Our good friends from cspan are joining us today. Before we talk to philip mudd about black site the cia in the post 9 11 world, i would like to tell you about what is taking place in the theater. On august 16th at noon, William Holland junior will tell us about a forgotten founding father, george mason who gave us the bill of rights. On tuesday, september 10th, Sidney Blumenthal will tell us about his recently released volume, his biography of abraham lincoln, all the powers of earth, 18561863. To find out more about these programs and our exhibits please visit our website, www. Archives. Com calendar and you will find some pretty theater in the lobby, and sign up sheet so you can receive an electronic version of our monthly calendar. He joined as an analyst specializing in south asia and the middle east. After the september 11th attacks he was a ci a member of a small Diplomatic Team that helped piece together a new government for afghanistan. After returning to the cia he became Deputy Director of the Counterterrorism Center and served until 2005. He was the first Deputy Director of the federal bureau of Investigations NationalSecurity Branch and later became the fbi Senior Intelligence advisor. Philip mudd has comment about terrorism and congressional testimony and been featured in broadcast and print news. He is the president of philip mudd management which specializes in security scanning, analytic training and public speaking about security issues. He is a senior fellow at the new America Foundation and the George WashingtonUniversity Homeland Security policy institute and served as senior Global Advisor to oxford analytic a which specializes in advising multinational companies. He sits on the Advisory Board for the national Counterterrorism Center and for the director of National Intelligence and service on the Homeland Security group. Please welcome philip mudd to the national archives. [applause] you missed the most important part, i live parttime in memphis, tennessee. Thank you. I was running in a place called midtown memphis, a historic part of memphis wondering whether to write another book. Ive written a couple. Reflecting on some of what i witnessed during that excruciating time after 9 11 and realize some of my colleagues had written their stories, many of the people i worked with would never speak, would never write and their stories would never be told if no one talked to them, put their stories into one narrative and explain what happened so i decided running my 5 miles in midtown memphis i would do that. This is mostly their story. Its not a history. Is not every document that ever appeared related to the program, it is the story of men and women i served with and he decided to speak to me because they trusted me. Step back in time with me. We are going into a time machine, back to the 1990s. A lot of my colleagues talk about the time, to paraphrase one of them, when we thought we had killed the dragon. And only snakes were left. A time after the fall of the soviet union, the following the wall, people talking the intelligence challenges of the future did not reach the magnitude be reached at the time of the soviet union but counterterrorism people knew they had a problem, that problem started mostly when Osama Bin Laden was in sudan, accelerated when he moved to afghanistan. When i spoke to 35 or 40 most of whom will never speak, when i spoke to about those times, theres a great sense of frustration and in some ways sadness they witnessed the rise of a Global Network and the tools they had were so limited when you look back in retrospect and realize that was only 20 years ago, less than a full generation, the tools the cia had were limited. If you think about loss of budget and personnel, im not accusing the National Security infrastructure of doing anything wrong, all of us thought the same thing, the dragon is gone but if you think about any organization, a Tech Organization or manufacturing organization, if you lose substantial pieces of money and people your ability to operate declines. There was also the attitude about terrorism, only 20 years, nobody i spoke with could have imagined the world when somebody said we could conduct lightning raids in afghanistan day after day after day. The thought that a raid would happen with high risk of american soldiers lives was almost unthinkable. Forget about a us invasion, just a raid against an al qaeda compound and we knew they knew where some of the compounds were. Much less, much less an armed drone that could kill a terrorist overseas. In debate for years, never happened. Meanwhile there is at trophy at the cia, training spies declines, the number of spies in cia Training Programs declined, and the attitude about terrorism was mixed. After 1947 the targets the cia typically chased were big targets, soviets, chinese, the cuban missile crisis, big targets. I returned from taking a leave of absence in 1992 and was told to go to the Counterterrorism Center because it was seen as a place where you sent people who maybe werent ready for prime time which was a model life it. That changed over time, like any organization, even Large Organizations people make a difference in the personalities i read about in the book and i knew so well were critical in keeping counterterrorism from declining further in the 90s. George tenet, cia director was immersed in counterterrorism and insisted but counterterrorism get some level of primacy, he insist on budget and insisted on ensuring there is leadership there that was well regarded across the agency. Not common in the 1990s including the director of the center, who raise the profile of counterterrorism, increasing the quality of people who were going over there, increasing the respective counterterrorism at the cia before 9 