Because all the little guys have Liquor Stores they can convince them to carry their product every four years less supermarkets decide that is the big market and they want a big chunk of it so why should they offer convenience at a lower cost . And not worry about the jobs i think theres 11,000 jobs so they passed a bill we have 25 million we will take all or we can do the compromise to phase it in every Supermarket Chain will have five new Liquor Stores said five more or Something Like that. Very large and Liquor Stores to buy in scale and it will be very hard on the small Liquor Stores that roughly half of those say it is the best compromise is we cant get a also talking to the brewers. They opened and made their investment with their life savings now we will change the law to give it to a Big Corporation . That drives me nuts but yet many of the small Liquor Stores think this is the best deal they will get and i feel absolutely sure if i veto to lead the charge we would overturn as colorados love Small Businesses supporting Small Business but what happens in two or four years and i about of office . I am not willing to commit but i do lie awake at night thinking about. The second question was about fracking. No. [laughter] that was what if i do next . I never thought i would be in the restaurant business. I never thought i would go into elected office. After looking into it i jumped into it but i dont know what is next. I will probably go to private sector somebody had the challenge for the foundation Something Different i have wondered to careers left but what in terms of fracking commented colorado the people who own the mineral rights are different than those who have the surface rights and our constitution protects that private property that is guaranteed by lot to access those minerals. In many cases people are living much further from town. They get the 35acre ranch they scatter all over the Eastern Plains on the front range where there happens to these be the ability to get large amounts of oil and natural gas. That is a very rapid transition fuel a major reason we are transforming south coal plants into a natural gas plants so you have private property we have protected. With the 2500foot setback somebody owns those mineral rights over than normally over 10 or 12 years but now somebody has a home there . That is unfair so we have an obligation to protect that private property. If on the ballot they talk about signatures to make the setback of many residents 2500 feet with that passes essentially that will take away all large amount of peoples private access i think that would go all the way to the Supreme Court for there are exceptions every lawyer says they will have to come back to make good end paper co with the power line or that conduit and to pay the value of the private property so lets figure out a way to pay people you pick that shoot thorniest problems that there are. This is the end of the book and also where the rest of my life begins where we go from here who knows for crowfoot this so to use super governor gideon up. [applause] [inaudible conversations] host eric fair thanks for sitting down to talk about your book. Your book is a story about u. S. The interrogator engaged in circumstances in iraq. In the story much more than that. Can you start off by giving a little what the story is about and why you decided to write to this book . Guest the question of why is interesting. A part of me wishes that i havent the story that i dont have to tell the there is an obligation a started talking in 2007 with the Washington Post i have been at this nearly 10 years with the same kind of values with what motivated me so that obligation to continue to write with the law under formats was the creation of the of book. I have been now for over a year and the narrative of what had gone and what frankly i had done as a soldier i had an obligation to the truth then they saw the narrative as an isolated incident it hadnt happened the same way we thought it did. In pennsylvania talk about your relationship with Law Enforcement. I grew up in the old dying steel town with the Presbyterian Church like humility in to have large displays of affection and far more importantly loves to veterans even older men went call me by my first name or mr. Fair it was a safe and wonderful place and is still important if they were to spend far more energy in time it was a beautiful kind of institution associate dia in places to serve in the military was strong. This was the 1990s before it decided to join but as i looked into the military about many of the same things like in church to take care of each other with the place of protection in to this noise about the troops it is so incredibly familiar. That is interesting you listed 1995 for the next five years of your life in the army tell us about that and your experience pop the path for you in your career i talked about feeling protected in the church that is what i wanted to do for others in so joining the army was a means to an end to be a police officer. The best way was to the veterans preference points then after four years of of college than there were operations in kosovo, with the etf that armies would be engaged in the land battle was the thing of the past people were suggesti that every future war would be fought from the air. So i spend most of my army time in training and the next three year four years in places like tennessee and North Carolina so when 2000 came round of violence mitt was up it was getting boring and i felt the call for Law Enforcement and i tried to find a job as a police officer. Rabil read a passage from your book is is about one of your training exercises so i have that here the idea what to read that . And will see if that is one of the first entries that you have the interrogation it is the subject of your books. With those exercises available in cent is more likely to recapture than the average soldier. That was essentially a Training Program . To first evade resist and escapes so you are behind enemy lines in this portion is where you are subjected so here were retried to evade so once captured your taken to a detention facility they tend to be enemies they have personal files