arrest of illegal aliens about 5,000 after the september 11th attacks and various other steps taken. i think the key attribute of this state of exemption which we are still living under, though the bush administration has gone is extreme interrogation, other than known as torture. :

he thought he was smart enough, clever enough, new hades history well enough, though he had come to power in this transparently undemocratic manner, he thought he could in effect sees real power from the military. he failed and was overthrown in a brutal coup d'état which i describe in the book but he said to me while he was in office, political violence is like stripping bare the social body. the better to place the 10 stethoscope and trap the true

life and be the skin. he meant by that that if you want to understand a society, understand its political and moral conflicts, understand its inner structure than look at it closely during a time when it is written by conflict, by political violence. look at it when i coup d'état is underway or a revolution or sectarian warfare or civil war or war itself. and this book is really a string of descriptions of what he calls points of nudity. that is, points of violence which allow you to see into a society whether that is haiti, the balkans or iraq or i would argue and i'm going to try to argue to you tonight, ourselves, the united states turko it seems to me that our experience over the last seven years, seven plus years, since the attacks of september 11, 2001 has had the effect to strip us bear and lay

before us a series of moral conflicts that though george w. bush is god we are still coping with or trying to cope with now. i would call it as a group the politics of fear. and it is still with us and we are still struggling to extricate ourselves from it as we are still struggling to extricate ourselves from the series of techniques that rush administration introduced and that the obama administration is excepting in various forms, rejecting some and accepting others as it tries to put itself on its feet when it comes to national security affairs. i am going to talk tonight about extreme interrogation, or we could call it or simply torture, and i would like to say this is extremely complicated story that goes back in recent history, back to 2001 and involves the military. it involves the central intelligence agency and the department of justice.

it also involves us. i am talking about the broader society, because we have known about this since at least 2004, when the photographs of abu ghraib were first broadcast on cbs, 60 minutes and published in "the new yorker." i began writing about torture at that time. i published a book that fall called "torture and truth," america, abu ghraib and the war on terror and two thirds about that, two thirds of the 650 or so pages were actually government documents. they were documents that have been leaked from various sources telling the story in great detail of how the government had decided to torture, how people in our commission offices in washington had worked out the legal details whereby they proved that these techniques of torture were in fact not torture and didn't really the convention against torture. one of the things that is significant to me in this

timeline is that we are talking about two different narratives here. one of the narrative about what happened on the house at the government decided what to do and the other is a narrative of what we have known when we first started learning about it and the five-year old story now of our own knowledge and what we have decided to do and not to do about torture. so that story is quite long, and pronounced as well. let me say a little bit-- i'm going to introduce this rather complicated subject of torture by telling a story of one detainee reeco i should say that last spring there came into my hands a document called the red cross report of detainees at the blog sites. this is a document put together by the international committee of the red cross taste in geneva. the red cross as you probably know as part of its charter to

interview p.o.w.s and report on how they are being treated and in particular whether their treatment of courts with the responsibilities of states under the geneva conventions. a prisoner whose story i am going to detail tonight is called abu zubaydah. he was captured by the united states and pakistani forces in march of 2002 and he promptly disappeared. he disappeared into a system of sites the united states established, secret prisons which were set up in pakistan, thailand, afghanistan, diego garcia, morocco, romania, lithuania. those we know about so far and others may come to light in the near future perhaps but those are the ones we know about. he had in captured in a gunfight in pakistan. he had been shot three times in the stomach, that by in the and lost a lot of blood. he wanted to a.. the cia rushed assertion from

johns hopkins to save his life. and i'm going to start telling the story from the moment he wakes up from the coma in the spring of 2002 so he is the last eocene. he has been in this gunfight and he thinks he is going to die in the wakes up. i woke up make it, strapped to a bed in a very wide room. the rim measured approximately 13 feet by 13 feet. the room had three solid walls and the fourth wall consisting of metal bars separating it from a larger room. i'm not sure how long they remained in the bed. after sometime i think it was several days but can't remember exactly, i was transferred to a chair where i was kept shackled at the hands and feet for what i think was the next two to three weeks. during this time, i developed blisters on the underside of my legs due to the constant sitting. i was only allowed to get up from the chair to go to the toilet which consisted of a bucket.

