The FRONTLINE Interviews
Ali Soufan
Author, The Black Banners
As an FBI supervisory special agent, Ali Soufan investigated high-profile international terrorism cases, including the events surrounding 9/11. He is the author of Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State and The Black Banners (Declassified): How Torture Derailed the War on Terror After 9/11.
The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Jim Gilmore on April 20, 2021. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Global Reaction to 9/11
We're going to begin with 9/11 and end up with Jan. 6.When Bush gets back into D.C., he gives a speech that night, and the speech is very much, "This is going to be a battle between good and evil."He talks about the fact that the United States will spread democratic values.The thing is, when you're listening to that speech, does he understand who the enemy is at that point?Does he and the administration really understand what this battle is all about?
I think that speech was, frankly, an amazing speech.I remember, I was listening to that speech in the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, and we were involved in getting the information that proved Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks.We had a great sense of mission at the time.The American people had a great sense of patriotism.We experienced domestic unity like we never experienced before.We experienced support from people from around the globe like we never experienced before.It was an essential speech.
The problem is not with the speech.The problem is what happened after the speech.
… One of the things that does happen is that soon after, the vice president defines a very different war that we're going to be fighting; that we're going to be fighting on the “dark side,” that a lot of it's going to be done in secret.And of course, this leads to a lot of the things that we will see to come.And it's 180 degrees away from the way that the president is defining the war.He's defining it that we will bring American democratic values to the world; we will beat back evil.Talk a little bit about the dark side, and when that was brought up, what was going on and what might be the consequences.
Well, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we finally responded, swiftly, against Al Qaeda and Taliban.However, unfortunately, we never finished the job, because we decided to go and invade another country that had nothing to do with 9/11.And because we wanted to do that, we started to implement techniques that are so un-American, some things that totally contradict with the mission of spreading values and human rights and democratic principles around the globe.We started to torture people so they can tell us that Saddam and bin Laden are working together; that Saddam have a WMD program.We created something called the dark sites.We started with Guantanamo Bay.
We were writing countries in our State Department human rights reports for waterboarding, for sleep deprivation, for actually doing the same exact thing that we as the United States government were doing at the same time.We lost our values.And we are still dealing with the consequences of this until today.
Guantanamo
Let's talk specifically about Guantanamo Bay.Guantanamo Bay is opened.How does the world see the symbolism of orange jumpsuits and the cages that these guys were put in and the planes where they were tied down.All of that, that symbolism, whatever they were doing, why were they doing it, and what's the blowback?How does the world view that?
Well, let's think about this way.We never had American citizens beheaded in orange suits until we put people in orange suits.That is the consequences of this image.That is the consequences of what we have seen in Abu Ghraib and other places.You know, the Pentagon and many generals testified in Congress that the number one reason so many foreign fighters were coming to Iraq during that time period, to join the insurgency, was because of the images they'd seen in Abu Ghraib.
But as far as Guantanamo, keep it to Guantanamo for a second, when you saw those images, what did you think?
You know, initially, Guantanamo was a necessary evil.We need to get these people from the battlefield, take them to a location to sort through them and see who's good, who's bad, who's ugly, who has blood on their hands.But unfortunately, after a year or two, that place just became evil.It's not necessary anymore, and we didn't have the judgment to actually pursue any kind of prosecutions or recruitment or doing anything with these detainees there.We just put them there and hoped that everybody will forget about them.
And the imagery?The orange jumpsuits, the cages.How did that affect, for instance, the Muslim world?How did it affect Al Qaeda?
Orange jumpsuits became a symbol.They became a symbol of tyranny, symbol of oppression, especially in the Muslim world and in the Middle East.We start seeing terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS kidnapping Americans, putting them in orange jumpsuits and beheading them.And that did not happen until we put people in orange jumpsuits in Guantanamo Bay.
When Afghanistan started, we had the world basically working with us, the allies.NATO jumped in, Russia.Even Russia was supportive of what we were doing.We had a potential that we to some extent squandered.How did the dark sites, Gitmo, some of the tactics that we were using, how did that affect our allies?How did that affect the world's support for what we had?Did we squander a new world order basically that was being established?
Well, torture significantly damaged the United States and our—our values, you know.We always talk about, we are the good guys; we are the people who are fighting the evil in the world, if it's the evil empire or the evil of Al Qaeda.And here we are, basically doing every thing that we claim we stand against.But in the same time, we're telling the world, "Don't do what we do.We can only do it because if we do it, we don't call it torture; we call it enhanced interrogation techniques.If we do it, it's OK because the United States don't torture, so if we actually torture, then it's not torture."
We lost a lot of credibility around the world.We lost a lot of credibility among our allies before our enemies.We lost hearts and minds in war, where hearts and minds is the most essential component of gaining a victory.We had a lot of tactical successes in the aftermath of 9/11.We had tactical successes militarily.We had tactical successes with law enforcement and intelligence.We have even tactical successes in foreign policy.But all these tactical successes resulted in a big, giant strategic failure.
