And it is very interesting but it is those questions the very few people are asking. Ask me anything. That negative feedback is usually because they think it is sexist. The other thing is what they dont realize with that narrative they dont not like me or the book but i would have peaked est flashbacks. To hear the bullets then they are there again. Because that reminded me so the insiders lovett because they have the Beautiful Image when how they buy that narrative fallacy for that execution and it is wonderful. But that is not how it is. And so dated so almost all the negative feedback i have yet to be serious. Have you read accidental empire . No precocious by . Been should i quit. We aeronaut on speaking terms anyway. One person was responding little defensive. No. I should not probably say this but it turns out it is like Insider Trading with hate speech. They cover a document at the time that is what it covers. And if anything is known it means that in some way nobody knows about it. By the way of any Company Partner knows about bad then it is also not confidential. Also for all the problems the country may have truth is always a defense because we have weak light bill lies fortunately. Unless it is under subpoena somebody could say yes he said that. Is a lot more than you think actually. Only those who knew my name that ran a slightly compromise position but i did not want that to be public. And never told anybody because it would be he said she said but but they were both pool ive let the know they were going to be mentioned. I would like to know why there isnt a scene like miami quick. It is funny i was there a few years ago. Is used to be the most hideous in the world. But look at mountain view. Were living in the elizabethan era of our time. Does this seem like and a culture that invested architecture . No. Of course, not. Every public building is named after some rich douchebag. Nobody has ever walked into the google hospital. But the notion of giving back but it is not like Carnegie Building a library. Some of the most beautiful libraries youll ever see. That educated a whole generation so to invest in the city just nobody cares. If you look around it does not seem like the 15th century. [laughter] of course,. [inaudible] obviously there are exceptions. We have five minutes left. I did work with a blend unnamed source. But things have gotten more political when facebook went from a crazy start up to be very political and this source said it would become a microsoft. From any other questions . [applause] thanks for coming tonight and for having me. So appreciated. [applause]. About why you decided to write this book. Guest . Its part of the book i wish i could put away the. For nearly ten years a its some of the same values for the things that motivated me to share that original experience. The operation to continue in some longer form essays, and then eventually the creation of the book. Host so the oped in the Washington Post gives a flavor for the theme of that and how that fit in with him. The narrative of what had gone on in iraq and other places. I saw the narrative switch and i saw people talk as if it is an isolated incident. For those of us that are there again had a duty to speak out. So the original hadnt used the word torture but the idea to enhance interrogation in these abusive tactics that have an impact on me and my own experience i was struggling with, so i felt it was a discussion that the American People needed to have and eventually evolved to the point i recognized now it is an enhand interrogation. But i didnt want to do is more importantly i told my story and splayed my role in these things and justified on some level to condemn them completely for the other people involved but to be as honest as i possibly could. Host i want to dig more into that as your role as interrogator but before we get there maybe start a little bit with your upbringing. One of the things that was interesting for me in the book is how motivated you were by your religious upbringing growing up in a town in pennsylvania. So talk about that and the relationship that may or may not have had with your decision to go into Law Enforcement and join the military. Guest it was an old traditional Presbyterian Church that focused on things like humility and being quiet and new sort of large displays of affection or appreciation. But more importantly, it was a place where i was surrounded by very important men in world war ii, worked at places like the steel mill and people were kind. People knew my name. Older men called me by my first name and we all sort of dressed up and it was a safe, wonderful place. It was also a place that installed some important values that our thoughts are to be with the people around us and we are to spend far more energy to focus on the needs of others. So it was a beautiful kind of institution. Now there were a lot of veterans in the institution as well. So the idea was a strong one. This was the 1990s by the time i decided to join. But when i looked into the military i found some of the same things i found with the idea of taking care of each other in a place of protection and a place that quite frankly did think of others first. It is so incredibly familiar to the way that ive grown up. You enlisted in the army in 1995. Your life in the army, tell us about that in your experience and how that would shape your career as the work to make your way to iraq. Guest to talk about feeling protected in the church and that is kind of thing i wantethe thing iwanted to do iss from the church and then in a general nature i wanted to be a Police Officer in the presbyterian sense of calling. So i enlisted in 1995 after four years of college and spent five years on what was essentially a peacetime army. There were operations at this point it was largely a war fought from the air in the idea that armies would be engaged on in large land battles was kind of thing in the pas past and ify would engage in the end of Ground Combat