And i just couldnt hang on but once things calm down i want to get back into the teaching environment. And would have put it on the spot and ask you about two or three novels that every kid should. I think smile is a great one for younger students. My own daughters love it and my daughters connect very well at that book. If you only. One graphic novel ever it should be. Gene yang is a National Ambassador for young peoples literature and the coauthor of a new series of looks. The new one is called jean, thanks so much. Thank you so much. Up next on booktv after Words Program former interrogator eric fair discusses his time at sub abu ghraib interviewed by sudbury director of National Security and human rights first about his book consequence a memoir. Host eric thanks for sitting down to talk about your book. Your book is a war story, story about u. S. And interrogator engaged in difficult circumstances in iraq. Its a story about torture but its a story about much more than that as well. Can you maybe start off by talking about what the story really is about and why you decided to write this book. The question is why and this day there still a part of me that wishes i hadnt. The book i wish i could put away and its a story that i have to tell that there was obligation today started writing about my experience in iraq and assert with the Washington Post oped so ive been at this for nearly 10 years. Its on the same values i have learned in the army but honesty and integrity and to share that regional experience. I wrote an oped of 700 are 700 or 800 words so there was obligation to continue to write and lead to more oped send logger formats and eventually the creation of this book. Host of the oped you wrote for the Washington Post give us a flavor for the theme of that and how that will fit into the format. Guest i had gone to iraq twice in the last time was 2005. The narrative about what had gone on in the prisons in iraq and other places didnt match up with what i had seen in quite frankly what i have done am i recognized again as a soldier i had a notation to tell the truth and the southern narrative switched as i saw people who had an isolated incident at abu ghraib that simply hadnt happened the way we thought it did. Again we have a duty to speak out so the original oped in the post, did not use the word torture. I start with the idea that what were calling enhanced interrogation for tactics that had an impact on me and my own experience that i was struggling with. I felt the discussion was something the American People needed to have. Torture is an enhanced interrogation. What i didnt want to do was write a policy that suggests that where these things come from or what might happen. One because i simply didnt know a lot of those things but more importantly i had to tell my story and explain my role and not to justify them and not even necessarily to condemn them completely or condemn the other people but to be as honest as i possibly could. Host so i want to dig more into that as your role as an interrogator at abu ghraib and volusia but before we get there maybe start with your upbringing. One of the things that was interesting for me in this book was how motivated you were by your religious upbringing and growing up in a steel town in pennsylvania so talk a little bit about that in your relationship but that may or may not have had with your decision to go into Law Enforcement and join the military. As you said pennsylvania was an old dying steel town and the traditional Presbyterian Church which focused on things like humility and being quiet and no large displays of affection or large displays of appropriation appropriation appreciation and what i did then was important. I worked at places like a steel mill and places that it as a young boy where he felt protected and safe and people were kind to me and people knew my name then. Olbermann called me by my first name are they called me mr. Fehr. It was a safe wonderful place and was also a place that instilled important values in me, the idea that our thoughts are to be with the people around us and spend far more energy and far more time focusing on the needs of others. Anyway it was a beautiful kind of institution. There were a lot of veterans in that institution as well so the idea that you serve in the military was a strong one. This was the 1990s by the time i decided to join but as i looked into the military i found many the same things in the military that i had found in church, the idea of taking care of each other in a place of protection that quite frankly did think of others first. The military leaders are often last and the concern is asa by your troops and the people that serve under you and it felt incredibly familiar the way i had grown up. Host thats very interesting that you enlisted in the army in 1995 and in the next five years your life in the army, tell us a little bit about that in your experience and how that would shape the forward path for you in your career as you made your way to iraq. Guest i talk about feeling protected in the church and it was kind of the thing that i want to do for others. I wanted to protect others. Joining the army was for me a means to an end. I wanted to be a Police Officer and i had a presbyterian sense of vocational calling so i felt this calling towards Law Enforcement and the best way to get there was through the military. So i joined, i enlisted in 1995 after four years of college and. Five years in what was essentially a peacetime army. There were operations in bosnia and kosovo this point it was largely a war in the air the idea that armies would be engaged in large land battles was a thing of the past and the army would be engaged and in ground combat. There were people suggesting that the future war would be fired in the air. I. Most of my army time in training and i