11 but make no mistake, the peace dividend for intelligence, lack of focus on terrorism mens on that day, on that day, the cia and the counterterrorist world was not only not prepared, they could not be prepared. They all talked to me about feeling before but especially in the searing months and years after 9 11, that they were on the back foot. On that day, this is not over dramatized, everything changed. Years of debate about armed drones, done. Years of debate about raids in afghanistan, forget about raids, the cia will be first in with operatives, with money, technology, guidance and weeks of 9 11. Forget about raids, the u. S. Army will invade afghanistan. Transition not only in resources but attitude was foundational. The cia director used to ask, i sat in on lightly threat briefings for years, we had 5 or 6 briefers training back and forth with another of my colleagues, opening with a threat briefing, a matrix of 10 or 20 threats, people who would write in threats, Foreign Security services tell us about a threat. Intercepted communications where al qaeda talked about coming to the United States. I started those briefings and one of the things that was so evident that was spoken around those tables was a special concept. We anticipated a 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 they had an anthrax program we did not fully understand. For months and longer we did not understand the research and development, we did not understand if they had taken strains of anthrax out of afghanistan. There was concern the second wave might not be aircraft, would be anthrax. Added to that is a fundamental problem. We did not understand the adversary. The human source penetration that is the bread and butter of an organization like the cia, the human source penetration, this is not me speaking, the people who ran operations against outside will tell you the human source penetration was modest so in the midst of america watching horrific videos of people jumping off buildings and watching pages in the newspaper of faces of the fallen we were sitting behindthescenes 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 this, there was a drumbeat in the spring of 2002 and i witnessed a lot of this firsthand, that was intense and getting louder, that drumbeat was the end for the first major cia captive, one of the challenges our qaeda head was they miscalculated the us response to 9 11. They did not anticipate such a huge response. They didnt anticipate they would take the towers down but they thought it would be more cruise missiles. They anticipated if the us military went in, they, working with a telegram, would bleed the student the military as they did the soviets, they did not avonex plan. The military operation, intelligence operation in cooperation with the afghans the us was working with, and element of afghanistan and a group called the Northern Alliance were so successful that al qaeda had to flee before they ever developed a plan and many of them fled east into pakistan where they started making mistakes, mistakes that allowed us in a part of the Business Intelligence we call targeting, individual analysts responsible for an individual terrorist to the tactical level where you know what the terrorist indications patterns are, what his family is, the career network, individual analysts and the growing intelligence progression, targeting analysts who were watching and the growing drumbeat was the sense that the circle around him almost by the day was getting tighter and then in the spring the raid happened, he almost died, suffered wounds from the gunfight that ensued particularly a grievous wound to his leg. A side piece of the story, the cia flew out physicians to ensure he would not die. Another bit of the agility after 9 11 that made the us response so powerful. Could you imagine calling a Medical Center before 9 11 and saying we want you to loan us your physicians to go treat a terrorist overseas now and we are going to put him on a plane . Unimaginable before 9 11. That began the search for what a detainee could tell the cia about an organization the cia did not fully understand. Forget about plots. Those are important. The counterterrorism business. A lot of what i witnessed was not about plots. That is what you saw on the newspapers. Our business was people business. People, if you stop a plot, hard in the building, harden an aircraft, people who are committed to the murder of innocents will go on to create another plot. Unless you can take down the architects of an al qaeda or isis you will face plots forever. Hours was a people business, how to find, fix and finish by staging a rate operation. Erinyes zubaydah was the first to went down. The reason he was significant, i mentioned lack of understanding of al qaeda. Of counterterrorism is often a people business obviously the first questions you might have for terrorist would be can you tell us about plots, the second wave, whether there are further hijackings in the United States but the stuff behindthescenes, can you tell us what the Organization Look like, can you tell us what the hierarchy looks like, who are the key players, who are the trainers, who are the facilitators, he was creating the false documents, who comes up with the propaganda. Who are the careers, critically important for intelligence, who carries messages between Al Qaeda Leaders who dont want to communicate by electrons . That basic material, bits of sand that make the beach, is critical, and we did not have a good understanding of that in spring of 2002. Zubaydah talked but the memory of the people i spoke with, he shut down and he told his interrogators go home, have babies, dont come back because i am not speaking anymore. In the intensity of that time when america was saying make sure