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Michael Morell

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2016-11-14

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2016-11-14

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1. “Or disagree with policy, and they're going to take it out on us, and they have access to networks and access to information to do damage. That's the Edward Snowden story. That's the insider threat story. And it's a big, big issue. And there's a lot of policy that needs to get worked out with regard to cyber. This is a new domain. We have air, sea, land, and space. This is a new domain. We've got to figure out the norms around it. We got to figure out policy around it. That's just starting. And people have to put in place the best security they can. And it's a moving target because the offense always gets better and offense gets to move first. Think about that advantage. That's what's happening in cyber. So this is just a huge issue.”

   2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “There's terrorism, there's hacktivists, and then there's the most dangerous cyber adversary of all, which are the very people who work for us, who for some reason might get mad at us. And maybe they think that we're not promoting them fast enough, that we don't see their brilliance, that, you know, et cetera, et cetera.”

   2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Cybercrime now generates more revenue than the illicit drug trade. It's remarkable, but organized crime is in this in a huge way, and it's growing rapidly, and they're doing everything from locking up the photos on your personal laptop and sending you an email that says I'll unlock them for ninety nine dollars, and many people just pay it, to stealing corporate financial information and selling it to stealing credit card information from companies and either selling that credit card information on the black market or coming back to the company they stole it from and say, hey, we have this information, we'll give it back to you for $300,000. So cybercrime, the rate of return to cybercrime is astronomical. If it were a legal business, we would be investing in it.”

   2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Putin believes we are. In some sense, he feels he's responding to that, right? But we don't. The number of nation states with the capability to get inside networks, the capability to steal information from networks, and the capability to damage to networks is growing very rapidly because the tools you need to do those three things are increasingly available on the black market, on the deep web. You don't need to develop themselves. You can just buy them. So the number of nation states getting into this business is growing rapidly. Second, you've got organized crime.”

   2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Absolutely, and there's different sets of adversaries here. One set of adversary are nation states who use it to collect intelligence. Hey, guess what? So are we, who use it to prepare for cyber war someday? Hey, guess what? So do we. But some of these nation states also use it to steal intellectual property and give it to their firms to make them more competitive. We don't do that. And some of these countries, as we're seeing with Russia right now, use this information for what we would call covert action purposes, right, to try to change something somewhere, as we're seeing with Putin trying to interfere with our election. We don't do that. We don't try to interfere in other countries' politics. We really don't. Most people find it hard to believe, but we don't.”

   2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “So I think this is the second biggest threat facing our country at the moment, I think international terrorism is still number one, but I think this is the fastest growing threat, and it is likely to overtake international terrorism as the most significant threat.”

   2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “And I think he did it with the intent of protecting his organization and trying to keep his organization out of politics, but the effect has been just the opposite, right? And now people are questioning his integrity. They're questioning the integrity of the FBI. They're questioning whether this is an independent organization. I feel sorry for him, but he made the wrong decisions here.”

   2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “To do your job and that decision has political consequences. And what I've learned is that the best approach is to do it the way you always do it, right? Whatever the issue is, just do it the way you always do it and let the chips fall where they may and fall back on, always fall back on. Look, I just did my job. No politics in mind. And we did this the normal way. We didn't do anything differently. And back in July, when he stood up and said, we're not recommending prosecution, but then proceeded to prosecute her publicly and then went to the hill a number of occasions and answered questions about this. He went outside the norm.”

   2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “No, no, not at all. Not at all. I think he was trying to protect his organization. But as Eric Holder wrote in the Washington Post over the weekend in response to Comey's actions, people make mistakes. And I think Jim made a series of terrible mistakes here. Look, I've been in situations where you have to make a decision.”