water for cleaning myself was provided in a plastic auto. i was given no solid food during this two to three weeks while sitting on the chair. i was only given insurer, which is a nutrient supplement did they in a can and water to drink. at first the insured made me vomit but this became less with time. to sell and room were air-conditioned and were very cold. very loud shouting type music was constantly playing. it kept repeating every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day. sometimes the music stopped and was replaced by a loud hissing or crackling noise. the guards were americans but for masks to conceal their faces. i interrogators did not wear masks. during the first two to three weeks. maathai was questioned or one to two hours each day. american interrogators would come to the brim and speak to me through bars of the cell. during the question the music was switched off but was then

put on again afterwards. i could not sleep at all for the first two to three weeks. if i started to fall asleep, one of the guards would come and spray water in my face. now this is called, in the protocol of cia interrogation, the military is somewhat different that this is called the conditioning phase. it usually goes from three weeks to a month. the prisoners kept make it, often hooded and is subjected to a stress position, long-term stress position. abu zubaydah was the first of the high-value detainees in the documents, hbd's who was subjected to this and that all they want to be subjected to long-term sitting, to be chained in a chair and mobile. after abu zubaydah of the protocol changed in prisoners were shackled standing up. again, naked with their wrists chained to the ceiling and their feet manacled to the floor. they would be chained in this

position for two to three weeks without stopped. if you want to know what death is like what your hands over your head and do it for 20 minutes or so. khalid sheikh ahamed was chained in this position probably for three weeks. various techniques are used as he describes to keep the prisoner awake. there are technical names for these in the cia documents in the department of justice documents, which methodically tell that these are legal. there is the use of those-- noise to reduce stress, the loud music which was limited to a certain decibel level but was played nonstop except when the interrogators were in the room. there is use of cold temperature adjustment to induce stress. the rooms were generally kept below if a two degrees and sometimes colder. the prisoner was make it. there was close observation to make sure that he did not turn blue. hypothermia did not again. but the idea was to keep them just above that level where

hyperthermia would set in. and finally, cold water was used when the detainee reach the point where, despite the bright lights which were on 21st of day, the very loud music and the cold, still the prisoners would start to nod off in the guard would come forward and use cold water to make sure they stayed awake. anybody who is spent an all nighter, pulled an all nighter during college knows the effect of sleep deprivation. anybody here spent two nights without sleeping successively? it is a remarkable experience. you start to experience a association of personality. you can't remember when things happened. well, for me. i am glad to hear it but we are talking here about two to three weeks straight. that is the conditioning phase of this particular protocol. i'm going to skip ahead a few days thomas still with abu zubaydah and keep in mind he is the first of these detainees,

high-value detainees to be subjected to this particular protocol. let me go forward a few days. remember he is in a white room, quite small, three sides or white walls in the third side is white bars. there is an area outside of those bars. to black wooden boxes were brought into the room outside myself. one was tall, slightly higher than me and narrow measuring perhaps an area of three and a half i 2 and a half by six and a half feet high so shaped sort of like a coffin. together were shorter perhaps only three and a half feet in height. i was taken out of myself and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck. they used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room. i was also repeatedly slapped in the face. this is called the attention slap in the documents. walling, the use of the towel later became, they later

developed a leather collar which was devised particularly for this purpose that had handles on it that it first began with a towel swinging against the wall that came from in the-- for what i think was about one and a half to two hours. the box is totally black on the inside as well as the outside. they put a cloth cover over the outside of the box to cut out the light and restrict my air supply. was difficult to breathe. when i was let out of the box i saw one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. from now on it was against this wall that i was been smashed with a towel around my neck or coy think the plywood was put there to provide absorption of the impact of my body. interrogators realized smashing me against the hardball would probably quickly result in physical injury. this is a key moment i think and a key.in this kind of interrogation. one of the tricks in it, or one of the things you have to be

sure of is how can we inflict a sufficient amount of pain and discomfort without inflicting injury that will make the detainee and interrogate a bowl of as it were. so, how do you cause pain without breaking bones? one thing to keep in mind here is that these interrogators were in constant touch with cia headquarters in langley virginia. the deputies they'd all of the decisions about techniques that the deputy rector level or higher so the top level of the cia. i don't have any proof of this but i have a suspicion that when they use walling for the first time and put them in a box, and e-mail are cable went out to headquarters saying we have just on this, we are afraid we are going to break something and they were instructed to put up plywood or something against the wall to cushion the blows. again this was the first time they use these things. another key point here is that

the interrogators, the cia people, including the director, central intelligence at the time george tenet was traveling back and forth from had orders to the white house and briefing the principles committee on an almost daily basis on the interrogation of abu zubaydah. so the principles committee is the vice vice president, secretary of state, secretary secretary of defense, attorney general so they were having fairly minute conversations that detail a minute form what was going on during these interrogations while they were happening. let me read one other excerpt from this particular interrogation. i should say the red cross report which is available on the new york review web site gives accounts agreed detail of three detainees. wallabies have been verified again in my two terms by other documents we have mostly from the department of justice and also from the cia.

