Declassified how torture derails the war on terror after 9 11. You probably know him from events weve done together. Hes a visiting special agent with the fbi and hes investigated highprofile terrorism cases after the 9 11 attacks. He has investigated skills to the private sector and these ceo of the Stephan Group and author of the Fordham Center and his specialty is global security, everything from governance culture and state actors, nonstate actors and im going to try to cover as much of that today as we can. One thing i want to point out is each day the center publishes the Stephan Group intel brief which is something you should really, you should read every day. Its a wonderful insight into a timely issue that goes to the heart of what we should be thinking about even if its not in the headlines, everything from White Supremacy to whats happening with al qaeda and isis geopolitics in Washington State and i encourage you to read it every day. Id also encourage you to read the Stephan Groups National Security produces which is its 14th year and brings you the news every day about what you should be thinking about about National Security and a variety of dimensionsso i want to thank you so much for joining me today, welcome. Thank you. I want to start by talking about the book and then were going to turn to other things. And as you know from your invitation you can buy this book online by pushing a button that says to buy and if you have any questions along the way , put them in the chat and eventually after talking i will get to them. I want to start with the title of the book. When the book came out in 2011 it was subtitled the inside story of9 11 and the war against al qaeda. Now its on torture. So much of what was redacted and classified had to do with torture, your involvement and interviews with al qaeda suspects and others and i want to get to the railing the war on terror before we get to whats different about this edition of the book. Lets talk a little bit about how the war on terror was derailed and how this book brings satellite. When i wrote the books, this was supposed to be a book recounting my own personal experience in the war on terror. I wrote the book to be a publication that can start a conversation. A conversation based on facts, based on reality, based on all the references that we had and also its successes but also the faith that we had in ourresponse. Tweeting about war for example, torture. So i completed the book as anyone can expect in a very productive process and they asked me to change a couple of things which would not create any problems for me because these things were kind of built within the boundaries of any publication review and unfortunately after the review, i had the incentive to the agency and usually the agencies response was its hard to get to the equation and pronouns were being redacted, anything that had to do what actually happened at interrogation rooms. How we get information. What was really framed later on, all these things were redacted. So while torture did not work , this is not how we get information regarding these states but i cannot tell you how you get information, how we identify that Osama Bin Laden was the architect of 9 11 and Everything Else had to do with the efficacy of this ancient tradition was redacted. And i always described the process as distortion by redaction so if you are for torture you can say anything you want and you are able to publish it. And the review board would review that but if you have a problem in what happened, if youre telling the truth about what took place inthese interrogation rooms , it would be heavily redacted so after nine years of fighting and after the mayo clinic jumped out to challenge the reactions ofthe black banners , met government would ask if they can do another book what they did find is they it was very fair and for the most part, it had been on redacted and now people can read exactly what happened. So within the first editionof the book , i talk about the war on terrorism, everything that happened from the day they declared jihad on the United States until may. So now, there was so much information that had been classified on National Security grounds the first time, it makes another book. These books that must exist and most of that has to do with the enhanced Interrogation Techniques Program and when you read it and when you see it you will see how that program was devastating to us interests and devastating to our success or lack thereof in the war on terror. There is this opportunity there to also thank the leadership of the cia for taking this amazing step of institutional senses and the classifying the black banners so that you can read the truth cause what ive said in the black banners, my firsthand experience so i saw what was happening, i saw this information and in many instances i either got the information personally and when you look into this and you say okay, you can count being classified or National Security, what you are admitting is the truth because you dont classify lies. If i was lying they would have said this guy, hes lying but declassified on National Security grounds so that helps the trumps in the long run. Now i reveal what had happened or what happens with different people. It is now the truth and they had been lied to like so many people who had all these successes and made it happen. And that is why the decision i made to change the subtitle of the book to focus on enhanced interrogation techniques. That this is the first time we knew exactly what happened in enhanced interrogation and had a prompt scene to the enhancedinterrogation room. Its rare for them to become declassified by a former official in the way yours was declassified and how unprecedented in your