   2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “And so it was stepping outside of that norm. It was also stepping into something I had never been involved in in my life. So it was not comfortable. It felt uncomfortable. I knew I was going to be attacked. And I knew the agency was going to be attacked. And not only would they attack me, they would attack the agency. In fact, the very day, my New York Times op-ed came out, Mike Pence said, well, what do you expect from an agency that gets everything wrong? So I knew the agency would be attacked. And so it was a big, big deal for me. But at the end of the day, I felt it was the right thing to do for the country. And I would do it again.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “And love the Institute of Politics. And they said to me, Don't you, you know, you feel really strongly about this. You have a responsibility to say something? And as the more I thought about that, I thought they were right. Now, this was a really tough decision for me for the reasons you said. Intelligence officers are supposed to be nonpartisan apolitical.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “My four years with her when she was Secretary of State I traveled with her to a couple of different places. I spent time with her in her office at the State Department, and I spent a lot of time, hundreds of hours with her in the Situation Room. And so I didn't think those capabilities were shining through. And I was sharing all this with my family and sharing all this with my young adult children.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “And there's a whole bunch of reasons why I believed it then, and I still believe it. And I also believed that That her capabilities to do the job were not shining through the tarnish that a life in politics puts on you. It's based on your observation. Based on my time with her.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “So going into The election, David, I had no intent to say anything about my preference for president. But as we got into the summer and as we got into the general election as the conventions came and went and we got into the general election campaign. I became deeply concerned about two things. One was that not only did I think that Donald Trump. Would not do a good job as president, I actually believe that he would be a threat to the nation. His really strong language, I just said.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “The president said, Michael, does this mean you wouldn't do this? And I said, No, no, no, no, I do it for a whole bunch of reasons. But, you know, I've never seen a president who is more thoughtful and listens as carefully as he does and takes the information on board as his thinking continues.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “So I answered his question and I said, Mr. President, I think people are washing all of this data through their experiences. So the counterterrorism people who since 9-11 have known nothing but success after success after success in stopping plots and taking terrorists off the battlefield are washing this data through that success. Me? I'm washing it through the Iraq WMD experience. In fact, I said, Mr. President, the case that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was stronger than the case that bin Laden is at Abadabad. A good friend of mine, Mike Vickers, who is in the room, said you could hear a pin drop.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “What are all the options for dealing with the body afterwards? And what are the upsides and downsides, right? So we did 15, 20 papers for him based on these questions he was asking. It was a particularly interesting moment in the sit room where We were talking about our confidence level that he was there, and we were talking in probabilities. What's the probability that he's there? The lead analyst from CIA said, I'm 95% sure. Her boss at CIA said he was only 80% sure. I said, I was only 60% sure. And the president turned to Dr. Panetta and said, why is everybody all over the map on this? And I was sitting behind the director against the wall, and Panetta turns around and looks at me and says, Michael.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “You know, I saw more of what I always saw, right, which was asking about every issue and wanting to know what we thought about every possible issue from How do we deal with the Pakistanis in the aftermath? This is a place where we actually thought through that, right? How do we deal with the Pakistanis in the aftermath of this? What do we do with the body? What are the upsides?”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “So there was a whole bunch of problems with that. One was you would never know. You'd kill a bunch of women and children in the compound. Three, you would definitely kill a family that lived across the street that had absolutely nothing to do with the compound. And four, because precision munitions do not always fall where they're supposed to, you'd probably kill other people in the neighborhood as well. And you wouldn't get the chance to get any intelligence that might happen to be there. So for a lot of reasons, that was a bad option. The only good upside of that option was you wouldn't put U.S. troops at risk. So, the president ultimately picked what I thought was the best option, but it was the option that put U.S. servicemen at most risk. which was the ground operation.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Exactly. So, you know, there were four or five options and all of them had upsides and downsides. For a while I thought the president was going to pick the airstrike option, a couple of B2 bombers just wiping the place off the face of the planet.