>> coming up next on booktv glenn carle describes his experiences as an interrogator at the cia black site in 2002. he details the methods he and others use to extract information from suspected terrorists. this is about 50 minutes.

>> good afternoon everyone. thank you for braving the summer heat and joining us here at the new america foundation. i especially want to welcome our c-span audience who has been recording our event today and the important topic for the broader american audience to engage in and they think by the end of the session i think you will as well. my name is patrick dougherty. i help run the national security studies program. i run the grand strategy initiative here at the new america foundation. and, national security studies here at new america does what we think few other programs do and that is to bring new streams of timely, accurate integrative data to the big strategic questions facing the united states.

we are focused as i'm on the grand strategy but also critical regions south asia, the middle east, and then a critical issue that needs a lot or data analysis, discussion deliberation, counterterrorism space. we are really blessed with two great counterterrorism researchers steve coll mack and peter bergen on her staff and we have an extraordinary team here and this event is coming out of that space and that desire for more debate and discussion and it is about the nature of the threat and our responses to it. and so it is on back that we are especially glad to have glenn carle, author of the new book "the interrogator" an education. i think it is available outside at the good independent booksellers around the country. putting in a plug.

and "the interrogator" linda for sale fortunas udc inside the struggling early years right after the attacks on 9/11. i will let glenn tell his story. a quick scan of the headlines in counterterrorism today showed that it is questionable as to how much we have learned the hard lessons that glenn and his colleagues at the intelligence community lived on a day-to-day basis. today we see reports of secret interrogation facilities in somalia. detainees are held for months and in international waters. before releasing their prisoners into the judicial system. of course the guantánamo and bagram facilities are still open for business. what is important about glenn's look however is the insight into the bureaucratic impacts of the decisions taken by the president and vice president to take the gloves off.

glenn not only talks about the gloves, the intelligence case built up around the detainee but how is the system failed to stand up or basic principles in the face of concerted civilian political leadership? these are but a few of the important lessons we can take away from glenn's compelling new book, so let me introduce him briefly. so he can tell you himself. glenn carle logged 33 years of service at the cia and he is a cut of the old-school mold, cloth with a bachelors degree from harvard and a master's degree from sais at johns hopkins. he cut his teeth on the sandinistas but spent most of his career working in counterterrorism, as he was doing from 1997 to 2001 in afghanistan when he was rapidly reassigned to the interrogation

of a high value detainee. which is the subject of this book. glenn would go one from that experience and ultimately cap out his career as the deputy national intelligence officer for transnational intelligence council, which is the pinnacle of our national intelligence community. and with that, please help me welcome glenn to the podium. [applause] >> good afternoon. well into my involvement in the interrogation of an al qaeda detainee that i call in the book captives. i'm not allowed to name him so i choose the word that means prisoner and latin.

weeks into my involvement, he and i were sent to the cia's most severe interrogation facility, what i call hotel california but what numbers to view if you read the book will probably give another name to the name it had actually in the agency that is public now. and i found myself, or found us, really in a moonscape with no trees and rocks and desolate horizons that were uneven and hilly all around, inside of the facility. the gold there, and the interrogation, of the interrogation procedures is to psychologically dislocate a detainee. that is the theory behind the program that i became involved in. and that means that you alter

one's perceptions. now it seems -- i will mention something that sounds quite foolish at first thought, but assumptions that you can become conscious of them are quite relevant to the interrogation approach that we took, the united states took in the cia. we all know and assume without thinking gravity pulls us down in the sky is up, the sky is blue, the sun rises in the east and it does so every day invariably. we tend to sleep once a day for a set period of time. we have regular series of males. sound is at certain levels and means things that we interpret consciously and unconsciously. that is how we perceive the world. that is how we have a sense of ourselves and that is how we then have rational thoughts and interact with the environment. psychologically dislocating someone is designed to change all of that so that you don't know not only where you are or

what is going on but who you are. you lose your sense of self. you become detached from your body, from your senses. it is astounding and it is shockingly rapid that one can have this happen. i had it happened to me and my training. the reason it happened to me and it was a relevant useful part of my training is the fear or the concern that a cia officer or an american official may be kidnapped or captured and then interrogated and tortured. so there are methods of coping with the psychological dislocations that occur. that can help you survive and that is what we were trained in. that is very useful. in a strange transmogrification the approaches that we were taught to cope with were then presented to the united states government, the cia in the military as a successful measure, a means of extracting information. these measures were two.

