Former CIA Boss on Threats To U.S. One Year After Afghanistan Exit - Mo News

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Hi everyone,

We continue our coverage today of the one year anniversary of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal and its lasting implications. We bring you more from our conversation with former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell. He helped lead the fight against terrorism in the region for more than a decade, including the operation to kill Osama Bin Laden.

We brought you Part 1/3 of this interview on China and Taiwan last week. Newsletter | Podcast.

Today is Part 2/3 on Al Qaeda, terrorism and Afghanistan. Next week will feature Part 3/3--focused on Ukraine, Russia and Vladimir Putin.

Morell was the only person who was with both President Bush on September 11, 2001, and President Obama on May 2, 2011, when the operation to kill Bin Laden was launched. In this premium edition of Mo News, he takes us inside the Situation Room for a unique perspective on:

• How decisions to take out terrorists are made and what questions the president has asked him before making that decision

• Whether the U.S. is doing enough to keep our promise to the interpreters who stood by our side in 20 years of war

• How big of a threat Al-Qaeda poses today

• How the disastrous Afghan exit shifted America's standing on the world stage

• Does the resurgence of the Taliban increase the chances of another 9/11?

• And, why he is happy he no longer gets classified intelligence briefings!

☕️ But first, a few headlines this AM before our interview...

• Giuliani in the Hot Seat: Today, former Trump lawyer and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani will testify as part of Georgia’s investigation into 2020 election fraud allegations. Giuliani is now the highest-profile figure to be named a target of the investigation.Flashback: In December 2020, right after the election, Giuliani made numerous claims of voter fraud and questioned the legitimacy of Biden's Georgia victory.The subpoena for Giuliani read, “There is evidence that the Witness’s appearance and testimony at the hearing was part of a multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.” ~The HillNext up: Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will also testify on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election later this month. Graham is not a target in the investigation, but officials want to see what he knows about two controversial phone calls with Georgia election officials, where Trump demanded they “find the votes” to help him win.But wait, there’s more legal trouble for Team Trump: Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg is expected to plead guilty in a criminal tax fraud case in NY as soon as tomorrow, after reaching an agreement with prosecutors to enter a plea deal.The reported plea deal: If convicted, Weisselberg could face fines and a 15-year prison sentence. A plea deal would allow him to dodge a criminal trial, and spend just five-months behind bars. With time credited for good behavior, that could amount to just 100 days.In July of last year, the Trump Organization was accused of providing executives with lavish perks – and keeping them off-the-books so they weren’t taxed. Prosecutors deemed them "indirect employee compensation." Weisselberg is accused of evading taxes on $1.7 million in perks.

• Rep. Liz Cheney Loses Seat: The onetime Trump ally, who became one of his most ardent Republican critics, lost her primary on Tuesday after a long-shot bid to survive defying the former president.She said that the path to winning the Republican nomination for her House seat "was clear," but it would have required her to "go along with President Trump's lie about the 2020 election." She added: " It would've required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic...That was a path I could not and would not take." ~PBS

• Colorado River Cuts: For the second year in a row, drought-stricken Arizona and Nevada will face cuts to the amount of water they can use from the Colorado River. It’s forcing them to make difficult decisions about where to cut consumption – and whether to prioritize their state’s growing cities or agricultural areas.The Colorado River snakes through seven states: Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, California, and Arizona. It also flows into Mexico. It supplies water and hydropower to 40 million people and more than 5 million acres of farmland.

Map via CNN

• The threat: The Colorado River’s two main reservoirs — Lake Mead, the largest in the country, and Lake Powell — are experiencing historically low water levels… so low that they’re at risk of falling to “dead pool” status, meaning there isn’t enough water to generate hydroelectricity for the millions who rely on it.Experts say climate change, plus a population boom in the West – is at the core of the issue.Hotter temperatures = less snow melting in the spring, which reduces the amount of water flowing from the Rocky Mountains, where the river originates.A growing population = a growing demand for water supply.The good news: Congress’s fresh off the press climate bill sets aside $4 billion for drought relief funding, which will essentially pay farmers, communities, tribes, and businesses if they voluntarily cut their water usage.

• Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids: Yep, you heard that correctly. The FDA will soon allow hearing aids to be sold over-the-counter, without a prescription, to adults. So long, expensive exams – and even more expensive devices.The new rule will take effect in 60 days, which puts us at about October. Americans will be able to find over-the-counter hearing aids in drug stores and other retail stores – including online – by that time. No doctor or prescription necessary. ~NPR

• Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Biden signed the Democrats’ $740 billion spending bill into law Tuesday.The package is named the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ and will increase taxes on large corporations, fight climate change, and lower prescription drug costs.Biden has promised the bill will drive down inflation… but economists say it will only help inflation a little... if at all. UPenn's Wharton School of Business says "The impact on inflation is statistically indistinguishable from zero."What the legislation does do:Cap insulin at $35 for medicare recipients$370 billion for climate initiatives including tax benefitsImplement a 15% minimum tax rate on billion-dollar corporationsAllocate $80 billion to expand IRS enforcement

President Biden signs The Inflation Reduction Act | Getty Images

Now, to my interview with former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell. He spent more than three decades at the CIA, worked with multiple presidents, and is currently the host of the Intelligence Matters podcast and a senior national security contributor for CBS News.

Getty Images

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. The full audio of this interview is also available on the Mo News Podcast.

MOSH: I want to start with a headline that Ayman al-Zawahiri was brought to justice. Given how much of your time at the agency was devoted to Al-Qaeda, the global war on terrorism, how big a deal is that? Why did it take 21 years? What does it mean for you personally?

MICHAEL MORELL: I had a bunch of reactions Mosh. One was that this guy was the number two, in Al-Qaeda, for 9/11. He was part of the senior leadership of the group that that conceived and carried out 9/11. So bringing him to justice was, you know, important for all of us, but particularly for the families of the victims. You know, President Bush used to keep a chart of all those Al-Qaeda leaders who were in some way involved in 9/11, and he would cross them off as they were captured or killed. Zawahiri was the last guy who was significantly involved in 9/11, who had not been captured or killed. Now that chart is complete.

Thought number two was, despite the war in Ukraine, despite the pivot to China, the United States continues to focus on terrorism, and focus on Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and that's a good thing and that's important. So I was very glad to see that.

The third thought I had was that this is going to make life more difficult for Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan to achieve what it wants, which is to rebuild the organization. That was Zawahiri's goal, that will undoubtedly be the goal of his successor, and this will make that more difficult. It’ll take time to decide on a successor - that's time they won't be rebuilding. The new leader will transition from whatever position that person has now, to the leadership - there's a learning curve there, so that will slow them down. But most important is this sends a message to any Al-Qaeda member in Afghanistan, that they need to worry about their security. That's the most significant consequence of these targeted killings, is it sends a message to everybody that you have to worry about your security.

And I think, given the way that Zawahiri was behaving in this compound, walking out regularly onto a balcony, that he wasn't that worried about his security. And if you can make terrorists worried about their security, that's a lot less time they have to worry about rebuilding the organization and attacking you. So I thought about all of those things when I heard that Zawahiri had been removed from the battlefield.

MOSH: I found the headline remarkable that he was in Kabul, not far from the presidential palace, not far from the defense ministry. What does that say about what he was thinking, and what does that say about how the Taliban is ruling these days?

MICHAEL MORELL: The Taliban had repeatedly told us that Al-Qaeda was not in Afghanistan. And it was a lie when they said it. Al-Qaeda was fighting with them and, of course, it was shown to be a lie when we found Zawahiri in Afghanistan. And by the way, we just didn't find him in Afghanistan. We found him in a posh Kabul neighborhood. We found him in a very large compound, very large home, that’s reportedly the home of an aide to Suraj Haqqani. Suraj Haqqani is the Afghan Minister of Interior. He led the Haqqani group, which is the most violent part of the Taliban. The Haqqani group was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers in Afghanistan. And here Zawahiri was, right in the home of one of Suraj Haqqani's aides. So this just puts a final stamp to the lie that Al-Qaeda has been telling, that the Taliban has been telling, that Al-Qaeda is not in Afghanistan. Just ridiculous.

