Good morning everyone. Welcome to the american enterprise. My name is mark and thank you for being here today. Were 15 years after the attack of September September 11, 2001. For those of us who live through it feels like yesterday. I think everyone of us remembers where they were on september 11, 2001 and how stunned our nation was at the ability of terrorists to penetrator defenses and reeked distraction. What do they want, most important like, what else are they planning. Today we take for granted the fact that we know the answers. We know they were attacked and taken out by al qaeda and Osama Bin Laden and in the early days after 9 11 we didnt know that. We knew nothing about the enemy who hit us. For the operational commanding or who the accomplishes were. On pronounced us there is to terror there that were waiting wavearry out the second way. There is the case im not work and then the humbling network which was a network of Southeast Asia terrorists who was recruited because they could look out for arab men. On 9 11 we do not know any of kn that. Beginning in 2002 we began to capture senior leaders. These captured terrorists gave us information that allowed the cia to round up all key members of the network and dismantle the stop the attack they had planned. Today we are honored to havepla. Inte us the man who went interrogated these and those that save so Many American lives. So doctor james mitchell. In the 15 year sense 9 11 no one has heard from caps on hes been isolated from the world. Of hou doctor mitchell has spent thousands of hours with cancer and other operatives. Hes looked directly to the face of evil and he has come to understand the terrorist mind what drives and motivates them better than anyone because the v terrorist told him what drives them. For the first time, doctor mitchell sharing what cason told him including his thoughts on bushs response and plans for new attacks in my why ultimately thinks they will prevail. His new book, enhanced interrogation offers a an account of the terrorist Interrogation Program and with the men who plan to the worst terrorist attack in history and people who would do it again if they had the chance. This is the first time he is speaking in public at a form and we are honored that you chose to join us. N public thank you. The details of enhanced interrogation have been discussed and debated. Im sure we get to the q a will get into the questions. I want to focus on what you have learned from these terrorists. Two people understand the conversations that you are describing were not happened while he was strapped to a watee board. Can you explain the difference between enhanced interrogation, debriefing and what you call how you do visits. These enhancement interrogations that i was a part of only dealt with about 14 of the top folks. I didnt have anything to do with mid or lowlevel folks. Most of these interrogations took place over about two weeks. K sms took about three weeks. After that there is no enhanced interrogation. None at all. So our goal in doing enhanced interrogations was to get them to be willing to engage in the questions instead of enchanting and doing things that previously been doing. Her sort once they started doing that we switch to social influence stuff. We know the real way to get the cooperation you want. I coursing it out of him its by getting them to provide information in a way they dont feel pressured to do it. We had to be very careful when were doing enhanced interrogations, we werents. Interested in confessions. Ive dealt with 13 or 14 of the worst ones. K sm, [inaudible] ive dealt with a lot. None of them would refuse to identify what they had done. We were looking for confessions because that doesnt stop attacks. What stops the taxes intelligence. S actual the way that you would get the intelligence dealt with is getting through the enhanced isy interrogations as you can usee social influence after that. So what we did was we moved quickly to debriefing. The way that worked for the cia interrogation was questioning the person who is deliberately trying to withhold information and was hostile about providing it. It usually involves a possibility of some like youht might be authorized to do eips for 15 days but we would not dot it. As soon as they started working thth us we moved away from it. T. After that we would bring the subject Matter Experts and because im not the guy to ask the questions. You want the expert on whatever the question is they have. We would bring in the person who brought the president s daily daily briefs because he had questions to ask. Were bringing other people and said in there with a and help them without corporation asked the questions there hoping to get. Once they were willing to engage with the debris for we got out of it. We step back. We might monitor or see how things are going but you needurr your experts asking about certain things. Jim mitchell is not the guy to be making up intelligence requirements. Thats done by experts who are experts in the field. Irrele they would give me briefings on who these people were and was expected before we did it. Interrogations took two weeks and then the entire time there with the cia they were never subjected to them again. Never. So k so k sm had three weeks of eaps and the never again. Not even when they are trying to find out the location of bin laden. Or when theyre trying to provide information to allow us to identify the courier. We did not use ents because they wouldve been used to stop catastrophic attacks. If it wasnt an attack they werent interested in doing it. Since i work from them theyy werent interested in doing it either. They dont want to be people to find out where someone is hiding. Where so then they were debriefings where dealt with intelligencehort. Requirements. He a friday of other meetings with the detainees. In my book i call the maintenance visits becausee thats what the cia called them. Theyre getting sour because ofd isolation. They would stop by and play board games with them or go to the Basketball Court and play basketball you and think thatal from listening we did a lot of that. K sm was one of those guys, like yoda. Like yoda. Di likes to sit there and talk. You might play basketball but you went to that with case them, he wants to tell you things heas has two kinds of things he did he had one of those dry erase boards and he loved to lecture. O we are listen to him lecture so