>> rose: welcome to our program. toninight a conversation with actor matt damon and dector cameron crowe about their new film "we bought a zoo". >> to me it was... it wasn't even about the animalstor zoo it s about this guy who... it was this epic love story about this guy who... just the person he was in love with was gone and he was trying to... he's trying to... struggling desperately to keep his life together and family together and help his kids through that transition while he going through it. and there was something that seemed really heroic about that and wonderful and resonated with me. >> reporter:. >> rose: we conude with ali

soufanny who interrogated key al qaeda detainees. >> if you look at the efficacy. it said padilla was caught in may of 2004. so if you brief anyone in washington about the time line of waterboarding it makessense. we start waterboarding in abu zubaydah in may, 2002. we arrest padilla in may, 2003. however the kaefsy memo is wrong. padilla was arrested in mae of 2002. months before waterboarding. so date brs r being changed. >> rose: matt damon, cameron crowe d ali soufan when we continue.

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from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: in 2006, a journalist named benjamin me moved his family to a house in the british countryside. it had 12 bedrooms and a lovely garden. the catch: it also contained 250 exotic animals. despite logistical challenges, mee and his family preserved the zoo, which is currently still open. the story of his adventure is a new movie. it is called "we bought a zoo" and here is the trailer. >> hustle, hustle, we're late. all right, oh, hi. all right. bye. >> bye, dad. >> i thought maybe dinner for three. >> thank you. >> or four. >> hey, rosie, am i doing

anything right? >> you're not like other dads. lots of them don't havehair. but that's good. >> attempt to start up. >> i shall try to start over. >> sunlight. joy. >> i salute you and the great times we had together and i quit this is exactly what we've been looking for. it could get complicated. >> what's so complicated about this place? (lion roaring) >> it's a zoo. >> daddy! i want to live here! >> welcome to your zoo. >> this is what you want, it's not what i want. >> at the risk of stating the obvious, you're insane. >> you don't even need any special knowledge to run a zoo. what you need is a lot of heart.

you argoing toove your new enclosure. >> we need somebody who can take charge of this place or else we and all these animals are gone. >> i'm trying to give the kids an authentic experience. >> stop before zebras get involved. >> there's two zebras, there's a lion, there's 47 animal species. >> it will never last. >> if you stick with me, i will give this everything. >> well, that's good enough for me. >> i think you're incredibly pretty. please don't take offense i don't hit on you. >> i'd be offended if you did. >> thank you. i think. >> i like the animals but i love the humans. >> all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage. and i promise you something great will come of it. >> you coming? >> rose: with me is cameron crowe the director and matt

damon who stars as benjamin mee, i am pleased to have them both at this table. welcom >> thank you. >> rose: you should be embarrassed. this is so heartwarming, isn't it? >> we put our hearts into it, definitely. it's a story from the soul, i think. >> rose: how did you find it? was it your... i read the book "we bought a zoo," but benjamin mee and it struck me as one of those stories about the human adventure, you can't really make it up. the guy follows his instincts and finds the whole world opens up to him. and that kind of story really depends onhe kind of performances that we had and matt and i really made the journey together. >> rose: but you said... i think i read this. you wanted to put joy in the world. >> yeah. i thought it was time to just... >> rose: we need some joy. >> put a little piece of joy out there. >> rose: and you? he calls you up and says this is the character, this is the story and you said... >> but that was one of the things he said to me. one of the first things about joy. he said "i want to put a piece of joy out into the world."

he said "this is a good time to do that. and that's what i want to do." so that was what... that was one of the this that really gripped me about this idea of doing this. obviously i was worried that was a kind of a lifetime channel version of this movie that would be too saccharin and wouldn't be something that i'd want to spend six months of my life doing but ceron is... that's where he... he lives in that place of emotion and humor and walks that line better than anybody and so if i was going to take a shot on material like this, it would be with him. rose: did you rewrite the script? you had to work on the script and make it less... >> i did. i did. i thought we'd go from the inside out and just make it about real characters and the choices that you make and there's, like, such a wonderful authenticity about matt's work and i just wanted to work with him so much and i thought two of us together kind of hammering