Talk a little bit about the difference between the CIA and the FBI's view of interrogation and such. …
A lot of people think it was an FBI versus CIA. It wasn't.It, you know, the FBI, the CIA, the military, we're all, you know, we're all Americans, and we have the same values.And we took an oath, you know, to protect the same Constitution.But I think there was a view in Washington, and Langley and other places, that we need to move away from traditional interrogations or from the traditional way of doing things and start new programs.And they hired outsiders in order to implement what they called enhanced interrogation techniques.But at the time, there was a focus that if any intelligence or any information did not come from enhanced interrogation techniques, it did not come from torture, then it is not accurate.
And they wanted to do torture.They wanted to do enhanced interrogation techniques in order to get what they want to hear.Give you an example: There is the very first high-value detainee that was picked up in '02.His name is Abu Zubaydah.He wasn't even a member of Al Qaeda.We knew he was not member of Al Qaeda.People in the FBI and CIA that had been working Abu Zubaydah knew that he was not a member of Al Qaeda.However, some analysts in the CIA decided that Abu Zubaydah is the number three in the organization.President Bush was happy about that and he spoke with the American public about this victory, that we arrested the number three in the organization.
So when we were talking to Abu Zubaydah and he's giving us actionable intelligence about operations that they were planning to do and we were disrupting that, they still believed that he is not being cooperative.Why?Because he did not admit that he was the number three in Al Qaeda.So after 83 sessions of waterboarding, he finally admitted he's number three in the organization, which was a false confession.
So the reason we were against these kind of techniques, because first of all they are not effective.They damage our reputation.They serve as a recruitment rally for our enemies and our adversaries.But also at the same time, they create compliance, not cooperation.In compliance, people tell you what you want to hear.In cooperation, you get the truth.That is a big difference.
Failure to Capture Osama bin Laden
… Did the Bush administration seem to have a plan after Tora Bora, when they lost a lot of members of Al Qaeda, including bin Laden?What was going on there, and what were the consequences?
After Tora Bora, bin Laden escaped, but our operations did not stop.We continued to disrupt Al Qaeda's operations.We continued to disrupt their safe house networks, arrest many members of the organization who crossed into Pakistan and even disrupt plots that they were planning to do in other countries.But I think at the time, most of the focus on how are we going to get Osama bin Laden, I believe, was, you know, was in the basket of enhanced interrogation techniques and torture.
Invading Iraq
But the fact that we didn't get him and we turned our attention to Iraq, we turned our attention away from the main reason, the guy who did 9/11, and we start turning our attention to Iraq, what are the consequences about the way that we turned our attention to Iraq?
In the aftermath of 9/11, Al Qaeda was a dying breed.They lost a lot of credibility.They lost a lot of credibility in the Muslim world.Unfortunately, when we kept the job unfinished in Afghanistan and start to move resources to Iraq, we allowed Al Qaeda to have a breeding ground.We allowed the Taliban to regroup.We invaded a country against international law based on false premises, and we eventually gave Al Qaeda the new oxygen and the new blood they needed to reinvent themselves.
Before the invasion of Iraq, of course there was in January of '02, Bush made his famous “axis of evil” speech.Talk a little bit about the effects of this both on the world's view and on Al Qaeda—the idea that we were now going to war against multiple countries, the expansion of the war that that speech defined, what were the consequences, and how happy Al Qaeda must have been, and how the world viewed that and how we lost support because of it.
The axis of evil speech, frankly, created a lot of confusion.We in the field were confused.We thought our war was against Al Qaeda.We thought the war was against the people who did 9/11.Now we start to hear about Iran and about North Korea and about Iraq.I think that created a sense of confusion.And you don't want your troops, you don't want the people in the field who are doing the job to be confused about who is the enemy.
I think this is where we started to shift.This is where we started to harness the patriotism that existed at the time, the sense of loyalty and the sense of unity and the sense of support the United States got in the United States and, frankly, around the world, even among our adversaries.We took that and we tried to use it for, you know, short-term political goal or partisan objectives.
And the damage done?
Significant.You can make the argument that a lot of the problems that we deal with today, domestically and on the international stage, was a result of this time period.
Why?
Well, think about what happened after 9/11.Think about not finishing the job in Afghanistan and the implication that that had, not only on terrorism but also on the world.And in Afghanistan, we're still dealing with this until today.Think about what happened when we invaded Iraq based on false premises, when we basically disinformed, let's put it this way, the American public that Saddam and bin Laden were working together.Remember, on the eve of the Iraq War, 75% of the American public believed that Saddam had something to do with 9/11—75%.
When we start to usher the era of the never-ending wars; when we started to say to our allies, "Either you're with us or you're against us"; when we started to borrow trillions of dollars in order to pay for these wars and putting so much debt on future generations to pay; when we started to disinform again the American public about torture—remember, you know, we went to Iraq because supposedly torture gave us information that indicates Saddam and bin Laden were working together; when we started to build a security state and a surveillance state; when we started to look at “us versus them,” and even we brought this into the issue of immigration and we took immigration from Justice Department and put it under Homeland Security; when we started to use terrorism and the fear of terrorists as a partisan tool in our internal partisan politics, we created the environment that Donald Trump capitalized on.You know, Donald Trump didn't create this.Donald Trump capitalized on this.
