Good afternoon. Im Karen Greenberg and im the director of the center on National Security at fordham law school. Insulated today to be joined by allie phon by the new book the black standard declassified how tortured the war on terror after 911. I thank you probably know olley from some events weve done together, former supervisory special agent with the fbi, investigated highprofile terrorism cases before, during and after the 911 attack and in recent years he is brought his investigative skills to the private sector and is ceo of the soup on center and specialty is Global Security affairs in everything from governance culture to state actors to nonstate actors and i will try to put as much of that today as we can. One thing i want to point out is each day the Soufan Center publishes a soufan brief which is something you should read every day. It is a wonderful deep dive into a timely issue that goes to the heart of what we should be thinking about even if its not in the headlines. Anything from whites promises him to what is happening with al qaeda and isis to the geopolitics of nationstates and regional powers and i encourage you to read it every day. I also encourage you to read the soufan morning brief switch the roof sponsors and the center on initial severity produces which is in its 14th year. In Exchange News every day about what you should be thing about about National Security in a variety dimensions. Ollie, thank for joining me today. Welcome. Thank you. Please dont stay mute because that would be not be a good conversation. I want to Start Talking about the book and then we will turn on to other things. As you know from your invitation you can buy this book online by pushing the button to buy it. If you have any questions along the way put them into the chat and eventually as we are talking i will get to them. I want to start with the title of the book. When the book first came out in 2011 it was, you know, subtitled the inside story of 911 and the war against al qaeda. Now, it focuses on torture. So much of what was redacted in classifying had to do with torture, your involvement in interviews with al qaeda suspects and others and just i want to get to derailing the war on terror before we get to what is actually different about this addition of the book. Lets talk about how the war on terror was derailed and how the book brings that to life. So, when i wrote the books back in 2011 it was supposed to be a book recounting my own personal experience in serving the nation and on the on terror. I wrote the book to be a publication that can spark a conversation but a conversation based on reality and facts and the successes we had after 911 and after the successes and failures before 911 but also the failures that we had in our response in the 2003 iraq war with torture and another example. When he completed the book it was as anyone can expect a long process but they asked me to change a couple of things which did not create any problems for me because these things were kind of weve been within the boundaries of any publication but unfortunately after the fbi finished the review out of courtesy they send it to the agency and additionally the agencies what they did was good but then it started to get crazy as you probably have seen from the first one pronouns are being redacted and i think that had to do with what actually happened against terrorist suspects and how we got information and that is i claimed later on [inaudible] all these things were redacted. Like i say, while, you know, torture did not work but thats how we got the information but i cannot say how we got the information and how we identify mohammed as the mastermind of 911 and then almost every think that has to do with the efficacy of the tradition was redacted. I always described the process as distortion by reaction so if you are for torture and you can go ahead and say anything you want and are able to publish it and the review board will give you the green light but if you have a problem in what happened and if you are telling the truth about what took place in these interrogation rooms you will have it censored and heavily redacted. So, after nine years of fighting and after the clinic the jump to help ray who challenge the reactions on the First Amendment grounds they were asked if they can do another review of the book and this time the review and for the most part everything they redacted has been unredacted and it can read what happens so the very First Edition of the book was about war and terrorism with the jihad in the United States until his death in may. Its the same book but there is so much information been classified the first time that makes it another book but of peace that did not exist in most of that piece had to do with a decent Tradition Program with torture and when you read it and when you see it you will see how that program was devastating to u. S. Interests and devastating to all success or their lack thereof. I want to give this opportunity there to also think the leadership of the cia for taking this amazing step of institutional transparency and he classifying the black black so now people can read the truth. My first hand experience was right walking into interrogation rooms i saw what happened and saw that information in many instances when we got information or i personally got the information when you look into this and say okay, your account is being declassified on the National Security and what you are admitting that is the truth. We dont classify lies. If i was lying then he was full of it but line but now ironically that helped the truth and our people read what happens or what happened with different people if we gave them illnesses and it was now the truth. [inaudible] that is why the decision was made to change the subtitle to focus on the torture because this is the first time you will read exactly what happened and have a front seat to the