Shout out target friends from cspan who are also joining us today. Before we hear from Gloria Venlet about his new book id like to tell you but to upcoming programs taking place in the theater for this friday august 16 at noon when t. Jr. Will tell us about a forgot founding father george mason the founding father who gave us the bill of rights. On tuesday december 10 Sidney Blumenthal will talk about his biography of Abraham Lincoln all powers of earth the political life of Abraham Lincoln in 1856 to 1863. To find out more about these programs and our exhibits please visit our web site at www. Archives. Gov account and you will find. Material in the theater lobby about coming events as well as sign up sheet so you can receive an electronic version of her monthly calendar. Philip mudd joined the Central Intelligence agency in 1985 on a panel specializing on asia and in the middle east. After the september 11 attack he was a cia member of the small Diplomatic Team that helped piece together a new government for afghanistan. After returning to the cia he became Deputy Director of the Counterterrorist Center and served there until 2005. He was the first Deputy Director of the federal pair of Investigations NationalSecurity Branch and later became the fbis Senior Intelligence adviser. Philip mudd has received numerous awards and his comments about terrorism and congressional testimony have been featured in rock cast and news. He is now the present of mudd management. The company specializes in consulting analytic training public speaking about security issues. Hes a senior fellow at the new America Foundation and the George WashingtonUniversity Homeland Security policy institute and serves as senior global adviser to Oxford Analytica a britishbased firm specializing in advising multinational companies. He sits on the Advisory Board for the National Counterterrorism center and for the director of National Intelligence and deserves on the aspen institute, and security groupie ladies and gentlemen please welcome philip mudd to the national archives. [applause] you missed the most important part of that which i lived part time in memphis tennessee the bluff city. Thank you. I was running in midtown memphis which is and historic part of memphis it must be three or four years ago wondering whether to write another book and reflecting on some of what i witnessed at the cia particularly during that excruciating time after 9 11 and realizing some of my colleagues many of whom are friends had written their stories but many of the people that i worked with would never speak, would never write in their stories would never be told as no one talked to them, put their stories together in one simple narrative and explained what happened. So i decided that morning running my five miles in midtown memphis i would do that. This is mostly their story. Not a history. Its not every document that ever appeared related to what we call the program detention and interrogation. Its a story of men and women that i served with that decided to speak with me because they trusted me. Step back in time with me. We are going into the time machine. You go back to the 1990s a lot of my colleagues talk about the time and to paraphrase one of them when we thought we had killed the dragon soviet union and only snakes were left. Thats a time after the fall of the soviet union the fall of the wall where people thought the intelligence challenges of the future may not reach the magnitude they reach at the time the soviet union but the counterterrorism people knew they had a problem. That problem started mostly when bin laden was in sudan and accelerated when he moved to afghanistan. When i spoke to them and i spoke to 35 or 40 most of whom will never speak and when i spoke them about those times theres a great sense of frustration and in some ways sadness. They witnessed the rise of a Global Network and that the tools they had were so limited when you look back in retrospect and realize thats only 20 years ago. Thats less than a full generation. The tools the cia had were limited. If you think about loss of budget and personnel, not accusing the National Security interest of sure doing anything wrong. All of the stock the same thing, the dragon is gone but if you think about any organization with its a tech urbanization or Manufacturing Organization if you lose substantial pieces of money and people your ability to operate declines. There was also the attitude about terrorism. In fact again only 20 years. Nobody spoke to could have imagined a world where someone said we could coconduct lightning raids in afghanistan day after day after day. I thought that a raid would happen where there is highrisk of american soldiers lives was almost unthinkable before 9 11. Forget about the u. S. Invasion just a raid against no credit compound and they knew that we knew were some of the compounds were. Much less and arms drone that could kill a terrorist overseas. In debate for years, never happened. Meanwhile there is bit of atrophy cia for example training spies. The number of spies in the Training Program declined. The attitude about character was mixed. Remember after 1947 to the target that the cia typically chased were big targets, the soviets, the chinese, the cuban missile crisis, big targets. I returned from taking a leave of absence of the cia in 1992 and was told to go to the Counterterrorism Center because it was seen as the place where you sent people who maybe werent ready for primetime which of course was the model i fit. That changed over time. Like any Organization Even larger organizations people make it different than the personalities that i read about in the book that i knew so well were critical in keeping counterterrorism from declining further in the 90s. George tenet as cia director was immersed in counterterrorism and he insisted on budget and insisted on