some of this world enough to remember and all of us have studied at least the scandals, suppose it scandal during the korean war that our gis were captured. how could these patriotic americans do this? they were traitors. this is wrong. would happen? the methods used were the methods that psychologically dislocated detainee so we studied them and copied them. those measures were based upon the measures of the nk bd the soviet intelligence service during the trials against the dissidents and jewish intellectuals in the 1930s, and they also signed confessions before being executed. so those are the measures and i found myself having just come out of this in garment where there was noise of all different sorts to make it hard to think or alter your sense of perception and they temperature

was random but quite consciously a way to manipulate someone sense of self and well-being. diets change in your sleep would change and so on. then there are some physical measures that i simply refused ever to have anything to do with which i will talk about in a moment that you all know about. although the most famous one of all i will say waterboarding. i literally had never heard of and didn't know what it was until it became a public issue several years later. i am speaking about 2002 when i was involved. so i just finished an interrogation session and i walked out of this facility and i stood at a window looking at this desolate surroundings, a loan for a moment. and i thought well, when the post-interrogation meeting had

ended as we meet with officers to see how things had gone what we should do next and whether we should raise the temperature or change the noise, all of the soundtrack. i walked out and i stood alone by a window, staring out into the dim and fading light. i still had to drive back to the compound where we all per -- slept in work and i wanted to get back if at all possible before dark. i had many hours of work back at the station writing cables come intelligence reports, taking care of administrative details. nothing moved that i could see. the landscape is barren under low clouds. what have i become? what had my country become? had this landscape always been so -- after i gazed out the window for a couple of minutes, my caller

pulled up against the -- what are you looking at he said? i am diogenes. i said slowly at first not turning. than i then i have smiled and glanced at the officer over my shoulder. got a light? why? nothing. we have to get out of here. let's roll i said. so i found myself in this series of circumstances that made me question deeply enough to write this book and stand before you today what my government was doing to ourselves, much less the detainee who might well be someone trying to kill us. but one thing that it did to me certainly was isolate me, but i want to stress that i am really an entry man in the book that i write. it is a personal story. each event i write happened to me and i described my sentiments

and perceptions as i have them but what makes it relevant is that were any of you in my shoes, i am confident he would have you would have experienced the same evolution of inking and wrestling with issues as relevant to us, not because it is a tale of varying duo by a cai officer but a story of an american citizen troubled by what he was assigned to do and struggling to do it honorably and to grasp the consequences of what he was involved in and to do something about it if possible. so i became isolated progressively in this and angry, and alone. i was left essentially at odds with the program, my colleagues and my institution and my government. and what does this one do about that? that is what i explore in the book. this circumstance is well illustrated i think via my

arrival in the country where this interrogation facility was located. it was as they say the fall of 2002, so it was quite dangerous there are and the dtd and i had just been sent a on a second rendition to this facility. we were being sent to increase the pressure on him to make sure that he shared everything he knew by using these techniques that were surefire. so the plane landed and quickly a perimeter of soldiers, they were not soldiers but security people, establish themselves around the plane, which was reassuring certainly. it was a dangerous environment and in great haste, they started to unload the plane of everything including mike detainee, and i stood aside for a moment. the whole point of the trip is to get the detainee and his interrogator through the

facility. and began, or before the circumstances of combined efficiency and lunacy that i lived for four weeks. so, the detainee was put into one of the vehicles and the perimeter collapsed. the security did its thing and they started to drive away in the plane started to take off and i was standing in the fogh saying well, stop. don't leave me alone on the runway here. and i did manage to catch the attention of one of the security people before they literally disappeared into the fog and hustle into one of the vehicles and both of us managed to get to the facility. but, this hurried, chaos and efficiency and tenseness is well

captured by literally my arrival in this country. so, it is not a tale of daring do although you have security people, weapons, planes landing in a combat situation and interrogation. all of that is true but i didn't write the story to tell that tale. the story is what have we done to ourselves and how did we come to be there? more importantly still, what can we do about it? well it started from the fall of 2002, about 10 weeks before the airports runway incident, and my boss came back to my office which was highly unusual, and he literally poked his head around the corner and said, can you go on a business trip tomorrow. it is important for the cia.

it is important for the country and it is important for you. i will initially send you for 30 days but it could well be 90. 30 to 90-day deployments are routine for what we call a search, and unusual high-profile or pressure time sensitive assignment for the agency officers. so i had to clear it with my wife of course who was struggling with some serious health challenges. she said listen, put the way it was described of course you go and i will cope. so, i told my superior i could go and he sent me to the other side of the bill into the counterterrorism center and said he will be briefed on what it is you are going to be doing for the next several months and they found a fellow. he said we have captured one of the top half dozen or so, can't name him but you may work out who it is, members of al qaeda. and we think that he could well lead us to osama bin laden and

at the least he can help us seriously damage our qaeda and its institution. and we want you to be involved in the interrogation because i had relative language skills. i was a senior operations officer with years of field experience and i was available and those three things were critical criteria. so, this is the man we have. and then he said, we were standing in the hallway talking. he said verbatim to me, literally said he will do whatever it takes to get him to talk. do you understand? and i understood immediately, but i didn't want -- i was just shocked. it was inconceivable to use the word torture. it was embarrassing. it just did not seem possible. so i said, we don't do that.