hed have something to do and occasionally something useful came out of that. Her thin the other thing you like to do is he would like to sit andan talked about was on his mind. He like to tell you about his religion i take all of the things they told me over the years from the beginning and bring them all together into one place and talk about it in one setting. G and i the things i read about in the book are not one session where we sit down and have someone on award of bork asking to tell us about the religion. That wouldve worked a mess not what we did. So thats to take people from the state a resistance to cooperation. Ly, so they never fully cooperated. They always had secrets they would protect. Coere is nothing they could have done to get us to tell us that month location. Pr but he told us inadvertently by. Line. Theres been a lot of people who opid it had nothing to do with they resisted and misled you. You get nothing of value and it was other means that got to bin. Laden. It is true that k sm lied to us. What is not true is that we did not know what that meant. It is true that lied to us. But it isnt true that we did note that meant. K a semmes nephew, after eits were done done were in the ksbriefing stage tells us that well [speaking in native language] told us so now are interested. So if he delivered a letter, we believe that they dont know where he was because in 2002 he doesnt even use electronics. Here we have a guy who is saying there was a courier using his jihad the name who delivered. So the cost said ksm says no, that guy used to work for me hes a protege of mine but he retired in 2000. He doesnt notice talking abouts we go back to the nephew and his nephew said hes fine. Hes lying to you. And so we think i wonder why ksm is lying. Most people dont know is they had established a secret way to communicate with each other, the detainees had. So ksm could get messages out to the troops. T messag but what they do know is that we knew it but we left it because we want to see what he was b saying to the troops. So he puts in a secret message, whatever you do dont tell him about the courier. So what we were thinking is that guy has to be important. Are thi here is a relatively cooperative guy who some people would say probably experienced the worst that you could experience in terms of eits, who is willing to risk going back to that to protect the identity of this one courier. Eventually they got the guy who got the letter. He said i never heard of that guy. I dont youre talking about. Theres not a guy like that. But we had been asking all these other detainees about him. So before eit [inaudible] was a man who worked with the highlevel facilitator worked with k sm. Facilita he says there could be two, three maybe more people working, with bin laden. Rk he is small group of people, could be him. Ays its after eits comments him, he does he does this he moves letters he works for him. Admit a this other stuff was a smokescreen. We had a detainee who said one of bin ladens wives gave abu a letter to give to bin laden. So you have to be thinking i wont give him a letter to give to my wife if i dont know who he is. R so all of these little clues fell into place. Then the brilliant men and women at the cia who are analysts and target is put it together. There is a partial true name for the courier that was already in the database. We did not know how important that was or how to find them. I interrogated, less than ten minutes a guy by the name of abu jan sir. After that he said this guy that you are interested in has a speech impediment. When he talks he talks in arabic and passed in. The agency was able to find out where that guy who spoke like that lived. The question is, because we knew he was living are likely to be living with bin laden. Essentially he had no outside contact. So then they try to find out whether or not bin laden was stained with the sky. And thats thats the process that happened. It wasnt the case simplysthe e hands were taped to a Steering Wheel and someone was cut their fingers a. It was hard work done from the cia. Some of the intelligence becomes actionable only when its placed in the greater context of what you know from everybody. Y. You already have the name of the guy who got it from someone who was in the program i we wouldve gotten it without this program anyway. E gone t the problem is when you roll up a detainee in the beginning there is a tell us everyone you think bin laden knows theres nothing about a single name that highlights the importance. Its like like picking up a phone book and say because your name is in the phone book that the guy whos gonna wrap the gas station. You need something to take you to that piece of information to highlight the importance. Unless im confusing this, its clear my book the guy who gave him his name thought he was dead. Who gi the thought he was dead. It was a smart clever work by the cia analyst who determined this guy was confusing him with his brother and the guy heg himi identified with was still alive. In hindsight this like doing a labyrinth puzzle backwards. Its easy because you know where theyre at. Im telling you the people who put this thing together not the interrogators but the analyst were brilliant. To get back into the intelligence database and review everything and piece together the matrix was amazing. On mike hayden is like putting together a puzzle with thousands of pieces by you dont have the cover of the box. Cover i may provided the picture on the box. The only two detainees that were denied muppercaseletter in the rest were providing bits and pieces of information. So most of us nobody has heard from cass some since 911, weve never seen an interview after his picked up. What was he like . In the book i call him a devil and a diva. In the beginning he was belligerent. Heres what you need to know about k sm. For two or three days he was w held in pakistan and he was a question to be debriefed by cia officers. In the standard nine coercive and they tried respectful conversation and one dressed upr in pakistani dress and spokeokef perfect. And that guy he described later as a calm. Most of the time k sm rocked and prayed and quoted the quran and acted belligerently. And theres a lesson here for today. Some people are saying you can get more out of these highlevel detainees with food and drink but that did not work for ksi. He told her, im not can you turn on my god for a