out the path on this. we make a movie that would leave a feeling with you so you'd leave that theater and it's just kind of... it's surrounding you. >> rose: did you tell him... i read a story tt you told him... he told you not to read the script in the beginning? >> well, he gave me script but he also gave me about an hour and a half worth of music that he had put together. you can't call it a mix tape anymore, because they're not tapes. but it was a c.d. that he left me with and helso gave me the film "local hero." >> rose: i love that. peter regert. >> peter regert. and he said "these three things, digest all of them, that's the feeling i want them to be. ". >> rose: hoping you would be on the same page she was in >> yeah. it really just a way to give me more information to make a decision because the real thing as an actor is when you say yes, that's t moment and then

you're off and running and you're completely committed at that moment and you're committed until the day the movie comes out. it is... and you have to commit to it that way. you're in the fox hole at that moment and you can't get out and so we obviously... they're all educated guesses for us. you've got the director and the material and the role and the rest of the cast and who else is on the crew but, you know, those pieces don't always add up to.... >> rose: what was it about benjamin mee that you wanted most of us to make sure that we got, understood, that made him interesting beyond the fact that it was senate this environment. >> because to me it was even about e animals or the zoo it was about this guy who it was this epic love story about this guy who just the person he was in love with was gone and he was

trying to... he's trying to... struggling kind of desperately to keep his life togethernd keep his famy togethernd help his kids through that transition while he's going through it and there was something that seemed really heroic about that and wonderful and resonat with me just as somebody who has kids and has a wife and i don't know what the hell i'd do without her and so in talking with cameron, that was really where we felt like that was our center. and if wead that... >> rose: find the place where the mother was not there. >> yeah. find... find this kind of desperate struggle to... this fight for your family that just really was a very life-affirming thing at the center of it. >> rose: how do you do that as a director? >> well, we had conversations early on that were incredibly

inspiring because matt who knows family and love in the home ve well as guy wanted to tell a love story that is about a figure who's no longer alive when scene one happens. so how do you do a love story where the person isn't there? well, you play it in every scene. and it's a version of that love. and how much are you going to carry with you of the memories and how much do you have to move on? and these new impulses and these new people that i'm meeting. how much can i connect with them? and what kind of instit am i going to follow to go forward? and what happened is we made this movie where the whole journey is revealed in the last two words where we see the woman that he's in love with the whole movie, she appears in a flash back that he acts out for his children and the last two words of the movie tell us that the woman has guided the entire journey. and that's the love story matt plays in the movie. >> rose: take a look. this is an excerpt where benjamin talks to his kids. here it is. >> it's a zoo! >> well, yeah. look, these animals need

somebody to rescue them >> animal need to be rescued? dad, my friends and my whole life is here! man, youot expelled, all right? what am i going to do? wham am i supposed to do? am i going to home school you? >> no. >> right, so what did we talk about? a new place. a new start. >> this is what you want. it's not what i want. >> what? >> the zoo. i'm moving to a zoo. >> we bought a zoo! >> yes, we did. we did buy a zoo. it needs some work. >> rose: just tell me about the scene, both of you. how you saw the scene, what was interesting about the scene. >> it's the father starting an adventure th usually would belong to the kids. so the father is saying yes, we bought a zoo! what's wrong with that? >> totally logical choice. >> rose: doesn'tven want to zoo. >> we shoot the scene where the kids said idn't you tell me

sometimes zoos are a prison for the animals?" "well, yes, but not this zoo. this zoo is about taking care of endangered species." so is the beginning of father and son story that happens roughout the movie. it's powerful. >> rose: has parenthood changed the way you approached acting at all or is it only a scene where you're doing a scene that involves children. >> no, i'm... i've become fond of saying... and it's kind of a silly thing to say but the story "the grinch who stole christmas" there's the mont at the end where his heart grows like five sizes. that's what it felt like happened when i met my four kids you know? and so what... as a result i just find... i mean maybe i've gone soft or something but just everything i find emotion in general is much more readily available to me than it ever was before. >> rose: and especially a film like this where there's an element of that? >> there's a lot of crossover,

