thinking about what type of behavior is appropriate for native born healthy americans. >> good afternoon for the national archives manager for the lecture series. on behalf of the archivist of the united states i would like to welcome you all to the

theater located in the national archives building in washington dc and also a special shout out to our friends at c-span who are joining us today. before we hear from philip about his book would like to tell you about two upcoming programs taking place. august 16th at noon to tell us about a forgotten founding father george mason who gave us the bill of rights and on tuesday september 10th at noon blumenthal will talk about his recently released volume of his biography of abraham lincoln 1856 through 1863. to find out more please visit our website. also printed materials in the

lobby about upcoming events as well as sign-up sheets you can receive the electronic version. philip joined the cia in 1985 specializing in south asia and then the middle east after the september 11 attacks and see a member of a small diplomatic team hoping to piece together a government in afghanistan. meant to become deputy director of the counterterrorism center serving through 2005. he was the first deputy director of the fbi national security branch and later the fbi senior intelligence advisor. receiving numerous cia awards and commendations in his comments about terrorism in congressional testimony has been featured and broadcast now the president of med management specializing in

analytic training and speaking about security issues and the senior fellow at the new america foundation at george washington university homeland security policy institute serving as dean of global advisor to a firm specializing multinational companies. he is on the advisory board for the national counterterrorism center and director of national intelligence and serves in the homeland security group please welcome philip to the national archives. [applause] >> you missed the most important part of live part-time in memphis. [applause] thank you. i was running there that was a historic part of memphis

wondering whether to write another book and reflecting on what i witnessed at the cia during that excruciating time after 9/11 and realize some of my colleagues and friends had written their stories but many of the people i worked with would never speak or write and their stories would never be told of nobody talk to them or put their stories to gather in one simple narrative to explain what happened. so i decided that morning i would do that for go this is mostly their stories. it's not a history. it's not every document that ever appeared what we call the program. it's a story of men and women that i served with who decided to speak to me. so to step back in time with me we are going into a time machine back in the 19

nineties. a lot of my colleagues talked about a time when we thought we had killed the dragon of the soviet union and all these snakes were left this was after the fall of the soviet union were people thought those intelligences of the future could not reach the magnitude of the soviet union but counterterrorism knew they had a problem. that started mostly when bin laden was in sudan and then accelerated in afghanistan but when i spoke to them about those times of the peace dividend there is times frustration that they witness the rise of a global network and the tools they had are so

limited it's only 20 years ago less than a full generation. that they think of loss and budget and personnel are not included on - - accusing the national security structure but whether technical organization are manufacturing if you have substantial pieces of money and people moved you will have declines there were also the attitude about terrorism thinking back only 20 years nobody would imagine a world where somebody said we could have raids in afghanistan day after day after day. the thought that a raid would happen with high risk of american soldiers lives was almost on thinkable before 9/11. forget about a us invasion but just a raid on a compound and

we knew they knew where some of the compounds were. much less an armed drone that could kill a terrorist overseas. in a debate for years, never happened meanwhile there is a bit of atrophy the number of spies declined in the attitude about terrorism was mixed remember after 1947 the targets the cia typically chased were big targets soviet, chinese, cuban missile crisis. i returned from taking a leave of absence in 1982 was told to go to the counterterrorist center because it was seen as a place you sent people who are not ready for prime time. [laughter]

that changed overtime like any organization the personalities that i write about in the book were critical to keep counterterrorism from declining further george tenet was immersed in counterterrorism to insist it gives a level of privacy and insisted there was leadership there that was well regarded across the agency. to rate that profile to increase the quality of people but make no mistake the peace dividend for intelligence a lack of focus on terrorism meant that on that day the

counterterrorism world was only not prepared they could not be prepared but in those months and years after 9/11 it is not over dramatized. years of debate the cia has to be first in with the money and then will invade afghanistan that attitude is foundational. and that on the nightly press briefings for years five or six prefers i was trading back