they know everything they threaten families by name and at night they play loud music of gore brings in the recording of his infant son crying over and over also crazy train your strip naked to stand out in the cold than they take our coats were promised more meals and warm beds if we cooperate they say everyone breaks down underdress it always has worked and it always will it just takes time. For in this to be the first entry point has a soldier that would shape your views on interrogation but you also describe it you are treating as a valid experience point with you in the other thought i had was just now knowing in retrospect in though water pouring was reverse engineered as it was designed the soldiers to resist torture as they were captured by enemy forces. So can you respond to that . To reinforce the idea is that we were essentially the good guys and they could teach you what it would be like but yet it was still a stressful environment in people did break down and had difficulty emotionally dealing with it. At the end region as your under the notion you are under the military so the idea of is with the wake of 9 11 to a few days after an 11 and now we have to work in the only way to infiltrate is due join them and i think that is into we should be but quite frankly i was an agreement i try not to have Great Respect for even in the interview to confront the vice president. Industry said it out loud that it was implemented i have no idea that these tax techniques were navigated with the in his Interrogation Program it ted lohan of any direct experience but i also know if the intention was to work on the shadows it didnt need to come from the school or from the outside with how to torture the human mind is where those techniques have come from better and no doubt would have mattered. Host we will get back to your narrative so i am curious. And how that transition in your life is in pennsylvania and that this idea of calling lawenforcement applied to a number of different agencies but maya and holding town of bethlehem was the first and i love the job of Law Enforcement you could almost read like a ministry is certainly an did keep a moment of trust in two shades the direction they could very quickly calmed down to transition much more quickly but he would know the officer that may come in the star by yelling or screaming and it was a way to get people riled up. To take somebody increases it was incredibly compassionate and professional and it was the perfect job now i was eventually diagnosed with a heart condition and was perfectly healthy i applied for another position they required extensive physical which discovered a heart murmur and it turned out cardiomyopathy that was pretty severe that instantly ended my Law Enforcement career. So i was devastated. All of those things i had of the sins of the military in the community suddenly it was wiped away. This was posted 9 11 with the runup to the invasion at this point. Now there was a war in iraq every could reel list with a heart condition. At this point with the insurgency there was a recognition we did not have enough soldiers to accomplish that task at hand in with Language Training that allows the contractor to qualify this is why a specific individual is qualified so we wanted to get better quickly i rise in january 2004. Tell us about the contract you signed up with into maybe also into i was struck the reporting lines of authority in the book but at the same time that it was hard to tell if you are a contractor remember of of military to not be as role was familiar with the company might. To work for a company that we called khaki intelligence was most of the contracts but there were asked to find a new division called human in tablet intelligence for human interrogators theyre bringing over analysts and screeners that would be the prisoners first then taken to the interrogators. I remember in basic training we were out raking leaves one day. So we were talking and i remember our drill sergeant flying across the grass screaming at us to get away from civilians. He didnt want us to of contact with the outside world but we watched him who was just horrible to west stood and spoke very respectfully to the civilians in the the directions that she was an underlying as it was drilled into your head from the start your the chain of canadian but there is always of total of the president of United States isnt always in civilian clothes. So you recognize the civilians in this was a complication in bay view guess outside the chain of command. And the contractors in most of us in listed but even when we were out of uniform we found ourselves acting the way we had before in the staff sergeants so that was a bizarre type of interaction between the two then you arrived in baghdad and then tell us about yahoo gray band may be the first time that things were not quite what they should be . I am vastus question and a lot and i try to think about i a remember pulling into the prison i remember who i was standing with but it was disorienting. Many of us had the impression and of vast number of prisoners were in outdoor camps. But my image was very much of the first goal for of images of the iraqis surrendering back behind enemy lines are the front lines to be processed back but here we were easily one of the most dangerous parts of iraq at the time halfway between fallujah and baghdad in this was not maya impression how the prisoners of war camp was run you didnt interrogate them in the combat zone the more important the safety of the actual prisoners. Had even before i thought of the issue most were confused by why it had been arranged. You talon interesting story about receiving these prisoners for interrogation in getting little to nothing to engage in these activities and in most cases they did think they would set back it was a confusing place and of course, everybody would deny having done it and then to move on to their next mission then they would end up at abu ghraib in the process with paper work but a majority had the phrase of a detainee to be suspected of anticoalition activity. Try to figure out what their involvement may or may not have been coming an come and in partr anticoalition activities