MOSH: What is Al-Qaeda these days? I mean, many of us who lived through 9/11, saw those attacks, saw their international reach, their capabilities...organizing these hijackers, planning this really remarkable attack.

In the years since, we've heard about the regional Al-Qaedas. Do you see them continuing to pose a significant threat...compared to what we saw on 9/11?

MICHAEL MORELL: Prior to 9/11, Al-Qaeda was really just in Afghanistan. And of course, they conducted the 9/11 attacks from there. After 9/11, a large group of them went to Pakistan, where they continued to plan, quite frankly, where they conducted the London bombings from, and where they did a lot of other planning from. A smaller group of them went to Iran, where they were put under house arrest. And a smaller group actually spread out around the world. Some of them went to North Africa, some of them went to Yemen, some of them went to Southeast Asia.

In the decade after 9/11, the strongest piece of Al-Qaeda was the Al-Qaeda group in that no-man's land between Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the U.S. spent a lot of resources degrading that group, and we used to call that Al-Qaeda core. That's the group that Bin Laden led. That's the group that Zawahiri led after Bin Laden was killed, so that group had been, I'd say, decimated by U.S. counterterrorism operations. They really haven't bounced back, but they were really hoping that the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan would give them an opportunity to rebuild that Al-Qaeda core.

Now, meanwhile, in the rest of the world, you have you have other Al-Qaeda groups that are tied to the main organization in Afghanistan, who still have significant capabilities, so you have you have something called Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, in North Africa, that regularly conducts local attacks. You have Al-Qaeda in Somalia called al-Shabaab, which many counterterrorism folks in the U.S. government will tell you is the most dangerous terrorist group in the world today. You know, there's a Somalia diaspora in the world that they can blend into, including in the United States.

MOSH: When you say most dangerous, you mean, international reach, you mean biggest attacks?

MICHAEL MORELL: Yes, international reach. They conduct a number of attacks in Somalia. There is a concern about their international reach. And then you have Al-Qaeda in Yemen, which was the strongest of the regional groups for a period of time, and has been weakened since. But you have to worry about it since Yemen is a failed state. It's no-man's land, there's a lot of room to maneuver for them there. So the regional affiliates are actually stronger than the cores. But the hope was that Al-Qaeda could rebuild that core in Afghanistan.

MOSH: Is there reason to believe, as Americans, that 21 years after 9/11, that Al-Qaeda has any capability to do anything like what they back then?

MICHAEL MORELL: I don't think it poses a threat to the homeland today, but it probably increasingly poses a threat to U.S. interests abroad, like that area outside Afghanistan. But if we allow it to rebuild in Afghanistan, they will eventually develop a homeland attack capability. That's why paying attention to what is happening there from an intelligence perspective, and then being able to reach out and action a target, like we just did with Zawahiri, is so important.

MOSH: When we spoke a year ago, you were very concerned about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, making it very difficult for us to maintain our level of intelligence and our capabilities.

MICHAEL MORELL: Yes...it is more difficult if you're not on the ground. But once you do find a target and you're able to take a drone there, then you're able to watch for pattern of life, and watch for the right moment to carry out your operation, so you don't kill civilians. But it's that (on the ground) intelligence that you need to take you to that particular spot.

MOSH: Take us inside how a decision to take out Zawahiri is made, especially given your experience with Bin Laden. How many people, how many years, how these assessments go to the President?