The post-invasion period of time in Iraq.It seemed that we didn't have quite an understanding of how to handle that whatsoever.The way it was handled, how did that affect the growth of insurgency, especially when it seemed that the American forces had no idea who the enemy was or how to deal with it.
I think the invasion of Iraq gave an opening not only for Al Qaeda, but also for Iran, because Iran know Iraq very well, know the political and cultural and social dynamics of the Iraqi society, and they were able to take advantage of that situation using sectarianism, especially the relationship with the Shia who had been oppressed under Saddam.But in the same time, we did not know how to deal with the Sunnis.
Most of the, you know, Iraqi bureaucracy at the time in the military, security services, social services, education, everything was under the hand of the Baath Party.You need to be a member of the Baath Party in order to have a job.And one of the very first things we did, we said, "If you are a member of the Baath Party, you're not allowed to have any job in the Iraqi government."So basically, we destroyed, we dismantled the administrative state, and suddenly everyone who doesn't have a job, because at one point maybe he or she were forced to join the Baath Party in order to get the party, became an enemy.
So this policy allowed terrorists, allowed the jihadis to reach out to these people who used to be in the military or in the security services and recruit them into their rank.This kind of policy, it created a monster, a Frankenstein monster that half bin Laden and half Saddam, a monster that did not exist before we went to Iraq.But because of what we did in the aftermath of our invasion, that monster became a reality. That monster later became ISIS.
And aided, of course, by our prisons, by imprisoning many innocents, as well as people that were insurgents.It became basically a college for the insurgency.
The lack of knowledge, the lack of experience on what we're dealing with in Iraq resulted in us helping the Salafi jihadis, helping [Abu Musab al-Zarqawi], helping Al Qaeda in Iraq to recruit a lot of the nationalist Baathists from the military and from the security services.We used to take everyone and put them in the same detention facility; it's called Bucca Camp.Bucca became a place where the jihadis and the nationalists started to meet each other.The nationalists, Baathists looked at the jihadis and they said, "Wow, those guys are crazy enough; we need them in battle."The jihadis looked at the nationalists and the Baathists and the former officers in Saddam's army and said, "Wow, those guys are strategists, and they know the art of war; we need them in our revolution."And then they started to coordinate.They started to meet each other.They started to take each others' contacts so when they left Bucca, they were getting together and joining the insurgency.
Bucca, in the literature of ISIS, is called the “jihadi university.” This is where all of them met.Most of the top leaders, including [Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi], and mostly everyone in the Shura Council of ISIS were an alum of the Bucca university.
Talk a little bit about that famous November '04 speech by bin Laden that he gave to Al Jazeera.He laid out in that speech and in other speeches how he foresaw America being bogged down in Iraq, that he foresaw, as he put it, a "death by a thousand cuts."Talk a little bit about the savvy of bin Laden in his decisions made on 9/11 and afterwards about what he was intending to do to the United States and how we kind of walked in to a trap.
We walked into a trap on so many different level.I remember in Afghanistan when we were arresting, you know, people from Al Qaeda, one leader in the organization who has been with Osama bin Laden since his time in Sudan told me, "When are you going to invade Iraq?"And I was laughing at that suggestion, like, "Why are we going to invade Iraq?"He said, "Oh, you will invade Iraq because the prophet predicted that.The prophet had predicted that there will be a war to fight over the black gold under the Iraqi rivers.So this is going to happen, and that will be the beginning of your end."
So there is this kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy that maybe bin Laden and a lot of his, you know, dedicated followers believed in.So—but unfortunately, we walked in exactly what they thought we're going to do.
How delighted was bin Laden in the fact that we turned to Iraq?
Well, think about it.Bin Laden and his narrative and his plan was a dying breed in the Muslim world.After the Iraq War, he said, "See?I told you so.It's not about 9/11.It's not about us.It's not about Al Qaeda.It is about dominating the Muslim world.It is about war against Islam.It is about stealing the wealth of the Muslim world.That's what America is all about."
And that was a very appealing message to so many people around the Muslim world at the time.So we went from bin Laden being a dying breed—nobody, you know, believed in what he's saying after the atrocities of 9/11—to say, "Well, you know, this guy might be right about something here."
Abu Ghraib
Then in April of '04, the imagery from Abu Ghraib comes out.… Talk about Abu Ghraib.
I think, you know, with our most unilateral invasion of Iraq, we sent a message to the people around the world and to our allies basically: “We are in an era where either you're with us or you're against us.” And a lot of people were kind of frustrated with this new position of the United States.That's not what the United States is all about.
But the images of Abu Ghraib sent an even more disturbing message, that America is not the country that we used to think it is.It's not about human rights; it's not about democracy.America is doing what dictatorships do, what Saddam used to do in his prisons.That was shocking, and that fed into the narrative of the insurgency, into the narrative of Osama bin Laden.