yeah, something like this with my life and and we were sitting out there at that zoo kind of ruminating about this stuff and, yeah, it was... we were all very, i think open. i think everybody, the crew, too. there were a lot of parents and a lot of... we were all there for the right reasons. >> rose: there's also this theme of taking risk. >> yeah. well, at the center of cameron's movies, all of them, the central character doesing? the first act that seems totally crazy to everybody else but it's something they that they need to do. their inner voice is telling them do it. and the whole movie becomes an exploration of that decision and the consequences of that decision and ends up being a celebration of the person who listened to that inner voice. d i think that that's just something that you probably did to choose the life that you chose and i know i did to choose the life that i chose as opposed

to being a doctor or lawyer. >> rose: an inner voice that told you... >> i've got to do that. >> rose: yeah, exactly. >> somebody told me recently that they had an extension of that theory which is that if you don't listen to that little voice it goes away. and then you don't have that anymore which i completely believe. >> rose: boy, that's a terrifying thought. >> it is. because to be out there just free and easy with no little instincts guiding you or giving you a tip, that's truly scary. >> rose: do you think everybody if they listened carefully would find it? would hear it? or do you have to... i mean, is it easily unheard i guess is the better question. >> i think it probably depends on who you are. i just watched this documentary about u2 and saw the young bono and he's just singing in just this, like, the force of... just beautiful everything that was pouring out of him, whether he was channeling it or whatever was happening it was awesome and clearly and even the other band membs say, like, we met this

guy ango, like, yeah, man, i want to ride with that guy. you can feel it. so i think for some people it's pouring out of them and for others it might be a softer kind of voice. >> rose: when did it happen to you? was it at school or before school? >> you know, i was... my mother is a professor of early childhood education and she was very... we had a very creative household and a very... she was very careful about urging us how to play and very open... the play was very open ended and from a very early age... she tells me now when i was two she knew that i was going to do this. i was constantly in this world of make believe and dressing up as one superhero or one person with an army helmet and running around or whatever it was. i was playing these roles and my brother is an artist, he's a painter and sculptor, he was building me cosmes or the

bionic arm and speing hours drawing it so i could wear it around and go bash it around in the backyard and so i think those signs were there and we were both very lucky to have the kind of parents and the kind of teachers who didn't squash that out of us. >> rose: who told you to follow your passion and encourageyou. how about for you? >> i loved writing. >> rose: writingwasirst. >> just loved the written word. had to follow that path. write it. you feel it, write it down my mom's a teacher and she encouraged me to do that and also took me to movies and say this is mike nichols, this is a very talented man. it's like okay, there's als this. these two things come together. rose: but was there also the sense that... from writing to directing, was that inevitable? >> not in the beginning. it was kind of... that was the dream beyond the dream. i think the first time i got

published in olling stone" and particularly when they sent me a copy of a story i did on led zeppelin and it arrived in the mail and it was on the cover. >> how old were you? >> 16. >> rose: the led accept lin story at 16 was on the cover of roling own? >> it was bizarre to think about it but i wasn't second guessing anything i loved that music. >> rose: this was conicled in what movie? oh, that's right. >> so it ended up being the subject of the movie i was able to make later. so i'min blue sky sailing now. it's all good. >> rose: so talk about people you've worked with. clooney. how competitive did you find him? >> he's unbelievably competitive. unbelievably competitive. i talked with jn about that all the time because john and i are working on something together and john did leather heads with george and john's 6' and quite an athlete but george

is very, very, very serious about basketball. >> rose: and about winning how was he as a director? i know you haven't been directed by him. >> phenomenal, if you look at what he's done it's fantastic. >> rose: do you want to do that? >> oh, yeah, yeah. that's what john and i are working on. we'vwritten something i'm going to direct next year. definitely. george... george is a... it's incredible, actually, what he's done with kind of coming from e.r., from being the handsome guy on "e.r." and he was just smart enough to know "if i just get my foot in the door." if you look at where his career is now versus where it was 15 years ago, it's remarkable what he's done. but it's because he's believably talented and he's so much more talented than ople realize. >> rose: that's ma what actors tell me about his directing. >> well, yeah, he has such a beautiful touch. just a great, great director.