MICHAEL MORELL: You have to find the person at a particular point on the planet. We did that with Bin Laden. We obviously did that with Zawahiri. Once you find them with intelligence, then you are able to take any number of intelligence assets. In the case of Zawahiri, it sounds like it was primarily drones, and you're able to watch for long periods of time, to see what the pattern of life is. To see when the person is alone, to see when the person is not alone. To see who else might be with that person, what other senior Al-Qaeda leaders might be with that person. You're able to really study it.

And then at some point, you go to senior policymakers, and you say, 'here's what we have. Here's why we think this is Bin Laden, or here's why we think this is Zawahiri.' The senior national security leadership makes a decision on their confidence in the intelligence, and it makes a decision on which option that they want to pursue. In terms of Zawahiri, it sounds like people were pretty confident that it was Zawahiri coming out on that terrace. And it sounds like they didn't give a lot of thought to sending in a SEAL team to get him. It was pretty clear that the only way to do this without putting U.S. servicemen and women at significant risk, was to do a drone strike.

And then, once you make that decision, you want to minimize collateral damage. Because collateral damage can turn people against you, and make it more difficult in the future for you to carry out actions like this. It might even create more terrorists, at the end of the day. So you want to minimize collateral damage and it sounds like the administration spent a lot of time figuring out what's the right moment to take this strike so that we minimize collateral damage. That's basically the process.

MOSH: Take us inside the Situation Room. What types of questions has the President asked you when you brief? And how does that process work? And how do you give the President the assurance that this is the person and this is the right approach?

MICHAEL MORELL: Your job is not to assure them. Your job is to tell them what you actually believe. So in the case of Bin Laden, we didn't have direct evidence that he was there. It was just circumstantial evidence, and because of that, people's level of confidence that he was there was all over the map. You know, some people thought there's a 95% chance he was there, some people thought it was 80%. I was 60%.

And I remember the President asking CIA Director Leon Panetta, "Why are people all over the place on the probabilities that he's there?" And Leon turned to me and said, "Michael, can you answer the President's question?" And what I said was, "Mr. President, I think that people are watching these probabilities through their own experiences."

So these counterterrorism analysts who started working on Al-Qaeda after 9/11, when we've had nothing but success after success after success of stopping plots, of taking Al-Qaeda guys off the battlefield, they're watching it through that set of experiences of success. I'm watching it through the experiences of Iraq WMD, when we were wrong that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

And then I said, "Mr. President, one of the things you need to know is that the case that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction is even stronger than the case that Bin Laden is in that Abbottabad compound." So a friend of mine told me you could hear a pin drop in the room. So I wasn't assuring the President that he was there, I was just telling him what I thought. That's the job.

You know, he asked so many questions that we put together a really thick binder, with the answers to all the questions he asked. He asked, "If we capture him, what will be the impact on the group versus killing him?" "If we kill him, how do we bury him? Where do we bury him?" "What's the risk that the compound is booby trapped, if I send navy seals in there?” “I'm putting them at risk to begin with. But if the compound is booby trapped, I'm putting them at more risk." Hundreds of questions he asked, and we answered every single one of them - not to not to sell the operation, but to fully inform his decision making.

MOSH: You have such a unique lens into some of the most important decisions, if not the most important decisions, the Commander in Chief makes. From your vantage point, what are the most important characteristics a president needs to have...as voters make the decisions on who should be the Commander in Chief?

MICHAEL MORELL: I've never thought about that, actually. It's good question. Character, I think, is incredibly important. You're put into situations, particularly when you're speaking to the American public, where there's an incentive to not be fully forthcoming - and I think character is extraordinarily important when you're speaking with other foreign leaders, and you're talking to the American public about what it is you're doing.

I think character might be the most important issue. Two, is the intellectual curiosity to ask all those questions. The intelligence community, and the military, when they're briefing the President on intelligence or military options, are trying to anticipate questions, but you can't think of them all. And to have presidents who are really interested, and asking a lot of questions. President Bush did that, President Obama did that, I don't know about President Biden, but intellectual curiosity is really important, so you don't jump to conclusions too soon.

