The CIA at War: Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror

Barnes & Noble.com: The CIA at War is a follow-up to your bestselling book The Bureau, which centered on the FBI. Why did you decide to write about "the Company?"

Ronald Kessler: The CIA is even more secretive than the FBI, and I like a challenge. When it comes to protecting us from another al Qaeda attack, the CIA is our first line of defense. Finally, because the CIA's role is so amorphous, ranging from recruiting spies to using Predator unmanned aircraft to kill terrorists, it can easily go off course. In the book, I explore what is right and what is wrong about the agency.

B&N.com: How has the CIA traditionally been used in times of war?

RK: The most important function of the CIA is to detect a planned attack before it occurs. But during the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, the CIA obtained intelligence about the enemy using everything from human spies to Buck Rogers sensing devices. Based on CIA intelligence, the Air Force bombed areas where Saddam Hussein was thought to be hiding. Unfortunately, he escaped.

B&N.com: What was the CIA's most embarrassing wartime blunder?

RK: The invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. It was incredibly stupid.

B&N.com: How would you categorize the tenure of current CIA director George Tenet?

RK: As far back as 1997, Tenet was warning publicly that Osama bin Laden was the greatest threat to the U.S. No one listened. Tenet focused the CIA on developing intelligence on al Qaeda. It was not enough. Since 9/11, the agency under Tenet has been extraordinarily successful, rolling up more than 3,000 terrorists with the help of other countries. Tenet reversed a trend under former director John Deutch of avoiding risk. The fact that we have not had another attack is directly traceable to Tenet at the CIA and Bob Mueller at the FBI. Most people who comment on the CIA don't know how it has changed since 9/11. Tenet gave me extraordinary access to the CIA, and I think most people will be amazed at what they are doing now.

B&N.com: The FBI and CIA have often had a difficult relationship. Are they doing better at cooperating during the war on terror?

RK: George Tenet's and Bob Mueller's biggest secret is that about every three weeks, they socialize at a Washington restaurant with their wives. Contrary to many of the media reports, the FBI and CIA are now working seamlessly at every level.

B&N.com: Did the CIA fail to detect the events leading up to 9/11?

RK: Yes. Ultimately, the way to detect such a planned attack is to penetrate the organization. As bin Laden said on a videotape, very few in his own organization knew of the planned attacks. So it's very hard to penetrate such an organization and find out what's going on, but it can be done.

B&N.com: Director Tenet recently took responsibility for not deleting the "sixteen words" in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address that alleged that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase African uranium. Was Tenet just being a good soldier in this instance?

RK: Yes. Tenet succeeded in deleting the reference from a previous speech by the president. Ultimately, it was the responsibility of Bush's national security staff to make sure everything relating to Iraq in the speech was solid. But the speech carefully attributed the information about Saddam Hussein trying to obtain uranium from Niger to British intelligence, and in fact the British MI6 still insists the information was accurate. When a British Parliament committee reviewed the MI6 intelligence in early September, it concluded the intelligence agency had good reason to come to that conclusion. Guess what? That finding was virtually ignored by the media in the U.S.

B&N.com: As this interview is being conducted, the troops have not yet located the massive inventory of weapons of mass destruction that Americans were told existed. Based on your discussions with Agency personnel, do you feel that there are WMDs still to be found in Iraq?

RK: Yes. It's common sense that people don't hide things unless they have something to hide. And Saddam Hussein was clearly hiding a lot. The CIA has found two mobile biological weapons factories that could have produced enough anthrax in a weekend to kill 60,000 people. As far as I'm concerned, that's enough reason to have taken out the Iraqi regime. In the new world where terrorists and rogue regimes can easily manufacture and use weapons of mass destruction, we simply can't hope for the best and wait until others attack us as they did on 9/11. That is the lesson of 9/11, and if we don't learn it, we will not survive.

Whether weapons of mass destruction are found, or whether Hussein relied on mobile labs to manufacture them overnight, is almost as relevant as whether a serial killer who reaches into the backseat of his car when an FBI agent orders him to keep his hands up actually has a handgun in the back. If the agent waits to find out, he may be shot dead.

B&N.com: It's been alleged that Vice President Cheney placed undue pressure on the CIA intelligence analysts to come up with proof that would justify the invasion of Iraq. Did Cheney attempt to politicize the agency?

RK: No. Cheney was trying to make sure the White House understood the CIA's intelligence and how good it was. The story that reported that some analysts considered his questioning to be "pressure" said in the third paragraph that other analysis welcomed the vice president's interest. If that point had been included in the lead of the story, do you think it would have been a page-one story? Moreover, no one has alleged that Cheney's questioning actually produced any changes in CIA intelligence.

B&N.com: What's the current CIA role in Iraq and Afghanistan, now that the major fighting in both countries has ended?

RK: The CIA is in charge of finding weapons of mass destruction and is also trying to locate Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. It has its hands full.

B&N.com: Your prediction: If George Bush is unseated in 2004, will DCI Tenet be asked to stay on the job?

RK: Traditionally, CIA directors change with administrations. Tenet could get a very high-paying job in the private sector. He has stayed on because he believes in what the CIA is doing, and he is loyal to George Bush. If Bush is not reelected, I think Tenet would want to leave.