interrogation room. Its a rare occurrence for somebody to become declassified by a former official in the way that you declassified and in your particular case and circumstances, why do you think i got declassified and does it have to do with the report or the cia trying to sign find a different message and how do you account for this but im grateful for that and im grateful for all the people who supported david kelly my attorney who was with me from day one fighting the bureau and the agencies for declassification but i believe you and i talked about but that [inaudible] i dont believe the cia is a cia program and we have these have these discussions we find it as a cpc program and a lot of people officers on the cia under the cpc and you will see it now in the book against this program more than i was and so that is why so many people from the field went and complained to those Inspector General and their investigation and in his investigation made it clear that he cannot find any disrupted to be imminent, that was number one and number two that the program worked traditional interrogation works well its objective matter and difficult and so its clear but he defunded the cpc program. The second mistake that a lot of people make like the fbi for cia and gotten out the book has been unredacted because it shows it was not washington hiding the contractor cpc and then how it now we look at everything that happened and we find out what i was talking about in 2002 and in 2011 it was rejected and people now can read and now you can see its happening. For example, we cannot prosecute any of these people for what they [inaudible] i believe theres a lot of new people in the cia and in the Intelligence Community and people in the government that believe in what the cia Inspector General concluded and that believe in what im saying in the book and believe in what the report came up with. Those people are not involved in all the problems of the past they didnt make these decisions in the past. Those people left. I think people wanted to turn the page and wanted to put everything out and you know, it is a factor so there is a transparency here that we did not see in the last few decades and that is why the timing of the release of this book is extremely important because what we face today is a political culture based on alternative facts and partisan talking points and on security but this did not stop the truck. This has been setting in our political culture for a long time with what we see as jump is just a step, you know, towards the next logical step so one of these issues [inaudible] youre mostly probably republican and if you dont youre probably most democrats but everything be a partisan issue and thats why President Trump or at the time candidate trump would say [inaudible] it was a race issue and something that drained the cheers of the crowd but now you have the opportunity to see the facts behind this and to see the truth behind the disinformation about the efficacy of the interrogation and waterboarding and you will see how in so many Different Levels operationally and strategically totally failed and heard the National Security interests. Lets talk about that because we often hear the phrase this has been partisan eyes or whatever that verb is which is that torture doesnt work. Ive always been curious what does that statement actually mean . It can mean so many different things. You dont get the information or all of them but you dont get the information at all means you get that information and it means a variety of things we can talk about institutionally down the road like not been able to try people but when you say torture doesnt work, talk is about the universe youre talking about. You are right. It means a lot of things but i will talk about it from the other perspective. Every country that tortures is not a stable country. I want to show you the terrorism we have to cam out of egyptian jail. Not good to go down that path but lets talk about the United States. We are a nation have amendments and constitutions and we took an oath to protect the constitution among all enemies, foreign and domestic. These constitutional protections have through trial and, you know, made treatments of all these kinds of things that we are talking about. But also the cornerstone of our International Policy and who we are as a nation is a nation that believes in freedom and democracy unlike Ronald Reagan said shining city on the hill and we have human rights and every year we go to the state department and enemies and allies who practiced sleep deprivation, temperature manipulation and the things are from 2002 state Department Report about allied countries in the world and we are doing it also. So when you have significant interdiction between the laws in between who we are as a nation in between what we say publicly and then between our strategy and when these things dont go hand in hand together its a total failure. It is steeped within what was said that if you know yourself and your enemy you will wait 10f you have no clue about the enemy you will fail and that is why members of al qaeda on the eve of 911 across the United States trillions of dollars just to become 40000 members and now they are not only in afghanistan but all across in somalia and yemen and you name it and not even mentioning isis which came out of al qaeda and lasted in war that was longer than world war i and guess what . We are in such a dangerous situation today. That is because of a lot of these things prayed this is because from Strategic Perspective our laws and our strategy did not were not in sync together. This is number one. You remember the biggest disaster i think and this is everybody the biggest disaster of the iraq war and we invaded a country and hundreds of thousands of people are dead trillions of dollars wasted and you name it. Al qaeda was dying before the war in iraq and ultimately right so