learned arabic in Monterey California and i. The next three or four years in training exercises in places like tennessee and louisiana and north carolina. When 2000 came around of my list and was up there didnt seem to be much need for a linguist in the army at that point. I still felt that call to Law Enforcement so i came back and found a job as a Police Officer. Host want to have you read a passage from your book or its actually about one of your training exercises in the program. I have it here if you have it. I have it highlighted highlighted for you sophie want to read that and talk about how that is one of the first entry points you had to interrogation which would be the subject of your book. Guest as a soldier i had myriad exercises available and one was in a position that i was in. I was part of a team that i would often forwarddeployed to the idea that you would be captured you are more likely to be captured city could qualify to attend something. Host is essentially a Training Program to help you deal with even and dating guest survive, how do you live off the land and evade how do you scape and resist, there is his portion is where you are injected to the interrogation of a foreign entity or a foreign army and escape is when you are able to escape. So this section comes in the middle tier school where we have been trying to evade but you are captured so once captured we are taken to a detention facility. The trainers pretend to be enemy interrogators. They have our personnel files. They know everything about us. They threaten our families by name. Might they play loud music. One of the guards of the guard springs and recording of his infant son crying at item plays it over and over and he plays the opening portion of crazy train. We stripped and stand out in the cold. Army doctors take our pulse. During interrogation where promised warm meals and warm beds if we cooperate. We get slapped in shubb. They say everyone breaks down under duress. They tell us torture works, it always has, it always will. Just takes time. Host a couple of things that are adjusting to me about that, one is its seems to be the first entry point to interrogation of the soldier that would shape your views on interrogation but also later on the book you describe how the training would come to be held out as a valid experience point for you to lead you down the path of being an interrogator in iraq are the other thought i had in reading this section of the book was just now knowing in righteous but that in the cia enhanced Interrogation Program that essentially those techniques from waterboarding on down were reverse engineered or must Program Designed to help our soldiers to resist torture. They were captured by forces so maybe i would invite you to respond to that and any thoughts you have. Guest sere seers school reinforce the ideas that we as soldiers are essentially the good guys and we would be captured by the bad guys and this is how we essentially would be treated. And there wasnt a whole lot this year could teach you in terms of what was really going to be like any of it was still a very stressful kind of training environment. You had people that did write down and had difficulty emotionally dealing with it and at the end of seers school you are essentially liberated by a Friendly Force in the raise the American Flag and you play the star spangled banner and its an emotional experience. It reinforces the idea that you are part of sort of this noble undertaking which was the american military. And so the idea of then, now in the wake of 9 11 there was a lot of talk and dick cheney went on meet the press for two days after 9 11 and a large portion of that interview was about things that the dark side in and how we have to work in the shadows and our enemy works in these dark dark places and the only way for us to infiltrate is to join them in this place. Id like to be able to say i thought thats not who we should be and like Many Americans quite frankly i was in agreement and others whom i have Great Respect for thought the same thing. Even the interview he didnt confront the Vice President and i think it evolve from there. Once the administration and wants all of us said it out loud and took it for a test drive, maybe we could do these things and we didnt object. I am familiar with the idea that the tech geek has navigated from sere school to places like the ca a. And enhanced Interrogation Program; have any experience with that. I certainly think it could be true but i also know the intention was to work in the shadows. He didnt necessarily need to be, it didnt need to come from the sere school or any outside influence. History is rife with examples on how to torture and the human mind can be incredibly creative. I had a valuable discussion about where those techniques came from but in my own narrative i dont know that it would have mattered if it come from some other place. Host im curious you leave the army and 2009 and back to bethlehem and joined the Police Department. Tell us a little bit about how that transition your life from pennsylvania to iraq. Guest this idea of a calling has been long force. Federal Law Enforcement agencies but my hometown of bethlehem was one of the first. I found i loved Law Enforcement and in many ways it was like a ministry preview would engage with people who were in the worst moments of their lives are certainly in a deep moment of crisis where there was a car accident or some kind of Health Crisis or a dispute or an assault and how do you respond to people at that moment. It could really change the direction that they were going to head in. If you respond with this steady form of compassion and authority they could very quickly calmed down and the situation would turn out much differently than otherwise but you also knew if you had officers back you up you