Osama bin Laden said that America will come and try to humiliate Muslim men.American women will humiliate Muslim men.And that's exactly when the images of Abu Ghraib told the world.Definitely it was—it was an amazing gift to Osama bin Laden.
And that basically helped Al Qaeda, helped the insurgency in Iraq to find a lot of support not only inside Iraq, but also outside Iraq.This is when we start seeing a pipeline of foreign jihadis coming from all over the world, from Europe, from North Africa, to join the insurgency in Iraq.
Most of the stormtroopers for Zarqawi at the time were not Iraqis, they were Libyans and were Tunisians and were other Takfiris that came from North Africa, who hated Al Qaeda when they were in Afghanistan because they don't see eye to eye with the ideas of Al Qaeda.But then they became fighters under Al Qaeda's banner against the United States and against our allies in Iraq.
How did the oblivious decisions made, oblivious movement and decisions made in Iraq come back to create the problems that continue to be repeated over and over?One person said—and give me your opinion on this—to some extent we were oblivious to the idea that we were walking into a 40-year-old religious war that we had no idea about.And that was part of the bigger picture of how ignorant we were of how to deal with this enemy.We didn't know who the enemy was.We didn't understand what the motivations were.We didn't understand the Middle East almost at all.
I think the problem with this, we had a lot of people in Washington who understand these kind of things.But at the time, nobody wanted to listen to experts.Nobody wanted to listen to people in the State Department or the CIA or the military or the FBI, whoever they are, who know the subject matter, because people wanted to get on their desk what they want to hear.They don't want an honest assessment of what's going on on the ground.And that was so obvious not only in Iraq, but also before in Afghanistan.We believed our press clippings, and we started to build policies based on our press clippings, not based on the reality on the ground.
Sun Tzu said, "If you know your enemy and know yourself, you will win 100 times in a 100 battles."So here we have a situation where we have no idea who our enemy is, but in the same time we've kind of forsaken everything that we know about ourself, and that resulted in a disaster.
Legacy of the Bush Years
So the legacy of the Bush wars, post-9/11, what's the overview, succumbing to, to some extent, the politics of fear and division, the consequences of Bush's wars after 9/11?
A lot of tactical successes, big, huge strategic failure, a failure that we continue to deal with domestically and on the international stage.
There's a moment when he's almost out of office, and he goes for his final visit to Iraq, and there's a press conference with [Nouri al-Maliki] at the end, and someone throws a shoe at him.It's an imagery that we will use in the film.Tell us a little bit about what the meaning of that was, the idea of this rage against America that we had grown.That was one moment where that rage was seen in a way that leadership in America did not understand.
That moment summarized the feeling in Iraq about our presence there.That summarized the anger and the anguish that Iraqi people had suffered because of that invasion.You know, look, Saddam was a bad man, right?But I think everything that we did in the aftermath of that invasion fed into our enemies, fed into our adversaries, fed into creating a big, huge base for Iran in Iraq, giving Al Qaeda and Salafi jihadis’ organizations another life, messing up the Middle East as we know it, and until today, continue to deal with the consequences of this, not to mention leaving Afghanistan without finishing the job, and we're still also dealing with the consequences of this until today.
So now we have a situation where the narrative of Al Qaeda is not defeated.The narrative of ISIS that we created in a way because of the invasion of Iraq was not defeated.The Middle East is not an oasis of democracy and freedom and liberty, and the position of the United States on the world stage is very weak because for the last 20 years, we have been focusing on how to arm drones, how to get involved in small, little, you know, problems here and there and focusing on never-ending wars without any idea on how we can use the diplomats and how we can create diplomatic solutions for these wars, focusing on a lot of these issues and how we can capitalize on—focusing about all these complex situations and see how we can capitalize on it here in the United States for short-term partisan gains while China and Russia and Iran and Turkey and so many other countries around the world taking advantage of that and building their own—their own powers, regional powers or international powers.
We allowed this to happen because we were not paying attention.We allowed a lot of the domestic problems we happen—to happen because either we created it or we were not focused on the threat.So when countries like Russia or China or whoever use this information against our people, they are using this information against us because our government at one point used it against us.When American, you know—when the American public or big portions of the American public believes in these conspiracy theories, believes that probably there is a deep state, believe in—in a lot of these lies that create distrust between the institutions and the public, they do that not because of the Russians, not because of the Chinese; they do that because of what they experienced in the last 20 years.How many times they were lied to about wars?How many times they were lied to while we violated our values?How many people were held accountable for 9/11 or for torture or for the economic collapse?Zero.
So please don't blame the public when they start to believe the lies of adversaries.We helped to create the environment that made it fertile for this, for these lies to grow and spread in our own society.
The Obama Years
Let's back up to the chronology that we're doing and talk a little bit about when President Obama comes into power.There is a great hope for him.The world saw him as maybe the opposite of Bush, that he would clean up some of the mess that had been made.Talk a little bit about Obama and how he viewed the war, what his hopes were on what he could do, for instance, in Afghanistan.And the question comes up, of course, did he learn the right lessons from post-9/11 and from Bush, or was he hamstrung in some way by the decisions that were already made?