with people suggesting every future war would be fought from the air. So i spent most of my time in training. They send me out t sent me out y california tonight joined the next three or four years in places like tennessee, louisiana and north carolina. So when 2000 came up there didnt seem to be the need for enlisting at that point, and it was getting boring and i so felt that in Law Enforcement so i came back and get did a job asa Police Officer. This is about one of your training exercises. I have highlighted for you. If you want to read that and talk about how thats one of the first entry points that you had in interrogation that would be one of the subjects of your book. Guest i never thought of the exercises available, and one of them is in the position as part of the team the idea to be captured we were more likely to be captured. Host it was essentially a Training Program to help you deal with the verifications while evading. Guest youve are behind enemy lines and how do you escape and resist. It has been suggested to the interrogation of a foreign entity and hopefully you are able to escape. This section comes to the middle but then you are captured so they are taken to a detention facility and they pretend to be interrogators. They have the personnel files. If they fit in the families by name in that night they played loud music. The guard brings in a recording and place it over and over and also please be opening a portion of Ozzy Osbourne crazy train and they would stand up in the cold, army doctors take your pulse. During interrogation we are promised warm meals and beds if we cooperate. They see everyone breaks down. The torture works and always has and always well. Will. It just takes time. Host for this to be the first entry point in the interrogation as a soldier that was sort of shaping your view on interrogation but also later on in the describe how it would come to be held as a valid experience point to lead you down the path of being in interrogator in iraq. The other section of the book was knowing in retrospect in the cia enhanced Interrogation Program that essentially those techniques from waterboarding down were engineered from the program which was essentially designed to help our soldiers resist torture. Guest they reinforced that we were in essentially the good guys and we would be captured by the bad guys and this is how the essentially would be treated. There wasnt a whole lot they could teach you in terms of what it was going to be like it if it was still a stressful kind of training environment, and there were people that did sort of breakdown and have difficulty emotionally dealing with it. At the end of the school cummings you arent liberated by the force and they raised the flag and play the starspangled banner and its an Emotional Experience because it reinforces the idea of if you are part of this sort of noble undertaking of the american military. So the idea then and now in the wake of 9 11, there was a lot of talk. Dick cheney went on meet the press after 9 11 and a large portion found things like the dark side and how we have to work in the shadows and the idea that where the enemy works in these dark places the only way for us to infiltrate or sort of join them in this place and i would like to be able to say i thought about the school and that isnt who w is and who we t i didnt think i tied its like Many Americans i was in agreement many of them like tim russert that i have respect for and even in that interview he didnt confront in that kind of evolved from there that once the administration and wants all of us i think said it out loud and took it for a test drive that maybe we could do these things and we didnt object then it was implemented. I am familiar with the idea that they navigated on the school to places like the cia and the enhanced Interrogation Program. I dont have any direct experience of that. I think it could be true but the intention was to essentially work on this dark side or the shadows and there didnt need to come from this years school or any outside influence. History is ripe with example of how to torture and abuse and it could be incredibly creative in those terms. The valuable discussion of where they came from but in my own narrative story, i dont know that it would have mattered if it had come from some other place. Host lets get back to the narrative. You leave the army and 2009 and back to join the Police Department. So, tell us about how that transition in your life from pennsylvania into iraq. Guest this idea of calling on Law Enforcement, i applied at a number of federal Law Enforcement put my own hometown was one of the first to bring me on, and i found that i loved the job in Law Enforcement and in many ways you could almost treat it like a ministry engaged with people in the absolute worst moments in their lives. Whether it was a car accident or a Health Crisis or an assault and how you respond to people in that moment could change the direction if you responded with a stead sticky form of compassid authority, they could very quickly compound the situation would turn out much differently than it otherwise could. But you knew if you had officers coming back, you know the officer that might come and make things worse and they start yelling or screaming and some of them almost enjoyed a getting people by older. People riled up. The Police Officers i worked for over incredibly compassionate and it was a perfect job. I was eventually diagnosed with a heart condition, perfectly healthy. Applied to a lawenforcement position and they required a physical but discovered a heart murmur that led to further testing and it turned out i had a very severe cardiomyopathy that ended my lawenforcement career. So i was devastated and all those things i had in this sense of having been in the military is very similar was suddenly kind of wiped away and there was no way back in and this was post9 11 and the invasion already have been 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. At