but he's very smart. he's seen every movie, read everything. he's been underestimated for... i don't think anymore because he's now with "good night and good luck" and everything that's happened but even when steven soderbergh worked with him he's halfway through his first movie with george and said "let's start a company together." and everybody went "why is soderbergh doing a company with the guy from e.r.?" they're not saying that anymore. >> rose: what does this mean? "a brand new damon. why isollywood's smartest actor changing careers?" >> by being referred to as hollywood's smartest actor i'm sure george is going to... (laughter) >> rose: rivalry here, sir? >> i'll get an e-mail. >> what do you mean you're the smartest actor. because i'm going direct. >> rose: it's about directing.

it's a bit like bono, i think it was... i believe it was ed bradley doing a profile on "60 minutes" of bono and he said "look, you guys are one of the greatest rock 'n' roll bands. and bono said "one of?" (laughter) >> exactly, exactly. "watch your step." >> rose: so what are you going to do next >> i want to direct a movie in the spring or early summer. >> rose: you want to? you know what it is? >> i do. i've been writing it and kind of inspired by our experience on "we bought a zoo." i just loved the cast and i've been writing for a while and now i just want to start directing. >> rose: did you learn something about directing from being part of the process with this guy? >> sure, yeah. yeah. well, the biggest thing that i'd never seen before was the music, was incorporating that into the tual process. i'd never seen anybo do that and it really worked. for me, i've always been interested in what works on a practical level. the there's serious theory but if you're going to ma these

things, then what actually helps? and i found that that personally really helped me. and so it's something that i'll do. >> rose: were you looking for property that... you've been thinking about this for five years, ten years and all of a sudden something came and you said yeah, that's it. that's where i'm prepared to do. >> yeah, i just started working with john and it was very easy and fluid and reminded me of writing with ben. it was very fast and easy and he's just a... john krasinski is like george in the sense that he's known for being on this t.v. show "the office," and he's great on that. but the perception of him i would bet my house on the perception of him in ten years being very different than it is ght now. >> rose: is what happened to you anben sort of the way you imagined it might or dreamed that it might or... >> i don't even know if we dreamed it would be like that. it was likwinning the lottery and having your best friend win

it, too. it was really beyond... and then you know... i think the rose-colored glasses came off pretty early in the experience as we started to realize how competitive it is, how you have to kind of keep proving yourself and it's a rough business but i feel like we're in that next phase where we've kind of weathered that decade of... we've made it through that and i feel like we're set up to kind of go the distance now. >> rose: how would you define... i'm writing a book about friendship and if i came to you and said tell me wha.. take your friendship with ben, what's it about. what is it that makes a great friendship? >> i think for one thing, when it starts. i think... it was our teenage... when he got to high school... i was two years ahea of him. i was a junior when he was a freshman. and we just locked on each

other. we both wanted to be professional actors and we both knew it. it was weird because nobody in our families did this, you know? and there was something about this kind of crazy thing, this voice that we were listening to, but we had the same goals and the same... and at that age. i think it's very powerfuat th age, you're changi a lot, the whole world is opening up to you and we started going toew york together from boston. my parents didn't want me to do it professionally. they were happy that i was doing theater, they said we want you go to college, we want you to do as much theater as you can and when we're done then go into it professionally. and i think they were rightly concerned that had i gotten a big job at 16 it might have derailed things that i did need to kind of live through. but long story short, ben and i were having these incredible adventures and i have my own

bank account with my own money when i was 16 from local commercials and ben and i had literally a joint bank account and we would go dip into it to take trips down here and audition for stuff. >> rose: the point is you started early. >> is he always that age to you now when you're together? >> rose: that's a great question. >> yeah. yeah. >> interesting. >> and always will... there's a short hand. he can say something i haven't heard in 25 years, a line, and i'll remember the girl who said it to us and where we were, the thing and it just... it's just a way to... there's a short hand you end up having and when we went to write together that short hand really served us well because we just... all the diplomacy that you kind of go through in a lot of these creative experiences we chucked that out of theindow and we're brutally honest with each other and when thing we always felt early on was judge me for how

good my good ideas are not f how bad my bad ideas are. then you keep those ideas open. >> rose: but is there part of both of you that want to do mething? >>h, yeah. wee been dying to do something together and ben... we had a whole conversation about this last year as ben finally sai "look, i finally made it back." (laughter) it's like that mountain climber. oh, you went up the north face? wow, man. i walked. i just... you kno he's got his crampons and is really haggard and tired. but he said, you know, we've got to really be actively looking for stuff. we're finally in this place where these are the salad days and so we've already identified one piece of material that we really like. this idea of whitey bulger, this... >> rose: of course. of course. >> up in boston and terry winters is writing the script for souse hopefully that will come together. it could be great. ben would direct... >> rose: and you'd be whitey?

