25 Years After 9/11 (with Lisa Monaco & Ken Wainstein)

0:00Support for this podcast comes from Juro. What if your business had someone who could draft, negotiate, and manage contracts, but never slept, ate, or took a day off? With AI, it's possible, and with Juro, it's a reality. Juro is the complete AI solution for business contracting from draft, to signature, and beyond. Juro gives you conversational access to your contracts and data, plus the connected workflows and integrations you won't find in basic AI review tools. Juro has powered 3 million contracts for a fraction of the cost. Visit Juro.com slash box for 20% off year 1. Support for the show comes from Engine. Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard, but if your team is still booking travel the old way, it's costing you more than you think. Engine is the fastest growing travel and spend platform in the country, built specifically for businesses like yours. Book a trip in as little as 2.5 minutes, earn up to 10% back on hotels.

1:02And in 2025, engine customers saved more than $300 million on travel, with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS. More than 1,000 businesses join Engine every month. Join them and get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at engine.com slash box. From Cafe and the VOX Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I'm Pete Barara. Two phrases stick out from the 9-11 analysis, right? Failure of imagination and connecting the dots. I think both of those things are indisputably true. In some ways, I think we were the quintessential democracy after the attack, because once again, democracies run on public opinion. In the aftermath of crisis like that is fueled by fear. When politics is fueled by fear, civil liberties, privacy, and the like, oftentimes, take a back seat.

2:07Welcome to Stay Tuned. I'm Pete Barara. This week, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of 9-11, I'm joined by my friends Ken Waynestein and Lisa Monaco. As you may know, they both spent decades at the highest levels of national security, serving at the Justice Department, the FBI, DHS, and the White House. Most recently, Ken was in the Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis at DHS, and Lisa was the 39th Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice. That's coming up. Stay tuned. Lisa Monaco, Ken Waynestein, my friends, welcome back after long last to the show. Good to be with you, Prie. Good to see you guys. So we miss you. I miss you. This is a perfect time to have you as we are recording this literally two days before the 25th anniversary of 9-11. Before we get to that, I thought we, I'd ask you a few kind of personal reminiscing kind of questions.

3:09I will note for the record for those of you who are not watching on YouTube, that only two out of the three participants in this podcast are paying tribute to Bruce Springsteen with frame photographs behind them. Those would be Ken and Prie. Yeah, but Lisa has good Springsteen chops. Although, that's pretty good. I have been to a Springsteen concert with Lisa. Yeah, more than one actually. More than one. And I will tell you a thing that I told my kids. This is a very controversial thing that I'm going to reveal that you said to me. I showed up to a Springsteen concert probably the only time ever. It was in DC. It must have been like 15 years ago. I forget which tour it was. And I showed up in a Springsteen concert t-shirt. And you said, what are you doing? You can't do that. Don't be that guy, Prie. You guys used to do a podcast for us. You have donated security which is sort of aspirational title.

4:09And we'll get into some of those issues some ghosts podcasting out continue to do it. Well, I missed talking to you, Prie. Well. That's very nice and . That's a good conversations. I cut perspectives. And I felt like same objective. But I can't believe it's been 25 years. So I mean, that my parents. And yes, well, you know, I feel like I might be your parents age or the about. No, that's mathematically impossible. Remind folks where you were and when you got involved in the business of national security. Lisa. So I was in the US Attorney's office in Washington, DC. I think I was about eight months in, nine months in to my role as an assistant US attorney. I was starting the second day of training to be an A USA doing what we call the time in that office.

5:13Misdemeanor trial training kind of bootcamp for young prosecutors to learn how to try cases. And I had come into that job after spending time as a counsel to the Attorney General, who is previously Attorney General Janor Reno. And I, unlike a lot of people probably at the time, had heard of Al Qaeda. Because of course, in that role working for Attorney General Reno, we had spent a good deal of time tracking a number of plots, including the now famous Millennium plot. So Al Qaeda was not a foreign word to me, but nonetheless, my first thought when I first heard about the first plane hitting the towers, like I think probably everybody else thought it was some type of accident. But it was a immediate reaction, of course, as I'm sure for many people when I heard about the second plane, not only did I think it was deliberate.

6:22But my thoughts immediately also went to Al Qaeda. And in fact, I remember talking to calling the phone a former FBI colleague at the time, who was still at the FBI and saying, you know, how do we make sense of this? And he said, you know, we think it's been long. Yeah. Can we review? Yeah. So I had just done the opposite trip of Lisa. So she'd gone from main justice to the US Attorney's office. I had been in the US Attorney's office had just gone in August to main justice, the DOJ headquarters. And I was what's called the director of the executive office for US attorneys that part of DOJ that sort of oversees and supports all the US Attorney's offices. And I had a daily routine of meeting with the deputy attorney general, but at least his predecessors, Larry Thompson, every morning to talk about sort of what US attorneys were getting installed because that's beginning administration. We were installing new US attorneys and I was meeting at 830. I think it was with Larry Thompson and his chief lieutenant, Chris Ray.

7:27We finished up the meeting on the fourth floor of DOJ, main justice. I then walked downstairs. Everything was normal. Walk downstairs by the time I got downstairs, the second floor, the TV was showing the first airplanes. Right. Yeah. About 848, right? Yep. And I assumed it was an accident though. It was sort of perplexing. It was such a blue sky. How could anybody want to plane into by accident or want to plane into the World Trade Center? And then of course, saw the second flight. And then in the rest of the day was it was it was actually pretty eye opening. There were very little there's very little in a way of plans for what to do with personnel and the injustice. And you might remember, you know, obviously they were to planes crashing in the New York. Then you had the Pentagon and then there are the reports of the plane out in Pennsylvania, which ultimately was taken down by the passengers. And then there are all these reports of that were on the radio and fire on the mall and explosion for the State Department.