one last excerpt from abu zubaydah. this is several days later. they are using the attention slap, the abdominal slap, facial fold a lot of speeding, a lot of it is minutely described, how hard the blows can be, how many could have been a road etc. the documents are quite remarkable. after the beating i was placed in a small box. that is the box that is three and a half feet high, very tiny. they placed a cloth or cover over the box to cut out all light and restrict my air supply. as it was not high enough to set up right i bright i had to crouch down. it was difficult because of my wounds. distress on my legs help in this position and my wounds both in the leg and stomach he came painful. i think this occurred three months after my last operation. it was always golden the brand but when the cover was placed over the box it made it hot and

sweaty inside. the blood on my leg again to open and to bleed. i don't know how long i remained in the small box. i think i may have slept or fainted. i was then dragged from the small box unable to walk properly and of course he is they could all this time, sometimes with the hood and sometimes not. unable to walk properly and put on what looked like a hospital bed and strapped down tightly with belts. so he is strapped down at the wrists, ankles and across the chest. a black cloth was then placed over my face in the interrogators used mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so i could not breathe. after a few minutes the cloth was removed in the bed was rotated into an upright position. pressure of the straps on my wounds was very painful. i vomited. so, you have a hospital bed horizontal, directly vertical and then in a position so the head is quite near the floor in the theater up.

the bed was then again lowered to a horizontal position in the same torture carried out again with a black cloth over my face and body are poured from a bottle. the bottle was kept in a refrigerator. on this occasion my head was in a that word, downward session of the water was poured on for a longer time. i struggled against the straps trying to breathe but it was hopeless. i thought i was going to die. i lost control of my. since then i still lose control of my and under stress. i was then placed again in the tall box. this is the coffin shaped box standing up. while i was inside the box allowed as it was played in somebody kept banging repeatedly on the box from the outside. i tried to sit down on the floor but because of the small space the buckets tip over and spilled. i was then taken out and a towel was wrapped around my neck and i would smash into the wall with the plywood covering and repeatedly slapped in the face by the same two interrogators as

before. i was then made to sit on the floor with the lack that on my head until the next session began. the room was always kept very cold. this one on for approximately one week. during this time the whole procedure was repeated five times. on each occasion apart from one i was suffocated once or twice and was put in the vertical position on the bed in between. on one occasion the suffocation was repeated three times. i vomited each time i was put in the vertical position between the supplications. during that week i was given no solid food. i was only given and sure to drink, obviously so he wouldn't choke when he vomited. my head and beard were shaped every day. i collapse and lost consciousness on several occasions. eventually the torture would stop by the intervention of a doctor. i was told during this period back i was one of the first to receive these interrogation techniques so no rules apply. it felt like you were experimenting and trying out techniques to be used later on other people.

there are a number of things to be said about this. one is that abu zubaydah we now know according to the department of justice memos that were released last spring was waterboarded 83 times so the procedure i describe to you was repeated 83 times. in 2004 when the "new york times" first published a piece about waterboarding, and water board is an ancient interrogation technique or torture, goes back a long time. it was used in inquisition. i wrote about it as a college student when i wrote about the dirty war in argentina in the late '80s. the french used it in algeria extensively. they would strap a prisoner down on a bench and use a hospital bed. usually again after beating them. they would lift one end of the bench with the feed in the air and the head would be plunged into a bucket of dirty water or soapy water or, various

techniques that they used that this was a favorite technique during the algerian war. a couple of things are clear. one is the sequence isn't necessarily clear to him. this happened a lot or that he says, at least according to the u.s. government. something else i should say is in 2004, or 2005, one of the interrogators, not the person who was applying the waterboarding, but another one came forward and talk about to abc news about how effective this was. he said the amazing thing was abu zubaydah only had to be waterboarded wants and he broke immediately and gave up the information. therefore this is not torture. you just have to do at one time. it took several years before we found out, can gain from it since it ever meant documents met documents themselves, that in fact this was performed on abu zubaydah 83 times in khalid sheikh ahamed 183 times. whether or not this was

effective certainly was used persistently and repeatedly a great many times. we don't have a lot of time so let me make a couple of brief once about the state of exception. president obama was an iq rated in january, two days into his term on the second full day of office. he issued avril executive orders. one of them stopped the use of these tech aches. another close to the black sites. in third promise to post guantánamo prison within a year. he probably will not make that last deadline. something happened though eight days later which is that the former vice president who had been warmer only 48 days came forward and began speaking out very aggressively on extreme interrogation, and attacking the obama administration. i'm going to read a very brief part of the statement. this dick cheney on february 4,