>> yeah. >> rose: great to see you. >> are we done already? i think i talk too much. >> rose: thank you, pleasure. >> so great to see you again. >> >> rose: ali soufan is here, as a former f.b.i. agent he interrogated key al qaeda detainees at the height of the war onerror. since his departure fro the f.b.i., he's become an outspoken critic of enhanced interrogation techniques. his new book is called "the black banners: the inside story of 9/11 and the war against al qaeda." i'm pleased to have him at this table obviously for the first time. welcome. >> thank you, sir. >> rose: let me talk about the f.b.i., about you. born in lebanon? >> yup. >> rose: came to the united states earlly. >> uh-huh. >> rose: what? 14? 15? >> i was about 16, 17 years old. i joined the bureau in 1997. the call happened in october of 2000. >> rose: so three year later you're a case officer. >> t lead case agent on the

u.s.s. "cole" investigation. >> yes, sir. >> rose: why did they make you an agent on that case? >> i was involved with the east africa embassy bombing. i was a case agent on an an important component of the investigation into the east african bombings which is the european components, the network, the logistical network that allowed al qaeda to function. even the claims of responsibility for the east africa embassy bombing came from that network was in london and it's called operation challenge and we worked closely scotland yard, the anti-terrorism branch on that. it was a very intesting case and from it i learned a lot because we found out the strong links between the egyptian islamic jiha network and al qaeda. >> rose: and so 9/11 you were where? >> i was in yemen. >> rose: what did you think when you heard that the planes had

crashed into 9/11 and one plane had gone into pentagon and another crashed in pennsylvania. >> we had no doubt in my mind... i personally had no doubt in my mind that it was osama bin laden. >> rose: and you believed that he and that organization at that time had the means and the ability toll do that? >> oh, absolutely. i mean, i've been working al qaeda for a few years before that. for about 40 years before that. and i tracked al qaeda not only from the east africa embassy bombing but i was in albania, i was in jordan, i was during the millennium plot i was in yemen before so we kind of like knew the network and the extent of thenetwork. i worked in many different countries around the world tracking al qaeda and so we knew how dangerous they are we knew how lethal they are and we knew that they definitely had it in their plans to attack the homeland. >> rose: but did you know that

they had gone to manila looking for moy or to asia looking for money? >> we knew about a meeting that tooklace in southeast asia. we knew that two people, actually, who were involved in the u.s.s. "cole," one of them later became the suicide bomber, one of t two suicide bombers on the "cole." and the other person we were able to aest him and i was able to talk to him with my colleagues in yemen. his name was fahad. his role was to help facilitate the logistics of the attack. his role also was to videotape the operation: so al qaeda can use in the their own propaganda. and fahad mentioned to me that delivered money to southeast area to one of the main people in al qaeda who was basically his boss in the organization. >> rose: and the money would be

used to... >> he didn't know. he said they delivered $36,000 him and the suicide bomber. and at that time it was very curious. first of all, yemen is a poor country and they were supposed to meet in singapore, howeve they were not allowed into singapore because of... they didn't realize they needed a visa, so they ended up in bangkok. rose: and the singaporeans are pretty tough on this. >> absolutely, absolutely. and thank god that's why they didn't have the meeting in singapore, it ended up in another country. so it was for us it created a lot of curiosity. why $36,000 come from a very poor country, yemen, and go to a more affluent country in southeast asia? we had a lot of options on the table thinking about them. maybe it's leftover money from a failed attack that they wanted to do during the millennium, which they had a plot to attack

maybe there's an operation going on in southeast asia because he claimed he delivered the money during the millennium time, december 1999, january of 2000, the last week of december, first week of january. so if they were planning to do something in malaysia or bangkok or singapore or any of the southeast asian countries that were mentioned en most had probably failed and most probably they were repeated again because the sullivans failed a they had to repeat it again with the "cole". so we had many other options on the table and we asked everyone in the community and the intelligence community... >> rose: including the c.i.a.. >> absolutely. including our sister agency, as we call it, the agency. and unfortunately everybody said we don't know, we don't know anything about this. >> rose: and was that the truth? >> no, it wasn't.