he responded, we do now. i thought, clearly right away, just new for a second my involvement that this was one of the critical moments in my career and i thought one of the critical issues and moments in the history of the cia and the u.s. government since world war ii i would say. i mean, this is a big deal and quite apparent in immediate need. so i thought well, we are at war. we would need at least a presidential finding to do that, which is a direct presidential order, authorization to the cia to conduct a certain specific action. the president finds that term up are fighting so we need direct essential order i said. my colleague said well, we have it. okay, the rules that change clearly. everything seemed to be in order. i just been told the president had directly approved authorized

and ordered the operation and -- that i was being brought into. i thought gosh. i said well,, and they anywhere was going in the country had a different reputation for its legal system and how it treated people than the united states. suppose something happens that i consider unacceptable? i stated it just like that. he became a little irritated with me now, because here he was briefing me and had informed me that the president and the attorney general and the department of justice and the director of the cia and the director of the counterterrorism center all had formally authorized, approved and ordered what i was being brought in to do and i on the other side, equivalent to roughly speaking lieutenant colonel, having been briefed for 90 seconds, was

raising questions. he had done everything correctly and i was being vociferous. so he is a little irritated and he said well, then what you do is you walk out of the room and if something happens you won't have seen it so nothing would have happened, what it? and then i thought of all the times in my career, this is the first chapter of the book that i'm skimming, really outlining. ball the times in my career this is the time to be difficult. i use a dif of -- different term in the book are going not just go along. i said what about the geneva convention? the cia officers except for the legal staff, our job is not to worry about the law. our job is to follow orders which have been determined to be legal. and he had reef to me, as i describe. so it was an insolent question

frankly and he became more irritated and he said, well which flag do you serve? i thought, oh boy. there is no percentage in continuing the conversation and it is clear. i had no standing, not knowing the case well having been involved for a couple of minutes. in the agency if you are invested in the case and then you know its ins and outs confiscated areas and clear points, then you have some influence and some say, which is reasonable. and i didn't yet. i had been told that everything was in order, so he said you talk to mary and jane or francine. they will handle your logistical needs and get you out tomorrow. well it took me two days ago. i just couldn't get out faster but two days later off i flew for what became almost three months of involvement.

and the issues were quite clear from the first second, that is some point i recall distinctly thinking at some point i might have to say no, i won't do this. this is wrong, but what do i do then? does walking away achieve anything? how dubai open a my orders, act properly, poorly even and accomplish my mission when it seems that there are contradictions and challenges. well so then i entered this world, as they say, combination of efficiency and lucy and. the methods were clearly legally complicated or challenging from the beginning. there is the convention against torture, the geneva convention, the cia's objective order 12333

which i can't cite verbatim but all of these are clear about -- and habeas corpus and our constitution constitution and on the other hand direct essential order approved and written by the department of justice saying here are the following things that you are ordered to do. they are illegal because we followed every procedure and this is what the log now says, which i thought we were in conflict. i eventually saw the memorandum or the finding. it wasn't the finding. it was john yoo's memorandum from july 2002 i believe that he called the torture bev mao which essentially said whatever the president orders to you to do is legal so you can do it. i've thought this was astoundin. it was clear to colleagues of mine and to me in reading this frankly that it was a bit of hack work, sincere or not. it didn't follow in the 800 years of heritage that i think we all try to embody and live by from the magna carta to today. it was apparent to me and to

many others. so, then i was involved in trying to interrogate this fellow and i started to find, one, essentially, and this is an ascending arc of dismay. first i thought it is bad enough. i think we essentially have the wrong guy. and we had have the man we wanted. we literally got the wrong individual which has happened to me that our assessment of him which i found overwhelmingly persuasive, i know my colleagues. i know they are talented and i know how hard they work and i saw the assessment done on this man. for years we have been following this came. the case was strong that he was was -- he was what he was presented as, a senior involved person in or with al qaeda who could do the things that had led us to render him help us to find things but i found that this wasn't true. fundamentally he was answering

my questions. entirely, accurately all the time. fundamentally i assessed him to be speaking the truth and responsive to me. more importantly, being cooperative does not mean anything. more importantly, i found that his answers as i assess them and my assessment of him, because i was sitting with him 12 or 15 hours a day, three feet away, looking into his eyes and assessing the man. i was the first one who had the chance to do that, where is all of our assessments have assessment have been from 12,000 miles away. i assessed them to be fundamentally telling the truth, and not what we had assessed him to be, not a jihadist, not a theologically ideologically similar to or identifying with

