36:27In 1989, George W. Bush joins the board of directors of the Carlyle Group,
36:32a post he held until 1994 without ever declaring his salary.
36:36This gigantic firm works primarily in the defense industry.
36:40Missiles, aircraft, tanks, company assets, $16 billion.
36:45George Bush Sr. remains one of Carlyle's main pillars.
36:48The board of directors is comprised of a network of key power brokers
36:52who hold strong sway over political decision-makers.
36:56Each partner has $200 million of capital.
36:59The Carlyle Group is headed by Frank Carlucci,
37:02former CIA deputy director and secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan.
37:07Shortly after taking office,
37:09George W. Bush signed a $12 billion arms contract with the Carlyle Group
37:13for a new artillery system against the unanimous advice of Pentagon experts
37:17who judged it unsuitable to the country's needs.
37:22The Carlyle Group probably has direct informal access
37:28to anything that CIA knows about the rest of the world.
37:30No accountability, no shareholders.
37:33It is a great intelligence front.
37:36Now, I mean, Carlucci, when you meet Carlucci,
37:39you are at the center of American power.
37:42Carlucci can call anyone in the CIA he wants to
37:44and have them talk to him.
37:45His wife, his former wife, Marsha, his ex-wife,
37:48used to work at an accounting firm.
37:51Her job at the accounting firm
37:53was to hide the CIA covert budget
37:55in the defense department budget.
37:56It was all in the family.
38:00There are a lot of accusations
38:02that we're the, quote, political firm,
38:05but nobody can point to any political process
38:09in which we've been involved
38:10or any time that we've used political influence.
38:14We do not try to exercise political influence.
38:18We buy and sell companies,
38:20and we make our money doing that.
38:21They do the covert operations.
38:24They funnel and lunder the money through the Carlyle Group.
38:27George Bush is a business partner.
38:29Colin Powell was a partner in Carlyle.
38:30Jim Baker, John Major, Arthur Levitt,
38:33they're our public figures,
38:34but these people all have business skills,
38:40and they were involved in business.
38:43And I think it would be interesting for the public
38:46to take a close look at where their money comes from.
38:51The Carlyle Group, of course,
38:53has a lot of interests in Saudi Arabia.
38:56And the Latin family, for instance,
38:58was thought to have invested
38:59in Carlyle businesses in London,
39:02so they were very strong ties.
39:04They were clearly a driving force
39:06in the very special relation
39:08that grew up between Saudi Arabia and the U.S.,
39:10and with the Bush family in particular.
39:14Well, that was a very small investment.
39:17I think it was a million or two million dollars.
39:21And we bought it back.
39:24We were not, obviously,
39:26we were not dealing with Osama bin Laden.
39:29Immediately after taking office,
39:31George W. Bush gets a clear warning from the CIA.
39:34Bin Laden is making direct threats against the U.S.
39:37Two months later, in March 2001,
39:40a U.S. government commission publishes
39:42a 150-page report that concludes with these words,
39:45A direct attack against American citizens
39:48on American soil is likely.
39:50Our nation has no coherent government structure
39:52to meet this threat.
39:53There were a number of us
39:55who had been saying since the mid-1990s
39:59that terrorists were almost certainly going to use
40:04as some kind of a weapon of mass destruction
40:06inside the United States,
40:09and that we should be preparing for that.
40:12There were a number of panels and commissions
40:15and so on that said
40:17a catastrophic terrorist attack was coming.
40:20It was virtually inevitable.
40:21The CIA was screaming,
40:25we are going to have an attack on the United States.
40:28There was a huge amount of information coming in
40:31about terrorist threats, terrorist plans,
40:34something's going to happen,
40:35something big is going to happen.
40:37After all, there were to be other attacks in New York in 1993
40:40in addition to the World Trade Center.
40:42The plot to bring down 12 airliners in 1995.
40:46The plot to crash a plane into CIA's headquarters
40:49about the same time.
40:53They had planned attack on Los Angeles Airport
40:57on the eve of the year 2000.
40:59There was a plot years ago to attack the CIA,
41:02to attack the facility at Langley.
41:04And of course, periodically,
41:06there are threats against the White House
41:08and Capitol Hill.
41:09Somebody will drive a car up
41:10and threaten to do something.