>> rose: this was crucial. >> yes. we found out ten days to the day september 12, ten days to the day that some people in the agency at least knew that at least two terrorists who attended that meeting in southeast asia they knew that they had visas to come to the united states and they were... they were in san diego and this information was not passed until to us, at least, until september 12. >> rose: did this come out in the 9/11 commission report? >> yes. >> rose: it did. so that's when we began to understand there was an abysmal la of communication between the f.b.i. and the c.i.a. >> and it didn't only come out in the 9/11 commission report. it came out in if the c.i.a. inspector general report and the executive summary of the

inspector general report has been dlassified and itlear says that the c.i.a. did n pass the information... >> rose: has anybody acknowledged it was deliberate or just an overnight? >> i don't know. according to c.i.a., about 60 people in the agency had read the information about the two terrorists who we knew on september 11 they were on flight 77 that hit the pentagon. they read the traffic information about them and unfortunately the information did not make it to the f.b.i. >> rose: this is one of the best opportunities to have discovered the plot. >> absolutely. think about it this way. we had a team working in yemen under very dangerous circumstances trying to find those who are connected to the attack on the "cole" that resulted in the death of 17 sailors and here we find out that we're looking in the wrong place. they are actually here in the

united states. and the c.i.a. did not say only that the information was not passed to the f.b.i., the c.i.a. goes further than that saying the information was not psed to the f.b.i. on a timely basis, it was not passed to the state department, it was not passed to the immigration and naturalization services. the c.i.a. failed to put these people on a no-fly list even though they knew that they have visas to come to the united states, at least in case of... >> rose: in the case of terrorism. >> and they have attended terrorist meetings. and that's why i don't make the conclusi. because i really don't know. and i want this book to be about history. history of an era. and this is my statement of how i witnessed that history. and i wanted people to make their n minds and their own conclusions. >> rose: so who's the first major prisoner that you interrogated after 9/11? >> after 9/11 the very first one iss in a sir al bahari.

he was the personal bodyguard of osama bin laden. >> rose: but didn't tell you that at the beginning. >> he was very hesitant to corporate. >> rose: was there a moment in which he broke? >> yes, he realized that he better corporate or his life is not going to be the same ever again. >> rose: because you knew he was lying and therefore you... >> absolutely. absolutely. and it's when we out with him-- my partner and i-- to identify some of the hijackers, not knowing that they were the hijackers, and this is days after 9/11. >> rose: you showed him ctures? >> we showed him a photo book and he went through it. and that photo book has dozens and dozens of photographs. basically everyone who has been involved in "cole," everybody involved in the east africa embassy bombing. you know, the days after 9/11 a lot of people were picked up so they send us their photos.

some of the photos i was laughing because poor guy, he will be sikh or something. so we put those photos... >> rose: so he's reading through the photo book. >> he lookethrough the photo book and the first time he looked through book he didn't identify except two or three people. he intified bin laden, al-zawahiri, mohamed atta. the main people. everybody knows who they are. so i closed the book and i said "can you look at it again?" and he was shocked that i did that. he said "well i just told you, i just looked at it." i said "do it for me." same thing. i made him do it a third time. >> rose: same thing. >> he started being sarcastic. is this a game? i said "come on, for friend sake do it one more time for me." and the only thing i know about his connection to 9/11 is one picture and one picture only.

so i had to develo my whole operation plan, my whole interrogation plan around that. and it was a photo of marwanny sheehy. i knew hwas sick at an al qaeda guest house in december of 1999 when abu jindal was the emir in charge of the guest house. that's everything i know. so when he arrived to the photo of ashihi i started talking to my partner saying "see, i told you he's full of it." and he didn't appreciate that. "what do you mean?" i said you want to tell you don't know this guy? you don't know him? he was sick in kandahar in 1999. you are giving him soup, nursing him back to health. >> and he just looked at the photo and you turn it and you think that we're dumb. so let me tell you something, in this book you don't know who's my source.