ensuring there was leadership there that was wellregarded across the agency not common in the 1990s including the direct are the center guy named cole for black legendary in my business to raise the probe ill counterterrorism increasing the quality of people who were going over there increasing their respective counterterrorism in the cia before 9 11 that make no mistake peace dividend for intelligence in the lack of focus on terrorism meant that on that day, on that day the cia in the counterterrorist world with not only not repaired, they could not be prepared. They all talk to me about feeling before but especially in the searing months and years after 9 11 about feeling like they were on the back foot. On that day and this is not over dramatize. Everything changed. Years of debate about armed drones done. Years of debate about raids in the in the stands, forget about raids the cia will be first in with operatives in Money Technology guidance within weeks of 9 11. Forget about raids by the u. S. Army will invade afghanistan. The transition not only in resources but in attitude was foundational. The cia director used to assess i sat in on the nightly threat rethinks for years. We had five or six refers per day was trading back and forthwith another one of my colleagues opening the meeting with the threat matrix of 10, 15 or 20 threads people who would write in threats to web site and Foreign Security services who would tell us they uncovered a threat. Intercepting predications were al qaeda was talking about coming to the United States but i started those briefings and one of the things that was so evident and that was spoken around some of those tables was a simple concept. We anticipated the second wave, what we called the second wave for years. The second wave was what we anticipated would be another 9 11 but perhaps worse because al qaeda had an anthrax program that we did not fully understand. Four months come months and longer we did not understand the research and development and we did not understand whether they had taken strains of anthrax out of afghanistan. There was concern the second wave my aircraft and i might be anthrax and added to that was a fundamental problem. We did not understand the adversary. The human source penetration that is the bread and butter of the human source of an organization, the human source penetration and this is an operative speaking to me. People who ran operations against al qaeda would tell you the human source penetration was. In the midst of america watching the horrific videos of people jumping off a dove wings and watching pages in the newspaper of faces of the fall and we were sitting behind the scenes with the director saying if there is that second wave tomorrow and you say i wish i had done this, that or the other thing. Why dont you do it today . In the midst of all those there was a drumbeat in the spring of 2002 and ive witnessed a lot of this firsthand. It was intense and getting louder. That drumbeat was the hunt for the first major cia captains abu peseta. One of the challenges of qaeda had was they miscalculated the u. S. Response to 9 11. They did not anticipate such a huge response. They thought it might e. They didnt anticipate they would take powers but they thought they response might be more crude missiles in the anticipated the u. S. Military when in day working with the taliban would lead the u. S. Military just as they bled the soviets. They did not have an exit plan. The military operations and intelligence operations and cooperation with the afghans the u. S. Is working on the group called the Northern Alliance were so successful of qaeda had to flee before they developed a plan and many of them fled east into pakistan where they started making mistakes. Mistakes that allowed us and a part of the business and intelligence that we called targeting that has individual analysts responsible for individual terrorists and you know what the terrorist Communications Patterns are and you know where his family is and what the Courier Network is. We had an agile targeting analysts who were watching over abu zubaydah and the sense that the circle around him almost by the day was getting tighter. Then in the spring the raid happened. He almost died and suffered wounds from a gun fight that ensued particularly a grievous wound to his leg. Aside piece of the story is told in this book to ensure he would not die another bed of the agility after 9 11 that made the u. S. Response so powerful. Could you imagine calling a Medical Center before 9 11 and saying wed like you galonas some of your physicians to treat the terrorists overseas now . And we are going to put them on the plane. Unimaginable before 9 11. That began the search for what it detainee could tell the caa about an organization that cia did not fully understand. Forget about the plot. Those are important. The counterterrorism business a lot of what i witnessed was not about a plot. Aarp does this was a people business. People with these hard at building or harden in aircraft people who are committed to the murder of innocents will simply go on to create another class unless he can take down the architects of an al qaeda or an isis he will face plots forever. Ours were the people business. How to find politics and finish a human being typically by staging a raid operation. Abu zubaydah was the first one they went down. The reason he was significant as i mentioned a lack of understanding of al qaeda. Counterterrorism is often the people business. Obviously the first questions you might have for a terrorist would be can you tell us about plots and can you tell us about the second wave and can you tell us whether their hijackers and that states that the stuff behind the scenes, can you tell us what their position with why . Who are the key players . Who are the trainers . Who are the facilitators . Who is creating