the views of al qaeda. i found him to be quite different from an american, but not a jihadist and to be forthcoming. and not even intentionally willingly complicit with some exceptions. fundamentally not what we had said. and then, nothing essentially went right. the fact that things go wrong i will illustrate is surreal but they become representative of what you are doing and the operational misunderstanding i think of the larger threat that we are trying to -- and have quite successfully. there is no pollyanna. there is no threat. i asked the fellow in question after several weeks i think it was, and they said can you answer x, y or z and he said yes i can. to show me the documents that i

have with me when you kidnapped me, and then i can provide the answer. i didn't know we had the documents and i thought well, it would be nice if the interrogator new more about the interrogation then the detainee. .com i tried to keep a poker face and then exploded to my colleagues about the foolishness. i thought okay, can fix this. i am the head of the interrogation team right now so i will instruct these documents be sent to the interrogator and i was told thank you for your request. we will be able to poach them to headquarters, which was 6000 miles from where i was, and they will arrive in six to eight weeks. so i try to explain how i wasn't at the headquarters and i needed them. and i was told the same thing so i thought okay well, i will send one of my staff, one of my team to get them and they couldn't get that.

i thought i would send another one. i was unable to do that because that person was pulled away and then i thought i will go myself around the world and get these things and come back. but if i did that the interrogation would grind to a hault and we were dealing with the a foreign intelligence service so without knee, i couldn't do it. i could not leave where i was. so, over 10 weeks i was never able to obtain the documents that i needed for the interrogation. that was absurd and of course the detainee became progressively disdainful of me or of us, because he thought of course you are doing this on purpose just to harass me when in fact we were just not able to get the documents to the hemisphere where i was interrogating him at. when i was said around the world for the second detention facility that i mentioned the first time, i did the correct

thing and immediately upon arrival i telegrams a formal request that the documents be sent to the interrogator so that he could conduct the interrogation effectively. i did this really to ease myself because i knew the answer would be in three days later the answer came from the station where they were saying thank you for your request. happy to comply. they should arrive in six to eight weeks, but that was 12,000 miles away, so i never succeeded. i thought it became symptomatic and representative of the wheels spinning that we did to a man who fundamentally was being assessed today. ..

>> >> the fact that he is not answering proves that he is guilty. i said, well, that's not necessarily the case at all. this is foolish. i thought, well, i'm dealing with someone who's challenged at headquarters, but that was actually not the case. i was dealing with formal doctor, and i learned after i left the case that the fact of the formal approach in our

interrogations at that time was to inform and instruct the interrogators that the lack of response was proof of guilt and withholding information, and there you must pressure him. this is just cia -- cia central intelligence we had to use stronger issues. it was damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. my first objective was not to protect this man, which his due right. that's just foolish. i'm sorry to say, boldly, but i just couldn't believe it. that is, in fact, what happened. then i was informed, okay, to help you pressure this man and get these lasts bits of information, we have rendered another senior member of

al-qaeda who's intim matily d with your detainee. they said you may not inform the detainee we rendered the second. i thought, well, what is the point? i said that makes no sense at all. i can understand pressuring him by saying we destroying his network, affecting his family, or has a different perspective on information he's trying to with hold. all of that is sense l. i sailed you may not -- i said you may not inform him, and this man's not providing any information you can use. that's the case, and it mikes no case. it sounds amusing, but it's profoundly disturbing. none of this made sense, and i was determined as anybody, everyone in the cia, any one of

you would have been to protect american lives and destroy al-qaeda, absolutely. it's an hoer nor for me -- honor for me to be given the case in the begins, but these things did not make sense. they were reck rectifiable, but i couldn't get it to change. i made humor jokes with the colleagues, but it was deeply disturbing we had a man who was not what we assessed him to be, was on the whole cooperating, who had information that i could use in the interrogation that i was unable to obtain, and whose lack of knowledge was tashingen as proof of -- was taken as proof of guilt and on and on. it's much less issues on how to interrogate someone. there's a term that didn't exist

at the time, and it was pressure him and be creative, and i, from the first second of the first discussion i summarized for you, i just knew i would not do anything physical to the man. i simply wouldn't do it. it was just wrong. however, i will say, as i mentioned, i had been trained -- i had been interrogated and trained the psychological dislocation was temporary and successful, and it did induce greater cooperation. i thought, oh, the experts assured us this works. i know what it felt like, so if i'm disoriented for a day or two, but if that makes it able for me with this fellow to obtain information that can lead to bin laden or something useful, i'll accept that. i quickly found or decided that

that's all wrong too, and that -- i thought clearly about my own experiences 20 years earlier, and what happened to me was shockingly quick psychological dislocation. it's very easy to break someone down, but that's not breaking someone. that's not making the person more willing to share information or more likely to necessarily at all. it makes you unhappy and angry and misrabble, but none of those necessarily leads to greater cooperation, so i became as disturbed frankly by that supposed approach as i had been from the first second about anything physical relateed, and i simply refused to have anything to do with it to the extent i tried to stop all of these things as i was able to, but i was not anal -- able to entirely.