and forth with the people who foreign security services who tell us they uncovered a threat and to suffer communications coming to the united states and one of the things that is so evident it was a simple concept we anticipated a second wave four years. what we anticipated would be another 9/11 but perhaps worse because al qaeda had the anthrax program we did not fully understand. for months and months we did not understand if they had taken strains of anthrax out there was concern next time it's not aircraft but anthrax per credit to that we did not

understand the adversary the bread and butter of the human source of the organization like cia this is not me speaking with those that ran operations that it was modest. so in the midst of america to watch the pages and watch the faces of the following we were behind the scenes with the director to say if there is that second wave tomorrow and you say i wish i had done this then do it today. . . . .

intelligence operations, cooperation with the afghans the u.s. was working with an element of afghanistan, a group called the northern alliance was so successful that al qaeda had to flee before they developed a plan and many of them fled east. its mistakes that allow us in a

part of the business in the intelligence that we call targeting that is having individual analysts responsible for the individual tactical level where you know what the terrorist communication patterns are, where his family is, what the network is. we have individual analysts. the drumbeat was the sense that the circle around him almost by the day was getting tighter. and then in the spring the raid happened. he almost died and suffered wounds from the gunfight particularly to his leg and a slight piece of the story by telling the buck ensured he would not die. another bit of the agility after 9/11 that made the u.s. response so powerful could you imagine

calling a medical center saying we would like you to loan us some of the physicians to treat overseas now and we are going to put him on a plane, unimaginable before 9/11. that began the search for what a detainee could tell about an organization they didn't fully understand. forget about the plot. those are important. the counterterrorism business a lot of what i witnessed that's what you saw in the newspapers how to find, fix and finish typically by staging a raid

operation. the first one who went down the reason he was significant as i mentioned with the lack of understanding. if counterterrorism is often a people business, obviously the first questions you might have would be can you tell us about plots and the second wave, can you tell us whether they are in the united states. but the stuff behind the scenes, can you tell us what the organization looks like and what the hierarchy looks like, who were the facilitators. who carries messages between those who don't want to communicate between electrons. that's basic material, the basic material is critical and we didn't have a good understanding of that in the spring of 2002.

he talked with him in the memory of the people i spoke with, he shut down and he told his interviewer's, his interrogators go home, have babies, don't come back because i'm not speaking anymore. so, in the intensity of the time when america said make sure this doesn't happen again, when a president of the united states says it sure this doesn't happen again and how did you fail to catch it when the anticipation was a second wave that might include anthrax, cia officers into the decision-making in the spring and summer of 2002 said well, if we think he's shutting down, what are the options, we can send them to the justice system where he will lawyer up and never speak again. we can send him to another foreign country that might have charges against him.

the prospect is the other country will interrogate him and we will not sit in the room and a well shielded from most critical intelligence that we need. they also will not have the same priority is that we have. they are going to want us to ask questions about their country and we want to ask questions about america. we will transfer al qaeda prisoners and interrogate them using the harsh technique that has been splashed across every page and newspapers in america for more than a decade. there's another piece of the process people would ask

questions later on and everybody knew that this was not only sensitive, but it would be controversial. that is the program. so, there are conversations between the inspector general, the cia and the war years at the department of justice has hit the wall to say what is appropriate in terms of interrogation for the cia fight, what complies with the u.s. constitution and what complies with federal law. we want it on paper and we are not moving until it is on paper. through the summer of 2002, the lawyers and department of justice discussed what could be done. he was already transferred, stable and transferred, but the formal authorization from the department of justice to not arrive until august of 2002.