8:32And so, you know, we just had to pull together our staff and we went to one of our field offices about six blocks away just to get them out of a lot of fire. What we thought was a lot of fire. It was all hands on deck. Oh, yeah. And then after once everything kind of settled down, we took care of our personnel. Then I came back in and I was there in the situation over the FBI until two o'clock in the morning or whatever. So I was also somewhat of a baby prosecutor. I was a year and a half in at the Southern District of New York in New York. I just come back from a vacation with my wife and my four month old daughter the night before to Puerto Rico. And I was getting ready to go into work when the first plane hit. And from where I used to live on 22nd Street, not from our apartment, but half a block away. There was a clear line of sight to the twin towers. And at some point, you know, we're watching on television. We had a baby.

9:32And I wasn't sure that, you know, anyone should leave the house. I wanted to see with my own eyes that it was really happening. I almost couldn't believe it. I walked over to Fifth Avenue 22nd Street, clear line of sight. And saw the buildings on fire. I remember talking to people that day and in the couple of days after about their emotions. And some people who are just very, very sad, frightened, angry, confused. Did you feel all of those? Some combination of them. What was your predominant emotion? In the days after 9-11. I think all of those, I'd add to it, shock. I remember going out onto there as a kind of a terrace on one of the upper floors of the US, Attorney's Office in DC. And a number of us went outside there and saw the smoke rising from the Pentagon.

10:32So you had a clear line of sight to the twin towers. And we could see over across the river and seeing the smoke rising from the Pentagon. I remember walking home in these desolate streets of the middle of Connecticut Avenue. Because of course, they finally gave some direction to say, don't get on the metro, you know, the DC version of the subway. And seeing tanks in the street near the intersection by the White House. And so shock, sadness, anger, and just a profound sense of that things had irrevocably changed. Yeah, I did out of that. I think it was, or I was guilty of the sense of sort of false security that so many of us had that, you know, America was attacked overseas. Yes, Pearl Harbor, we've been struck in, you know, Pearl Harbor, but still that was offshore.

11:37And the idea that 3,000 or a people were killed here in the United States by this, you know, Ragtag gang of terrorists, it was it was a part of the dawning realization that the threat has globalized that the threat now cuts across borders in a way that it never had. But I remember actually talking to my brother that night and, you know, this was something that everybody had said, but, you know, kind of recognizing that the world had changed, and that the world, especially for people in the national security, law enforcement community, it had completely changed. It was a new game and the following months proved that out. I think everybody, you know, pivoted dramatically in terms of what their mission was. It was no longer, for example, for Lisa and me and you, you know, prosecuting cases, putting together, you know, putting together the evidence and prosecuting a case of a completed from an act, it now became a matter of prevention. It's interesting. You cite the 3,000 number, but that's a number we didn't appreciate until later.

12:43And I remember doing the super horrifying macabre math based on no knowledge in my head. When those two buildings came down, how many people might have died? And I also remember a very different Rudy Giuliani being asked the question, you know, how many, how many people you think we've lost? And his answer, I think I still remember almost his exact answer, which was too many to bear. And there were moments in the coverage that day and the day in the days after that, you know, you don't know what you're going to remember and the, you know, the, the, the scenes that will stick in your head 25 years later. I wasn't thinking that far ahead. And one was I saw the chiroren on TV about how many body bags have been ordered. And then also the lines of people in New York to give blood.

13:44And neither of those pictures, neither of those were needed very much. Because of what happened. So so it's been 25 years. You both done national security prosecutions. You both tracked al Qaeda and all sorts of other terrorist groups. You deal with policy, both of you at the highest levels of government with 25 years of hindsight. How do you assess the blame for that happening and how it was allowed to happen? The most common refrain, I think the, you know, two, two phrases stick out from the 9, 11 kind of analysis, right, failure of imagination, which was one of the conclusions from the 9, 11 commission. I think in the opening line from governor Tom Kane of New Jersey. And connecting the dots, right, it's a failure to connect the dots. I think both of those things are indisputably true.

14:48And the changes we've undertaken in those 25 years, all the things that can mention, kind of pivoting institutionally, culturally, legally, were designed to address all of those things in terms of blame. I don't know, pre kind of on one level, too numerous to mention, right, on another level. How, how can you really ascribe blame? There are some things that you change going forward to try to prevent the next thing. And then you do these simulations in your head. We've all done them. We've all managed people to run offices. And you think, you know, well, that, that thing didn't go well. Or that case didn't go well. Or that personnel decision didn't go well. Please, I do this. And you go back and you think, if I had done things differently, might I have come up with a different decision. And often it's the case that you would. But then sometimes you think there was just not a way to know that that was going to go south because of other factors that I had no ability to know about.

15:57So to modify the question a little bit, can, where do you lay the blame? And was it, in fact, preventable or not? To start with the second question, yes, it was preventable. You know, it's kind of hard to imagine something that couldn't have been prevented if things had broken the right way. But I guess in terms of sort of ascribing blame or responsibility or accountability, I mean, and this is not to excuse anybody or anything. But we do operate in democracy. And democracies are cumbersome. Democracies are responsive designed to be responsive to public and political will. Public and political will is forged by imperatives that the public see and recognize and understand. And prior to 9.11, you know, maybe we should have been more focused on this. But the public, Congress, and we generally back to the point I made earlier, didn't perceive the threat sufficiently to devote the resources and the attention

17:01and the political will to addressing. I mean, we were still living with the peace dividend of the wall coming down sort of enjoying that. We had lots of issues that we thought were front burner national security issues in hindsight. They seem less front burner after 9.11. So does that excuse it? No, doesn't excuse the neglect. It makes a little bit more understandable. And I guess the last point of that is what has been done since 9.11 is to focus on having the sort of the antenna out for that evolving threat. And that antenna is our intelligence system, right? And our intelligence community, making sure that we have a strong intelligence community identifying what the avenues of threat are going to be. And that we have decision makers and policymakers and politicians who are responsive to that intelligence. And that's really critical. And you saw it for 9.11 an intense focus on that process from the top of the, you know, from the president on down.