the measures are disturbing. they do not work. they are legally questionable. we have a man who was not what we assessed him to be, larger than all of those things, still, i started to question the premises and assessments of our frame work of the threat we were trying to perry. what was the nature of al-qaeda and the threat? i had initially accepted the conventional view which was that al-qaeda, and therefore jihad was centralized global, there was command and control, growing worldwide, targeting the united states, and even possibly existential threat, and each of the points as i knew the issues first hand, literally, through my case, and then subsequently, but i restribt me book to the

perceptions at that time in the case. the thet is not -- threat is not pervasive or dramatically growing, certainly not existential. now, they can kill thousands of americans, trying to, they probably will. this is a terrible thing. we must stop that. all of that is true. it's not an existential threat to the fabric of american society or the functioning of our government or international relations or institutions. at its hay day, al-qaeda, and 24 i did not know from the case, but is relevant. hay day, al-qaeda was about 600 people of whom all but i would argue 30 or 40 were essentially young went who were idealists with ak-47's. maybe 40 officers if you put it into a cia or military terms capable of planning, managing,

and ux cuting -- executing a terrorist operation. it takes one person to kill thousands possibly, but maybe 30 or 40, and the conventional statement stated by the united states for many years said al chi 2k5 was present -- al chi doo was present in 80 countries. six, six -- now define presence. if they have people hiding someplace planning operations, that's what i say is presence. the answer, therefore, is six. if they bought a ticket to long island, does that make the ticket taker come police sit? i think not. i felt broldly of the situation, and does that mean al-qaeda's presence is in the united states? i think that's a stretch too. i came to find that.

after weeks of wrestling with these thing, i came to a number of conclusions. it was totally wrong that our government detained someone on false assessments and destroy his life whether he was in our initial assessment a terrorist or not, and i accept we make error. i make any number of errors every day as anyone who is honest will add admit, and that's fine. when there's lives involved and it's your responsibility to get it right and make things right, then you must try even if you are embarrassed by it and your policy suffers somewhat. i just do not accept that we sacrifice people's lives in order to cover up our errors or carry on p a broader goal if we

can do something about it, so i thought, well, we should let this man go, and we should let the second man who was rendered go, who was captured so i could capture him without being informed we are actually done it. i recommended that, and i failed. the case carried on. my time ended, and i went on to other speedometers, and i -- responsibilities, and i learned that he was held for eight years and then released -- i learned this after i retired. he was released from what i gather with a mutated apology from the united states government which was go on and lead your life. that corroborates, proves, validates every point i made in the case eight years before, but

failed to have implemented. that's the case. it's a sad one and important one talking about issues of torture, rendition, and our law, but the reason i where the book, and i'm talking to you is much more important than that i really believe. i think the policies i was involve in affected all of you as well as me although this happened in a black ought of sight because it made us as a society consciously coarser in the paradigm of what's acceptable behavior according to our laws. from the schoolboy in new hampshire to cia officers at

langley, our attitudes often shifted so measures and practices that would have been dismissed as completely incompatible with american ideals and laws are now discussed at the least as rational operations and more frequently are accepted. there's a number of polls. the pugh institute did polling, and usa today did a poll in the spring asking americans' attitudes towards torture. 35 and above, generally this is the gist of the answers -- americans 30 35* and above says torture is incompatible with the united states. that's not who we are. that's wrong. we don't do it. that's not what the flak represents. 35 blow says, well, cia officers, if they need to, it's

okay sometimes to do what you need to protects us. i find that frightening. that's not the america that i think we believe that we live in. the laws that we had were clear. convention against torture which we helped wry is clear. the geneva con senses that eleanor roosevelt wrote are clear. the military justice, the lawyers and the justice department, most of them, it was all year what american ideals, obligations, and practices should be, but none of them obtained. a small number of people subverted them literally. that is a fact. we were ordered, and it was legal because there was the executor order to do things that were clearly incompatible with

our ideals and legal guidance. it's the greatest threat to our institutions and societies' beliefs. the interrogation and detention program done out of sight from people, but with broad support of american public because we have to be protected, and you guys are assigned to do it, and your have to be tough to do it. it shiested our attitudes and meat us what we they'd the ourselves not to be. the loft system of government is u corped and torture 1 now discussed. the euthanism has taken hold. i wrote the book because the only tool we have, the only weapon we have is the truth.

