Danny Jones

Well, Gary Bernson is a ex-CIA officer who I had written a book with 20 years ago called Jawbreaker.

He was the guy who organized the teams after 9-11 and led the teams that went into Afghanistan

to set it up for the military.

Because the day after 9-11, when President Bush called all his advisors together, he said, I want to go into Afghanistan.

The Taliban has been protecting these, the Al-Qaeda.

And I've asked them to turn them over, and they're not doing it.

So let's go in and punish them.

And Donald Rumsfeld, who was the Secretary of Defense at the time, said,

Mr. President, Afghanistan is a difficult country.

The Soviets got their butts kicked there, and the British got their butts kicked there.

We need at least three months to prepare.

The President Bush wanted to do something right away.

So George Tenet, who was the head of the CIA at the time, he went,

You know, Mr. President, we've had teams in there before working with the Afghan resistance, the Northern Alliance.

So maybe we can put together something and go in there and kind of prepare the ground.

I don't know if it will succeed.

And the president said, yeah, let's do it.

So they brought this guy in, Gary Bernson, who at the time was the station chief in Uruguay.

And he had been in Afghanistan.

He had met Shah Massoud, who was the head of the Northern Alliance.