41:12We were quite convinced
41:14that America would be attacked
41:16and we knew the gravity of the situation.
41:20And unfortunately,
41:22while the politicians all shook their heads,
41:25wisely, in agreement,
41:26no one did anything.
41:27The whole country was essentially asleep.
41:32Despite increasingly specific threats,
41:34infighting between the CIA and the FBI persists.
41:37Both agencies fuel the rivalry,
41:39continuing to hold back information.
41:41The head of the FBI warns his agents
41:43not to share any information with the CIA.
41:45It appears there were some mistakes made.
41:48Lack of exchange of information
41:50between agencies and such forth.
41:53It was not a question of keeping secrets.
41:55It was a question of not having the facility
41:57to send information to CIA.
42:01They don't communicate very well.
42:03Their computers don't talk to each other.
42:05Their people don't train together.
42:07Their people don't work together.
42:09Each side, when it has information,
42:11tends to kind of keep it to itself.
42:14And they don't quite trust each other.
42:16It's not a question of fighting.
42:17It's having different agencies
42:19with different missions and different cultures.
42:22There was a war,
42:24but largely carried out
42:26in the counterintelligence area.
42:28In February 2001,
42:30Israel warns the CIA
42:31terrorists are going to hijack
42:33one or several commercial aircraft
42:35and use them as weapons.
42:37King Abdalav Jordan,
42:39President Mubarak,
42:40and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder
42:41passed the same warning
42:42onto the Pentagon.
42:44There will be an attack
42:45on American soil in the near future
42:47using commercial planes.
42:50For a number of years,
42:53Islamic extremists have been trained
42:55in how to hijack a passenger aircraft,
42:58an old one on the ground there
42:59that you can see
42:59with commercial satellite photography.
43:01And they're trained in groups
43:03of four and five
43:04how to hijack such an aircraft
43:06with, among other things,
43:08very short knives.
43:09I sent an email to the CIA
43:11in 1998 on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
43:14about hijackings
43:15and the aliases he was using.
43:16He was traveling around Europe
43:17and never got a response.
43:19Some people from Arab countries
43:22were studying flight training
43:23and they were not interested
43:24in learning how to land.
43:26There were things like that
43:27that clearly called
43:29for more investigation.
43:30Can you imagine instructing a guy
43:32who's supposed to go off
43:33to learn how to be in an airplane,
43:36and that he tells his pilot instructor,
43:42I'm only trying to turn left and right?
43:44I mean, come on.
43:46We received a number of leads
43:48that we literally did not take seriously.
43:51A young man walked into the FBI office
43:54in Newark, New Jersey,
43:55a year ago, a year prior to 9-1-1,
43:59and told him, told the FBI
44:01that there was a plan to use planes
44:03to fly into the World Trade Center.
44:04The FBI could not verify
44:07any aspect of this story,
44:09and so rather than taking it seriously
44:11and understanding there was a great deal
44:12they did not know,
44:13as well as a great deal
44:14that the CIA was not telling them,
44:16the FBI dismissed the story.
44:18They probably thought
44:21that these hijackers were planning
44:23a simple, old-fashioned hijack
44:26of the plane
44:27where you make demands.
44:30They probably did not know for sure
44:33that they planned to use the airplane
44:35as a bomb, as a missile.
44:39So they waited and waited,
44:41and then it was too late.
44:42It's just like the information
44:44on Zachariah Moussaoui.
44:47On the 24th of August,
44:49DST, French Intelligence,
44:51gave the legal attaché
44:53for the FBI in Paris a document
44:55showing that Moussaoui
44:57was involved with al-Qaeda.
45:00We had given them fairly specific information,
45:03especially about the fact
45:05that Moussaoui had traded in Afghanistan
45:06in a camp run by Ben Laden.
45:10We also knew he had been in contact
45:12with al-Qaeda agents in Europe,
45:14and we had given their names
45:15to the U.S. authorities.
45:16Do you know that document
45:18never got to the FBI agents
45:20in Minneapolis
45:21where Moussaoui was operating?
45:23Not only were they keeping
45:25the stuff from Minneapolis
45:26going to the top of the FBI,
45:27the top of the FBI
45:28was keeping it
45:29from getting down to them.
45:30The man in charge
45:31of the office in Minneapolis
45:34is like a prince,
45:35a little king, a baron.