the laws were there. our oath was clear, but it's easy to usurp the laws when ordered to do so, and it's a terrible dilemma. the important thing to seize from this is when the attorney general, president, vice president, the secretary of state, the directer of crick and director of count terrorism center say this is in the national interest, you are ordered to do it. on the other hand, you have lieutenant colonel, what do you do? it's an acute dilemma. how do you make it right? you bear witness. i think only by knowing what we've done and understanding what we do, then the laws have a chance of being full fulfilled and made living because they were there. that's why i actually don't

support prosecution of anybody. i think it would be more devicive, and it would not strengthen the law. i have bigger game i'm seeking. i want the americans people, american society to understand what we've done and repudiate what we've done to ourselves and to embrace and strengthen our social contract frappingly, our commitment internally, and then in our actions to the laws that we already had. the laws are there so that that way the u.s. legal system applies whrfer our flag falls sway, and that will be the flag that i serve. i start the book with, i think, it's points. it's slightly ambiguous, but it's the challenge we all face,

and i certainly consciously felt i faced in this operation and that is why i hope you'll read it and why i'm speaking to you today. this is our daily challenge if we are honest about it. to accept doubt. rayless there's no certainty, and agent with principles. finding meaning and purpose in confusion. having a gray world of intelligence with clear eyes fulfilled me, and then i was surged to become an integ gaiter on the world war on terror. i found the limits of human endure rains, zeal can blight integrity, and a terrorist life in my hands -- with a terrorist life in my haps and perhaps the

lives of many americans in my hands, alone i had to decide how to fulfill the mission, what was legal, and what was right. i came to the partnership -- point personally to use the orders i received from the administration that corrupted the flag that i swore to serve. [applause] >> okay. i'll ask a couple questions, and when you do raise your hand, state your name. we'll get a microphone to you, and then ask your question real clearly. glenn, this is phenomenal. thank you so much for telling your story, bearing witness, and trying to force the conversation

we don't want to have in this town for political reasons but that needs to happen. so with we can move beyond this and be stronger from it. until that day, we have not learned the lessons. i cited some in the opening remarks, but we have one of the most authoritative data base on drone strikes in the open source, and what we're extremely conscious of is that every day we're killing tens of low level militants in pack tan with a program that the u.s. does not recognize as part of the cia strike program, but is treading on similar territory. i just wanted to reaffirm until we have tough conversations that you raise with us that programs

like that and everyone cations of those programs are not going to be treated with the attention they deserve, so i wanted to thank you for that. i first wanted to open up with a question broadly that given that the washington decided to move on and not have any kind of reckoning after the years of torture and global war on terror, what response have you received so far since you've published the book? by the american people, the media, how's the response been telling this story at this time? >> well, thank you. i assume the sponsor would be a reflection of people's preconceptions so the people who think that -- well, people on

the right would be hostile, people on the left are hostile, and people in the middle are probably supporter. on the left i'm a torturer, on the right, i'm -- i had reviewed that reached me and they've been overwhelmingly supportive. there's been a small percentage, 5%, the standard by attacks, but on the whole, supportive. >> that's encouraging. >> by the public. not by the institutions. >> okay. i'll open it up to the floor for questions, and then we'll have a back and forth, and it should be a little of fun.

where's the microphone? in the back. gentleman here in the blue-striped shirt, jenn. state your name when the microphone comes. >> mike hagueer, recently retired, in the over 35 category. i enjoyed your speech very much, very moved by it, however, at the end when you indicated that prosecution would not be a suitable response, i wonder if you think what other methods? what worries me is books like yours may be very few, and so the impact of drawing the proper line, getting us back to legal propriority may not occur in time, and it occurs to me we need something. what do you think about a truth commission as an alternative? >> well, thank you. actually, in the book i propose

and say what does this mean? i propose the equivalence of a truth commission giving everyone immunity so we know the fact, but there's no less resonance to speak or less punishment for anyone and so on. i think that assume would be a dead letter the instant it was written and congress shows no interest in doing that. i wrote it to bear witness, in that it's my effort to speak frankly. when you read the book, you'll see i'm as truthful as about everything in my life as can be, and that's important. there's honor and truth. there's not a lack thereof. i thought a long time ago what we should do, and i had any number of precedence in mind, and my goal is not to protect

the guilty, by to strengthen the society as i said, and one of the great try umps in american history, after the civil war, 2% of the country was maskerred and torn apart. there's general johnton and sureman were playing poker on a river boat together. inspite of the radical republicans, there were few people punished. i think that was one of the keys to american success. henry kissinger said a nation is great by reconciliations, not by vengeance. i think that's wise too, so the goal to me is to change our

