Yemen - Obama Presidency Oral History Back Yemen Index / Locations Transcripts Jeh Johnson ...say, “only in Afghanistan,” or “only in Yemen .” So you have to go where the enem... ...our counterterrorism operations in Yemen and Somalia. They were classified, s... ...“Military's fighting a secret war in Yemen .” I said, “Well, that shouldn't be th... Alan Bersin ...Christmas Day plot, and then the Yemen cargo plot with the UPS and FedE... ...Actually, that's what saved us in the Yemen cargo plot in October 2010. But yo... ...the Christmas Day plot, and then the Yemen cargo plot of October 2010. I've helpe... ...or the underwear bomber, with the Yemen cargo plot. I'm wondering how thos... ...the Christmas Day bombing and with the Yemen cargo plot was that yes, in fact... ...mission succeed in the aftermath of the Yemen cargo plot, is a real tribute to th... Show more... Janet Napolitano ...was a whole alphabet soup of them. Yemen was a particular problem. There was ... ...anti-US plotting that emanated out of Yemen . That's where the skilled bomb maker... ...on a plane. They all were coming out of Yemen . So we worked very closely with Joh... ...this correctly. He'd started in Yemen , flew to Nigeria, flew from Nigeria t... Tommy Vietor ...had time for me, like a director for Yemen , or a young policy person on Syria... Mara Rudman ...countries—the exception of Yemen . So for the development community, no... ...portfolio. I had a mission director in Yemen . I had a mission director in Jordan. ... ...out of that time; huge challenges in Yemen at that time; and then what became th... ...saying to one of my colleagues, Yemen will be zero sum, that the attention i... ...attention is going to shift away from Yemen to Syria and that's going to cos... ...Brennan had been very focused on the Yemen challenges as well. So that was part o... Show more... Michael McFaul ...course, there's Egypt, and then there's Yemen and Bahrain. To what extent did thi... Jeffrey Feltman ...al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, in Yemen , and elsewhere—I think that would hav... ...of course, then in February that's when Yemen , Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Morocco... ...Tunisia and Bahrain, our response in Yemen ; there was just so much going on tha... ...we might have needed for helping us in Yemen , or elsewhere. I think that we wer... ...as opposed to the categories like Yemen and Bahrain and Tunisia, Morocco... ...now of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen —when the administration confront... ...I would go from an Egypt meeting to a Yemen meeting to a Bahrain meeting to a Syri... ...East envoys. There's an envoy for Yemen , for Libya, for Iraq, for Lebanon, fo... Show more... Jim Steinberg ...in this time frame. Countries from Yemen to Bahrain—and we can talk about thos... ...go. I'd also been pretty involved in Yemen . Again, there are things that deputie... ...day-to-day work to manage the crisis in Yemen . I spent quite a lot of time on Yeme... ...Yemen. I spent quite a lot of time on Yemen during this period, and working wit... ...CT [counterterrorism] folks. And the Yemen situation was a total mess. Then o... ...what I saw from my own engagement in Yemen , in Bahrain, in Syria. I believ... ...is more complicated. You mentioned Yemen , and you just briefly said that tha... ...What were the circumstances in Yemen that made it so complicated? Like i... ...it was in Egypt or Bahrain or Saudi or Yemen , was to try to work with the leader... ...change. So the major effort with Yemen was to try to take advantage of th... ...support—more than tacit support. In Yemen , it was important to critical nationa... ...or hosted a town hall in Sana'a, in Yemen , in January of 2011; I think it'... Show more... John Brennan ...is the Al-Qaeda group that is based in Yemen . That led to then some subsequen... ...thought about the region, thought about Yemen , thought about terrorist groups for s... ...and several of the leaders of AQAP in Yemen were very closely affiliated with bi... ...bomb makers and terrorists in Yemen , as evidenced by some of the attack... ...that these franchises, whether it be in Yemen or Iraq or Syria or North Africa o... ...the United States. So I traveled to Yemen frequently to meet with the Yemen... ...there were just too many examples of Yemen being the base for these terroris... ...Obama administration I traveled to Yemen about a dozen times, and there was ... ...of Cairo, or Tripoli [Libya] or Sanaa [ Yemen ], or other areas. The progress wa... ...with President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen repeatedly and was again—sometimes ... ...one of the reasons why I traveled to Yemen so often, so that I could talk to firs... ...on things like Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen , terrorism, even dealing with Russia... Show more... Load more Transcripts Related Topics go to the Science Science go to the LGBTQ Policy LGBTQ Policy go to the Immigration Immigration go to the Supreme Court Supreme Court go to the Wartime Presidency Wartime Presidency