huge . But at the time they wanted evidence that Saddam Hussein and al qaeda or working together and everyone in the cia and fbi and pentagon who knew these things we know they were not working together. But that was not good enough, right . He worked with al qaeda and they tortured him and then they were working together. They are developing for people so we took this information to the Security Council and i think everyone remembers secretary Powell Holding that and with george behind them and talking about how al qaeda and saddam are working together to develop which would be devastating to any American City in the world. When we went to iraq we found out everything was a lie. We kind of knew it was a lie but it did not make sense but one thing that i said to him so wide to july and he said while you are torture me i would give you anything you wanted to hear. Operationally speaking there is a big difference between compliance and cooperation and compliance is when i get in dick training wants to hear them working together so fine, torture a guy and get that information and he gets his war and thats exec we what happened. Its difficult for us to go to the white house and say well, we dont use that information because that get that information they want so now cooperation is the truth so there are differences between compliance and cooperation. You dont have unlimited resources to have ghosts around the world like in some states because of the false information we are getting and we wanted facts and what you see in this book is how we were getting facts. Now, some of the, you know, and some of the threats for example about [inaudible] for example they were watching tv and watching the movie with him going over the bridge and they started joking how many infidels will die if we blow up that bridge and then suddenly less than 24 hours on cnn we are watching al qaeda blow up the brooklyn bridge. Theres a big gap between what has been sold to the American Public at the time. I think theres a big difference between compliance and cooperation for this is from an operational perspective the other elements of the operation we do all the time is basically justice. Intel and cinched justice or legal justice. What we have today are people that have blood on their hands and we have a mastermind who admits that he [inaudible] we cant prosecute that even in a military court because what they do under this program. In the Inspector General if we were unfolding back into thousand four but towards the end will have a lot of people and what do you want to do with these guys . You have to think long term because after all as i said at the beginning we are the United States of america and we have laws. Yeah, so lets talk about on, no in the military commission and how torture has affected them because there is a disconnect. We want to try them but we try to get around the evidence and all of these things complicate a just legal process. To think there will ever be tried . I dont know. I think it will be a difficult situation. Seriously, you know, i think some of these guys went through black sites and a lot of the information became tainted and now how do you proceed with the prosecuting someone when youre trying to classify the time that they would and that is the complexity and why 19 years up to 911 we still cannot prosecute mohammed or [inaudible] and he was so strong just by looking at the profile and believe me, i would know. I was a case agent. We helped the yemenis prosecute him in yemen and suddenly they had more evidence than we have [inaudible] we were able to find a yemeni judge and to sentence him to death. We know what we have in our own case files but unfortunately he was arrested because of the torture program and we were not aware of any information resulted from the harsh treatment that he went through and now we go to Guantanamo Bay there were 17 sailors murdered in 2000 in the gulf of [inaudible] still awaiting justice. We have one of the questions from our audience, somebody who worked in the middle east for more than five years and are frequently how damaging [inaudible] to think we have moved beyond that episode and if not, what we need to do to move beyond that episode . You know, what is great about the United States that we eventually do the right thing. I think the whole world has seen all these things happening and they are seen people like john mccain stand up, god rest his soul, and supporting somebody like me and they are seen, you know, men and women in the military and the cia and in the fbi going to the Inspector General and complaining of what they had to do have to see in these sites. We are seeing what happened with the black banners now and now after nine years it is been unredacted and they can know the truth about the program. This is all positive for america and all positive that everything that is happening there is still some light, it may still be dim but its still there with this shining light on the hill. First of all id asked the question if you hear a lot of the hearings that took place and watch the hearings that place at the Armed Services committee on the iraq war basically the images recruited more foreign fighters to fight in iraq than anything else and that benefit al qaeda and benefited them at the time so yes, they were disastrous for us and they were a disaster for the iraqi people frankly. So i believe that by turning the page and by having this moment of truth and moment of transparency and hopefully it will lead to a moment of accountability i think we can move beyond this. You know, every country in the world is allowing it now in the states and unfortunately we have a few states i think the United States will move past this. I want to talk a little bit about the middle east region and the tremendous instability in the region unless you want to tell me its more stable than im suggesting. Certainly the iraq war began a proce