society's assumptions and values, and i think that comes by moving ahead. i think the obama administration on the whole is getting that part right rather than focusing on the ills and the wrongs of predecessors which will continue to have it be the hideous polarized situation that politics always is, but particularly at this moment, and if the cost to those who oppose enhanced interrogation is let half a dozen people who wrote legal guidance carry on with their lives, but the benefit society shifts away from it, i think that's a small price to pay. >> thanks. right here on this said, jenn. >> thank you so much. i'm mark stout. great talk. i think a few months ago there was an op-ed piece that said something along the lines of gosh, isn't it ironic that given

the time we've been unable, this country, to come to a way of handling detainees that we've solved the problem now by killing. i'm curious if you think that's a fair characterization of what's happened, and b, if you think that's an improvement or not. >> that's maybe the toughest question anybody asked me. [laughter] i don't propose in principle drones for lethal strikes, but in my opinion, i don't know how relevant it is to me and my reason for standing here. i think it's a little -- i think the world -- [inaudible]

there drsh these people are hard to get at and i don't know how low level they are actually. i think that the policy is distinct from what to do with detainees, and it's not a decision of well it's simpler to kill them than to figure out what to do with them. i think it's a replacement for rendition. >> okay. on this side. someone right there. yep. >> i'm major todd piers, u.s. jag attorney. my father was in the pa ton, and some captors were prosecutorred for waterboarding and other

crimes. the vietnam war, we prosecutorred american service members for water boarding and p went back to the philippine-american war. in addition, been doing research recently on nazi germany, and many of the justifications provided for why the president could do -- [inaudible] they are out of the legal theories presented by carl smith. why should these people be given immunity from prosecution when they violated the law with impunity, and then in fact the harm is still continuing because we are still locked in a war. some of the things that we're doing according to bin laden was exactly what he wanted to do in order to provoke more people in the middle east to join al-qaeda, so this problem is not over with, and now it's a matter

of hindsight that we don't want to do anything. the problem is continuing and aggravating some people say by the fact these people were ail to act with impunity and violating constitution which i'm guessing, you too, we don't take an oath to serve the flag, but to defend the constitution. there's people for calling for setting the constitution aside. eric poser refers to carle smith and to set the institution aside. there are people openly calling for the advocation of our constitution to justify further acts such as what you described. why again should they not be prosecutorred 1234 >> i'm not sure if the microphone was on, but if we don't prosecute people, will we be allowing people to do and get away with things 245 undermine the constitution that i argue we want to strengthen as best we

can. your points are powerful. i'm not 100% certain of how to move forward. i wrestle with do you want to hold people accountable with the position that i suggest which is the most important thing is to have as a society repudiate values, and it comes from embracing good practices which is more easy to do for people who are ambiguous of supportive of others than to denounce convictions and actions of others. the substantial section of society, i think. that said, your points are powerful. i wrestle with them. friends. and colleagues made them too, and it's a hard thing to suggest that we allow american officials to justify their rationales and our actions

upon the war of 60 million dead to repudiate and stop. they are very powerful points. it is shocking, and something i say in the book, and no interviewer really focused on it so far. i talk about torture and rendition and law issues and getting the wrong man, but i concluded that's secondary to the fact i was a tool for the defactor user patient of the constitution was united states which is the point that you're getting at which is well, then we must act to stop and to hold accountable people who do that. i mean, that's stunning for american officials. it's stunning. the greatest crisis since world war ii at least. i don't say your approach is wrong. i wrestle with what is the right way.

i embrace reconciliation in the hope that it will diminish the support for these egregious policies in the future, but i don't claim to know the right answer entirely. >> okay. here, and then some in the back. >> i'm trying 20 get a picture of the story. i don't have background from where you came to all of this. can you say something about your background, how you were raised and your beliefs and that kind of thing, and then i'd have a better picture of who you are. >> well, i won't give my whole autobiography, but it's relevant to the story, and i'm hardly no person representing everybody, but i'm in many ways not an every man, but my story is relevant because in this context, i am. i think anyone would react similarly, and i say before i

answer that the book i hope readers find is not a partisan book. it starts -- i took an oath to serve the flag and constitution and fulfill my orders and serve my mission. anyone, the agency is full of civil servants who are fundamentally a-political. you would come to the same reactions of concern, dismay, and conclusions i think. i wrote that. i'm from new england. i'm a central casting new england -- my ancestors go back to 1700s. most of them were loyalists actually. one was convicted for spying against the americans. he was a british spy. i went to harvard, john hopkins school of international studies, and i always wanted to be