particular circumstance , why do you think it got declassified . You think it had anything to do with the court or to do with the cia trying to send a different message . First of all, im grateful for the law clinic. Im grateful for all the people who supported me, my attorney who was with mefrom day one. But i believe that a lot of people wrongfully and you and i talked about this belief that the torture group was a cia group. I didnt believe its a cia program. We had these discussions you and i before but even if the cia Inspector General defined as a cdc program, thats within the cia, a lot of publishers in the cia who were not under the cdc as youll see now in the book were against this programmore than i was. So thats why so many people work and they complained that the Inspector General and the Inspector Generals investigation and in their investigation, they actually made it clear that you could not consider any of these threats to be disrupted and number two that the enhanced Interrogation Program worked, yet i say well, its this subjective matter and we really dont think its evident. But if you can find the cdc program , the second thing that a lot of people make is versus the cia and im glad now the book has been on redacted because it shows its not fbi versus cia, it was hiring a contractor to oversee a new program that became bigger than that cia at the time and now we look at everything that happened and we find that what theyre talking about in 2002 and it had been redacted andnow people can read , now you can see its happening in also examples, we could not prosecute any of these people for anything even though they have american blood on their hands because what they went through at the black sites. Ive read it to a lot of new people in the cia, a lot of new people in the government that believe in what the cia Inspector General included. That believe what im saying here in the book, that believe in what they came up with. Those people are involved in all the problems of the past. They didnt need these decisions in the past. So i think a lot of people wanted to turn the page and wanted to put everything out and so there is a transparency here that we did not see in the last decade. Thats why the timing of the release of this book is important because given what we face today, a political culture based on alternative facts and partisan talking points, on conspiracy theories, this did not start with trump. This has been settling in our political culture for a long time and what youre seeing with trump is just a step towards, the next logical step ifyou want to call it. So what was a partisan issue and if you believe it was your most probably republican and if you dont your most probably democrat, everything is a partisanissue. Thats why President Trump at the time candidate trump was saying its reporting because its about something that brings the cheers of the crowd. Now you have an opportunity to see the facts behind us. The facts behind this information about the efficacy of these interrogation techniques and you see how in so many Different Levels operationally and strategically hurt our National Securityinterests. Lets talk about that because you often hear the phrase and this has often been partisan eyes, which is that the eics dont work. Im always curious, that means so many things. It can mean you dont get information and all of that. You dont get informationat all. It means you get bad information. Im not going to go down that path. Lets talk about the United States. We are a nation based we have prosecutions, and limits that prohibit these kind of inhumane treatments, right . So we took an oath to protect the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And these constitutional protections have speedy trials, have humane treatment, have all these kinds of things that we are talking about. But also the cornerstone of all our International Policy and who we are as a nation, is a nation that believes in freedom, in democracy, like Ronald Reagan said, that shining city on the hill. We advocate for human rights. We have the goes from state department stating and calling enemies and allies who practice sleep deprivation, temperature deprivation. These things are taken from the 2002 state Department Report about allied countries in the world when we were doing it ourselves. So when you have significant contradiction between the laws, between who we are as a nation, between what we say publicly, and then between our strategy, when these things dont go handinhand together, its a total failure. It fits within what was said, if you know yourself and you know your enemy, you will imagine if you forget about yourself and your you are, you have no clue about the enemy, youre going to fail and tesla members of alqaeda on the eve of 9 11 9 11 caused the United States trillions of dollars just to become a thousand members today, right . Now theyre not only in afghanistan, they are on in some aldie, in yemen, you name it. Im not even mentioning isis looking at of alqaeda. They lasted in a war thats longer than world war i, world war ii, vietnam wars altogether. And guess what. We are in such a dangerous situation today, and thats because a lot of these things. This is because of from strategic perspective, our laws and our strategy, okay, were not in sync together. This is number one. Operationally speaking, its a totally different situation. The biggest disaster, and they would agreedupon, even President Trump, we launched the biggest disaster in iraq war in 2003, iraq war. We went to iraq, invaded the country, hundreds of thousands of people are dead, trillions of dollars wasted. You name it. We gave a new birth for alqaeda. Alqaeda was dying before the 2003 war in iraq and ultimately we gave birth to