And now from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, the Act Spiles, with your host, David Axelrod.

You know, as we head into this holiday season, the issue of terrorism is very much in the forefront of the news.

As is the question of how we deal with national security and homeland security, and still honor our heritage as a country, a welcoming country, a diverse country, a country in which we honor religious freedom.

There's nobody better to give us an understanding of what's going on in these troubled regions of the world from which a lot of this threat is emanating than Hussein Hakani, who was the ambassador from Pakistan to the US during the period when Osama bin Laden was apprehended and killed very eventful period.

He was an aide to Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated by extremists as she campaigned for President in 2007.

I sat down with him as he finished his fellowship here at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, and it was a fascinating talk.

Hussein Hakani, a journalist, a diplomat, a big political player in Pakistan at times and a political exile at others.

You've been a major observer participant in Pakistani politics and affairs for three decades. Talk a little about your journey.

I came into politics in a very interesting way. I was born poor and in our neighborhood, what happened was I was about 11 or 12 and the drains all got clogged.

There was nobody doing anything about it. This 11, 12 year old kid was very agitated about it and started looking for people who will help figure out what to do about it.

That's how I discovered there was something called local government and there was a guy who actually was our representative and I found him and he belonged to one of the Islamic parties.

He was a very kind man, a nice little accountant. He helped me solve that problem and then he recruited me into political work.

He was a very young boy.

This sounds like a Chicago story.

Yes, Karachi can be like Chicago. If Chicago had grown from 400,000 to 4 million within a year, Chicago would be Karachi, which is where I was born.

Karachi was a small city of 400,000 people and then India got partitioned and all the refugees ended up in Karachi and it went from a population of 400,000 in 1947 to a population of 4 million.

Just like by 1951. That's what happened to Karachi.

But anyway, that's how it happened. I got interested in politics. As I grew, I had a curious mind.

It used to be very hot. I used to go to something called the American Library. Americans in those days thought it was valuable to try and recruit friends by just appealing to their reason.

They built the air-conditioned libraries in third world countries. It was the only air-conditioned library I could go to study.

While I was there in my spare time, I started browsing through, apart from doing studies for my school.

I started browsing through things and I remember reading a magazine called The National Review.

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