18:01And, you know, I think it's important that we, we continue to value what our intelligence community does as many people are questioning our intelligence community says. So you said two things there that lead to a question. One is what happened in the aftermath of 9.11. And the other is the comment that, you know, we are a democracy and we were a democracy at the time. Some people would argue that we became a little bit less of a democracy immediately after 9.11. Is that a fair statement? I don't know. I think first and foremost, you know, the job of government is to protect its citizens. And so there was a imperative, of course, to as, you know, can describes to pivot immediately to say, how do we prevent this from happening again? And of course, and in the immediate and Ken will know this better because he was closer to it. The immediate focus was, is this, is there another follow on attack? Right? This was a Tuesday. What's going to happen Wednesday?

19:02Right? The, but both things can be true. Right? I mean, the apparatus came together and in to, to, and successfully, frankly, over 25 years to prevent another 9.11 style attack. But it's also true that I think we made mistakes as a government and as a society over 25 years in trying to meet that challenge, right? Preventing the next one. But are there things either of you, whether it has to do with the Patriot Act or material witness warrants or, you know, so-called sweeps that in retrospect, we went too far. And we've adjusted that or you think everything made sense given what was going on at the time. I wouldn't go so far as to say that everything made sense given what was going on at the time. I mean, one thing I think about a lot in in retrospect in over 25 years is I think we forgot for a while the value of transparency.

20:12The value of transparency to legitimizing government's action, right? If, and if you aren't operating with more transparency, I think about some of the surveillance programs that came to light years and years later, that might have been accepted by the society and citizens. If there, you know, elected leaders had talked to them about it in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 versus 10, 12 years later when things came to light. And people saw those reactions as an overreach and delegitimize them in many people's eyes. Yeah, I think that's a very good point. I mean, there are a lot of lessons out of 9-11, but one of them is probably one of the main ones, not the main one. I think is Lisa's point that there were a lot of things that the government did that had they been a little bit more forthcoming publicly about them. And they could probably have done that without jeopardizing the integrity of their operations.

21:15Can you give an example? Well, you know, for instance, the terrorist surveillance program, you know, obviously you don't want to tell the terrorist surveillance program was something that the president ordered by executive order about a month or so after 9-11. Which addressed the fact that it was really difficult and cumbersome to get individual orders from the federal court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Every time you want to surveil a foreign terrorist and, you know, there are some peculiarities about the governing law at the time and the way the law is being applied that made it particularly cumbersome. So he issued an order, which has subsequently been debated by lawyers ever since, saying that it could be done without going that surveillance could be done without going to a court. If you're trying to surveil somebody who's, you know, Al Qaeda, no, you know, specifics to it that won't get into. That was a very controversial when it got leaked, I don't know, three or four years later.

22:15And there was a reaction to it. Two things. One, there was a reaction to the fact that it had been done in secret. And two, it was there was a reaction because it got disclosed several years later when the pendulum of public opinion had swung back. And by that time, people were going to be a little bit more skeptical of what the government was doing than they would have been right after the attack. And so, so I think the transparency point is a good lesson. And once again, not to be an apologist for that era, but you asked, where we less of a democracy after the attack. In some ways, I think we were the quintessential democracy after the attack because once again, democracies run on public opinion. Public opinion in the aftermath of crisis like that is fueled by fear. When the politics is fueled by fear, civil liberties, privacy, and the like, oftentimes take a back seat. And that's why it's important that we think about this, that there were places where we went overboard in the post-9-11 era.

23:23We should be thinking about that every time there's a crisis because it takes, you know, we have to be measured in our reaction. Because at the end of the day, you know, if we give up our civil liberties, the bad guys have won. You know, here's another thing that people lose sight of. And politically, in the modern world of Donald Trump and MAGA and the way people do things, you know, sometimes we forget moments of grace and I think high-mindedness by people on the other side of the aisle. And I'm talking about what could have happened. And one thing I think we should be generally proud of. And there were lots of cases of violence against people who were perceived to be Muslim, a number of people from, from my native country, India were killed in the aftermath. But the sitting president of the United States, Republican George Bush, I had forgotten this.

24:24Six days after 9-11, went to a mosque and insisted that Muslim Americans shouldn't be blamed for the attacks. Nine days after 9-11, President Bush addressed Congress and said, quote, I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. Anyone on to say, the enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends, it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists in every government that supports them, which seems like a fairly ordinary and correct thing to say. And yet, you know, we are not in 10 days past 9-11 at the moment. And the anti-Muslim rhetoric as we gear up, provoking in the midterms, is off the charts. Do you have any reactions to that? I think that was an incredible display of leadership by President George W. Bush coming so soon and in a climate that, you know, by all accounts, the winds were blowing the other way, right, to your point.

25:36And it's interesting. I've been reading a lot of things as we all have been in kind of the lead up to this anniversary. And I've been reading about nostalgia. And I read something this morning that really struck me. It was a op-ed from the son of somebody who died in on flight 93 that crashed into the field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. And basically he talks about being nostalgic for exactly that type of response. He said, I felt the visceral, unprompted pride of being an American. It was a patriotism born not of military might or political rhetoric, but of radical, neighborly empathy. Radical neighborly empathy. Yeah. And he was 10 years old when his father was killed in flight 93, kind of an incredible reaction to have 25 years later.

26:41That's a beautiful story. And I think it highlights just what you said. It's the importance of leadership. I think the role of leadership in a situation like that is to sort of direct people to the better angels of our nature, right. Because our worst instincts come out when we've been struck when we're afraid. And it happens all of us. And the leaders of our country need to understand that's what happens in the aftermath of crisis. And then step forward and remind them of our humanity. So all of that reminiscence leads me to a question of why I ask you, since I interviewed Ken Feinberg on the podcast last week, Ken Feinberg, obviously the special master. Who oversaw the 9-11 compensation fund. Who reissued his book. What is life worth with a set of reflections that are new and he asks, I think, the important question that relates to what you're talking about. And he writes, for this new edition of what is life worth, I'm adding these reflections on how much has happened to our country in the years since in particular.