knew the officers that would come and make it worse by yelling or screaming and some of them quite frankly almost enjoyed getting pulled out. You take someone who is in crisis but i was surrounded the fact that the Police Officers i worked with were incredibly passionate and it was for me a perfect job. I was eventually diagnosed with a heart condition. Perfectly healthy and id applied to another federal Law Enforcement which led to testing ahead of severe cardiomyopathy that instantly ended my Law Enforcement career. I was devastated to all of those things that i had having been in the military and in that community and Law Enforcement community being very similar was suddenly wiped away and there was no way, this was post9 11. The runup before the invasion of happen at this point so there was a war in iraq and i had no way to get involved. I couldnt reenlist with a heart condition and at this point as the insurgency started to grow there was a recognition that we did not have soldiers to accomplish the task so Contracting Company were tasked with filling in the empty spaces and one of those was interrogation peered as a Police Officer in the soldier was security clearance and Language Training and ironically enough having been to sere school those were the things that allow the contractor to qualify me in the position of interrogator. The contractors were required to submit paperwork to the army saying here is why this specific individual is qualified. I wanted to get to iraq as quickly as i could. Saddam hussein had been captured in 2003 and we thought the war would end and a number of weeks or months of the wanted to get there quickly and i did. I arrived in january of 2004. Host tell us a little bit about the contrast with khaki and maybe also im interested in just the role of the contractor in relation to uniform military on the ground in iraq. I was struck by how haphazard the reporting lines of authority were as you describe in the book but at the same time seem very integrated in the sense that it was hard to tell if you were contractor or a member of the military so maybe talk a little bit about for those who may not be as familiar with the role of a contractor. Guest i work for Contracting Company and they are an enormous contractor and had done a lot of work with the army and they Defense Department are years mainly in terms of electronic intelligence but like some of the other contractors at the time they were being asked to find this new Division Within their own company was called human intelligence interrogators soaked the time they were bringing over interrogators and intelligence analysts and i think what they were calling screeners. It would be the prisoners first and pass them on to the interrogators. I remember in basic training the relationship between civilian military and the contractors. Basic training we were out raking leaves one day as we often were in the car pulls up at wide directions. We were talking to the civilians and our drill sergeant flying across the grass and screaming at us to get away from the civilians. He didnt want us to have any contact with the outside world but them a watch from a distance as the drill sergeant who have been horrible to us for the last couple of weeks stood and spoke respectfully to the civilians sir, maam and gave them directions and make sure they knew and help them anyway they could could and it was a shock to us. Here was this drill sergeant who we thought ruled the world but suddenly realized in the face of civilians he was kind of an underling and one of values that still into your head from the start of the military is civilian leadership. You learn your chain of command from your platoon leader all the way up to the Battalion Commander for the top of the command is the photo be president of the United States and he or she is in civilian clothing. A member of the military and United States recognizes civilians essentially are in charge here this was a complication in iraq. Civilian contractors of the military viewed us outside of the chain of command and they werent sure how to deal with us and they thought they should defer to us but is contractors in the interrogation are prior military most of us and listed so we thought of ourselves in the chain of command if we knew where we would sit whether we been been a sergeant and 95 or 96 or a specialist or even though we were out of uniform all of us still kind of found ourselves acting the way we had before or listening to staff sergeants. It was a bizarre interaction between the two and im not sure that anyone even even to the state knows quite exactly how is supposed to go. Host you are a contractor, you arrive in baghdad and essentially make your way to the abu ghraib prison. Tell us about abu ghraib and maybe the first signs that you have that things werent quite what they should be. Guest yeah, i am asked this question a lot about First Impressions of abu ghraib and i try to think about, remember the image of pulling into the prisoner member who i was standing with what i was wearing but it was the syrian did. It was such a larger complex than i thought. Many of us had the impression of and the vast number of prisoners most of whom were an outdoor camps so they were behind her wire. This is not i think what i thought of as interrogation or military interrogation. My image was the images of thousands of iraqi surrendering and then heading back behind enemy lines are the front lines and being processed back to the rear but here we were out in what was essentially one of the most dangerous parts of iraq at the time. We were essentially halfway between fallujah and halfway between baghdad and mortar rounds came in and this was not my impression of how a prisoner of war camp was run. You didnt interrogate prisoners in a combat zone. He rid removed him from his own for th