and, you talk about how in the book the first few weeks use wouldve had a sad story about recommending detainees as not being a threat to the Coalition Forces. You get called in. Tell us a little bit abou aboutt experience. Experience. It was impossible to know. There were people that were part of this and it deserved not necessarily deserve to be there but had access to the information we needed to get but there were others there was simply no way to determine why they were there in the first place where others had been captured. One gentle man in particular and this is a common theme that said his son is suspected of being part of anticoalition, but his father, his family wont give up his locations a wonderful baby we are taking the father. Then he says even i if im, which im not comin, how could i possy know where he is you tell me where he is and so i would write a detainee is not a threat to the Coalition Forces and my impression of that phrase meant is they were to be set for release and so almost all of my initial interrogations i interry recommended these guys knowingly for the release and i was pulled in and told that this is what was happening. And again my connection to this mission be leaving and its so strong i didnt want it seen as the guy recommending it for release so i went on and changed it. So even the men i did interview as threats we have to write as a potential threat to the Coalition Forces. So in the traditional line of rapport based on interrogations when did the interrogation start to cross the line in your mind . I know this has been a shifting line as you look back over the years by them. Since what you saw. I didnt think about the lines there were not discussions. As you mentioned i spoke arabic and i still need a translator in the beginning to get through some of i forgot some of the language. Once they realized i spoke they were desperate to talk to me about the conditions in the prison and seeing the family. And i could hold a long conversation. Torture is an enhanced interrogation but you can hear it in these interrogations. You can hear the plastic and guy is talking about stress positions and food deprivation, when do i have to let them sleep. They are talking about food and isolation and deprivation and not behind closed doors. Its as if we were huddled together and if somebody walked by he wouldnt talk about it, so i was well aware that these techniques were being used. It wasnt something i considered the longer that i stayed to present the longer the frustrations were and even though i was a contractor still a part of that mission i was obligated to try some of these techniques. You talk about at one point in the book. You talk about the folks tell us a little about that. Guest anyone that wore the uniform and listed will understand this. The type of soldier that served in the 90s he called derricks and we knew had managed the seals manuals by heart, there is one for everything, from cleaning your weapon to put in your uniform on the right way of fixing the helicopter. So we used to have motor pool mondays and everyone would have to go out and check the humvee and check the air in the tires and the loyal levels. There was someone there with the field manual in hand. Everyone made it inefficient and this wasnt the way that the army kind of worked in an efficient way. We dont operate by the field manual, we operated by getting the Mission Accomplished into doing what we are told and whats necessary. While there were some discussions about recognizing that there are certain, the field manual said that certain procedures in which you are to glean information there is also the discussion that we need to be creative and here i was hearing about an interrogator that had been successful but the message was again if the insurgency continued to grow we need information and to im not going to sit here and say that i was ordered to use the position that this wasnt done in isolation. I wasnt a lone wolf and this is what we thought we were supposed to be doing. There were pressures to get information and get it fast. I wonder was very conversation about these kinds of techniques that are out of bounds across the line and is that in the consciousness . I remember a specific conversation one of the things you were not allowed to do is threaten the life of a prisoner. You couldnt say if you dont talk im going to shoot you. There were discussions about can i do things that would frighten the prisoner or make the prison are afraid for his life without saying directly could i say to him if you dont cooperate with us we are going to send you to egypt or to a place where you may be executed us of the messagwith themessage being if t cooperate. And we were not sure. And i say that only to illustrate the absolutely worth thinking even within this world of the enhanced interrogation we were thinking of the lines and limits. But yes there were absolute discussions. It wasnt as if there were open season and you could do anything you wanted. In which respect we know there were places that was open season and id like to think that if i had seen some of the things that had been recorded like the disco rooms and blinding light and the use of dogs and people being put on hot exhaust pipes and burned because of my own actions and things like sleep deprivation i dont know that i would have been able to stand up and say something. You tell the story of being pulled out of the middle of the night. Tell us about that and what you experience to bear. The vast majority were held in camps but it is a basic prison facility within abu ghraib and it was worth were tt of higher value target for the highranking regime suspected of still at this point suspected of knowing something about chemical weapons because we were still thinking of attaching someho sow to trigger some. And as a linguist with my high level of clearance is and some of my Law Enforcement experience, i was thought of as an asset and someone that could insist in these interrogations. For me it was very difficult to have a conversation with a translator that often spoke a different dialect and you are never quite sure if you are getting the full conversation so the idea is that i would come in