He is the founder of the Dupont Center and his specialty is Global Security, everything from governance culture to state actors and nonstate actors and im going to try to explore as much of that todayas we can. I want to find out each day the Dupont Center publishes. [inaudible] 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 White Supremacy to whats happening with al qaeda and isis and regional powers and i encourage you to read it every day. I also encourage you to read the morning brief which they Stephan Group sponsored at the National Security produces in the 14th year and bring you the news every day about what you should be thinking about about National Security in a variety of dimensions. Ali, thank you for joining me today. Welcome. Please dont stay mute, this is your conversation. I want to start by talking about the book and then were going to turn to other things. And as you know you can buy this book online by pushing the button that says to buy. And if you have any questions along the way put it in the chat andeventually after talking i will get to them. I want tostart with the title of the book. When the book came out in 2011 it was subtitled the inside story of 9 11 andthe war against al qaeda. Now it focuses on culture. Some of that is because so much of what was redacted and classified had to do with torture, your involvement in and interviews with al qaeda suspects and others. I want to get to the railing the war on terror before we get to whats actually different about this edition of the book. Lets talk a little bit about how the war on terror was the real and how that came to light. When i wrote the book back in 2008 it was supposed to be a book recounting my own personal experience in the war on terror. I found the book to be a publication and in part a conversation but based on facts, based on reality, based on all the successes that we had until then and actually the success of other figures but also all the successes we had in our response methods. The 2000 two iraq war for example, torture is another example so when i took the book to thefbi , it was a productive process and we had to change a couple of things which did not create any problems for me because these things were kind of within the boundaries of any prepublication visit. Unfortunately after the review i quickly extended it to the agency and initially the agencys review was good but then as you seen pronouns were being reenacted, anything that has to do with what happened against a terrorist suspect, how we get information that we really claimed later on, all these things were redacted so i again, while torture did not work, this is not how we got the information regarding that state. How we identify mohammed as a mastermind of 9 11. If you have a problem in what happened and if you were telling the truth about what took place in these Interrogation Rooms you would be heavily censored and heavily redacted. After nine years of fighting and after the yield clinic to jump to help alex and ray who challenge the reductions on the First Amendment grounds government asked if they can do another review and the review was very fair. And of the most part everything they redacted has been unredacted and now people can read exactly what happened. The very First Edition of the book was about the war on terrorism in general and everything that happened from the day in london with the jihad and the United States in 1986 until his death in may. So now it is we are in the same book but we are so much information that has been classified initial security grounds the first time and it makes it another book but it was a piece that did not exist in most of that piece has to do with the Technique Program with torture when you read it when you see it you will see how that program was devastating to u. S. Interests and devastating to our success or the lack thereof in the war on terror. I want to take this opportunity there to also thank the cia and leadership of the cia for taking this amazing step of institutional transparency and declassified the black banners so people cannot read the truth because what i said in the black banners back in 2001 my firsthand experience, right, it wasnt about Interrogation Rooms but i saw what was happening and i saw the disinformation and in many instances i personally got the information and when you look into this and say okay, your account is being declassified what you are admitting it is the truth. You dont classify lies. If i was lying they wouldve said in 2011 no, this guy is full of it and line but they classified it on National Security grounds so now ironically that helped the truth in the long run and now when people read what happened with al qaeda or what happened with [inaudible] or what happened with different people that we gave them aliases in the book it was now the truth and they would know they rely to buy so many people who took all these successes and made it as the result of the socalled interrogation techniques. That is why the stipulation was made to change the subtitle of the book to focus on enhanced interrogation techniques because this was a person will read exactly what happened in the Interrogation Room and a you have a front seat to the Interrogation Room. So, it is a rare occurrence for something to become declassified the way by a former official in the way yours has been declassified. Probably unprecedented in your particular case and in your circumstances. Why do you think it got declassified . To think it has anything to do with the report or does it have to do with the cia trying to send a different message . How do you account for this . I think, first of