you don't know who was undercover over there in al qaeda. and, in fact, he's working for me. you don't know who i have in my custody and who they said about you. and i will never tell you that, because that's the only way i know if you're saying the truth or not. so what do you think? should we play this game or should we start all over again? he said oh, yeah, i remember this. and then he told us his story and how he joined and how he came with another friend who was killed during a training accident. 50% of al qaeda members died in training accident. they graduate more people to the here after before they graduate th from the camps. so then we came back and he had identified many freedom the book. including seve of the hijackers. so we put that aside and we start doing a debate about issues, about al qaeda, about

bin laden. and there was a a yemeni newspaper on the table in the interrogation room. and the title on the first page was... the headline "200 yemenis perished in 9/11." now, that's not accurate, but at the time in yemen they were reporting that there were many yemenis who died as a result of that. i said "what do you think about that? 200 people,ll yemenis, all muslims." is this a crime or what? he said "absolutely it's a crime." so we start debating who did it. and then towards the end, after like five minutes of a very harsh debate i became very agitated-- or acting as if i'm very frustrated with him. i said "well, i know who did it anyway, bin laden did it." he said "he's not that crazy, he never would do anything like that. who told you?" i said "you did."

and he got so furious because in that culture a lot of times when they go to these jails they put words in your mouth. you go and you sign a piece of paper and they fill in the confession and that's what so many people told us. that's why every time we read him even his miranda rights, every time we talked to him he refused to sign because he was scared we were going to have something. so he was very furious and he said "you're putng words in my mouth, i never sd that." i said "yes, you did. you told me bin laden did it." and i took the photos of the seven people he identified, seven or eight people, and i put them on the table next to him. i said "do you know these guys?" and here i got his attention. i said "those are the hijackers. those are the people who flew the planes into the pentagon and the world trade center. sohat do you think n?" and he started shaking,

literally. he put his hand... his head between his hands, put his head down. he was shaking. and then after that he said "look, i know these people. all of them are bin laden's men. i think bin laden went crazy, the sheikh went crazy." and whatappened after that was very different than what happened before. the level of corporation was totally different. because now he knew that he idtified to the americans who was behind 9/11, that's number one. and number two, he put himself in the mix by talkingbout these friendships and how he trained with these guys and a lot of... did a lot of things with them. he put himself in the same group that conducted the 9/11 attacks. so now he has to save his skin and he knew that we knew a lot and i think afte that i know

that was described by many people to be the best interrogation in the war on terror. >> rose: okay. so this is for the united states and for other countries this one interrogation is a central part of the understanding that made you confirm that al qaeda... >> yes, absolutely. >> rose: captured one of the highest figures they know in al qaeda. zubaydah. >> right. and at the time we started great. people were working together. as i mentioned in my statement to the senate which is the only statement under oath about what happened. >> rose: you testified behind a curtain nobody uld know. >> exactly. exactly. he was providing a lot of actionable intelligence. it started very easily with him. i said "what's your name?" that's my very first question. he looked at me and gave me an alias. just a name. but we knew he has been using it

at one point. and i said "oh, okay. so what if i call you hani." and he had this kind of like "my god." you know? >> rose: but you knew to say hani because?" >> well, abu zubaydah wasn't new to me. i was a case agent in the millennium operaon in jordan and i was in the sanction operation. we knew a lot about abu zubaydah because of his operation with the plot to blow up the l.a.x. airport. and after this, this individual who thinks he's big in his mind, he gets caught. he's injured. >> rose: he was shot, wasn't he? >> he was shot. we're treating him very nice and then also keep in mind that he's a... human beings are social animals in nature so he wanted that communication. he wanted to show you that he has a value for you because this

value is what's going to make his life worthwhile for the rest of it because he's going to be in jail. so there's a lot of things playing in his head. so it's not only what's in my head what i want. i have to understand where he is mentally, psychologically, and play on all these feelings to out with him to corporate. and if i was very successful in understanding this, understanding where he is and understanding what i need to do to get him to a full level of corporation then i'll be in total control of the interrogation. >> rose: so here enough relationship and he's giving up what? >> he gave us immediately the first hour he gave us a threat that as i mentioned in my statement to the senate a threat in another country, a plot that he was working on.