45:39And he only sends
45:41the headquarters in Washington
45:43what he wants to send.
45:47The FBI decided
45:48that the information
45:49passed on by the French
45:50about Moussaoui
45:51was insufficient
45:52and didn't deserve
45:53further investigation
45:54or setting up wiretaps.
45:58The French gave it
45:59to the United States.
46:01The Americans said
46:02that's not important.
46:03They didn't put taps
46:04on his phone.
46:04They didn't get into his computer.
46:06They don't listen.
46:08You know, everybody says,
46:09oh, it's the FBI's fault.
46:10It's the CIA's fault.
46:11Well, when the president's team
46:13is telling you,
46:13don't look over there
46:14for trouble.
46:15We don't want to know
46:16if there's trouble over there.
46:17We don't want to see it.
46:18We don't want to hear it.
46:19The Saudis are our friends.
46:21What are the intelligence
46:23people supposed to do?
46:24The real intelligence failure
46:28was that CIA
46:31was not conducting
46:35operations in Saudi Arabia.
46:37It was understood
46:39that the Saudis
46:40were our friends
46:41and that we were not
46:41to spy on our friends.
46:43The king
46:44is sending a message.
46:45He doesn't want to know.
46:47In this case,
46:48the king was George W. Bush
46:50or the assistant king,
46:51Dick Cheney.
46:52But the reality is
46:54they did not let
46:54our intelligence forces
46:55do their job.
46:57Maybe, just maybe,
46:58if we had let
46:59the organization
47:00do its business
47:03properly,
47:04it might have stopped
47:04September 11th.
47:06Five years
47:07after quitting the CIA,
47:08Robert Baird decides
47:09to make a private visit
47:10to the Persian Gulf
47:11to reestablish contact
47:12with the groups
47:13he had infiltrated
47:14and gather information
47:15about the upcoming attack.
47:17I became very close
47:18to a dissident group
47:20in the Gulf
47:21that was aware
47:22of these plans.
47:23So when I went,
47:24resigned from the CIA,
47:26did not retire,
47:26I went to Beirut
47:28and simply being on the ground.
47:30These people told me
47:32that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
47:33was planning hijackings.
47:37It was the old Ramsey
47:39Yusuf group
47:40that blew up
47:40the World Trade Center.
47:41It was telling the president
47:43in August of 2001,
47:45we're going to have
47:46a terrorist incident
47:48inside the United States.
47:50I knew the CIA
47:51wasn't going to listen
47:53because they had decided
47:54nothing was going to happen.
47:56This is the way it works.
47:57They decide nothing's
47:58going to happen
47:58in the bureaucracy
47:59and then they don't want
47:59to hear any views outside.
48:01We failed
48:03to thoroughly examine
48:05all of those documents
48:06and to understand
48:06that they would keep coming back
48:08only their plans
48:09would get bigger.
48:10So whether it was
48:11the FBI's fault
48:12or the CIA's fault,
48:14regardless of how
48:15you want to put blame,
48:16it wasn't done well
48:17in that center.
48:18You know,
48:19putting money
48:19into incompetence
48:21is like adding gasoline
48:22to a fire.
48:25That's what happened.
48:26Everybody wants to talk
48:27about it as a complex
48:28of, oh my God,
48:29these people were geniuses
48:31and complex nonsense.
48:34It was done
48:35by a bunch of fools.
48:37But we couldn't imagine
48:39that they would have
48:40that much capability
48:41and that many people
48:42willing to commit suicide
48:43and set up a structure
48:45like that.
48:46We missed it entirely.
48:53The morning of September 11th
48:55finds George W. Bush
48:57in Florida
48:57taking his daily jog.
48:59He has just ended
49:00a five-week vacation
49:01on his Texas ranch.
49:03His brother,
49:04Florida's governor,
49:05invited him to kick off
49:06his new education campaign
49:08in the state.
49:09The president is kidding
49:10around with reporters.
49:12In an hour,
49:13he'll visit a school
49:14in Sarasota.
49:15At 8.47 a.m.,
49:17while the president
49:18jokes with the kids,
49:19his advisor gets
49:20a telephone call.
49:23The president
49:23of the U.S.
49:24and jokes with the kids,
49:48of her.
50:16The president
50:30Relive the past.
50:33Discover the rules.
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