and almost observed a translator and overhear the conversation ts and say are you getting this right so my introduction to the hard site was essentially to kind of overhear the translators but when i got in there i saw something that kind of changed the way that i thought about what we were doing and i come to this all the time. I knew that i was now involved in something i was going to spend probably the rest of my life dealing with not violating the technique techniques or goir but seeing that implemented was troubling. There was a great deal which was essentially forced standing that was an enhanced technique and Donald Rumsfeld at some point said he stands at his desk all day. I can tell you seeing someone in a forced position has nothing to do with a standing desk. It was torture. At the time it was hard to come to grips with the fact i was involved in this and they didnt want to violate the trust i have with my friends but certainly now after the processing there is no way to deny what was going on and there was torture. So where you see some of the worst of these now i want to read from an interrogation that you witnessed in falluja what i think was the mayor of falluja at the time. The prisoner had been brought in which we thought was ridiculous with how ugly it was but it turned out in fact he had been the mayor of falluja involved in an attack on the Police Department which a number of Police Officers were murdered. And so, there was some suspicion that he had a connection or have somehow facilitated this attack and smuggled in their uniforms. So i interrogated him initially and it was a very direct interrogation i had spoken to him and moved on and he was passed on to another interrogator that placed him in this palestinian share. Where the name comes from there were rumors about being trained in israel. I dont know if that is true that we as americans sort of did this and we needed to be sure we were focusing on what we did as a nation. So while he was being interrogated in the chair i happened to walk by the interrogation room. Is blown open in the hot desert wind. His hands were tied to his ankles forcing all of his weight onto his side is as i fires as n trapped. His arms were pinned below his legs blindfolded, his head collapsed into his chest and he gasps for air. Theres a pool of urine at his feet. To tired to cry tha but too much pain to remain silent. One of the things thats interesting to me about the public torture focuses on the waterboarding technique which is strapping someone down onto a board forcing water into their lungs with the sensation of drowning. Its one that inspires the imagination when we are talking about torture, but the stress position of sleep deprivation, you put that in the category of torture as well and my question to you is the physical being that is described in the stress position is that sort of your view of how to think about torture . The psychological component is the only component involved in torture. Its just to get you to that psychological point. You dont ever have to play a hand to torture them come into the conduct of sleep deprivation. But in terms of the chair, it is an incredibly violent place and people have done perfect things. At times i was tempted to put someone in the chair and use it. It did seem strange there was a device and maybe that was an alarm bell for me i thought i should use it and see what it felt like. Another interrogator agreed with me and we strapped each other into the chair. The pain was searing and it was incredible, but what matters more is the fear of knowing that he wouldnt be able to get away from that pain and you were not sure how much worse it could get. So within a minute or two both of u us that gets said get me os thing and certainly it hurt but it was that momentary sense that if my friend isnt standing right there and ready to take me out of this thing, then i dont know where im going and i dont know whats coming, and thats frightening. Having seen the mayor in his chair, clearly he was in pain and discomfort. But what was going on in his head and what was being created inside of his own mind is what constituted torture. And i can speak about my own. I didnt use the chair. I did see it and that makes it complicit in its use. I showed up in the interrogation and was asked. There had been speaking to a prisoner during the day and wanted me to keep awake at night. So i came in and i went into his cell and wok and woke him up and stripped him naked and i realized immediately that it was kind of an assault on this individual. It got to the point of my involvement in the interrogation ended. And theres been a lot of talk about sleep deprivation and the idea that going to law school or medical school or training or Ranger School is the equivalent to sleep deprivation and its insane. Its intellectually lazy. Sleep deprivation can be accomplished in a matter of hours. Put someone in a room with no windows no idea what time it is, wake them up and they have no idea how long theyve been asleep. Within a matter of three or four hours that individual has no idea how long theyve been alive. It may feel like four or five days when its only been five or six hours and they lose all control and recognize that they no longer have control of their lives and you can instantly stripped them of hope. You dont need weeks or months just need a few hours before you torture someone. Now one thing beyond the discussions of this but ive always been interested in talking to interrogators is the idea that creating this sense of confusion and disorientation and sort of disrupting the brain function in this way how can that be the best way to gather information from someone, and its interesting to me that you dont go into the efficacy of the book. Its worked in some circumstances but perhaps not others. You talk about some examples you give quite a lot of information. One is having cake. Why do you think the public conversation or not torture is so focused on whether it works or not . Why do you sort of ride the narrative in your book . Guest the reason the public is so enamored in torture and i believe this is because the world is so frightening and scary and because some of the things