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “Through a series of continuing meetings with him, and that additional intelligence led the analyst to conclude that there was a strong possibility that bin Laden was being harbored at this compound in Abad. Those were pretty much the exact words. So in late in the year, late in 2010, the president ordered us to consider the options for taking action. And at first he said we should only do that, but then he said, no, reach out to DOD and finally bring them into this. And we did. And Bill McCraven, who was then the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, and we worked very closely on these various options. Over the next few months, the options were, the various options were briefed to the president.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Telling you this kind of stuff. And they had followed a guy there who we knew was once close to Bin Laden. So we took all of this to the president in September of 2010 and told him all this, didn't tell him that we believed that we had concluded bin Laden was there, but it was a possibility. The president gave us two orders He said, number one, find out more about what's going on in that compound. Number two, don't tell anybody. Don't tell anybody this. Nobody knows this except the people in this room and the people at the agency who you need to tell to get the job done. Don't tell DoD, don't tell State Department, don't tell anybody. This is the most closely kept secret in my 33-year career. So we gathered more intelligence over the next few months and kept the presence.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “It was one of those leads that started way back in 2002 that never the thread never ran out. It just kept getting us to a different place. And in August of 2010, my counterterrorism guys walked into Director Panetta's office and told us that they had found this incredibly unique compound. And when they told us about the compound and its amazing security features, twelve to eighteen foot walls topped with barbed wire, a house with very few windows, a terrace that had a concrete wall so you couldn't see in or out of the terrace. The compound was sectioned off so it wasn't easy to move from one place to another. There were two gates you had to go through to get in. It was the only way into the compound. The hair started standing up in the back of your neck when they're...”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “So, this was This was one of the defining experiences of my career. From the moment we lost bin Laden in January of 2004 when he slipped out of the mountains of Torabor in Afghanistan and went into Pakistan, we followed every lead that we ever got on him. And there were hundreds of leads.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “We were seeing these demonstrations and protests in many, many different places in the Muslim world as a result of this video. So when one happens in Benghazi, right, when there's, and we said that this was a protest, right, that turned violent. That's what we said. We were wrong about that, but that's what we said. So in that context, it's not unreasonable for people to conclude that a video caused this. The second point I'd make is the only guy ever arrested for this attack, Abu Katala, who was grabbed in Libya and brought to the United States and is going to be tried in the United States. Abu Katala says that there were two things that motivated the attack. One of them, he said, was the anti-Muslim video. So it turns out that both Susan Rice and Secretary Clinton were right about what they said.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “So what we said, we did not say that the video precipitated the attack. What we said was that Benghazi was caused by people in Benghazi watching what happened in Cairo, which was precipitated by the anti Muslim video. That's what we said. There were, as a result of this parable of”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “And there are many, many different things that precipitate terrorist attacks. So those two things are not inconsistent. Second, Susan Rice was criticized for saying the attack was precipitated by an anti-Muslim video. Secretary Clinton was criticized for saying it. Guess what? It turns out that it probably was. It turns out that it was a reasonable thing to conclude at the time because”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “So my sense is that the criticism of Secretary Clinton on what she said to the families of the fallen about what precipitated the attack is Is very unfair. You know, she's criticized for telling the families that the attack was precipitated by the anti Muslim video and telling Chelsea in an email that it was a terrorist attack. And somehow this is seen as her being deceptive, her lying. Here's what's interesting number one number one those two things are not inconsistent, right? It was a terrorist attack, absolutely. We saw it as a terrorist attack”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Always. And so, you know, the way his mind works, and I don't know if you saw this, but the way his mind works and his trying to understand every possible angle means that decision-making is sometimes slow. And I think that's the downside. And I saw that on a number of issues. But I found him to be much more introverted than President Bush. You know, I found him, but I found him to be as equally interested in intelligence and equally a good consumer of intelligence. I saw him at policy. I saw this brilliance at policy meetings over and over. I saw when there were disagreements in the room that he was able to find not a consensus solution, but he was able to find A solution to which everybody could agree. And I think that's a remarkable trade in an executive. And I thought he had that”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Yes, so it's, you know, he sees complexity. He understands complexity in a way that I've never seen in any other president. I think the weakness, right? I mean, your weaknesses, what's interesting about people and organizations is your weaknesses slow from your strengths.