I think the Obama legacy, when it comes to Al Qaeda and 9/11, will always be that he is the one who killed Osama bin Laden and it happened, you know, under his command.But also on the same time, when Obama took office and he wanted to deal with a lot of these issues, right, from the legacy that he inherited from the Bush administration, we have to put it also in the context of the hyperpartisan politics that was going on, especially after he was elected.
So in a way, I think the administration was very limited in its options in Afghanistan.In order to have an effective engagement in Afghanistan, you need to first engage with the Afghani [sic] government, but also engage with the Taliban.That, under Obama, was a no-no.Remember when he exchanged a couple of the Taliban leaders and they sent them overseas, and all these things happened, the political storm, the partisan storm that took place at the time in the United States?So he was very limited, and he could not get away with any of these kind of things like Trump did when he started the negotiating with the Taliban.
Also on the same time, if you want to engage and have a really strong, you know, political solution in Afghanistan, before we leave Afghanistan, we have to include Pakistan; we have to include Russia; we have to include China; we have to include Iran.We can't just negotiate with the Taliban and leave.That is like negotiating, you know, with—with the Communists in Vietnam before we left.This is not how it works.Eventually the Taliban is going to look at this as a win, and they're going to take over—take over the country.
So Obama's options were very limited, and I believe that he was chained to the—to the partisan politics in America, and he wasn't able to take the decisions that he needed to take at the time.
What were his initial hopes on Afghanistan?Of course, during the campaign, he sold that as the “good war” and Iraq as the “bad war.” What were his initial hopes?
Well, I think everyone in America believed that the Afghan war is a good war and the Iraq war is a bad war.We went to Afghanistan because 3,000 Americans were killed on 9/11, so it is the good war.But how do we finish that good war?Do we finish it victorious, or do we finish it in defeat?And this is the $10 million question.
And Obama?How did he see it?When he walked in the door, how did you perceive his possibilities of accomplishing the things he talked about?
I think he probably wanted to move out of Afghanistan, trying to move out but move out in conditions that won't allow the Taliban to take over the country again.
And part of that is to negotiate—to negotiate with the Afghan government and to negotiate with the Taliban.And—but I don't think—I don't think the political situation in Washington allowed him to do that.
Somebody told us that this was not a war of attrition, but it was a war of inattention, that what they were trying to do was basically stall until they could build up the Afghans and the Afghan politics and the Afghan military to take over.How do you see it?
I see it as intellectual laziness in D.C., and I see it as the laziness of the politicians and diplomats.Look, the military did a great job in Afghanistan; we have to admit that.There is no objective that they didn't meet with great success.But the problem, it's not the military's job to create political solutions, to create that social contract between the different entities in Afghanistan, to create some sort of peace not only between the Afghani factions, but between all the regional powers that support each and every one of these Afghani factions.This is not the job of the military.
So what Washington did, they kept kicking the can down the road, putting it in the hand of the military and hoping the condition will change.But our policy in Afghanistan continued to be the same policy from day one.You know, we changed a little bit of colors here, a little bit of little lines here, but the policy itself is the same policy that we repeated 20 times, and every time we expected different results.
The turn to drones, to targeted killings, to killing off the No. 3’s constantly of the Al Qaeda leadership.Why did they turn in that direction, and how effective was it?
Look, the drone is an effective tactic, but the drone is not a strategy, right?
So if we have a person who is very dangerous or a group of people who are planning a terrorist attack and they are faraway, you know, it will be very dangerous—you know, it will be very dangerous to send the troops to deal with the situation.Yes, send the drone and get rid of the threat, you know.So you can accomplish your tactical objective.But when we start thinking of a drone as the answer to all problem, terrorism, this is when we failed.And the drone can kill individuals, but the drone cannot kill an idea.A drone cannot kill an ideology, cannot kill a message, cannot kill a narrative.So every time we kill someone, 10 people came to take their position.
So the consequences on the Muslim people, on the Afghani [sic] people, on Al Qaeda, what were the consequences of this strategy?
The initial consequences, frankly, was very negative, because the drone, you know, strategy or the drone tactic wasn't very accurate, so we ended up killing a lot of innocent civilians, sometimes, you know, bombing a wedding by mistake and so forth.And I think everybody heard these stories.
But later on, it became more precise, and it damaged Al Qaeda greatly.I mean, they were really scared of the drone.It kind of like disrupted their operations.But again, this is only a tactic; it's not a strategy.We never were able to counter the ideology.We never were able to counter the narrative.We never were able to counter the tribal conditions that allowed Al Qaeda to function in particular regions or to create alliances in other regions.We didn't do any of these things because we said, "You know what?We can drone them."
Killing Osama bin Laden
… You talked a little bit about Osama bin Laden, the killing of him.By the time it had happened, though, was it significant?