2009. he said when we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an al qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the united states against people who are absolutely committed to doing everything they can to kill americans than i worry. these are evil people and we are not going to win this fight by turning our cheap. of it hadn't been for what we did with respect to the enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees, then we would have been attacked again. those policies were put in place in my opinion and perhaps a little crucial to getting us to the last seven plus years without a major casualty attack on the u.s.. there ensued after the statement remarkable dialogue between the newly in not great president and the just having left office vice president on the merits of the necessity for torture in u.s. government policy. it was remarkable couple of months that culminated in

president obama's speech to the national archives and the speech given on the same day, immediately afterwards of the cable stations covered live of dick cheney at the american enterprise institute, so we have these dueling opinions on torture. the argument that cheney made i think is a complicated one that has to do with exculpation first of all, that first evolved part one, one of the reasons that the attack was successful on 9/11 was because the club said input on by limitations on the president's power end of the power of the cia in the mid- mid-70s. after the attacks thank god we knew enough to take the gloves off and to use these techniques. therefore we did what was necessary. therefore we should not be blamed for these things. on the contrary, they were what was necessary to keep the country safe and we were willing to do what was necessary.

finally, that is the backward looking argument. the forward-looking argument is if we needed the succeeding administration not only renounces these techniques, but makes them illegal or moves against those who would undertake to use them in defense of the united states, then it will be leaving the country vulnerable knowingly vulnerable, for these things are absolutely necessary to protect the country. we need them. therefore, if there is a further attack on the united states under the obama administration, you can lay the blame for that attack clearly at the door of the administration that isn't willing to do what it takes to protect the country, namely torture detainees. it is some audacious argument, a roof as argument and it is also has been an effective argument. it has had an effect in changing

the political dynamic around issues of interrogation and has brought back what i call the beginning of politics of fear. the politics of fear were introduced not surprisingly after 9/11. karl rove for a month after the attacks said to the republican national committee, we can go to the american people on this issue, the issue of national security in january of 2002. the american people trust republicans to protect the country. they trust us on national security. it is a winning issue. torture, i mean who would have predicted it, has been in essence the lever to push back into public view the politics of fear that we have seen the democratic congress among other things refuse to vote money for the closing of guantánamo prison. they clearly have been spooked by criticisms from the republican side that terrorists will be brought into your

neighborhoods, brought into the united states and brought into your neighborhoods is the phrase goes. vice president cheney has succeeded essentially in turning around this issue when it comes to torture and when it comes to vulnerability under democratic administration. where we are now, and i will conclude with this, is that though the present attorney general, eric holder in his confirmation hearings when asked to rackley whether waterboarding was torture, answered unequivocally yes, it is. it is illegal. mr. holder has now inside it that none of the techniques i have described to you which were used extensively during the last seven years, will be investigated or prosecuted. instead, he has rendered an opinion whereby interrogators who went beyond these techniques-- one example is an interrogator who came up to a hooded, naked detainee with his

hands chained to the ceiling, and interrogator came up with a power drill and grabbed it up next to his ear as if he was going to drill him. he didn't actually use it to threaten him. another was an interrogator that approach the detainee in the same position and wrapped a semiautomatic vessel as if he was going to execute him. another was an interrogator that threatened the detainee that his wife would be raped in his children would be killed. those fourth rings fall outside the bounds of what the bush administration approved in the attorney general has decided that those particular techniques or whatever you would like to call them, i am not sure take me as the right word, could be investigated and possibly will lead to prosecutions. meanwhile the idea of having a bipartisan commission modeled after the 9/11 commission to investigate the interrogation and torture has been put aside.