this point as it started to grow there was a recognitio rece didnt have enough soldiers to accomplish the task into subcontracting companies which have always been there for task now is filling in the sort of empty spaces, and one of those was interrogation. With Language Training and ironically enough, having been to the school goes for the kind of things that allowed the contractor to qualify me in that position so they are required to submit paperwork to the army saying here is why its a specific individual is qualified. It happened very fast. I wanted to get there as fast as i could. Saddam hussein was captured in 2003 and we thought that the war would end in a matter of weeks or months, so we wanted to get there quickly. I arrived in january, 2004. Host tell us about the contractor that you signed up with, and maybe also im interested in the role of the contractor in relation to the military on the ground and in iraq. I was struck by sort of how haphazard the reporting lines of authority were as you described in the book. But at the same time it seemed very integrated in the sense that it was hard to tell if you were a contractor or if you remember the military. So talk about for those that might not be as familiar. Guest weber and enormous contract to her in the military for years mainly in terms of electronic intelligence. That has been most of the contracts, but there were others at the time being asked to find a new Division Within their own companies of human intelligence for interior, so that the time they were bringing over interrogators and intelligence analysts and screeners that would meet with the prisoners first and then add them onto the interrogators. I remember in basic training the relationship between civilians and military contractors and the training we were out raking leaves one day as we often were in a car full of civilians pulled up and wanted directions and so they were talking to them and i remember the drill sergeant sliding across the grass screaming at us to get away. He didnt want us to have any contact with the outside world but then we watched from a distance. They stood at the parade rest and spoke respectfully to the civilians. They gave them directions and made sure they knew and helped them anywa any way they could at was a shock to us. Here was this drill sergeant that we thought would rule the world but then we realized he was an underling and one of the values drilled into your head is the leadership you burn your chain of command and all the way up the Battalion Commander at the top of the command is always a photo of the president of the United States and he or she is in civilian clothes, so you recognize civilians essentially are in charge. So this was a complication in iraq. The military viewed this kind of outside of the chain of command and they were not quite sure how to deal with us. We still thought of ourselves within the chain of command coming in we knew where we fit. Whether it was a sergeant or specialist even though we were out of uniform, all of us still found ourselves acting the way we had before. Listening to the staff sergeants so it was a bizarre kind of interaction between the two and im not sure anyone to this day knowtheyknows how it was suppos. Host so you are a contractor specialist and arrive in baghdad and make your way to the prison. Tell us about abu and the signs that things were not the way they should be. Guest im asked this question a lot about the first impressions, and i try to think about i remember the image of pulling into the prison in who i was with and what i was wearing. But it was such a large complex more than i thought and a lot of us had the impression of an vast number of prisoners most of whom were in outdoor camps, and you could sort of see them standing there and this is not what i thought of as interrogation and my image was still of the first gulf war with thousands of iraqis surrendering and heading back behind the enemy lines and being processed. But, here we were out in what was essentially one of the most dangerous parts of iraq at the time. Essentially halfway between falluja and baghdad. More rounds came in, and this wasnt my impression of how a prisoner of war camp was run. You didnt interrogate prisoners in combat. You removed them from the zone and more importantly for the safety of the actual prisoners. So, in terms of when i knew something wasnt quite right even before i thought about the issue of interrogation most of us were sort of confused by why it had been arranged this way. Host interesting. Do tell a story in the book about receiving these prisoners for interrogation, and getting little to nothing about them in terms of intelligence implied they were picked up engaged in anticoalition activities. What does it mean to be engaged in the anticoalition activities . Guest it was an Impossible Task. Most of these prisoners were ground up by young infantry soldiers on this Impossible Mission and in those cases, they didnt think that they were going to be sent back to prison. It was just such a confusing place. They would go to a house where someone had shot at them and wound up everyone in the house and they would deny having done it. Then they had to move onto the next mission. Then they would end up abu grave and have paperwork but as you mentioned, the good number even maybe the majority had this phrase detainee expected that the anticoalition activity. The other praise, detainee seen running from an explosion. And if you run from that, you are somehow potentially involved. We had a sort of standing joke that the best way to not be captured in iraq was not run from the scene of an explosion. Either run towards it or stand. An Impossible Task for the guys out there. Its also a breakdown in what was going to happen. They were not just being sent back to a safe place to be held until the end of the conflict which is how they thought of it. They were being sent back to these prisons are the fault was the would gath