Yeah, absolutely.I believe it was very significant.A lot of people thought that Osama bin Laden was kind of like far away, hiding; he does not know what Al Qaeda is doing; he's irrelevant.And frankly, if you look at the documents that were found at his house, he was in total command of the organization.He was micromanaging not only Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but also he was micromanaging the affiliates.He was involved in what Shabab should do or should not do in Somalia.He was involved in even negotiations with the French government that Al Qaeda affiliate in North Africa, in Sahel, was doing.And he was involved in the training manuals for Al Qaeda, what kind of religious lessons do they learn or not learn; how to plan another attack against the West and against the United States; who's the enemy.He was involved in the details of the operation.He was able to shift Al Qaeda into affiliates, first of all to message.That message, you know, was able to kind of bring many affiliates from around the Muslim world under his umbrella.
… Let's finish up with Obama.Obama in Iraq, he basically really had wanted nothing to do with Iraq to begin with, and he eventually does pull out the troops, and he politically disentangles himself as well to some extent, with consequences: consequences of power vacuum; consequences that Maliki, who we kept in power, created another civil war, basically.And it allowed the potential for ISIS to grow again.Talk a little bit about the decisions made as far as Iraq during the Obama administration and what the unintended consequences were.
For Obama, Iraq was the bad war.For Obama, Iraq was the illegal war, and we need to get out of Iraq.And we got out of Iraq.But also, there was a heavy price to pay for us leaving Iraq, again, before finishing the job.We left Iraq, and then look what happened after: Maliki became extremely sectarian in dealing with everyone in Iraq to include a lot of the Sunnis who, as part of the Sahwa, were fighting alongside the Iraqi government and alongside the US against ISIS. Or it wasn't ISIS at the time; it was Islamic State in Iraq.And unfortunately, that fired back [sic]; that created a lot of anger among Sunni communities, and that later fed into the ISIS insurgency.
So there is a clear example what might happen when we do something without finishing the initial job first.And what happened after that we are responsible for.What happened before that also we're responsible for.It's exactly what Colin Powell said, the “Pottery Barn rule”: “If you break it, you own it.” Unfortunately, we own a lot of these problems now in the Muslim world.We own a lot of these problems in the Arab world.We own what's happening in Iraq and Syria and Libya and other places because it was us who started it, or allowed it at least to happen.
Did Obama learn anything from Bush and the legacy of Bush, how it comes to haunt him and how he seems to make his own mistakes that create a legacy which is equally as dire?
I don't compare them both together.I mean, like, Obama, for example, did not invade Iraq on false premises, right?I mean, probably there is other failures that he did in foreign policy, the way they, you know, allowed the Yemen war to happen and create the biggest humanitarian, you know, problem in the world today, or the way we dealt with the Arab Spring, the way we dealt with Libya or we dealt with Syria.
So there are a lot of other problems that you can blame on Obama, but I think it's a totally different legacy, and it's way more complicated than the George Bush legacy.Look, George Bush was able to unify the nation after 9/11, right?And we give him credit for that.George Bush led the attack against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and we give him credit for it.But unfortunately after that, we started to see a big shift about going to Iraq and about the Iraq invasion.And unfortunately, a lot of these, you know—and unfortunately, there were very dire consequences for going to Iraq.And that became his legacy.He did a lot of good things, but the war in Iraq erased many of the good things that he did early on in fighting terrorism and fighting Al Qaeda and—and attacking those who were behind the attack on Sept. 11 20 years ago.
Obama’s Legacy
And Obama's legacy?
From a national security perspective, from foreign policy perspective, I think Obama's legacy, frankly, is not that good, you know.We had the Arab Spring.I mean, you can give him probably some credit on the Iranian nuclear deal, for example, but that was done at a price, you know, for allowing the Yemen war—probably you can make that argument—to happen.He wanted to give our allies in the region something.A lot of people will always remember the red line in Syria.
And domestically, at least from an economic perspective, I think he has a very good legacy for rescuing the United States after the collapse of 2008.So it is—it is more complicated.
From terrorism perspective, I think killing Osama bin Laden definitely dominates his legacy, but also in the same time, I think he was able to understand the complexity of terrorism, that not necessarily everything George Bush did was bad, but I think that he felt chored in bringing in transparency and accountability to a lot of the bad things that happened during the Bush period.And unfortunately, that directly contributed to the conspiracies, the lack of trust of in the institutions, a lack of transparency that allowed somebody like Donald Trump to happen.
During the end years of Obama, the elections are looming, but terrorism is not forgotten.The fears that started on 9/11 still exist in the United States and are magnified when events take place like Paris and San Bernardino and other events where I suppose these are also in the plans of bin Laden when he spoke, the idea that he will have lone wolves continue this, spread this fear.But in the United States, it's very potent.Talk a little bit about the consequences on the public.It also leads, I think, to Donald Trump.It leads during this political campaign that 9/11 is not forgotten, and the wars are certainly on the front burner here.Talk about that fear.Talk about those attacks and the consequences for America leading into the election in 2016.
The terrorist threat is real; that's not manufactured.And if you don't stop the terrorists from attacking you, they will attack you.And I think the law enforcement and the intelligence community did a great job after 9/11 to prevent another 9/11 from happening, either by stopping the plots early on so they won't take place, or by creating the condition that makes it impossible for the terrorist organizations to have the capability to carry out another big attack like 9/11.