this doesnt happen again, when the president of the United States and make sure this doesnt happen again, Congress Said how did you fail to catch it the first time, when the anticipation at the cia the second wave that might include anthrax, cia officers in a of decisionmaking in spring of summer of 2002 said if zubaydah is shutting down what are our options . We can send him to the us Justice System where he will lawyer up and never speak again, we can send him 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 the room and they will shield from us critical intelligence that we need. They also will not have the same priorities we have. They will want to ask questions about their country. We want to ask questions about america. So, through a series of conversations among cia leaders there was a fateful decision that is the subject of this book, and that is should we develop our own secret facilities, clandestine facilities in friendly countries overseas where we will transfer al qaeda prisoners come in this case an al qaeda prisoner and interrogate him using the harsh techniques that have been splashed across the page in newspapers and in america for decades . There is another piece of this process. Everybody knew and i was there, that people would ask questions later on and everybody knew this was not only sensitive but would be controversial. That is the secret black side network. There are conversations between the Inspector General of the cia and lawyers at the department of justice set and interpret law for america to say what is appropriate in terms of interrogation for a cia black site that complies with the u. S. Constitution and was complies with federal law and we wanted on paper and we are not moving until it is on paper. Through the summer of 2002, cia lawyers and department of justice discussed what could be done with zubaydah. He was transferred to a black site, formal authorization authorization from the department of justice did not arrive until august 2002, that is what my colleagues marked the beginning of the black site program. Zubaydah went through 7 delegations techniques. People talk waterboarding, there were more than 100 detainees at cia facility black sites, 3 of them were waterboarding. Zubaydah was one of them. What challenges of talking to a detainee, one of the challenges of discussing this in a public environment where we dont have the luxury of time that we have in this auditorium is people look at me every day and say come on. You put somebody under duress they are going to buy. Let me explain as we went through that process with zubaydah, im not here to defend the program. Im here because i thought the views of the cia should be explain so those who want to attack what was done and those who support it, i hear both on the streets, will understand what happened and why, will be up to walk the issues my colleagues walks through and understand what they did regardless of whether i like it or not but on this foundational question of why you would purchase someone to speak with techniques like sleep deprivation, because you know they are going to lie my answer is straightforward. People not under duress lie too. Thats not the full answer but al qaeda terrorist not under duress is going to make up stories all day long. That is not the real point. The real point is an analytic effort i mentioned earlier called targeting, you cannot have a successful high end interrogation of high end al qaeda prisoner unless you know so much about that prisoner, not a midlevel car, not a lowlevel guy but so much because you have been following for so long that you can come up with in concert with other experts and physicians, psychologists, interrogators, a package of questions where the detainee starts to realize these guys know a lot more than i know and they seem to know when i am lying. When that prisoner is under duress, when that prisoner has been in a confined box and under sleep deprivation, when that prisoner starts to realize he cant lie his way out you start to get answers. Not truth, not truth, we were not stupid. Some answers never came particularly locational information about Osama Bin Laden, but you get what we call compliance with someone will try to give you bits and pieces of information they think are less valuable, there was a guy who trained a few years ago, who was a german at our camp. I think his name was hans. Im making of the stories, but that kind of material, bits and pieces, are invaluable gold for intel guy. Of the prisoners complaint and gives you what he thinks is throwaway information about somebody who trained, a german or freshman or a british or american three years ago, game on for people in my world. Im going to balance that against every bit of data we have, every bit of travel data we can acquire, every other detainee and all of a sudden those bits of sand will tell us who that person was based on one shred of evidence, shred of information from a compliant detainee giving you stuff he thought was irrelevant. The point i am making is of course people lie, the only way you can get out of that box is to develop an interrogation package that is so complete the detainee feels he needs a lifeline and that lifeline was the cia. A lot happened after the initial stages of the zubaydah interrogation. When i spoke with lawyers and managers, they talk about the maturation of the program, the first months and years were tough. You have an agency trained to collect information from spies overseas that is now serving as a prison conducting interrogations the cia had never done. The cia values agility but sometimes they step into programs because they believe nobody will ever do it despite the fact that we dont have experience doing it, we will do it. That was part of the genesis that led to