the false documents . Who were the carriers critically important for intelligence. Who carries messages between al qaeda met who dont want to that basic material is critical and we did not have a good understanding of that in the spring of 2002. Abu zubaydah talked but then in memory of the people i spoke with the shut down. And he told his interviewers his interrogators go home, have rabies, dont come back because im not speaking anymore. So in the intensity of that time when was saying make sure this doesnt happen again when of president of the United States is make sure that doesnt happen again in on the anticipation of the cia will was the second way that might include anthrax cia officers in the cauldron of in the spring and summer of 2002 said well, if abu zubaydah shutting down what our options . Can options . Consented to the u. S. Justice system where he will lawyer up and never speak again. We can send them to another foreign country that might have charges against him. The prospect is that of the country will interrogate him themselves. We will not sit in a room and they will shield from us critical intelligence that we need. They also will not have the same priorities that we have. They are going to want to ask questions about their country. We want to ask questions about america. So through a series of conversations among cia leaders there is a fateful decision that is the subject of this book and that is should we developed our own secret facility called black site a clandestine facility in friendly countries overseas where we will transfer of qaeda prisoners in this case no qaeda prisoner and interrogate them using the hardest techniques that have been splashed across every page in newspapers in america for decades. Theres another piece piece of this process. Everybody knew that people would ask questions later on in everybody knew that this was not only sensitive but would be controversial. Thats the secret lack Site Networks of their conversations between the Inspector General at the cia and the lawyers at the department of justice to set and interpret law for america to say what is appropriate in terms of interrogation for a cia black sites that will comply with the u. S. Constitution and would comply with federal law. We wanted on paper and we moving until its on paper. Through the summer of 2002 cia lawyers at the department of justice discussed what could he done with abu zubaydah. He was already transferred, stable and transferred to a black site that the formal authorization for the department of justice did not arise. Until august of 2002. August of 2002 was when mike colleagues mark the beginning of the black site program. I abu zubaydah went through tough interrogation techniques. People talk about waterboarding didnt waterboarding. There were more than 100 detainees at the black site. Three of them were waterboarded. I abu zubaydah was one of them. One of the challenges of talking to a detainee and one of the challenges in discussing this in a public environment where we dont have the luxury of time that we have this auditorium is people will look at me every day and say welcome on, if you put somebody under duress they are going to lie. So let me explain as we went through that process with abu zubaydah y. And im not here to defend the program. Im here because i thought the views of the cia should be explained so americans on either end of the spectrum those who want to attack what was done and those who supported and i hear both when im on the streets and understand what happened and why and will be able to walk in my College Shoes and understand what they did regardless of whether i like it or not put on the foundational question of why would you pressure someone to speak with techniques like sleep deprivation because you know they are going to lie and my answer straightforward. First of all people not under duress of lie. Thats not the full answer but al qaeda terrorists under duress is going to make up stories all day long. Thats not the real point. The real point is an analytic effort i mentioned earlier called targeting. You cannot have a successful client interrogation of the highend upended prisoner bless you know so much about the prisoner not a lowlevel guy but so much because youve been following for so long that you can come up with in concert with other experts position psychologist interrogators that he can come up with a package of questions over weeks or that detainee starts to realize hey these guys know a lot more than i know and b they seem to know when im lying. When that prisoners under duress , when that prisoner has been in a confined box when the prisoner has been under sleep deprivation and is exhausted and when the prisoner starts to realize he cant lie is way up we start to get answers. Not truth, not the truth. We were not stupid. Some answers never came particularly for example locational information about Osama Bin Laden but you get what we call compliance. Someone will try to give you bits and pieces about mason that they think are less valuable. Theres a guy we trained a few years ago who was a german and our camper they think his name is hans. Im making up the stories that those bits and pieces are invaluable gold for an intel guy. If the prisoner is compliant and get you what he thinks is throwing information about somebodys who trains at german the frenchman of bread or an american and who trains three years ago game on for people in my world. Im going to balance that against every bit of data we have had every travel data we can acquire and every other detainee detainee that i not all of a sudden over the course of time those bits of sand will tell us who that person was based on one tiny shred of evidence, shred of information from a compliant detainee who was giving you stuff you thought was irrelevent. The point im making is of course people lie. The on