august of 2002 was when my colleagues marked the beginning of the program. he went through tough interrogation techniques. people talk about waterboarding. there's more than 100 detainees at the facility's. three of them were water boarded. he was one of them. one of the challenges of talking to a detainee and one of the challenges of discussing this in a public environment where we don't have the luxury of time that we have in the auditorium as people to loo do look at me y and say come on. if you put somebody under duress, they are going to lie. so let me explain as we went through the process wide, and i'm not going to defend the program, i am here because i thought tha their views should e explained so americans on either end of the spectrum who want to attack what was done and those

who support it and i hear both on the streets we will understand what happened and why. why would you pressure someone to speak because you know they are going to lie and my answer is straightforward. that isn't the full answer, but an al qaeda terrorist is going to make up stories all day long. that isn't the point. the real point is the analytic effort i mentioned earlier call targeting. you cannot have a successful interrogation of the prisoner unless you know so much about the prisoner, not a mid-level or lower-level so much because you have been following for so long that you can come up with in concert with other experts, physicians, psychologists, interrogators you can come up

with a package of questions over weeks when the detainee starts to realize these guys know a lot more than i know. when he starts to realize he can't lie his way outcome you start to get answers. some answers never came, for example vocational information about osama bin laden. but you get what we call compliance. someone will try to give you bits and pieces of information that they think are less valuable.

those bits and pieces are in valuable gold for the intel. if a prisoner is compliant and gives you what he thinks is throwaway information about somebody that trained a german, french and, i'm just one example of a trained three years ago, game on for people in my world. i'm going to balance that against every bit of data that we have had against all the charitable data -- travel data and over the course of time it will tell us who that person was trained based on one tiny shred of evidence, shred of information from a compelling and detainee who was giving you stuff he thought was irrelevant. the point i'm making is of course people why and the only way you can get out-of-the-box is developing an interrogation package that is so complete a te detainee feels he needs a lifeline and that lifeline was

the cia. a lot happened after the initial stages of the abu zubaydah interrogation. when i spoke with lawyers and managers of the program, we talk about the maturation of the program. the first week the first month and years were tough. you have an agency that is now serving a prison conducting interrogations that the cia had never done. they value agility but sometimes they step into programs because they believe nobody will ever do it despite the fact we don't have experience. there are some who may not have been involved particularly over

time particularly after some mistakes the program matured. other things happened that were surprising. i can tell you sitting at the threat table in 2003, 2004 until i shifted to the fbi i thought we were losing. that may come as a surprise to you but the u.s. army had invaded afghanistan supported by the cia. there was a network i didn't think we were in front o of her years in a volume of threats and attacks we could not contain.

nonetheless, the people i spoke with uniformly said business was good. the architect of 9/11, the highest and prison are they ever held captured in 2003. architect of the bombing against the u.s.s. cole. time and time again they have been faster and faster as the intelligence picture clarified and not only did they matured at the sites matured, the cia needed more sites and they started developing their own custom-built sites. the expertise and training people to talk to prisoners and determine what techniques were most effective in determining how to build the psychological

package around each individual so that you could go in and maximize the prospect so they would say they know more than i ever expected. i better speak. better and better. but there was a flipside and that was the iraq war, the declining unity after the remarkable unity of 9/11 leading up to the iraq war and increasing questions about whether the cia program was sustainable. especially as many of my colleagues would view this with some sense of privacy especially since the second wave never happened. let me put it this way the fact that america had the time and space to discuss what should be done in a democratic society resulted partly from the fact there wasn't another major attack. many of my colleagues are

persuaded the decline of the program is partly due to the success of a we are not the bureau of prisons and once we extract that intelligence we are not going to be holding people for 20 years we don't even necessarily want it for two years to the endgame questions

very few were briefed and i was among those briefed them. we told them what we were doing and we told them in some detail but very few were briefed. increasing questions within the cia with the endgame is and outside of it what are they doing and whatever happened. the white house and the memory of my colleagues was not too excited about dealing with the questions. i don't blame them. i understand once you open the door you have to answer every single question about how and

why you authorize that but it led to increasing frustration at the cia including frustration at white house meetings where the officials time and time again told me they were saying we cannot you, the american policymakers asked us to go down this road of detentions. you have to participate in the conversation about what happens after. about a legendary director among the cia officials before and director of the national security agency, a man with intelligence and the military, highly respected for his discipline, for his mind com, he came into the cia in 2006 after the first detainee and said we have to put this on solid ground if we read everything and he was