the obama administration has rejected it and we now live, as they stand here today in a very strange world where the administrations have changed. we now have the number craddock administration in power and torture has moved since 2001 from something forbidden by treaties to which the united states is a signatory, notably the convention against torture and by domestic law to a policy choice. essentially to something that a given administration could choose to do, because the legal underpinning exists, and has not effectively been renounced. does, this is why i say this book, "stripping bare the body," the body it ends with this us because we have seen the affect it seems to me over the last seven years of the politics of fear and one of the reasons why

the obama restoration has slowed in its appetite for dealing with these issues is its perception that fear baiting on this issues is effective. we now have two major political parties one of whose position on torture is we are for it. the republican party essentially a strongly waiver of what it calls enhanced interrogation techniques. we have a second major political party now in power whose position is ambivalent. and we might well chuckle at that but the reality is in a sense this reflects the temper of the country, and it reflects the fear on the part of politicians that there is no upside on this issue. there is only down side. and we have reached the point i think after five years where the american public has made a kinder verdict on torture, and i

am afraid to say that it is not necessarily a negative verdict. it seems we have put ourselves in a position where we are willing to denounce it, to talk about it and treated as a crisis or a controversy that above all to live with it. that is a rather depressing point on which to end, nonetheless i hope it will be a provocative point on which to and. on that, i will thank you for your attention and welcome your questions. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you mark. your remarks are certainly sobering and provocative. our first question actually is quite a good follow-up to your comments. in earlier u.s. history, what kinds of rushers, societal, journalistic, judicial, have previously caused the state of exception to be lifted?

>> well, that is a great question. well, the first exception in 1798 was lifted when the other party for the first time took office. the second-- you can argue about what states of exception actually are but the major ones certainly would be that one, 1860 obviously, 1861, the civil war in that state of exception went on for quite a long time into reconstruction but the lifting of the restoration of habeas corpus happened relatively quickly. it was really ending with the end of the war itself or the end of the civil war. actually with the eerie mac after lincoln's association. assess-- assassination. the more interesting one is whether you consider the mccarthy period the state of exception. which wasn't during a war per

se. it was during the cold war. i didn't list that and briefly summarizing them but i would consider god as a state of exception and that was resisted for quite a long time. the blacklist and so i listed the 60s. so i am not sure what this tells us necessarily about torture because of course one of the characteristics of the war and we now have learned to put quotation marks around it, the war which is being fought now, i am talking about the war on terror is that it is unbounded in space or in time and it is one of the remarkable attributes of this war is declared by the bush administration that george w. bush repeatedly said, this will not be awarded in with the signature on a surrender document on a battleship. it is not the that kind of war but having said that he didn't quite tell us what kind of word is.

>> i am going to ask you to two questions from our audience. i believe torture to be wrong and ineffective. how do you respond to mr. cheney's arguments that it is necessary for national security? has there have been to your knowledge any evidence that torture has prevented an attack on the u.s.? >> not to my knowledge, although the problem is that the former vice president, and again this because to some extent the mccarthy period, usually when he makes these statements he bna sense ways to figurative secret document and says there are many many cases-- he said this on cnn, in which thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved by these procedures. president were said this in 2006 as well. but then when asked what those were, he will usually say that is classified, i am sorry i can't tell you.

there is a great and vigorous debate among people who are in a position to know on the subject. many people within the government thought this was a terrible idea, take great issue with the argument that information was gained through torture that couldn't could have been gained through other means exist that is really the question. if you have somebody for four years and torture them, you will get information from them. the question is whether you can get information that could have been got traditional interrogation methods in many professional interrogators say you don't. you get this stuff, and you have the further obviously disadvantages of torture which are many. first of all you destroy the possibility of rendering justice. you create a ripple of detainees. some of the people who probably were responsible for 9/11 by the way who we can't prosecute as they have been tortured which is an extremely severe wind to

inflict on ourselves as a society. you also horse have-- do great lyrical damage in a war which is generally a worldwide counterinsurgency. it is a war in which you won't win by killing it jihadist. you when i stemming the flow of jihadist to begin with. people who want to join these organizations. the images from abu ghraib have been enormous recruiting tools, real work routing tools for al qaeda and other organizations. you do great moral damage to yourself obviously and finally they produce these techniques, we know produce false information. many of you will remember secretary of state colin powell's famous speech to the security council in february 2003 which was and shimano and bring in bringing the country to war in iraq. his main set of arguments there had to do with the iraqi regime producing biological weapons in