all, i am grateful for the law clinic and grateful for all the people who helped and supported for david kelly my attorney who, you know was with me from day one fighting the bureau and the agency for the declassified station but i do believe that a lot of people wrongfully and you and i talked about this belief that the torture program was a cia and i dont believe the cia was a cia program and you have these discussions, you and i before. The torture program even the cia Inspector General defined it as a cpc program that is a unit within the cia and a lot of people a lot of officers who were not under cdc and you will see it now in the book were against this program more than i was. So, that is why so many people from the field went and complained to the Inspector General and the Inspector General with the investigation in their investigation or in his investigation he made it clear that he cannot find the right to be eminent in number two basically said yes, the Interrogation Program worked, traditional irrigation worked but its a subjective matter and very difficult and we are so its very clear but he defined it as the cdc program. The second mistake of a lot of people made that it was every versus every cia. Im glad the book has now been unredacted because it shows was not i versus cia but washington hiring a contractor to oversee a program bigger than him and bigger than basically the cdc at the time and how now we look at everything that happened when we find out what i was talking about in 2002 and it is not open redacted people can read and now you can see its happened. For example, we cannot prosecute any of these people for anything even though they have american blood on their hands because of what they went through at the black site. I believe there is a lot of new people in the cia and a lot of new people in the government that believe in what the cia Inspector General concluded that believe in what im saying and that believe in what the report came up with. Those people were not involved in all the problems of the past and they didnt make these decisions in the past but those people left. I think a lot of people wanted to turn the page and wanted to put everything out and there is a transparency here that we did not see in the lasted two decades or anything. That is why the timing of the release of this book is extreme important. We face today of political culture based on alternative facts and partisan talking points and on securities this is not just trump but this has been setting in our political culture for a long time which we see with trump is just, you know, a step towards the next logical step, if you want to call it to what has happened. So if you recall one of these issues was a partisan issue and if you believe in waterboarding you are most probably a republican and if you dont most probably democrat and they make everything a partisan issue and that is why President Trump or at the time candidate trump was saying i want to bring back waterboarding because it was the race issue and that can bring the cheers of the crowd but now you will have the opportunity to see the facts behind it and to see the truth behind the disinformation about the effect and efficacy of the interrogation techniques and waterborne rating. You will see how its only Different Levels operationally and strategically totally failed and hurt our National Security interest. Lets talk about that because we often hear the phrase and this is also been partisan or whatever that verb is that which is that torture doesnt work. And ive always been curious what does that statement mean . Its attending so many Different Things and it means you dont get information and you dont get the information at all or a means you get that information and it means a variety of things that we can talk about institutionally down the road like not been able to try people but when you say torture doesnt work, eit didnt work so talk about the universe youre talking about. You are right. It means eight lots of things but i want to talk about it from the other perspective. I will not show you down the road that every country that torture is not a stable country. I dont want to go back and show you that the terrorism we have today came out of the egyptian jail because they were torturing. I will not go down that path. Lets talk about the United States. We are a nation based on laws we have constitutions and amendments and these inhumane treatments, right . We took an oath to protect the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic and these constitutional protections have speedy trial, have, you know, treatment and of all these 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 like Ronald Reagan and said that shining city on the hill we advocate for human rights and we have a report every year that goes from state department saving and calling and allies who practice sleep deprivation, nudity, temperature manipulation and these things are taken from the 2002 state Department Report about allied countries in the world when we do it ourselves so when you have significant contradiction between the laws and between who we are as a nation and between what we say publicly and then tween our strategy when these things dont go hand in hand together its a total failure. It sits within what if you know yourself and your enemy you will win 100 times out of 100 battles but if you forget about yourself and have no clue about the enemy you will fail. That is why members of al qaeda on the eve of 911 called the United States trillions of dollars just become 40000 members today and now theyre not only in afghanistan but all across the