27:49I want to address the question whether the nation could again deal with the catastrophe so effectively. End quote. What's your answer to that question? I think we have to. And I think we don't know what we will do until we are tested. I think that's what we saw in 9-11. And so I think my head goes immediately to where it sounds like yours has gone. Preat, but I quickly feel like we've got to pivot to we have to be able to come together in response to catastrophe. You're not optimistic about that question. Are you Ken? Yeah, I don't think I'd be, I wouldn't say I'm optimistic, but I tend to be a glass out full kind of guy. And I think why we love you, Ken. Look, I think there is something in our national spirit that when we are threatened, we pull together.

28:53You know, this is, we're an untraveled territory right now politically. And we're seeing the consequences of that, you know, to look at COVID. COVID was a different kind of crisis, but still was a crisis that, you know, really didn't bring us together particularly fundamentally affected our country. And we didn't pull together. Now, you know, that's once again slightly different nature than a forward enemy striking us, killing us. That being said, that was not a unified response. And it's getting less unified over time. Father, we get away from COVID. There's more crimination back and forth going on. So I, you know, I do despair about the divisiveness of our politics. I do hope, though. And I actually think there might be some reason for hope that when there is a crisis, if when there is a crisis like 9-11, what bonds us together in the face of that threat, we stronger than what tears us apart.

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33:05Let's talk about some of the perpetrators and accountability. And a few minutes ago, we talked about democracy and whether we retreated a little bit from our values. So one example that people would point out was the treatment of KSM, Cleachick, Muhammad, and others through, I think, what is, as a consensus matter, considered torture, waterboarding, which also for three former prosecutors is relevant because it has affected and does affect the ability to bring someone to justice through a court system, whether that's in federal civilian court or in a military tribunal. Do you have any reactions in retrospect about how we did our interrogations of some of these folks? Well, look, I think you're exactly right. I mean, by any measure now, there is consensus or should be consensus about the interrogation techniques that were used external to the United States,

34:09and in some cases, equitonimo. And the changes that then brought about, and we've just now seen a ruling from the military tribunal throwing out the so-called clean team interviews of KSM by the FBI, which I think has, you know, one of the things that has contributed to 25 years of justice, delayed, and here to for denied for the victims and their families. I think that should be seen as a black mark, the fact that in any other context, that we would have 25 years later not having justice for the families and the victims is kind of unbelievable. You know, I will interject here. As Lisa remembers that my connection to this years later, and you know, people already thought a

35:13lot of time had gone by, I didn't become the US attorney until eight years after 9-11. The day I became the US attorney, I was briefed on, you know, only two or three things. One of which was a debate that I had entered that was already underway about whether or not KSM and his cohorts should be tried in a civilian court or in a military tribunal. I've been referenced to that earlier, and two months after I think I took the job, I got the call from Eric Holder that the decision that it made for it to be in a civilian court. And in the Southern District of New York, and the prosecutors who would try the case were going to be from my office and also our friend, Neil McBride's office, Eastern District of Virginia, to jointly bring those individuals to justice. That was 2009. That was 2009. And one of the considerations that I know, A.G. Holder was thinking about was closure and accountability.

36:14Lizard, how is it possible? I have some theories, but I want to hear where you folks think that we went from, and by the way, Lisa, at that time to let people in in our connection. I think we spoke every day. For a period of time. Easily. Easily every day, multiple times a day. I think you called me on one of my kids birthday and said, we have a crazy idea. Can we build a prison in the Midwest and see if there's some loophole in the law about bringing these folks to the United States? Do you have any assessment of how that went south? Look, I think it's something that can refer to the kind of politics of fear. I mean, as you'll recall, and now this is going back, now, 15 years, but there took hold this theory that it would be unsafe to bring the 9-11 defendants here to downtown

37:16Manhattan to house them in a secure detention facility and put them on trial. That is what snowballed into this then legislation to say can't bring the 9-11 defendants here for any reason, even to put in a supermax facility. I think ultimately it was fear. Yeah, look, just to sort of broaden the lens out a little bit, I think we should look at the dispensing or non- dispensing of justice around 9-11 and the folks who were picked up post 9-11. In the context of what the priorities were right after 9-11 and to go back to what we said earlier, the whole focus was prevention and it was all about preventing the next plot, preventing the next terrorist attack and of secondary importance was, okay, what are we going to do in terms of trials, in terms of justice for these people? Lock them up, hold them in Guantanamo,

38:19law of war, whatever. You saw this issue play out a number of ways. You saw it play out as you talked about in interrogation techniques. The concern was just like you see in the movies, hey, the bomb is about to blow. Go off, let's get the location of the bomb anyway possible. The good guy puts a gun in the bad guy's mouth and gets an admission or whatever. There was a thought that getting that information was more important than running the risk of being accused of torture or any impact I would have on future criminal trials. Same thing with military commissions. Military commissions were stood up in the fall of 2001, but they never got off the ground. They ever got procedures in place because DOD was focused on running a war and there was less focus on how we get to deal with dispensing justice. I think one of the lessons in 9-11 should have thought about that at the front end and in fact, for example, take the military commissions. If we had gotten the military commissions going early on when people

39:21were still very focused on the need to deal with these terrorists and before that pendulum had swung, we probably would have processed a number of them and gotten those commissions regularized and they'd be up and running and then commonly accepted. We didn't. As a result, they never really got off the ground or at least not sufficiently. I think one of the lessons in 9-11 is we, next time we have an attack that results in broad-based need to dispense justice, we should be thinking about that early on, even while we're focused on prevention or dereliting the next plot. Since we're just talking amongst ourselves, Lisa and Ken and nobody's listening, over time, I have come to think that sometimes people can get complacent in the bureaucracy, not that we were a bureaucracy, but I will tell, I remind people that the day the announcement was made that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others would be tried in the civilian court in New York,