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “Yes, that will take care of any problems, right? Any crimes committed by our guys, right? They're not going to get tried in your system. They're going to get tried in our system. That's essentially what the status of forces agreement is.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “No, he would not agree to the status of forces agreement that we have everywhere else in the world where we put our community forces.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “To take on the Sunnis, to disenfranchise them at every turn. You know, as soon as we left, he put out an arrest warrant for his own vice president, SUNY vice president. And he drove, right? His behavior drove moderate SUNY's into the hands of the extremists.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “So, I think it would have been harder for Al Qaeda in Iraq to bounce back. I'm not sure that it would have prevented its bounce back and the ultimate rise of ISIS, but it was certainly a contributing factor. Less because of the role, this is really interesting, less because of the role that the US military played in keeping AQI, Al-Qaeda, and Iraq under pressure, and more because when the US military left the country, Maliki felt that he had a free hand, right? That he had a free hand.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “There's a lot, as you know, David, there's a lot more to democracy than just voting and elections. And the rest of that has to develop. And it takes time. And it can't be imposed from the outside. I think what we need to ask for in these countries is good governance is delivering to the people what it is they need and push for that and let democracy come when it may. Even if it may be.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “We should learn that there is a timetable that makes sense for every country in terms of getting from where they are today to some semblance of democracy that I do think at the end of the day brings more stability than less. But there's a timetable. You can't impose it overnight. Look what happened in Gaza when we pushed for free and fair elections. The most organized group in the country Hamas became the leaders in Gaza. Look what happened in Egypt when we pushed for free and fair elections after Mubarak fell, the most organized group in the country took power. The Muslim Brotherhood because organization, as you know, is everything in politics, right?”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “So it is not impossible that us Saddam still in power would have had weapons of mass destruction eventually. The other thing that's not impossible to think is that a rock would have faced the same kind of Arab Spring revolt that Libya faced and Syria faced and Yemen faced and Egypt faced. So it's not impossible to think that had we not gone to war in Iraq that the situation in Iraq today could just be just as unstable as it is with weapons of mass destruction. So when you think about the counter history, it doesn't necessarily take you to a better place.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “So clearly our going to war and the policy decisions, the depthifications we made in the first couple of months after military operations were reportedly over. That led to considerable instability. It led to the rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which ultimately changed its name to Isis when it marched into Syria. So it definitely played a role. Here's what I think is interesting to think about, and this is not a defense of what President Bush did. If we had not done that, the situation could actually be worse than it is today. How? Saddam's plan, Saddam got rid of his weapons, he had his weapons programs, he got rid of them because he wanted the sanctions to go away because they were strangling him. His intent all along was once the sanctions were gone that he would reestablish his programs.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “saying that anybody who was a member of the Bath Party could never serve in government again. We made it much worse. So I don't think we did our job particularly well in helping him think about the aftermath.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “Generally, right? You know, we never wrote a piece that said, Mr. President, we're going to win this thing pretty easily from a military perspective, but it is going to be real hard to keep the peace afterwards, right? There was a reason Saddam Hussein ran the place the way he did, right? He needed to run it that way to keep it together. So it's going to be, we never wrote that piece, right? There was never any policy discussion about what do we need to do in the aftermath, right, to keep this thing together. In fact, we actually made policy decisions that made it worse.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “And I think one of our failures, as well as one of the administration's failures, was in not thinking through what happened the day after So we never wrote anything that said”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “I don't know, I don't know, right? I don't even know see the mistake David that we made on Iraq WMD was not the judgment we came to. If I would bring all the intelligence we had into this room and put it on this table and you went through it, you too would come to the judgment that we came to that he had all these programs. Our failure was in not saying that we had little confidence in that judgment because there wasn't a lot of information. The information we had was dated. The information that we had was largely circumstantial. So the mistake we made was not saying, Mr. President, we think he has these programs. What you really need to know is that we don't have high confidence in this. Had we said that to him, we still may have gone to war given what I think his psyche was, right, about the possibility of these weapons being shared with terrorists.