a voracious reader of information about the programs that he could master the details. let me read everything and figure out what the right path is. i think in talking to my colleagues, his effort led to the interrogations but by that point even in 2006, the writing was on the wall. five years after 9/11, just four years after the 2002 capture of abu zubaydah the program is already declining. the appetite wasn't there. waterboarding was dropped and the interrogators said we don't think despite the conversation about this, we don't think this is the most specific technique and we don't need to use it anymore, sleep deprivation for example comes up as a technique that was successful. people don't like to be tired and they start to lose their will to not speak, so he scaled

back the program. there were more and more conversations with the department of justice. sometimes the program was shut down because the department of justice officials were starting to scale back on the original opinions. every time they scale back the leadership a couple of times said if you want to change the documentation we are not moving until you change it. we don't move without paper and it has to explain how would we are doing is in compliance with the constitution of the federal law. but the writing was on the wall. and of course george bush made his announcement, his famous announcement and said we have these prisoners, there were these black sites and we are transitioning them to guantána guantánamo. some of them including khalid shaikh mohammed still o bar. that wasn't the final end of the program including under general

heageneralhayden or a couple moe prisoners authorized funds for president made the announcement i think ann richards that you could say that was the beginning of the end of the final chapter. now some cia officers went to briefed president elect obama on the program was and shortly after he came to office, he said the united states had committed what he had called torturing some folks. i think the colleagues i spoke with grizzled out that for a simple reason. they have the right to change policy. but we had been told and this is a lesson of covert action from the beginning of time we had been told by one administration this is not only the policy of the land but this complies with the wall of the land and been told that what you did doesn't comply with the law of the land and doesn't comply with basic values that we all sign up for.

that was painful and of the program was done. i did spend time with every one of the individuals i spoke with. some of them had unique questions because of their jobs. i asked about interrogations and senior managers i asked about including the cia director's about white house deliberations. i think when my colleagues look back, d they look back with the knowledge that anybody on september 122001 would have said there will be a second wave we were not prepared for this and if you argue against the second wave, if you said there will not be another catastrophic attack in the country people would have said you were crazy.

so, in terms of reflecting, there was a fair amount of unanimity in this. many of my colleagues looked back and said i was a tiny piece of the puzzle that ensured another nearly 3,000 people didn't die. they look back on the program itself. i would say not with regret they feel it is a piece of the puzzle that might have kept america safe. but they do look back i think with the knowledge that an america that's once said to do anything to ensure there isn't a second event very quickly i think supposedly said what you did was wrong. not because they regret it or because they are embarrassed about it or because they thought that it was ineffective, but

they know as people have experienced in these moments, they know that if a program like that are ordered by another president comes years on the road three years, five years, ten years what did you do, why did you do it and now you may be called for legal action in the next administration. some were investigated by the department of justice. maybe we help ensure that another kid gets to grow up with their parents. i think that the best capture of this is one of the most thoughtful officers. i don't name people in the book because i told them i would not and i don't like them getting hate mail.

one gave me a snapshot of ethical thinking that a lot of us witnessed what is the law of the u.s. government, does it allowed you to do something, that's the department of justice piece of pape paper that says wt you are giving complie doing coe constitution and federal law. what is the regulations they come at a forma formal of itemst says what you're doing complies with this agency has written down and as a formal policy. then you start getting tough. those are pretty straightforwa straightforward. there is a classic question as he stepped down a list of ethical questions how clearly can you explain this in a public audience. we used to call this the "washington post" test. if you are in front of a journalist coming and i do cnn for livinfor a living suit simie "washington post" test can you capture what you are doing and why in the one sentence that