these mobile vans, supposedly mobile trucks in which they have these laps going around the country and also the assertion that the iraqi's were training iraqis in the use of chemical weapons. both of those pieces of her mission were from a tortured detainee. who was tortured severely by the egyptians, gave up this information and appeared in the mouth of our secretary of state. we also know, many of you will remember those alerts in the spring of 2002, shopping malls are going to be attacked. we saw this film of shopping malls. a few weeks later, financial situations are going to be attached. allah that came from the person whose experiences i just read to you tonight. this came from abu zubaydah. he is in the brim, he is being tortured and he says shopping malls are going to be attacked. that goes out immediately as an orange alert to the united unitd states and affects all of our

lives and it was complete nonsense. so one of the disadvantages certainly is, it can give terrible information. those who support using these techniques will say that is true but ordinary interrogations sometimes produce false information as well and that isn't decisive. that is not dispositive. but what i can say sitting here as there is rate deal of controversy among professionals about whether this is useful. there is not much controversy that the downside is very very severe on using these things. >> this is a parallel question to these comments. is it possible to protect our country without breaking the law? >> that is an eloquent answer synced away to put the matter. i think the answer to that is yes. i believe.

in world war ii, when the stakes were certainly as high, when the scale of death was unprecedented, 50 million died airing that war, the united states did not use torture as a matter of the from and policy. in fact it's interrogation program was extremely effective. there were german linguist chosen and trained very extensively. we got there he could information from german p.o.w.'s in particular so no i don't think it is necessary to use these things. i think that country can be protected while keeping within the law. i absolutely believe that. one of the most vicious attacks of effects of the state of exception and the former vice president's statements is, they leave among the american people the impression that they can't be made safe without a legal techniques, and that all of these ideals that we like to say are so close to the heart of the

united states and its founding documents that distinguish us are in fact a kind of national decoration that we have to discard, we are forced to discard when the country comes under threat. and i think that is absolutely wrong. i don't think that is true. and i think one of the most awful consequences of the last few years is that so many people have been convinced that it is through. >> beyond your reaction to fear baiting why do you think the obama administration has been unwilling to reject the state it doctrine? >> that is also a very good question. i think in a broad sense, government wanting to accrue more power is not a partisan desire, which is to say when you are in an executive position, you have things you believe in and want to accomplish. you tend to conserve our, not

give it away. i think that is a general principle. i think the states secret doctrine is confiscated for the administration in part because there are a lot of things that they would prefer not be revealed, including private lawsuits by detainees. that would embarrass the united states that would not only embarrass the united states were reduce its influence in its power. i think there is a choice here. one is to say this is the previous administration. let it all come out, let it all come out. and i, i inclination and by profession, would strongly support that. i think the photographs of the additional photographs of the obama administration decided not to reveal, i think you should release. i think documents in general should be released. i think is that where they should make a clean of it that i

also understand they are in a position-- suddenly you have a president, 47 years old who has never been an executive board who now was running among other things the cia. the national security or are perceived and this is a controversy not only from the republican party and the government but within the government itself. and i think they have made a decision to be very conservative of these issues in part as they are worried about the backing of the cia and other national security or oversee. >> as a clarification for our audience, you mentioned the 2004 international red cross report. could you describe what the icrc does and the purpose of that report and then the consequences of it becoming public? he sure. this is actually the 2006 report. there is one in 2004 in iraq and abu ghraib which i wrote about

in a previous book. the icrc are poured into thousand six was based on interviews with 14 high-value detainees who had an captured in secret or isn't. at the end of 2006 in the fall they were taken to quandt, mo. president bush gave a speech at the white house in which she announced, a remarkable speech. i think the only historical speech he ever gave, eight speech on torture in which he announced these 14 would be brought to guantánamo and interviewed by the red cross and in a sense both into the light from the dark is. said the red cross comes in and as part of their responsibility to interview he owed of you's. they interview them individually. they put together a report based on what these people told them and other efforts and they submitted that rep not to the public that to the cia which is the governing authority. another worst the body that have the responsibility for them.