muslim world and in somalia, yemen, uganda and im not even mentioning isis which came out of al qaeda and lasted in a war that was longer than world war i, world war ii altogether and guess what . We are in such a dangerous situation today that is because of these positions and because of Strategic Perspective our laws and our strategy did not, were not in sync together. This is number one. Operationally speaking its a total different situation. Remember this disaster and everybody agreed upon and even President Trump and the biggest disaster is the iraq war and we went to iraq we invaded a country and hundreds of thousands of people are dead and trillions of dollars wasted and you name it and we gave new birth for al qaeda and ultimately we gave birth to [inaudible] but look at the time they wanted evidence that saddam and al qaeda were working together and everyone in the cia and fbi who these things we know they were not but that was not good enough, right . He worked with al qaeda and they tortured him and then they said yes, we are working together. And we are developing together so we took this information to the United Nations critic council and i think everybody remembers secretary Powell Holding that small little tube with no nod him and talking about how al qaeda and saddam are working together to develop [inaudible] which would be devastating in any city and when we went to iraq we saw everything was a lie. Even colin powell was forced to go into it and it did not make sense but thats one thing and i said to him why did you lie and he said when he was torturing me i would give you anything you wanted to hear. Operationally speaking there is a big difference between compliance and between cooperation. Compliance is when i get what i want to hear. Dick cheney wants to hear Osama Bin Laden working together but will torture a guy and he will give that information and he gets is war and thats exactly what happened. Its difficult for us to go to the white house and say well, we wont torture and use that information because they get the information they want and so now cooperation you get the truth. Theres a difference between compliance and between cooperation. We dont have unlimited resources to change around the world because of the false information they were getting because of waterboarding but we wanted status and what you see in this book of how we are getting facts. Now [inaudible] and some of the threats for example about the Brooklyn Bridge for example they were watching tv and watching the movie they showed how many infidels would die if we blow up that bridge and then suddenly were hearing on television less than 24 hours on cnn that we are watching al qaeda will low up the Brooklyn Bridge but thats a big gap between what we reported and what had been sold to the American Public at the time so i think theres a big difference between compliance and cooperation. This is from an operational perspective but the other elements of the operation that we do all the time is basically justice and it can be a military or intelligent or legal justice and what we have today are people who have blood on their hands. We have a mastermind who admitted killing more than 3000 americans and he admitted that. And we cannot him even in a military court because of what they went through under this program and the cia Inspector General warned about that in 2004 and all these things into those before but towards the end we will have a lot of people [inaudible] 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 i just want to talk about guantanamo and the motor commissions and how torture has affected them because there is a disconnect and we want to charge them but its hard to get on the evidence that comes from torture and hard to get on the fact that all of these things complicate a just legal process. To think there ever will be tried . I dont know. I think it will be a difficult situation. I seriously, you know, i think some of these guys went through lack sites and a lot of the information became tainted and now how do you proceed with the prosecuting someone when you are trying to classify the time. That they were in a black banner and thats the complexity and why 19 years after 911 and we still cannot prosecute mohammed or [inaudible] and the case was so strong and believe me i know because i was a case agent. We held the yemenis to prosecute him in yemen and suddenly they had more roles of evidence we have in the states because they do not want to prosecute him and we were able to find a yemeni judge to convict him and sentenced him to death so we know what we have in our own case files but unfortunately he was arrested and when not allow because of the torture program and in now we have Guantanamo Bay and People Killed to include sailors for the murder in 2000 and the gulf of [inaudible] still waiting justice. One of the questions are audience, somebody who worked in the middle east and heard frequently how damaging the [inaudible] episode was to the United States and do think weve moved beyond that episode . If not, what do we need to do to move down that episode and what is great about the United States that we eventually do the right thing. I think the whole world is seen all these things happening and they are seen people like john mccain standing up, god rest his soul, and you know, somebody like me and they are seen men and women in the military and in the cia and the fbi going to their Inspector General and complaining about what they had to have to see in these sites. We are seen what happened with the black banners right now and after nine years its been unredacted and they can know the