Former acting CIA director remembers 9/11

I want to broaden out the conversation now by going to former acting CIA director Michael Morell. He was also with President Bush on 9/11. And as fate would have it, he was with President Obama 10 years later, when Osama bin Laden was brought to justice. Mr. Morell, thank you for joining us. Your reflections on this morning. Hi, Tony. Hi, Norah. It's great to be with you guys. I've been through years and years of these anniversaries now, and this one feels very special, much more somber to me than previous ones. So it's a very special day. I was with the president, as you noted. I was his daily intelligence briefer. I was with him wherever he went in the world every day, seven days a week. For me, the day was a mix of the intensity of doing my job, answering the president's question about who did this very early after we went airborne from Sarasota, to giving him intelligence later in the day that this could just be the first wave of attacks and there could be another. So the intensity of doing my job to the surreal, you know, fighter jets on Air Force One's wingtips, going deep into the underground bunkers at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska with the president, and then flying home and seeing the still-smoldering Pentagon and being told by the president's military aide that the fighter jets that were on our wingtip were there to put themselves in between a surface-to-air missile and the president of the United States, if that happened. So it was a very special day.

It gives me the chills to this day, Michael, hearing about your experience, and thinking about everything since then. And just to remind everyone, the president asked you specifically, as you were on Air Force One, who did this. And you caveated, I know that you didn't have all the intelligence, but you did tell him that you thought it would lead to al-Qaeda and bin Laden. And then he asked you how confident you were. And what did you say?

I told him that I was so confident that I would bet my children's future on it.

Michael, you were also with President Obama when Osama bin Laden was brought to justice. That first phone call from former President Obama was to former President Bush. Is that true? Were you there? Can you recall that moment?

I wasn't in the room when he made the call, but that was my understanding, which I think was an amazing gesture on the part of President Obama. And then President Obama, knowing that I was with President Bush on 9/11, asked me to fly to Dallas to brief the president on the intelligence that took us to that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and the military operation that brought bin Laden to justice. So that was just two weeks after May 1st, 2011.

Michael, thank you very much.