40:21people didn't complain that day. Ray Kelly, he was the commissioner of police. I spoke to him that day. He said we're New Yorkers, we can handle it. The mayor, Mike Bloomberg, said something to the same effect. The local senators didn't complain. I don't know, I didn't hear Lindsey Grant. Nobody was freaking complaining. But as time went by and other things happened, there was a terrorist, a Ahmed Gailani, who had a very mixed verdict. We had the underwear bomber, so called underwear bomber, and the issue of marandizing him when he flew into the airport in Detroit. And then in retrospect, again, not pointing fingers, and some of this maybe is laying at our own feet. When you have the green light to do something, you got to do it. Because politics can be an nasty business and can interfere with what is otherwise right. Is that a fair statement? Yeah, I mean, I think you're absolutely right to describe the chronology in terms of

41:29the mood changed. And the statements people made on the day of that announcement and the day after that announcement, you know, it can morph quickly. So, you know, it's like anything. Move with the courage of your convictions. The other hypothetical that I used to have in my head at the time to see if people's principles were consistent about this. So, Cleachick, Muhammad, Master of Mind, very significant figure became a household name. Most people can't name the other co-conspirators at Guantanamo Bay. But the biggest household name and the most evil participant in all of this has some have been Laden. Larger than life, evil figure responsible for lots of death and destruction. He wasn't held accountable in the way he was until some years later. Had we hypothetical, I guess? Had we captured bin Laden and had been Laden, bin at Guantanamo Bay

42:30in the in the mid 2000s? Do you think the people's views of trying him at 500 Pearl Street in lower Manhattan would be different given who he was? That's interesting thought experiment. I mean, you know, I'm almost too big to try. Like you think, you know, should we reopen Nuremberg or something? And then the other problem is, and I wouldn't have talked about it this way, you know, 17 years ago. And when I'm about to say contravenes how we always think about justice and our process, you know, the reason we respect our justice system or one of the reason we respect our justice system is that anything can happen, right? A jury decides and the fix is not in and there's no sure thing and there's no guarantee. And that's well and good for pretty much every defendant who comes down the pike from a garden variety drug dealer to a sitting president of the

43:34United States, if it ever came to that. But with KSM and or bin Laden, I think the entire political elite thought to themselves, well, this has to be a sure thing. This has to be a sure thing because my God, what if there's a hung jury on one of these guys, or God forbid an acquittal of one of these guys? And that's not a way that any of the three of us ever would have talked about this. And I'm not sure we still would, but other people have. Much rather have a question there, but you know, sometimes there are crimes that are just apart from every other crime that's ever happened, or in a very, very small group of crimes I mentioned Nuremberg. Was it was it fair to think like for those guys? And remember, I advocated the other way, that for those guys, you know, ordinary treatment in a civilian court wasn't the best approach. Because because of the risk. Because of the risk of of a bad verdict.

44:39Failure. Yeah. Correct. Um, I mean, I don't think so, but it's I don't think it's an illegitimate question, especially for a politician. Well, I don't know. I think if you remember, the debate at the time was trial and a civilian court and all that that entails and, you know, bringing folks to downtown Manhattan and it was it was a fear of physical security, really that animated the reversal of that decision and the politics around that Congress passed a statute to ensure there could be military commissions. So, um, and the statute had protections in there to make it a lot more like the civilian system, right? That's what Congress did when they passed the military commission statute. And I guess it was 2009, 2010. Um, so it was really a choice between two systems that theoretically both could have had, uh, acquittals in them. Yeah, interesting. Uh,

45:40because I saw that debate play out pre in the context of military commissions. So, uh, when the military commissions were stood up after this legislation was passed, there was a live debate about whether, okay, we take a particular inmate at Guantanamo, put them through a military commission. Let's say that person's acquitted under the law of war, we could continue to hold that person until the end of hostilities. And of course, what is the end of hostilities when you're talking about terrorism? Um, and there are some who are advocating, yeah, go ahead and try them, but if they get acquitted, let's just go ahead and hold them anyway. Um, which of course would have completely undermined the credibility of the military commission. So it would have looked like show trials. And I remember President Bush's to his and during credit, his position was give him a fair trial and then let the chips fall where they may. Um, and that's, that's the way we proceeded. But it was, that was a very live concern that, uh, in the part of some people who felt like, okay, it's okay if the regularly criminal gets acquitted, but not a terrorist. Can I ask the question that I,

46:45I often ask and now I'm asking after 25 years, as opposed to after 10 or 15 years. And, you know, everyone knock on wood when I asked this question. So 9-11 happens. Everyone I know, myself included, thought that there would likely be maybe not the next day or, you know, possibly the next day because maybe there were other offshoots of that particular plot. But, you know, when a year went by, nobody thought we were out of the woods. And we're never out of the woods. We're not out of the woods today, 25 years later. But if you had told me, and I wonder how you would react to this question, if someone had told you on September 12th of 2001 that in 25 years, there will not have been, you know, that kind of a, of a broad scale devastating catastrophic attack or even something of fraction as horrific, either by al-Qaeda or one of its splinter groups or any of the other terrorist organizations,

47:48including some that may arise, you know, beyond that day. Would you have been skeptical? Yes. So how do we do so? How do we again, knocking on wood and not, you know, yeah, counting our chickens? What accounts for that? Is it because we connected the dots? Is it because in al-Qaeda's case, and this I've heard a bunch, and you folks are more expert than I, that al-Qaeda was really sort of wedded to the idea of spectacular catastrophic attack and not so into, you know, small scale attacks and cities which they viewed were beneath them, which may have saved us a little bit because I have a theory about that. Combination of those things, how do you attribute 25 years of fairly decent track record since 9-11? I think, I mean, the reason I said yes so quickly is, is one, because the thing that changed on