we face now scare us, there is a loss of the sense of control and the very thing we try to do to lose that sense of control is how we feel by facing this complicated world which quite frankly is no more complicated than the world has ever been. Its this deep brutality of the war so the idea that you can force control on this person to essentially cooperate is comforting in some way because now you suddenly regain control so instead of accepting that the world is so complicated and values like compassion and humanity wont fix it you resort to things like torture this person is bad. They have information. I will get the information, now im safe. Its simplistic. I dont mean to be demeaning when i say it because i am there and thats what i thought. But this has the effectiveness of the technique and the ability to control another person has nothing to do with who we are as a nation and if that is all we are is a nation that says just do it, then weve lost our way. As a soldier i didnt swear an oath to protect the homeland or the citizens of the United States. I swore an oath to the constitution and ideals and i have an obligation to not defend the values in the constitution and an issue like torture and enhanced interrogation violates that in the worst way possible. I am as guilty as anyone having given into some of these horrifying attacks, but we absolutely need to do better. It occurred to me reading the book as you go through the interrogations. Its one of those antiair periods of time that youve come out later to talk about as a sort of retrospective exercise you knew was wrong at the time that you describe it as a thing. So why did you do it. Guest we talk about how similar th the church into the y can be and the same values and the church so it is an incredibly attractive organization so it was difficult to extract myself and realize what i was doing was violating my own faith. I see these things as they say amanda vaughn. A sin and wrong. For anyone that hasnt served it with sound kind of ludicrous and ridiculous to become something bigger than yourselves and that can mean a lot of Different Things but for me, it meant that even though there was this pulled towards Something Like my favoritfaith or the family valut have been taught. Its two separate myself because this is what we are doing to prosecute the war. It was a normal failure on my part. Letting go the question i get asked is why didnt i quit right away. You saw it come you didnt like it, you could have quit at any point, why not . Pulled towards the community was so strong that it was quite a communitwould quite acommunity f revolting. Once i got home, i was impotent in terms of being able to say this was okay to. Host you resorted to drinking and your heart condition got worse. You were literally on your deathbed. Talk about that experience and how your decision is to go public. Guest without having lost the job we would have stayed with the Police Department or Law Enforcement i may never have got into iraq. This isnt a book about addiction. I dont want it to become a distraction. I think thats something a lot of soldiers and veterans and anyone recovering from trauma deals with is alcohol. But as the heart condition continued to worsen and cardiologists told me that it was, i essentially faced my deathbed. Now, at this point i started writing about iraq and of my involvement, but theres no denying that i was aware then and now thof thenand now the cls essentially taking for me. Retirement age ends at some point there is an extra sense to hurry up and be as honest as i can about these things. Hispanics so you are pretty careful to avoid politics of the larger policy debate. Debate. Theres a very personathere is y about your experience in your life. But you came to dc last year and worked with us on a measure that was passed in congress and has responded to some of the comments made on the president ial campaign about returning to a waterboarding and other socalled enhanced interrogation techniques. Talk about how the process factored into your thinking about your kind of life story and why it is that you decided to speak out. When i wrote the first oped for the Washington Post all of my colleagues may not necessarily respond well. I did think some would support the entity behind me but essentially all of them broke contact with me and i havent heard from any of them since. It was a difficult thing. Suddenly i was isolated and people said havpeoples that have right thing here. But there were the voices that matter so i felt like i violated a trust. A few years later, the organization did reach out to me. Down in the hills i responded by saying i dont think thats a good idea. Places like the cia and the fbi and air force i dont think they will want me around. I think my voice is valuable on my own and the organization continued to push and i came down. I was welcomed with open arms and it was an eyeopener. In all kind of places in the intelligence communities that were speaking out strongly against these practices and i remember sitting down with the Lieutenant General swanson who had been the director of the agency into being incredibly inseminated intimidated knowing what id done and he was gracious to spend an hour or two speaking with me as a friend and showed the affection for i have done. I was essentially part of that group and was reintroduced into that bond and i still miss what i had and i will always miss the Close Friends i have. They were always good people and organizations that allowed me to recognize a lot of people feel very strongly about this. Senator mccain said its not about who we are its about who they are and one of the kind of narratives that i think is very reflective of that is this idea that not only does it have a incalculable impact on individuals in custody who are going to suffer psychologically, physically for the rest of their lives the family will pay the price as well but it also, what does this mean for the soldiers and others working for the government when we ask our own to do this, to engage in torture and what impact will that have on our values and our friends and family members who will comk from the war and i think thats what your book is about