So they have the intention, but we deprived them from the capability.And this is real, you know.There are a lot of fear mongering that took place early on, you know, about the dirty bomb; that basically was all made up.Mushroom clouds, made up.… A lot of this fear mongering that was going on definitely became part of the public psyche in dealing in all these disruptions that were happening at the time against lone actors or against, you know, terrorist, you know, cells that we were disrupting around the world, and sometimes here in the United States.
So it became that there was this big, evil, all-powerful organization coming to destroy our way of life.No.They don't have the capability to do it.And that is the last thing they want to do about destroying our way of life.They want to make us live in fear.And if we live in fear, they will win, because that's exactly what they want us to do.And I think this is—this is where, you know, the politics of terrorism contradicted with the real way of fighting terrorism.
The Trump Years
And the consequences coming up to the 2016 elections is what?
The consequences were very significant coming to the 2016 election because it was about fear; it was about us versus them; it was about all these immigrants that they come, or Muslim names, that they come, they are coming to kill us, to the point that Donald Trump said, "I want to stop immigration; I want to stop anybody coming from Muslim countries," or, as the media called it, the Muslim Ban.It was something that's so easy for demagogues, so easy for, you know, hyperpartisan operatives to jump into that and create a political base out of this fear, out of this view that we are under attack from the, you know, big, dangerous wolf.
And his ability to also in the campaign use the 15 years of lies, of never-ending wars, of the incompetence in the decisions made: How was he savvy in the use of that politically?
You know, everything that Donald Trump did, Donald Trump did not create.Donald Trump just capitalized on already existing divisions, fears, you know, views about the government, about elites, about the deep state, about all these kind of things.
And frankly, Donald Trump is a logical next step for everything we've seen in the last 20, 25 years.You have an individual who saw all these kind of things happening, and he said, "OK, you know what?I can capitalize on it and create my own brand out of this distrust; create my own brand out of the fear; create my own brand out of the economic anxiety that was created because of trillions of dollars that we borrowed and, you know, we put it on the credit card for future generations; and create, you know, a brand out of a lot of countries around the world, especially China, taking advantage of the United States being bogged down in never-ending wars and building their own economic empire."
So Donald Trump just saw an opportunity, and he took it, and a lot of people in the United States were happy with what he did because they did not have trust in the government; they did not have trust in the institution.And guess what?After two decades of constantly brainwashing them that they have to fear the Other, the Other is going to kill them, they were an easy prey.
Which he does.And he brings the war home to America, and he talks about the fear of Muslims, uses the fear of Muslims, and those become his policies to cater to the wishes of his base.
He used the fear of Muslims; he used the fear of immigrants in general after that.He used entities that was created after 9/11 as, for example, Homeland Security to go after immigrants.You remember, before 9/11, Homeland Security used to be under the Department of Justice.So he used a lot of these things that was already available because we created it.The American people, the institutions, the government, we made it happen.And most importantly, he capitalized on the lack of trust.You have huge portion of the American public don't believe anything.But you know what?If you don't believe anything, you know what happens?You will believe anything.And that's what he did.
But your overview, looking back at how Trump approached Afghanistan and Iraq, what was his approach?
As Obama continued a lot of the Bush's legacy, Trump continued a lot of the Obama legacy.The way he dealt with Syria, … the way he dealt with ISIS, it was basically a continuation of a lot of the things that started under Obama.His continued support to the war in Yemen, again, a policy that started under Obama; so the international coalition to defeat ISIS, again, something started under Obama.So he continued a lot of the legacy, but he was able to do something Obama was not able to do in Afghanistan, even though Obama attempted to do it with the Taliban.But the partisan blowback of this was really hard for him politically to follow up with it.Trump was able to do it, was able to have the United States sit with the Taliban and negotiate about Afghanistan.
So there is, you know, a lot of the crazy stuff that happened with Trump, especially his narrative, his rhetoric, but also in the same time, many of his policies were actually a continuation of policies that already existed before.
How much of that was because of what he believed, and how much of what was part of what the establishment folks that he had around him believed in?There was a big debate between him and, for instance, Gen. [James] Mattis and Secretary [of State Rex] Tillerson that we'll talk about in the film.It seemed they had very different points of view about the world.What's the importance of that, the understanding of the fact that to some extent, he was pushed and pulled, ending up not dealing with the world exactly the way he intended to, which was to pull out immediately, and that he had a very transactional sort of view towards the world while there were people around him that saw the world and the United States power and role in the world and role with our allies in the world in very different terms.
No, I, you know, definitely Donald Trump's view of the world does not match the view of the United States government.
… He's a businessman.He's very transactional, you know.And values, you know, consequences doesn't mean much to him.So there was significant disconnect between him and between many people even in his own administration.And we've seen that not only with, you know, dealing with Russia or dealing with the intelligence community’s assessments of Russia's interference.We've seen it also in the way he messed up the situation in the Gulf, dividing the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council], having countries fighting with each other and allowing this to happen.We've seen it in the way he dealt with a lot of foreign policies, to including giving a meeting and an audience to the North Korean dictator, something that, you know, was shocking for so many people around the world to see; to the way he protected [Saudi Crown Prince] Mohammed bin Salman [MBS] after he murdered Jamal Khashoggi.