the icrc's job is talked to the p.o.w.'s and if they find the laws being broken and they declare it unequivocally that this was torture and against the law, they then handed been handed it to the cia with the appeal for the cia to do something, which it did not. a year and a half later the stock and came into my hands and i made it public in a couple of long articles in "the new yorker" who oaks and put the document on the web site of the new york review of oaks and my books.com. these books are not intended to be public. they are supposed to remain secret. nonetheless i thought it was extremely important and partly as a consequence of this being made public the administration, the obama administration made up with a series of documents from the department of justice and said explicitly they were doing this because of the public realm so it brought other documents, which are the equivalent of what

you heard, the legal hide sight of what you you've heard so these documents are essentially the legal justifications for why all of these techniques are not torture and for all of you interested in law, i would highly and strongly recommend reading these documents which are also in the public realm as well. what are the odds for a bipartisan investigation if you have recommended over the next few years? >> the next few years, i don't know. as yogi berra said i never make roughest seas, especially about the future. so i don't know. i think in the near future the obama administration has said it doesn't want to go down that path. there is interest in the congress. senator patrick leahy in particular has introduced legislation to establish a truth commission. i think it is extremely important because as i said the country needs to be educated on this russian state to be answered particularly the

resurgence of the former vice president that about the necessity of using these things. the obama administration has said again and again we prefer to look forward, not that, which is an allegation that drives me crazy because if we followed to the letter we would never prosecute anyone. this is the position they have taken and i think it is possible that might change. a couple of years, i don't know but the immediate future does not look good. >> there are quite a few questions from the audience on afghanistan if you are willing to address that are co-you note that the wars we fight deal with the hidden structures of power. is a small illustration of that the comments today i ambassador eikenberry from general muck or so for an increased force in afghanistan? >> again that is a cleverly formulated question. i think that we are seeing

perhaps in a fascinating way going on in washington, not necessarily in the structures of power certainly the hidden structures of this project you are government and especially the leaks because of course ambassador eikenberry's comments were in cables to the president that someone leaked and it is a pity that the press in reporting things that gets through leaks can't write about it very important part of the story which is the leaks themselves, because i urge everyone when reading the news out of afghanistan to think when they look at a story like that where did this come from, who leaked this, what game is being played? it is clear that there is a high-level argument going on. and that there is a lot at stake. yesterday before he got on the plane for the west coast, i was in new york, the news in the "new york times" was that obama was about to choose a plan for afghanistan that involved adding

30,000 troops, sending 30,000 troops to afghanistan. when i got off the plane in seattle there was cnn they know, resident obama has decided none of these plan satisfies him and he is going to demand additional plans. this morning and i got up ambassador eikenberry's words were in the "new york times" telling us that in fact he thought, he thinks as the ambassador on the ground and a general experience in writing in afghanistan that no additional groups -- match route should be sent until the karzai administration shows says it is committed to fighting corruption and providing good government, so we have a struggle going on at the top and i think it is based on the fact that parts of iraq was they have realized that this president really is not sure what he wants to do and is not going to be lowly into getting on a train. the destination of which he does not know and i salute him for that. i don't know what his eventual

decision will be, but it is clear he is, someone quoted him as saying he is looking where the off ramps are, which i think is very smart. so, yeah matt, what is going on over in afghanistan certainly does reveal something about the hidden structures of power. and how debates are carried out in washington and it is happening in real time. i don't know what decision he will make what i can feel his anguish, which is there are no good choices here. it is a terrible situation. the american public is tired of this war. the public does not support it. so-called partner in afghanistan, the karzai government is corrupt, fragile, disastrous, unpopular, illegitimate as well. and it is a war that in a sense isn't at the phenomenon of a larger conflict between

afghanistan and pakistan. they happen to be a major supporter of the taliban who we are fighting. just to make it more in judging the taliban is trying to overthrow the pakistani government so apart from that everything is absolutely clear. [laughter] it is an extremely complicated situation and i think the one thing president obama as a young man without much experience in these things that see very clearly is that he doesn't want to be trapped. he wants to know where this is going to go and he feels anguish and realizing that if he makes the wrong decision this could prove lee, fatally harm his administration. and johnson, lyndon johnson and 64 felt the same thing. there are wreck or took him in the senate saying i don't want to get in there that they impeach a president who would run out of there, wouldn't they wax he did not want to get involved then as he feared it destroyed him. i think what is being in front

of us is very troubling and but also very exciting. there is a craving for information and a craving to make the right decision even in a position where there is no right decision. >> in the financial times, the secretary secretary of defense gates was quoted about saying, everyone out there should just shut up. [laughter] speak he is an eloquent man. [laughter] speak can you recommend a strategy and timeframe for leaving afghanistan? would you? why or why not? b. i am tempted to use gates's answer to that one. i could not. i think having covered insurgencies before, my gut feeling is that adding more troops in the situation is not going to help and it is going to