48:49September 11th and September 12th was this sense of invincibility was lost, right? We, I think, immediately became and felt vulnerable because of the unimaginable had happened. 25 years later, no foreign-directed large-scale attack like 9-11 has occurred here, and I think that is owing to incredible work across multiple administrations, Republican and Democrat, incredible work by military intelligence, law enforcement, federal, state, local, international cooperation. We built across 25 years a capability to connect the dots, to see the threat, to understand it better, to act with resolve. Now, which is not to say or to minimize the attacks that have occurred that have been

49:49smaller in scale, but no less meaningful to the victims and their families, I think, of course, about the Boston Marathon bombing. I think about the San Bernardino attack. I think about a number of terrorist acts that have happened here in abroad, but nothing on the scale of 9-11, and I think it is, I would have been skeptical on September 11th that we could have done that. A little bit of luck, too, Ken? Yeah, no question. Some luck along the way, but you know, lucky to make your own luck, right? But I think your points are a good one. I think Al Qaeda focused on this spectacular. I think they were so happy themselves after 9-11 that they were trying to replicate it, and there's some who would argue that it's 1-Z2-Z's would have been more effective in terms of sort of really undermining the sense of security in the United States. They didn't go that route. So we have maybe arguable

50:51misjudgments on the part of our adversary, but also just, and this is not for us to pat ourselves in the back because all three of us were involved in this effort, but I think, you know, the history will say that the government actually proved its ability to build a stronger capability, and many new capabilities in the aftermath of 9-11, and do so pretty quickly. I mean, you think about the pressure that Al Qaeda and related terrorist groups were under, and still under, for the years after 9-11, whether it's military pressure, pressure from our foreign counterparts who had locked arms with us, pressure on their finances, drawing up their sources of support, this kind of thing. It was really sort of relentless pressure on all points, and so yeah, so it was luck, but we were lucky because we might have detected a plot, but we detected that plot because we had people out there, we had sources that we developed in a way that we hadn't pre-9-11. And we know that that intent and capability continued, right? I mean, with the

51:52with these many spectacular plots that were disrupted in the intelligence hall from the Abadabad raid, of course, showed the ongoing plotting and planning. Am I correct that part of the reason for the good track record we've been discussing is international cooperation. With, I mean, a gigantic part of it, right? You can't learn about them without that. I don't mean this is a political question, but at a time when our relationships with allies, including like Canada, which is an important partner in the fight against terrorism, as I know personally, and you folks know personally because that's one route for people who want to do us ill to come through. So cooperation there and a good relationship is essential. With all this talk about how the frame of those relationships and alliances hurt us in terms of geopolitical issues and and economic issues and the terrorists and all that, are you substantially worried, incredibly

52:57worried or mildly worried or not worried at all about the effect of this fraying of our relationships, what what the effect will be on our fight against terrorism? Absolutely. I mean, look, it is a it is a factual statement that there isn't a single, I can't think of a single terrorism plot that was disrupted in the last 25 years that didn't have an international dimension that the disruption required and relied upon shared action shared intelligence and cooperative efforts to disrupt that plot. I can't think of a terrorism conviction and international terrorism conviction that didn't rely on cooperation and sharing of evidence and the like. So without that cooperation, we wouldn't have had those disruptions, those convictions, etc. And it one has to be concerned that with the fraying of alliances and the relationships that we're seeing amongst including NATO allies,

54:06that some of that cooperation diminishes and makes us less capable of disrupting future plots. Now, what I would say is we still have this apparatus that we have built up that has made us better at detecting plots, but the threat has changed quite dramatically as well. So I do think to use the the term, I think there are fewer dots to connect given the shift in the threat. Yeah, look, one point of civil lining is, you know, we've seen over the years, there will be some sort of stormy seas between our country and another country, and it looks like we're at odds, and then you find out that at the working level, the operational level, their intel folks and our intel folks are still working closely together. They get it, we have a

55:07common interest in mind. It's like, okay, let the politicians fight out their political issues, but we're going to keep working together. That's a very important point. That is a very important point. That is a very important point. It is important in point, and it's held true over the years, except only so long as those operators see that we do have the same objective in mind. We have the same mission in mind, and there is a point at which we distinguish our interests from the interests of NATO and our allies to such an extent that that understanding no longer holds. At that point, I do worry. So I am very worried that the more rhetoric we engage in, direct it against our allies, the more that's going to undermine that operating cooperation that we rely on. So you feel pretty confident, even though Karni and Trump are fighting in public and are engaging in a tariff work, if there was some threat, that Canada got wind of, that the operational agents both in

56:07the US and Canada are absolutely talking to each other and trying to prevent it. I think that's true. I think that's a fair assumption. Domestic terrorism. Problem or not, is that the right word to use? Why isn't there a federal statute? Take your pick amongst those compound questions. I think that the domestic terrorism has become a phrase that we use to describe grievances from whatever perspective they are animated from, take the form of violence, and we should be focused on, obviously, the disruption and stopping violence, regardless of where it comes from, whether it's from foreign, directed, and inspired activity or from some domestic grievance or from some mix of grievance, I will say, when I was still in government, the thing we were increasingly seeing

57:08was actually violence from lone actors here in the United States from a kind of a mix of origins and grievances that you couldn't necessarily always describe to a particular point of view. But the core thing that law enforcement has to be focused on is the violence, the conduct, not the ideology. Look, I think this is a god-dentil point where just the use of the term domestic terrorism is such a hot button. But the reality is domestic terrorism, that term denotes etiologically-driven terrorism here in the United States, but that doesn't have a foreign source to it. And that is a problem. That's a problem on both sides of the local spectrum. And so, at least this point, we need to address the violence and not the ideological source of the violence. In terms of whether we need a law, there's a whole question about, as a practical