your mother would understand and if you can't, be careful. and the last one, did i think my friends have to thin got regulaf regularly what would your mother say. i don't care what the law says or regulations with the "washington post." what would your mother say. using those tests to look back on the program i think most people still look back and say i'm not sure i can give you the perfect answer on every question. but i am sure of one thing. if you step back in time and drive down the gw parkway in the spring of 2002 and recollect people jumping off buildings and you thought maybe you were a tiny sliver of the response that prevented that from happening

again, they still sleep at nig night. thanks for listening to my story. [applause] we will take questions because there is a televised component i'm going to insist you go to the microphones of this can be captured for the tv audience. from the perspective of the what is aspect, the soviets, russians, whatever departed afghanistan however they had infrastructure there and knew aspects that could have been interesting was that possible from the perspective of people that were there that the u.s.

could have somehow relied on? >> that's a great question. i don't render anybody ever raising that. the relationship in the russian security service, i don't want to give too much in the details was and i assume still is with russian intervention tenuous even after 9/11 there was a lot of talk about facing common threats etc.. i don't think that they were a greagreat partner even after 9/, so the prospect that they would be helpful at a tactical level i don't remember. it's a great question and i will now have to ask my friends. i don't remember that coming up that old. you started strong. i never thought about that. if everybody else could do that that would bwould be great. thank you. >> thanks so much for your

stories as someone who grew up i was in first grade in 2001 so it interesting to hear from somebody that was there at the time a fully formed member of the intelligence community making hard decisions about the tragedy on that day but i'm curious to know if in your view you think that it's on its way out i know that these days the discussion is i think rightfully focusing on power competition and domestic instances of what could be called terrorism, the proliferation of the right-wing extremists in the u.s. and is thithe sort of counterterrorism really on its way out. >> this is a rare moment i will give you an answer, yes or no. but i'm not sure for this and

reason it's declined dramatically remember there's like 2014 when isis was in the news every single day. you look for two characteristics in the organization that is a threascript breaking through ale noise. i look for the leadership that is visionary don't just take out the local police station the americans or the threat and i would look for leadership in a timely space to act. you don't see that today some of the leadership is gone but the speed with which an organization can constitute leadership and a safe haven in a place like this, i wouldn't rule out and i'm a pretty optimistic person i wouldn't rule out that the group emerges to see them in this. another thing i agree with you on the shift in focus to the more traditional post-1947 what about iran, north korea, russia, south china sea. it's not hard to envision a world where within a year some

group emerges in place where the local government doesn't have the capability or the will to take them out. two quick things finally i would say on that. some of the tactics and chasing people i could see. i'm not talking about the law just analytical capabilities i could see easily transferred to the white supremacist groups. i'm not suggesting they would do that or that we should do that. i'm talking about the techniques so if america starts to say we have a different threat and they learned a lot about how to look at people and not just big threats so i see it changing but i'm not sure that america has the stomach if there is a terrorist that shoots up something in america but they have any stomach to say anything but now we've got to do this all over again. i'm not sure. >> thank you for the top. i wantetalk.i wanted to ask youe

language used around what happened. my personal view would be that regardless of the ethics what occurred and using words like enhanced interrogation is more a euphemism so i'm wondering what language do you prefer to use and how do you see the debate? >> most people don't ask that question politely. i get attacked a lot. i never went to the site. i'm not denying i didn't know everything going on but the one speaking partly as a result of my conversation that is a fair question. i can give you a couple of answers just technically speaking the word torture is illegal so if you say you are acknowledging that you should be in a federal prison, the

technical way people look at it as a couple phrases and legal concepts. one is doing something that would result in long-term physical or psychological damage so that you can say i'm uncomfortable with waterboarding. i think that it meets my sort of human definition of torture technically i'm not excusing it and just giving you an explanation. there was another phrase that was called shock the conscience that is a phrase meaning if you pick up somebody for stealing gum you are not going to put them in a black site. if you pick up someone participating in the murder of almost 3,000 americans that doesn't shock the conscience if you express them to sleep deprivation. i would close by saying the right conversation to have isn't what the law is and of course this is from someone who never got close to both school.

it is please don't look back we did this in the congress and said is this where we want america t to be and if the answr is no, simply create the wall to stop it. but if yo you're asking the technical question about how we talk about it, some of the language that was used in the philosophy behind the program. thank you. that is a fair question. >> it's been about 17 years since the beginning of these sites. this year it dramatically expanded the identity protections act and kind of a broadway so one of the reasons they justified it is saying because of the issues so based on your experience -- >> talking about the black site program. from your experience what could those issues be and why would that come up now?