So there are a lot of things that was going on that made people in the U.S. government, that made people in his own administration really concerned, I mean, to the point that, from what we understand, Gen. Mattis resigned because he heard about the commander in chief, the president of the United States, ordering the troops out of Iraq via a tweet, something that he had no idea about as secretary of defense.
There are these erratic moves on the world stage that further damaged our reputation, especially among our allies, you know, from the way he was dealing with NATO to the way he was dealing with the EU to the way that he was dealing with a lot of other things.
So, you know, Donald Trump, I don't think he has a full understanding of the geopolitical dimensions of foreign policy and what that means.But you have people around him, even in his own administration, who were very knowledgeable about that.And we see them losing a lot of battles, but also we see them winning a lot of battles and continuing a lot of the policies that's already in existence, that if we didn't do it, will create significant damage to the United States.
But he pulled out of Iraq.But then a couple of weeks later, we went back to Iraq, right?So there's a lot of things that were happening behind closed doors to kind of like, mitigate the irrational and the erratic moves of the president.
As the 2020 election is coming up, he turns the war back home.The war at home is what he is talking about.He transfers the enemy from ISIS and Al Qaeda, and all of a sudden the existential threat that he's talking about is the demonstrators in the streets.Antifa is an existential threat; Black Lives Matter folk are an existential threat.… What's going on here, and the long-term consequences of what it is doing in motivating his base and leading up to what we are leading up to here?It's the biggest indication that President Trump only cares about Donald Trump.It is a very transactional way of looking into things.Anybody from before could have done these kind of things, but there is always consequences for doing something like this.You know, how my action at that particular moment, either to win or to get reelected or to whatever it is, will affect the country, will affect future generation.
… And we start seeing the rise of anti-government militias.We start seeing the rise of white supremacist organizations.We start seeing the rise of organizations and groups and militias that they believe in our society today—that they believe in our society today we have taxation without representation because Biden is not their real president, because the election was stolen.
These have significant dire consequences down the road.And unfortunately, we're going to be dealing with it for years and years to come.So when he urged his followers that they need to defend their country, when he started talking about the fact that the election was stolen, the effect on his followers is intense, but it's only because of what took place in the last 20 years?How has everything that has come before us that we've been talking about allow that to happen?
Everything that came in the last 25 years contributed to create an extremely dry forest.And the only thing that Donald Trump did for his own sake is to take a match and throw it on that very dry forest—economically, socially, politically, culturally.
The strength of the social contract that is America, the trust in our institution, the trust in our government, a ll these conditions were not created by Donald Trump; Donald Trump just capitalized on something that already existed because of the missed policies in the aftermath of 9/11.
Twenty Years Later
So when Jan. 6 happened, why was it possible to have a group of Americans, a large group of Americans attack the Congress, to try to stop the verification of an election?How had the 9/11 wars, how had the lies to get us into the wars, how had the distrust due to the national security establishment surveillance, how had all those decisions gotten us to this point?
A lot of the people who went and attacked the temple of our democracy, the U.S. Congress, did not go there just because at that specific moment they heard President Trump to tell them "We're going to walk up Pennsylvania Avenue, we're going to go to Congress, and we're going to, you know, force them to do the right thing."Those people showed up at his rally because they believe in him, and they believed in him because they believed in his narrative and his brand, and they believed in his brand because they distrust the institution and they distrust the government.And they distrust the Other, whoever the Other is.They believe in the enemy within.They don't like the people who are running the government because they felt that they failed them again and again and again.
So a lot of these social conditions, economic conditions, political conditions, you know, fed into the reason that they believed in Trump in the first place.And that's why they came over to D.C. And they were so fed up at the time, they felt that the institutions, they felt that the deep state, as the QAnon conspiracy puts it, are pushing back, stealing the election from him.And that's why they did not mind doing something that we thought was unthinkable in America, to see Americans attacking the U.S. Congress, something that we did not see during the Civil War, something Al Qaeda failed to do.
To see them going and attacking the temple of democracy in order to change a result of an election, chanting that they want to kill the vice president because he allowed that meeting to happen, that will continue to be with us, and that will continue to be the image so many allies and so many people around the world will remember about the United States.That definitely takes away, big time, from our leadership position in the world, if it still exists.
… The fact there is logical steps to Jan. 6, that we've become more tribal, more divided.It led to hate; that led to rage; and that led to insurrection.Talk about the fact that this is not a surprise in a lot of ways, that these are logical steps that we've taken.
What we saw on Jan. 6 is the logical step of a lot of the things that has been happening in our society for a long time, you know.We have, you know, fear that led to hate; hate that led to division; division that led to distrust; distrust that led to an insurrection.We have been dealing with this for decades.But unfortunately, we don't have the political leaders with the wisdom to stop something like this from continuing to happen.
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Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation; Park Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. Web Site Copyright ©1995-2025 WGBH Educational Foundation. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