And then I'd say confidence, because only the hardest decisions come to a president. I've served on the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council. We made a bunch of decisions ourselves. And then the cabinet members, one level up from the deputies, they made decisions themselves. It was only those toughest decisions that went to a president, and the decisions that are going to presidents don't have easy answers.

So, at the end of the day, once you've asked all those questions, and once you've been fully informed, you got to make a call. You can't stall. So I think confidence, self-confidence, is also an important characteristic.

MOSH: When we spoke last year, you were concerned about how this made the U.S. look to adversaries and allies alike. You were concerned about what would be transpiring on the ground there. How do you look at things now, a year later? What is better than you thought it might be, and what is worse than you thought it might be, in terms of what unfolded last August and how it impacts us today?

MICHAEL MORELL: I think in general, we are where I thought we would be. First of all, this is not Taliban 2.0. This is the original Taliban in terms of how its governing, in terms of how it's dealing with its people, in terms of how it's dealing with women. I had no doubt that that they would welcome Al-Qaeda in the country, and they clearly have. Perhaps they would not be in favor of Al-Qaeda conducting attacks on the United States from Afghanistan, but they have certainly welcomed them back in the country.

MOSH: The Taliban made a whole bunch of promises last summer: this was the "new Taliban, we respect women, we're approaching this differently." And it turns out that they're the same as they were 20 years ago.

MICHAEL MORELL: Without a doubt. And I'd say the thing that surprises me is, I was concerned that once we left Afghanistan, we would lose our focus on Afghanistan. From an intelligence perspective, and our attention would go elsewhere. And I think the thing that made me perhaps feel the best about the Zawahiri operation was that concern on my part turned out not to be right. I'm glad I was wrong about that. That's really the only thing that surprised me so far.

MOSH: And as far as the images that we saw last summer - just the image of American weakness. The people running down the runway. The feeling that we sort of left with a tail between our legs. What is your sense of how that changed how our adversaries and allies look at the U.S. now?

MICHAEL MORELL: There's no doubt in my mind that when Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine, one of the things that was on his mind was our withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Both the decision to leave as well as the circumstances under which we left, and how weak that made us look-- there's no doubt in my mind that was a factor that. It was kind of, on the ‘plus’ side of the column, in terms of invading Ukraine. His expectation was that we were so weak that we wouldn't respond. So you know, he was wrong about that. But I'm sure the Chinese still see it as weakness.

MOSH: When we spoke last summer, you were expressing concern over some of the Afghans you had worked with, like interpreters, getting out the country. Where does that stand today? I understand there's still people who worked with the U.S. a year later who are still trying to get out of Afghanistan.

MICHAEL MORELL: I don't think we could cooperate with the Taliban on that. I think many of these people are hidden from the Taliban. But there is a very large number of people who worked for the U.S. government, in good faith, with a promise that they would be taken care of, who are still inside Afghanistan, and were not able to get out because of the circumstances under which we left. There are NGOs working very hard to get those people out. The U.S. government is supportive of the of those efforts, but we still have a way to go. We are limited in what we can do. I don't know everything that we're doing - I probably shouldn't know everything that we're doing - but I won't feel good about it until every Afghan who worked for us, who wants to leave, gets out.

MOSH: I understand Presidents are eligible for intelligence briefings, following their time in office. What about you? Are you privy to anything, Michael?

MICHAEL MORELL: No, I am not privy to anything at all. And you know, I like it that way.

MOSH: Why? Does it help you sleep better?

MICHAEL MORELL: I still have my security clearance, so current directors and deputy directors can talk to me and can confide in me, and they can ask me for my advice. That's why I have my clearances. There are some people who have clearances who go in and ask for briefings. I don't do that. And I don't do that, because I do things like this, right? And I have my own podcast, and I'm a commentator on CBS News, and I don't want the responsibility of having to differentiate between something that's classified and what I want to say publicly. So this way, I know that what I'm saying is based on open source information, and I don't have to worry about the whole classified thing. Makes me feel much better.

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