>> i've seen commentary trying to protect the identities of secret officers more aggressively. i haven't looked at the y. i can just tell you from the personal perspective would be the two things together. the anger in this culture is something that i haven't seen before. it's fueled by both sides of the political debate and the second piece i see elements of that. the level of anger and violence in the culture today is high so if you just do mathematics 330 million americans accused of exposing a cia officers, what is your statistical chance that one person who is angry isn't going to show up at somebody's door because you can find people's residences by public records.

i don't worry about that because i work in a public world and i'm on cnn. people come up a lot. but i can understand just looking at the world as i see it and knowing my colleagues in this culture that want to send mail saying you should die of cancer that may be we should work harder to protect those who took a great risk because in the culture today even in contrast with ten years ago i wouldn't guarantee somebody isn't going to knock on the front door. i don't want to complain it's not harmless but most of it is somebody is ticked off in their basement. if it's any indication that bill is worth it because the volume of people that write and the language they use is unprintable everyday. i think about that and i can

understand why people would want to be protected. anyway, yes please. >> you had mentioned the first wave that we waited for the second wave that never came being anthrax. is it the fault of that we are now on three or four and just skipped ahead and that these were different modes of the second is just one that never came? >> that is a good question. i'm going to give up soon because i'm tired. we focused on a large group biggest threat. nobody talked about homegrown in 2002. i'm not sure we use that word. so, our concept of second wave

was another major organization there was a movement of like-minded individuals who didn't understand the ideology but thought that their anger was allocated. typically people that were not connected to the central group except by watching a youtube video.

you start to see people who want to see the video. this may pick up on what you were just talking about. i'm interested in what you learned about the motivations of the people you've interrogated in the future to anticipate or to dispel in the forming of more and more groups. >> there's two basic groups of

people. the book talks about this they would sit in front of a whiteboard and explain. they were also very proud of 9/11. they thought they were not apologetic. again one explanation for why it was hard to get them to speak. the motivation was interesting from an american perspective that typically is shortsighted and in some ways selfish what's in it for me. the motivation would be able to would say it won't come in my generation. it will not come to my children's generation but maybe my grandchildren's generation there will be an acknowledgment that the only way to live is by the rule of the book that the nations across the world like they would say saudi arabia and egypt don't rule by the rule of

the boothat because the leaderse corrupt and it's the only way to take up the government is to get rid of the americans because they are the backstop to these regime so their philosophy was that you get the american south and they thought we were weak, the strike at an economic target, political targets to congress, very strategic fight. they said the americans are so soft in the underbelly they will get out the support for the regimes and then we can move in more aggressively and take out the regimes in place like egypt and saudi arabia over 50, 75 years. that was their philosophy. now one caveat. this changed when the homegrown movement started in whatever it was, the late 2,000. my experience and it's similar

with isis, the further you get away from the organization into the home grounds and 18-year-old in georgia, the less likely that person is to understand what the ideology is. they will come at this with some ideology and they might be angry about something that they witnessed a school. think of it as a culture and not a religious group. they validate their anger and they can give you three minutes on what the organization is all about. we will validate your anger and give you a video that helps you understand why we exist. so, differences between the poor organization that can give you chapter and verse on ideology and homegrown where the ideology is glaser dan.

the likelihood is much higher. after a while they can't explain what they were thinking. so the approach is to someone who's a committed years long terrorist and homegrown kid who went the wrong way when he was 17 in terms of how you indoctrinate significantly different. thank you for the question. [applause]

that's why i came.