have significant downsides. that is there is a nationalist reaction. been more troops you put into more helpful it is to the other side because troops, it is not comfortable to have troops occupy your country. they do things that are very inconvenient and dangerous. they tend to make, help the other side in gaining support. there is this nationalist effect that american power almost always brings, so when i look at this, and i should say i have reported on the ground in afghanistan, i think sending more troops is not the answer. and i think trying to work with the karzai government, but in an effect sending more chips makes it easier for them to persist, it makes it easier for them not to make difficult choices. i think this is the wrong thing to do and i think there has to be an endgame and some kind of vision of how this thing can

finish and help the americans can leave afghanistan. so i wish i could-- this is a great example of something that is not amenable to the op-ed culture. the op-ed culture is the 700 words you write about how terrible everything is and the 200 words at the end that have to tell you what to do. there are no 200 words at the end when it comes to afghanistan so i wish i could give the answer, but i can't. >> as a final question, i would like to ask something about your arsenal experience. obviously is a professor you have an academic side. as a journalist, you seem attracted to the most difficult scenarios of the journalistic world. how does that happen? [laughter] i should say that this book is dedicated, it reads to my

mother, in partial answer to her persistent question, why can't you go somewhere nice for a change? [laughter] so, i suppose i have an attracted to those places that demonstrate the truth of president monica awsat submission that places in conflict convulsed by political violence, by coup d'état or evolution of war, tend to show their inner life. and they also tend to be exciting places to be i should say, places where you learn and places above all to tell you how little you know. it is remarkably beautiful thing about reporting, that the farther away you are the more certain you are. before you go to iraq and you were thinking about it, you say

i note that what the problem is in iraq. i know what the difficulties are and i know it completely. then you arrive and are assaulted by a lizard of impressions, everybody's view of the taxi drivers to the soldiers to government officials to the people claiming the streets. you take all this end, you ask questions in your eyes become insatiable and about the second or third week, you reach a point where you get up one morning and you said down at your desk or you pick up the telephone and you suddenly have this youthful perception which is, i know nothing. i have reached the point of ignorance, and it is a youthful thing to feel. it it is almost voluptuous and its pleasure. i love that about reporting. and then, after you've reached that point, you try to build some rickety structure in place of that former certainty, so i

think that is really at the heart of reporting, the search after ignorance. i have always loved it. in a sense this book is a kind of wreck of that search from haiti, which for me was really a laboratory of politics. this exotic, either .-full-stop i'm moving, hard raking wonderful place where all kinds of politics are practiced. kind of a hothouse of all it takes right up to the president and the questions we are dealing with now in the state of torture and the things i've talked about tonight. i don't know if these are the most difficult stories but to me they are the most important once. [inaudible] >> i am afraid i do not have one so i am not sure if that is coincidental, so i can't give her a "matt. >> it is a fine conclusion to our program this evening. on behalf of the world affairs council of her the california

and books inc., please join me in showing your gratitude to mark danner in his work. [applause] mr. danner will be signing books up at the front hear. >> paul driessen congress of racial equality senior fellow and linda lear who wrote the introduction to the 40th anniversary edition discussed silent spring, written by scientist rachel carson. the program is an hour. >> host: paul driessen, who was rachel carson? >> guest: rachel carson was a scientist for fish and wildlife service department of the interior. she was an author. she was a gifted writer. i read silent spring when i was in college and read the sea around us and they captivated me. she is ms murray sing writer and she is able to take scientific,

dry scientific information and put it in vibrant colorful words that captivate you. >> host: what was she well-known before silent spring came out in 1952? guest though she had the sea around us, which was a pretty big seller. that is what got me interested in marine biology and scuba diving and things like that. >> host: that was published in the 50s? >> guest: i believe so. i should have checked before i came on but i'm quite sure of that. >> host: what was the impact of silent spring in 1962 when it came out? >> guest: it was a pretty serious impact. it touched on a lot of things that have been on peoples minds. it created alarms. if presented in a poetic way and an alarming way what might he happening out there, and it was almost presented as it was happening even though much of it was conjectural and spec elation. it was presented as, as is

happening. we are using so many chemicals, so many insecticides that we are going to be left with a silent spring in which there are no songbirds. we are going to kill off the bald eagle with their insect sites. and it got people scared. she did a marvelous job of raising people's awareness that a lot of what we were doing was poisoning the environment. the air, the water, the land. she did it in a way that got people emotional, and made them want to get involved, to take steps to solve the problem, to end the distillation of our environment. >> host: were insecticides knew at that time? >> guest:the moderns insecticides were. they used nasty stuff for a long time, copper or s