58:10matter, we need a domestic terrorism statute. Because right now, the reality is if somebody launches an attack, it's etiologically motivated here in the United States, no foreign connection, there are myriad statutes that you could bring. Federal statutes and then state statutes that are brought to bear. I mean, just look at the Oklahoma City bombing. And so, I'm not sure that we're actually that our ability to prosecute what we consider domestic terrorism is that impaired by not having a statute. And a problem with the statutes is that just that debate will be credibly divisive as to what it is. Because people, at least politically, look at domestic terrorism through a political lens is the current executive branch going after domestic terrorism on one side of the political spectrum because they disagree with the thought that animates that domestic terrorism or they sort of objectively looking at violence and going after it no matter

59:12what it's etiological source. Lots of discussion on the podcast and everywhere in the country and in the world about what? Artificial intelligence. And the other thing you talked about being one of the failures that led to 9-11 and that could be a failure again is what? Connecting the dots seems to me from my lead eye perspective that AI among other things can connect the hell out of dots. True is AI among its dangers and perils potentially like a savior in preventing terrorism or not. Look, I think it is like so many of the general purpose technologies that have come before something that can be both a tool and a weapon, right? It poses tremendous potential to help cyber defenders, to help medical research, but it also can accelerate and we've

1:00:15seen it already accelerate known threats. So I think we have to be quite clear-eyed that it can have both capabilities. Double edge sword answer from Lisa, Ken? Did I? Look, I'm a lead eye slideite, but I will. That's why I love you. I absolutely, I imagine right now that federal government is doing everything it can to try to bring it to the fight, but Lisa's point is a good one. I have gotten briefed on our adversaries use of AI, both in the cyber context, but also in terms of clinical infrastructure and it gives the bad guys an unprecedented ability to scan and identify vulnerabilities. That guys didn't have before, so we've got to be on our game. Any final word on this anniversary, folks? Well, just thank you, Prid, for bringing us together. It's always good to talk to you and to get to

1:01:17reminisce with my friend, Ken. I'll go back to where we started. I can't believe it's been 25 years, but I also think about spending a lot of that 25 years in conversation with the two of you, and I'm grateful for that. Yeah, and thanks for getting the band back together again. Yeah, you make beautiful music. Look, I love you guys, and as I always say, people who have had the kinds of careers you have, although not quite that many people who've had the careers keeping us safe as you folks have. So I always thank you for your time. I thank you for your insight, and I thank you for your service. And I mean that especially so when I say it today. So I haven't asked you what you're doing on 9-11. My office, Wilmer Hale, is at Seven World Trade Center. And there used to be a Seven World Trade Center before and the entire memorial

1:02:21and museum is right next to my office. So I get to see out the window, not my window, but my neighbor's windows at the office, the memorial every day, and I often, depending on what route I take, I walk by them. So to the extent people say don't forget, certainly this group will never. And I'm thankful for that too. Thanks folks. Thanks, P. Thanks, P. My conversation with Lisa Monaco and Ken Waynestein continues from members of the insider community. The thing I think that we should learn from 9-11 is we weren't structured appropriately. We had silos that terrorists exploited. To try out the membership, head to stay tuned dot substack dot com. Again, that's stay tuned dot substack dot com. After the break, I'll share a few of my own reflections on the 25th anniversary of 9-11.

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1:04:25in these extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. C terms. We're some C heroes and other C egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. So here we are. This podcast being made public on September 10th, one day before the 25th anniversary of September 11th. And if you've been listening for the last couple of weeks, you know that we've been focusing a lot on the events of that day, the consequences of that day, the legacy of that day with the guests from last week and this week. And as I said to Ken and Lisa today, it almost feels cliche to say it's hard to know what to say on the 25th anniversary, but it's true. So I thought I would as probably many of you are just reflecting on your own experiences, your own reactions, how you feel about things today and not talk about policy for a change.

1:05:31So when you think about 9 11, probably like all of you, you remember a lot of things, but the most jarring things obviously are in my case, watching television as the second plane hit. So I saw that in real time. And I lived not far from the Twin Towers. And as I said in the podcast earlier, I remember walking out to the street, crowd of people on Fifth Avenue, straight line of view to the towers. I remember the towers falling, but I will tell you less obviously that there were two things that made me feel better and they might kind of surprise you. One was when I was watching network news with my family and it was my wife, my brother, and our four month old daughter. And they showed a graphic eventually. I don't know what time a day it was on September 11th, but the graphics showed that every single plane in the continental US had been grounded. And to me, that meant no more threat, at least in the immediate term

1:06:32from the same kind of attack. And the second thing, relatedly, was when I heard and saw a fighter jet fly over Manhattan. And that's when I remember thinking, okay, we're safe for now. That didn't last for long because rumors flew through New York and DC. And I'm sure many other cities of impending attacks. And I literally did the calculation that night, I lived on 22nd street in Manhattan, just south of the Empire State Building, which is on 34th street, 12 blocks up. And even though I had witnessed with my own eyes, the way that the twin towers fell, that they imploded upon themselves, it still occurred to me that it was possible that a building could be knocked over, clearly showing I know nothing about physics. And I was trying to calculate the height of the Empire State Building to see, because that was the rumor that that was going to be destroyed next. Could that building reach our building? These are the kinds of thoughts that I'm sure I'm not alone in having that day. I wonder sometimes if my reaction may not have been quite as strong, if I didn't have a, you know, basically a newborn at home, thinking about what was in the future,

1:07:36not just for me and for my wife and for my friends and for my colleagues, but for my four-month-old daughter, what kind of world had we brought her into? The one thing that did change, and I don't think I planned it, but it was based on, you know, essentially the two strongest emotions I felt, I asked my guest today this question, but I don't think I answered it myself. The two strongest emotions I felt were grief, overwhelming, intense grief, not even knowing how many people we had lost. And the second was patriotism, a deep feeling of obligation to and love for my country. And so I mentioned the patriotism in part because I had always been a pretty patriotic person. I was working in the US Attorney's Office. I wanted to do public service, but I remember thinking I will never ever feel or want to feel uncomfortable loving my country or think that being patriotic was cheesy and that unabashed love of your country, not necessarily for the leaders of your country, one of the decisions your country and its leadership make. And you know that because you