isis. Huge disaster. At the time they wanted evidence that saddam and alqaeda were working together. Everybody in the cia and the fbi and the pentagon who knew these things we know there were not working together. But that was not good enough, right . So they took a guy who worked with alqaeda. They tortured him and he said yes, they are working together. Absolutely theyre developing wmd program together. We took this information to the United Nations security counsel, i think everybody remembers. Secretary holding that small little too with the george kent behind talk about how alqaeda and saddam are working together to develop wmd which would be devastating to any American City or any city around the world once we got iraq we knew everything was a lie. We kind of knew it was a lie. Colin powell was forced to go into it. He did not make sense. But when we look back to the sheikh and said to them why did you lie . Because you were torturing me, i gave you anything you wanted to hear. So 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 saddam and alqaeda are working together, fine. He gets exactly what he wants. So it was very difficult for us to go to white house and say well, torture produced that information because we get information we wanted, right . So now cooperation, you get the truth. A difference between compliance and between cooperation. We dont have unlimited resources to chase ghosts around the world, like in some instances we did because of the fake and the false information they were getting. We wanted status, and what you sit in his book is how were getting facts, not what they did with these facts and some of the threats, for example, about the brooklyn bridge, for example, you know, they were watching tv and there were watching a movie that showed a guy stepping over the bridge. They started joking, how many infidels would die if we blow up that bridge . Suddenly were hearing on television less than 24 hours on cnn, we were watching alqaeda wants to blow up the brooklyn bridge. Thats a big gap between what we reported and what had been sold to the American Public at the time. Theres a big difference between compliance and cooperation. So this is from an operation perspective. The other elements of the operations that we do all the time is basically justice towards the end, and justice and liberty justice, intelligence justice or legal justice. What we have today are people have blood on their hands. We have a mastermind who admits killing more than 3000 americans. We cannot prosecute even in a military court because of what they went through and its program. The cia Inspector General warned about that back in 2004. All these things when fully back in 2002. But towards the end we would have a lot of what a going to do with these guys . Yet to think the longterm because after all, as i said in the beginning we are the United States of america and we have laws. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about guantanamo and the mr. Commissions and out torture is affected because as a disconnect military commission we want to get around the evidence with torture and hard to get by the fact they had been tortured all of these things complicate a just legal process. Do you think they will ever be tried . I dont know. I think its going to be a difficult situation. I seriously, 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 prosecuting someone when youre trying to classify the time period that they were in a black site . Thats the complexity, thats why 19 years after 9 11 and we still cannot prosecute Khalid Sheikh mohammed or others. His case for so strong just by looking at the uss cole file itself. Believe me i know i was a case agent. We help the yemenis secured him in yemen, and suddenly they had more rules of evidence that we have in the United States. We were able to find a yemeni judge to convict him and to sentence him to death. So we know what we have but, unfortunately, we were not allowed to talk to them because of the torture program and we were not working information result from harsh treatment that he went through. Now hes in Guantanamo Bay and people he killed include the sailors murdered on october 12, 2000 in the gulf of aden, still waiting justice. We have one of the questions from our audience, somebody who worked in the middle east for more than five years and heard frequently have damaging the abu ghraib episode was to the United States. Do you think we have moved beyond that episode . If not, what do we need to do to move beyond that episode . You know, whats great about the United States that we eventually do the right thing. The whole world is seeing all these things happening. They are seeing people like john mccain standing up, god bless his soul, and supporting somebody like me. They are seeing men and women enlisted in the cia, in the fbi going to the Inspector General and complaining about what they had to do or have to see in the sites. They are seeing what happened with the black banners now and how after nine years it has been unredacted and they can of the truth about the program. This is all positive for america. This is all positive that everything thats happening, theres still some light, the light is a dim but is still there in the shining city on the hill. I think its good. I believe, i agree with the person who asked the question. If you hear a lot of hearings that took place, watch a lot of hearings that took place at the Armed Service committee on the iraq war, basically images of abu ghraib recruited more foreign fighters to go and fight in iraq than anything else. It benefited alqaeda and benefit zarqawi at the time tremendously. So yes, they were disastrous for the iraq people frankly. I believe that by turning the page, by having the m