involved in public service and foreign affairs, and that leads to the career i have in the agency. i think that addresses your question. >> great. okay. in the back. lady in the black shirt. >> i'm a policy fellow at the american library association, and i'm interested in whether you have any advice for someone who might be aspiring into entry intelligence officers, if you want to do something in the field, but care about these concerns and don't want to be in that sort of thing. >> overwhelmingly, and i was honored to serve with my colleagues there. they are bright, dedicated people, but there's an unusually

devoted group of committed people. that's all true. the careers of an operations officer is wearing. the cost are high. the rewards are different. i can talk offline how to go about it. people ask if i'd do it again, and i hem and haw when i answer. the sack -- sacrifices are so great and rewards are so unusual, it's hard to answer. >> you know, in the military, there's a real ingraining, and the geneva conventions, and is the training for young intelligence officers strong enough so that there's future kernels to say no, i will not. do you think we're there yet in terms of the quality of the training? >> that's to the point i

remember now that the gentleman in the front asked. i think the answer to your question is yes, but the agency is not, was not in the business of interrogation. i'm not an interrogator by profession. i'm an operations manager. my job is to find people who will spy for the united states. the skills i need to do that job i found are almost identical to those that i concluded are required to be good interrogators, but we are not interrogators. the training is accelerated today compared to 28 years ago when i went through it, the pressure of war on terror to get people in the field has had unfortunate effects in shortening training. the seriousness we're trained, the focus given to honoring your oath, giving it life, not just the rhetoric, i think is quite

strong. i think it's quite strong. none of us had any training in experience in, it was not our job, intrergs is not relevant or of an intelligence officers skills until 9/11. we were -- the tools and perspective we had were targeted and framed for an entire different mission than we were given. >> lady in black and white. >> i'm lee young. i appreciate your opportunity. i'm trying to draw comparisons on abuse or power or authorities -- [inaudible]

[inaudible] >> they are all kind of rights, constitutional rights, all their property, their home, their car, has been robbed, but we call -- >> do you have a question, ma'am? >> my question will be do you have any information or try to attempt to find some studies to address these type of issues. >> well, what comes to mind i think is directly relevant. one of the key dates in how do we conduct integ gageses, what's the responsibility of the intelligence community, military, and law enforcement in the war on terror going after to protect us from terrorists and to identify them.

the 1% doctrine of vice president cheney was the operating guidance for many of us which is that if there's any possibility at all that somebody's guilty, you'll treat him as such. that's a wildly expansive approach that it justifies any action of any person and it's 1984. it's shocking really. it's an error in a practical sense saying there's a mushroom cloud, so we have to inspect every car coming into manhattan. one does not write a law or develop a doctrine, intelligence officer or military i'd imagine, on the one theoretical example that's ten standard deviations from war, that might happen one time out of ten. what you do is develop your doctrine on the 9, 999, 999 more likely case that is does not

call for stopping every car that comes in even if the theoretical harm is a mushroom cloud destroying manhattan. you have to make critical judgments and not be absolutists. the likelihood 6 these things happening -- of these things happening does not justify subverting the laws and guarantees for veg individuals in legal practice whether in law enforcement or intelligence work. >> gather two more questions, and then we'll wrap up, so right here and then right there. >> i'm lincoln day, a retired sociologist, and i found what you had to say very moving, and i certainly share your value system as far as i can tell what it is from your talk, which is really important, but i wish i could share your hope. i can remember not only pearl

harbor, but the dropping of not one, but two atomic bombs with the full knowledge that literally tens of thousandses would be immediately killed. you're talking about the two generals, the union general and confederate general getting together two days afterwards sort of tipped this off. they were the same crowd. they spoke the same language. they had the same religion. they had the same color. one group took that out later on the blacks during the period of reconstruction, and all the other people on whom the united states has used torture and people like filipinos, asians,

africans, and so on. i just wonder is this too much for us to hope that we can get beyond this and stop torturing, not only our so-called enemies, but just our people who are different? >> two parts to that. i think it has taken us 150 years 20 overcome, to achieve the goals that came to be the goals in the war, so that's a depressing thought, but i think things may have been worse if they were vindictive and punished people directly who had probably a guerrilla war and been more soft today than we are. i do think -- i didn't put it in the book really -- but i suspect that if the man i interrogated looked like i do and came from the north of england where my wife comes from, he wouldn't

have been detapedded for eight year -- detained for eight years. >> okay. final question here in the white search. >> i e-mailed you a few days ago, the old s. e. a. l.. >> right, right, i remember. >> i write the blog, powerful peace.net. you made a comment how the murmured released and the quiet apology was rhetoric, and there's murmuring apology after destroying a man's life. when i was there, we had guys in there for six months who were innocent. that was the early release program. they validated releasability, and by then, his wife