_ It’s clearly important to both Obama’s and Brennan’s senses of self that there should be a morality behind our lethal operations, a continuing journey of ethical reasoning. For Brennan, that journey may have started in the philosophy classroom at Fordham, but just as foundational was the moment when theory was tested by the sickening realities of terrorism. In April 1983, when Brennan was in his third year at the Agency, a suicide bomber blew up the American embassy in Beirut. Among the 63 dead were employees of the CIA, including Brennan’s mentor, a Middle East expert named Robert Ames. _

**GQ: Can I ask you about Bob Ames? **

JB: He was a legend in many respects. He’d spent a lot of time in Yemen, was a very good Arabist, and someone who I had gotten to know in CIA. That was the first time that a terrorist attack came home to me in terms of killing somebody who I knew—who I worked for.

**GQ: I’ve heard that he was this sort of larger-than-life figure— **

JB: Oh he was, yeah. He was a tall guy; he was an imposing figure. Especially since I was, at the time, 27 years old, I think. He had a great reputation as being the epitome of an operations officer [that is, a spy-runner] in the Middle East at a time of great intrigue and coups and other things. I was studying Arabic in an intense tutorial for about six or seven months, so when I would come back into the office, I’d see Bob, and he would test me, almost, on my Arabic. So he’d be listening very carefully to, you know, my chuh and my ghuh.

**GQ: And were you sitting in the embassy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia when you heard he was killed? **

JB: Yeah. He was killed while he was in the stairwell. And I remember talking to people who had to then identify the body, and they said there was barely a scratch on him [tracing an index finger down his cheek]—but it was the percussion of the explosion that just tore people’s insides apart. And so he was killed almost instantly.

**GQ: Do you ever get inured to the losses? **

JB: I don’t think you ever get used to it. Unfortunately it’s happened too often. You know, when you—if you allow yourself to really focus on the, the human dimension and the emotional side of it, you really get quite—quite emotional. What I don’t want to do is get maudlin. Because I can do that. Because, if you think about, you know, the individuals? It’s—it can be an emotional drain. It can.

_During the course of our conversation, what Brennan seems to be saying is that he knows he will never convince his detractors—hell, he’s barely allowed to tell them about what he does—so he has to do his own self-policing to make sure his actions live up to his ethics. He must be, in a way, a closed moral system, a morality unto himself. But obviously there’s a real loophole there. Can anyone—over a long and arduous campaign of judgment calls—be a reliable check against himself? Even as Obama indicates that he’ll institutionalize the decision-making, Brennan’s self-examinations remind us that at the moment of go or no-go, it’s a personal decision, guided by personal conviction. _

**GQ: How challenging is it to say, ’Yes, you should take out this person’? **

JB: I’m not ideological. I think sometimes when people are ideological, the world’s a lot easier. Because it falls into either right or wrong, or black or white, or whatever. To me, I’m still trying to figure out a lot of things. You always, I think, debate with yourself about whether or not you made the right decision. And you have to then give the person that you’re working for—in my instance, the president—your best judgment based on your understanding of the facts, but also the calculus you use to make a determination about what’s the best way to go forward.

If anything, when I go to the president now, and I make a recommendation, the thing that allows me to feel good about what I’m doing, is that I can bring 30 years of experience to the issue, so that that journey about finding that which works best, or that which is most grounded in either Just War Theory, or morality, or right or wrong—is a result of the tremendous good fortune that I’ve had, being in the White House years ago, and having the opportunities to travel and live overseas.

There are a lot of people in the counterterrorism community who have tremendously weighty responsibilities. And I’ve seen them agonize and struggle as they’re poring over intelligence and trying to make assessments about, you know, who was responsible for putting together this plot that is, if it comes to fruition, is going to kill Americans—men, women, and children. You always want more data; you want more information. But at some point you still have to—I get a call; I have to go up and see the president.

_Reid Cherlin, a former spokesperson for the Obama White House, is a frequent contributor to _GQ.