http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... ps.01.html
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ZAKARIA: So, what is the story behind Bin Laden's death? What are the consequences?
Joining me now is one of America's great spy masters, Michael Hayden. Hayden was director of the National Security Agency on 9/11, and later was the head of the CIA. He's worked under Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama.
Welcome, Michael Hayden.
HAYDEN: Thanks very much, Fareed.
ZAKARIA: So you took news of this courier in to President Bush many years ago, right?
HAYDEN: We did. I think it was about four years ago, in 2007. We - we had built up sufficient lead information on the name of the courier that we thought it was ready for presidential primetime. So we briefed it to the president, not as something eminent but as our most promising lead to track down Bin Laden because, frankly, Fareed, the trail had been quite cold for a - a long period of time.
ZAKARIA: And why had it been cold, General? Because you had these huge bounties out on his head, and one of the things that people used to always say to me in the region was, gosh, this guy must inspire fanatical devotion and loyalty. The Americans are willing to pay $25 million and nobody turns up to - to claim the reward.
HAYDEN: Yes. Well, a - a couple of thoughts on that.
Clearly, he was concerned with his own operational security. Those people who knew where he was was a very small group of folks. $25 million translates very well into an American or European context. Frankly, Fareed, we learned that those kinds of numbers really don't have the same kind of meaning in the - in the tribal region of Pakistan.
And, most importantly, he went off the grid. And by that I mean the - the telecommunications and electronic grid, which has been a very powerful tool for us for such a long period of time. And it was - it was that absence from electronic communications that convinced us we know he's communicating. He must be doing it through human beings. We need to find and follow the couriers. And that was the hypothesis with which we went into this four years ago or so.
ZAKARIA: So this is classic human intelligence? You had people on the ground. They talked to people. They developed relationships. Is that right?
HAYDEN: It is. But it also came out of detainee interrogations.
One - one of the more prominent leads we had at the beginning of this exercise was partial identity information that came out of detainees that we were holding in our so-called black sites. And then, from that point, we used all the tools of intelligence.
I can't go into detail, but, I can assure you, it was signals intelligence and imagery intelligence and human intelligence that allowed us to build this. And - and Fareed, this wasn't done one brick at a time. This was actually done one pebble at a time. This is classic analytic work.
ZAKARIA: Tell us for a moment about that issue of interrogation, because, you know, there's something of a debate here about whether the extraordinary methods, the ones that have aroused so much controversy, that people like Colin Powell and John McCain came out against, were those methods crucial to getting information that has led to Bin Laden?
HAYDEN: Well, let me put it to you this way, Fareed. First of all, I'm proud to be a citizen of a country that feels it needs to debate these kinds of issues. But, as we debate them, the debate has to be fact-based. And the lead information I referred to a few minutes ago did come from CIA detainees, against whom enhanced interrogation techniques have been used, not to elicit specific bits of information, but move them from their initial air of defiance into a zone of cooperation.
So the facts of the matter are people against whom we used these interrogation techniques provided us at least one of the strings of information that led to last weekend's events.
ZAKARIA: There are people who say, though, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the - kind of - one of the chiefs, one of the planners of 9/11, perhaps the chief planner, denied even knowing the courier. And actually that's what tipped some of the interrogators off, that it wasn't some extraordinary methods.
HAYDEN: I think the actual - the actual facts are that he gave us some - some very partial lead information at the beginning. As we developed the information, we went back to him, and he and another detainee were so demonstrative - atypically demonstrative in rejecting knowledge of this individual, that that in itself turned into lead information.
And I'd have to suggest, Fareed, if - if he had not been largely cooperating with us, this would not have been anomalous behavior. And so it's all of a piece.
ZAKARIA: So tell us about these kinds of operations. Is it - is it a - was it a very risky operation? In other words, the president had to make a call between dropping a drone, which would have almost certainly killed every - killed Bin Laden, but everybody else and perhaps with very little evidence, or going in.
My - my mind goes back to Desert One, that famous case where President Carter tried to rescue the Iranian hostages, ended up in a total fiasco. For logistical reasons, a sandstorm in the desert, dirt got into the helicopters. How much do you - would you have worried about those issues when - when deciding to go for a human operation here?
HAYDEN: I would have been very worried, and I know my - my friends at the agency were - were very worried. But - but frankly, Fareed, this - this was a courageous choice on the part of the president. Make no mistake about it.
But, in addition to being courageous, I think it was also inevitable. This was the very best chance we had to kill or capture this target. The president had choices, and it made more difficult because even as those helicopters were going over the wall, everything we had on this facility, the belief that Bin Laden was there, was truly circumstantial. There were no sightings, nothing that you can point to and say, that's it. That's him.
So the president made this decision, even in the face of uncertainty. That requires some courage, but - but, frankly, I - I cannot imagine any American president not making that decision.
ZAKARIA: So you are very well acquainted with the relationship between the CIA and the ISI. You worked it, the Pakistani intelligence agency. Given all you know, is it - is it plausible to you that Osama Bin Laden was living in a fortified house, eight times the size of every other house in the - in the area, with no phone lines, all kinds of suspicious activity, and that nobody in the Pakistani military knew, even though this was happening one mile from their West Point, their Sandhurst?
HAYDEN: Right. Fareed, let me give you a professional and a - and a personal answer.
At the professional level, and frankly this is the best answer I'm going to give you, we just have to let the facts take us where they will. And now that we've got this trove of documents and electronic media from this particular building, some of those facts may be in that - that mountain of data.
On a personal level, it - it really does tug at credulity to - to think this could go on without someone - and by no means am I accusing anyone particularly, particularly at the highest levels of the Pakistani government, but it's hard to believe this could happen without someone suspecting at least what was going on there. I mean, what did the neighbors think? What was the word on the street? What did the local police chief believe? Those kinds of things. I think, in this case we have a right to know. In this case, the burden of proof is on the Pakistanis.
ZAKARIA: Finally, General, give us a sense of the consequences. So you talk about the treasure trove of documents. What do you see as the - as the most likely consequence of Osama Bin Laden's death?
HAYDEN: There are two or three things that are - that are happening, Fareed. One is the treasure trove of documents - and - and frankly, I can't remember the last time we did what's called SSE, sensitive site exploitation, against a leading al Qaeda figure. It's been years. And so this will be very, very important.
The second thing is, al Qaeda now has to go through a succession crisis. The word is out that they've got a succession plan. It's Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two. But no plans survives contact with reality the way it was originally developed. So I'm going to enjoy watching how al Qaeda deals with this.
And then, finally, Fareed - and this is really important. Any member of the al Qaeda, particularly prospective members of al Qaeda, have to remember this mission. They're going to think about what happened here, that these Americans have great reach, have great precision, and a very long memory. That's a very powerful thing in the kind of war in which we're engaged.
ZAKARIA: You've tried to kill this man for 10 years. Personally, what does it feel like when you - what did it feel like when you heard the news?
HAYDEN: It - a bit of mixed emotion in - in the sense that I didn't know the details, and so I wanted to know more. But a - kind of the - the basic human level, it was very powerful satisfaction that we had done what we had set out to do, and that the work my old community, the intelligence community, have been working so hard on for so long was now paying off in a way in which their successes, as opposed to their failures real and imagined, are now being talked about by their countrymen.
ZAKARIA: Michael Hayden, a pleasure to have you on.
HAYDEN: Thank you very much, Fareed.
ZAKARIA: And we will be back.
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