Smerconish Exclusive: Chatting with Obama

PRIOR to my interview yesterday with President Obama, I e-mailed some friends about it. I gave the details and said that while I was still preparing my questions, I was certain to ask about Pakistan and the hunt for bin Laden.

A good friend quickly responded, concerned that at a time when all the political talk in the nation is about the economy, I was headed in a less interesting direction. I told him that was exactly why I intended to raise the subject.

Yes, I asked him about the election Tuesday. I asked how he intends to govern if a new congressional class is being sent to Washington intent on erecting a roadblock to compromise. I asked whether the Brits have a better idea in combating the economic funk by cutting spending as opposed to increasing it. We discussed the level of government spending, the fact that no one who voted for health-care reform is running on that issue, and the political climate that has born incivility in Washington. (Find the full audio of the interview at www.smerconish.com.)

What I was most intent on asking concerned a subject I have raised with him in the past. Yesterday was my fifth conversation with the president, and in each we have spoken about the best way to hunt and kill the man who both killed 3,000 innocents on 9/11 and set in motion the events that would claim the lives of more than 5,700 soldiers.

Three of those conversations were while Obama was running for president, and in each he impressed me with his understanding and focus on Pakistan as the world's true trouble spot.

"Now those guys have been getting billions of dollars in foreign aid from our country and they have been playing us like a violin," he told me in March 2008. He promised change.

Much to his credit, he has initiated an increase in the use of predator drones to combat al Qaeda in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. And Bob Woodward's recent, meticulously researched book, "Obama's Wars," makes clear that the president has given tremendous attention to Pakistan since being sworn in. But where we are nearly two years into his watch - still sending the Pakistanis billions, and with bin Laden unaccounted for- I thought it only fair to ask him if we were still getting played.

"You know, I think that we've seen over the last 18 months improvement in how Pakistan deals with us. We have seen more cooperation on counterterrorism. They finally started to send their armies up into some of these border regions where al Qaeda and these other extremist organizations are operating," he said.

He further said that we have "not gotten all the cooperation that we need," partly because of the devastation of the recent floods. "They're cash-strapped. And so some of that means that they are not working as effectively with us as I'd like us to be working with them."

He then rightfully took credit for taking out "over a dozen top al Qaeda leaders, hundreds of their key affiliates." He said they are "hunkered down in a way that we haven't seen in a very long time. And so we've made progress, but we've still got a long way to go."

I then asked him whether it's time to send our special forces across that Afghan-Pakistan border, engaged in the hunt of bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

"Well, I can't go into details about everything that we're doing, obviously, because we've got a lot of brave men and women who are already out there and a lot of their work is classified. But I will say that we are ramping up the pressure each and every day, and I'm actually confident that the work that General Petraeus is doing on the Afghan side of the border, the cooperation we've begun to get from the Pakistanis on their side of the border, is starting to have an effect.

"But as you and I have talked about before, every day I've got a team of some of our best people who are still looking for bin Laden, still looking for Zawahiri, still focused on making sure that we are defeating and dismantling al Qaeda once and for all."

I asked whether on his watch, we've ever had a line on bin Laden or Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

"I think it's fair to say that by the time I got into office, the trail had gone very cold. And we have done a lot of work over the last several years in making sure that we are starting to resuscitate the kinds of leads that would be necessary eventually to get them."

I never expected the president to share classified information with me based on the latest intelligence. And I don't know that I learned a great deal from my three questions on Pakistan.

But what I firmly believe is that only when bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri are dead will it be time to stop asking.

Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at www.smerconish.com.