1:08:39listened to this podcast, but deep love for America and what it had done for my family. And we had established a ritual even at four months. So when we put our daughter to bed, we would sing her songs. And the normal repertoire, as you can imagine, songs that you would sing to a little kid. And on September 12, I think maybe on September 13, when we put my daughter to bed, I added a song, and it was God Bless America. And I think it is the case that every night I ever sang to her, and then when her brother came along, also to him, and then when another brother came along, to all three of them, until they got tired of dad singing them songs at bedtime. But from September 12 or 13 until that point, one song was always in the rotation. And it was God Bless America, and I'm not embarrassed about that one bit. So when I said I felt massive grief, mostly I'm talking about the loss of life. Obviously, after the immediate attacks, I began to think a little bit more about whether we had lost our innocence, whether we had lost our feeling of

1:09:40security. I certainly felt that we had lost a lot of our feeling of security, but not only that we had lost a lot of people, but we had lost a lot of heroic people. And I just remember being sad a lot. And from where we lived and from where I worked, and we didn't go back to work until the following Monday, you know, the fires burned at ground zero for a long time. Those of you from New York know that and remember that. And it just it smelled like the death of a lot of people to me. So there was a base level of sadness and grief that I felt and everyone, everyone felt. But then there were moments where even though you were sad and grieving and hearing about the funerals of police officers and firefighters and others, that grief might spike. And I will never forget going to I think it was a firehouse actually where they had set up an opportunity for people to volunteer to provide services and help them with the bureaucracy if they were members of the families of 9-11 victims. So I went and I volunteered one day. And it's pretty sad to tend to people

1:10:43who would experience that, which I had not a member of your own family. And as I was walking out of the building, I saw a wall and on the wall were taped or pinned all these very colorful letters and cards. And as I got close to the wall, I realized that each one of them was a card, colorful card with a note from a child, written to the firefighters who went and saved people and tried to save more people. And something about the juxtaposition of the innocent children's cheery notes and knowing the fact that so many firefighters died on the stairwell in those two buildings just killed me for a while. So the 25th anniversary is very significant obviously, but the one that had the greatest impact on me and was the most cathartic. And I think I've talked about this before was the 10th anniversary, September 11th of 2011. I was the sitting United States attorney. I felt like I should have an event at the office and I did and we had speakers

1:11:44and I spoke and we gathered to remember and to grieve and to just be a community. But the other thing that happened that day and it was a Sunday, the other thing that happened that day was the opening of the 9-11 Memorial. They had taken that long to construct it, put it together. And it opened with the president of the United States. In every dignitary you can imagine from New York and Washington was there and I was also there. And on that day at the Memorial, the only people who were allowed in to look at the footprints and to see the names etched in the stone were family members of those who had lost their lives. And so you knew, unlike every day since when there might be people who had no connection to 9-11 or no loss were coming from other countries, on that day, everyone there had lost someone. So that was powerful. And then I did a thing that I normally don't do. It happened to be a Sunday and one of my best friends in the world, Boyd, was a deacon at his church in the village and he invited me to church. So on the 10th anniversary of 9-11, I went to the opening

1:12:49of the Memorial. I saw the victim's families grieve at the Memorial. I went to a sermon about grief and about recovery and about resilience. And the combination of all those things gave me some peace after 10 years. And I think that may have been true for other folks as well. Now, when people ask the question, what do you want folks to remember the most about 9-11? What do we mean when we say, never forget? I think that we mean a lot of things among them that we need to be strong and protect ourselves. All the things that I talked about with Lisa and Ken about national security, but a lot more than that. And basically, to me, it's two things that we should be clear-eyed and honest with ourselves about the existence of badness, of evil in the world, but then also its opposite. And I mentioned that on the 10th anniversary, I had an event at the office and I spoke very briefly. And it seems like every few years or so on a significant anniversary, I go back and look at what I said. And what I just mentioned

1:13:53is encapsulated in the first minute of what I said to the office, which was this. The lessons of 9-11 boiled down to a few simple and timeless truths. There is evil in the world, but there is also good. There is cowardice in the world, but also courage. There is terrible tragedy, but also hope. Sometimes, a world altering tragedy is thrust upon us, epic in scale and suffering, and made more shocking because it is wrought not by nature, but by wicked men. That is when good people announce themselves with great force and in great number. That is when good people, even knowing they can never fully console the grieving or calculate the loss or even comprehend the act, dedicate themselves simply and tirelessly to healing the harmed, fighting for justice, and rebuilding their city. And that's what I want all of us to remember. And that is why I keep coming back to what Ken Feinberg said. And the question that he asked, that I've asked a series of

1:14:54guests, will we come together next time that we need to? Because we will, and as Lisa said, we must. If you have a moment and you care to share, send me and us your reflections. What were you doing that day? What lessons do you draw from the experience? What's been seared in your mind the most? What is your outlook for the future? In the meantime, be well, be safe, and God bless America. Well, that's it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guests, Lisa Monaco and Ken Wainstein. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. You can reach me on Twitter or Blue Sky at PriteBerara with the hashtag AskPreet. You can also call and leave me a message at 833-997-7338. That's 833-99Preet. Or you can

1:15:57send an email to letters at cafe.com. Stay tuned is now on Substack. Head to staytuned.substack.com to watch live streams, get updates about new podcast episodes, and more. That's staytuned.substack.com. Stay tuned is presented by Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Seper. The supervising producer is Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Cloudy Hernandez. The audio and video producer is Nat Weiner. The senior audio producer is Matthew Billy, and the marketing manager is Leana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I'm your host, PriteBerara. As always, stay tuned. Support for the show comes from Engine. Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard, but if your team is still booking travel the old way, it's costing you more than you think.

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