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “In public on Sunday shows, would go a little bit further than what we said, right? So he would say that they're working, actively working on a nuclear weapon. It's not what we said. We said they were reconstituting their program. It's different. On the terrorism side, he said the opposite Of what we actually believed. He said there was a relationship. And so he went in a completely different direction than we did. And to this very day, he talks about a relationship between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Simply wasn't there. In fact,”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “So we had two main judgments. One was that he had, Saddam had weapons of mass destruction program. So he had chemical weapons. He actually physically had them. He had the ability to make biological weapons. And he was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program, which we knew he had previously. And he had the missiles to deliver all that stuff. So that was the WMD argument, right? And then our other judgment was that there is no relationship at all between Iraqi intelligence, the Iraqi state, and Al Qaeda, zero. Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. They had no foreknowledge of it at all. They had nothing to do with 9-11. So on the WMD issue, the vice president frequently”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “With the intelligence community telling him two things about Iraq one, that they had active weapons of mass destruction programs, and that they had relationships with terrorists, not al Qaeda, but relationships with other terrorist groups largely Palestinian anti Israeli groups. And while we didn't think it was likely that he would ever share these weapons of mass destruction with those terrorist groups, we couldn't rule it out either. So I think it was the combination of what happened on 9-11 and his concern that Saddam could give weapons, could possibly give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists that would make 911 look small in size. That's what I think took him to war. We were wrong about the weapons of mass destruction and a fascinating story about how we ended up being wrong.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “So, I spent a lot of time with the president between September 11th and January fourth, 2002, which was my last briefing, and then I saw him occasionally after that. But I was a senior CIA official at the time, so I spent a lot of time working on the Iraq issue. I believe that what took him to war in Iraq, and it may be different for others, for the vice president and the secretary of defense and the deputy secretary of defense. But I think what took George Bush there. The combination of two things was the combination of what happened on 911, the largest single attack in American history on our homeland. And his personal belief that the most important job of a president is to protect the country, and therefore he failed in protecting the country on 9-11, deep in his heart, right?”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Was for the president. Exactly. On the flight back to Andrews, the CIA sent me some intelligence that they had just received from a foreign government. So we have great relationships with foreign intelligence services. Foreign intelligence ser Happened today was only the first wave. There's a second wave coming, so you can imagine me presenting this information to the President of the United States who had just gone through Biggest attack in American history and hear his intelligence briefers telling him that this could be the first wave of.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “At this time, we know about all the planes, all the planes had been grounded. And so we know all of that. Another example of the intensity of doing my job was on the flight from Offit back to Andrews.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “He then said to me, When will we know? It's another kind of question you get from a president. When will we know? And so what I did was I replayed in my mind very quickly how long it took us to know who was responsible for the various other attacks against the United States. So the African embassy bombings, right? Two days, the coal bombing in Yemen a number of months, Kobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, a couple of years before we found out who was responsible. So I went through all of these for him. And I said, so the bottom line is we may know soon, or this may take some time.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “The kind of question you get from a president. And I said, Mr. President, I haven't seen any intelligence that takes us to the perpetrator here. But I'll offer you my opinion. And he said, I understand, get on with it. I understand your caveat, and I get on with it. I said, look, there's two countries that have the ability to do this, Iran and Iraq, but neither of them has anything to gain and they have everything to lose by doing something like this. So I don't think it's one of those countries. I think the trail will take us to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. I think it'll take us there. I said I would bet my children's future on it. I've never told them that.”

    2016-11-14 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 96 - Michael Morell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source