handful of dates. What are you thinking. Because thats when he was describing the behavior of another person. Then he went into a place when he was treated badly there. Then he came to us. In each case he had not per two and a before the eits to answer the question with no correlation, just provide information. The way it works is we would do a neutral assessment in the beginning. I will commit a talk and say this is the information we want. So i went and said we need information to stop operations. We think you have some of it. We have reason to suspect that you have other operations of the work. He looked at me and told me youu might hear from you when i get to washington d. C. And meet the cowboy george bush and talk to my lord. And i said thats not going toho happen. So i asked several different a ways and then he looks at mrs. Soon youll know. Ll soon youll know. Then i go into great detail inea the book because i dont want to waste your time. But i had a spiel that we used which i would say in every mans life there are moments of opportunity. There are times when the decision you make forever changes your future and you cannot go back. I want you to be sure that this is one of those time. You have until i work out of this room to work with us. We know you dont knowit everything and that you might not know everybody is but you might know something. So the next time you see one of us things will get rougher but before that happens youll be given the opportunity to answer this question. Pp so then the next time he comes up before eit starts we ask thei the question is called the bridging question. The whole point is to give him a chance to think about it. Says belligerent and resistant and once he went to a state of cooperation what was he like . Charming. It was like visiting a master. Everybody thinks hes pure evil and he is pure evil. But what i used to tell the folks that would come after the eits were over i would say sometimes you rub the devils belly and sometimes you poke him in the eye. Were in the belly rub and stage. Not that they would really do i poking. But they would think they would need to be perry mason were some tough debris for. None of that is necessary. Unless you get sideways with them. Ry. If you get sideways with them heaven help you. Ive not seen this much raw brainpower in one place. Its probably the brightest person i have ever seen in myri life and ive seen some brightht people. He was very charming. That is often how evil looks. If evil looks to evil you can push back against it. If its charming they then you bring people into the fall. S a you get them to act. He thinks hes a jedi master and that these people out there who hes recruiting are jedi warriors. Tell me i am and a long line, what you dont understand is you have already lost. In all of the timeline the world is already under strict sharia law. I am a wire standing in my place. When i fall another will come j up. You have already lost. Fascinated with a think about it. They tell us about the time where he said go get the lady who writes the notes i have something important to tell you. Okay i need to be careful about the skins i dont want to give you the full story. L not do we were pressing him pass the eits we had a w md expert ine i their and were trying to figure out if al qaeda had nuclear material. On that, the reason for that and the reason the beginning it was as rough as a bus. Nn we had credible intelligence that ubl had met with the pakistanis that were distributing to the rogue states our outsourcing terror. The pakistani said the hardest part is to get the nuclearor. Material. And ubl said, what if we already have it. And ub so, the wmd expert, tim and bruce were sitting in hes probably been out of eits for a month or month and a half. Shes asking questions and shes done and she leaves away do this thing a call fireside chat. Sometimes when you take people out of one situation and put them in a new one the dynamicspu will pull them to act in certain ways. So we the interrogation is over. Lets talk about how that work for you. For you. Members who is empathetic and who can some like to better because he had some in case them had some and i dont. Bruce bruce says i notice you are uncomfortable at times. Sometimes when the lady would ask questions you seem like youre going to Say Something but then hold back. We had a couple of those like what wereen you thinking about that and he and go get the lady who takes the notes. It was actually exiting the questions. But the she had a islamist does something much of women. Go get the lady who takes the notes. We bring her back. He describes killing daniel pearl. He describes it cutting his head off and dismembering him and baring him in a hole. Cribes c i dont care recall if its me or bruce we asked was that difficult for you to do thinking emotionally that had to be hard. He said oh no. I had 12 knives the toughest part was getting to the bone. In the was sort of happy and it was creepy. That was when you asked what it was like the evil shines through. Es throu he referred to daniel pearl as daniel. In that tone of voice. What you have to understand isug that k is some thought that what he was doing to daniel pearl showed his god, k smc god, god god of islamist not the god of islam but the god of islamist is showing his gun how much he loved his god. Because taken the life with someone who is helpless toho ise prevent it they qc see isis doing when they burn someone who is in cages or crucified children. Taking someones life whos helpless to prevent it shows his glory. Its almost like an act of worship to him. G about so he is talking about daniel pearl like they had an intimate moment. After it is over were walking back to the cell one of the guards theres a lot of guards there said to me, that guy needs to die. And he didnt mean that wee should kill him, he just meant that the world would be a better place if that particular monster was gone. Tt lets talk a little bit about islam. We often hear that terrorist attacks have nothing to do with islam. Cass m told you about his views of islam and said islam is a religion of peace. I will answer that but i want to make one point first. Wants to cast them is an islamist. In my mind thats a person who wants to impose sharia law on the whole world. If youre muslim and not islamist im not talkina about you. When people talk about the ku klux klan i dont get insulted because im not a membe