and he gave us more information about a plot that was going to happen and that plot was an important ot. >> rose: but the most important is that he delivered... from >> this is later. >> rose: then at some point they send in new people to interrogate >> that was about ten days later. ten days after... >> rose: ten days? >> ten days after we arrived. about ten days after we arrived they send a new team and we were very happy with the team they sent. the people who came, the officer who came the experts who came were people that i worked with before and have a lot of respect for so basically we're very excited because the team that was there on the ground, they were not terrorism experts. the team that were coming, people we worked with in friend locations around the world. so there was a high level of excitement but then it appeared that they are n even on... it

appears they are not even in control of the situation. they had a contractor with them and it seemed to us he was calling thehots. >> rose: who was he? >> i call him boris in the book. >> rose: he's a psychologist. >> supposedly he's a psychologist but he doesn't have any practical real world experience in interrogating terrorists, islam i can extremists. >> rose: here's what's important about the moment. you were beginning to see advanced interrogation techniques. >> that term was not used. >> rose: what was used. >> at all. just a different technique. we need basically... he's not corporating, we need... >> rose: so their judgment unlike yours was that he was not corporating? >> the judgment came that he was not corporating. >> rose: because there's much moreo learn. >> exactly, exactly. and what they based their information on that he is the number-three guy in al qaeda and if he doesn't admit he's the

number tee guy in alaeda we's not coorating. well, our position at the time that he's not even an al qaeda member, so how can he be the number three in al qaeda? he associated himself with al qaeda but he's not an al qaeda member. and unfortunately we felt that the people on the ground, the people in the field doesn't have much control over the situation and a lot of it has been dictated by back home. and this continued to escalate until we reached a point that i felt we could not participate in this anymore. and... >> rose: what they began to do was, one, take all the clothes away so they knew... so they began to use sleep deprivation and then noise, those three things. >> yup. >> rose: and in some point the argument is that you began to get more and more.

but then the theory comes in that at so point you've done everything you have and that would be waterboarding and then you have nowhere else to go. >> well, this is the issue. i mean, when i was there i said why are we going to go on this path? because this path is going to take us to nowhere. we are towards the end of democracy and we don't torture and we have a line that we're not ing to cross and at the time the waterboarding issue wasn't even on the table. the issue was, you know... >> rose: sleep deprivation. >> 24 hours sleep deprivation, let's do 48 hos this time and see how it works. >> rose: so how did theyet g to waterboarding? >> that happened after i left. way after i left. i think waterboarding did not start taking place until the end of july or august. >> rose: did they have to go to the white house to get approval for waterboarding or simply go to langley? >> well, i think the approval came from the office of the legal counsel, with the office of the legal counsel memos and was judged by these memos. however, the idea is at the time

if you want too this... today we'll say 24... let's say 24 hour sleep deprivation. tomorrow we'll make 48 hours. after tomorrow we'll make it 72 hours. so basically it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophesy and that individual is basically the most in control when you're doing this kind of techniques. why? because he's expecting it. so you're actually giving him what he's expecting. so it gives him some sense of control. however, he's expecting way more. he expects the torture that he will endure in middle eastern jails. >> rose: because he's seen in the middle eastern jails. >> exactly. so we're not going to get there anyway. >> rose: his fingernails and everythi. >> exactly. so why go down that path where he's going to call our bluff? and later on when they formed the enhanced interrogation techniques and we saw the steps going from nudity to accumule but not necessarily end with waterboarding, we realized that we hit that glass ceiling.

so what do you do? we continue to do it again and again and again. >> rose: here is the point, though, and this is the crux of the matter in terms of what everybody wants to know. he was waterboarded later. the number is 83 times. >> yup. >> rose: c you tell us ho much more information they got after they began to waterbod him? >> well, they told us what they got: they told us that they got padilla, they told us they t k.s.m.. >> rose: all with the waterboarding? >> it's in the efficacy memo, the legal counsel memos. that basically mention that... in the bradbury memo which has been declassified said you've told us after waterboarding he gave... after these techniques in waterboarding he gave... identified khalid sheikh mohammed as the mastermind of 9/11. >> rose: and your argument to them is he'd already given up... >> my argument that's not true

because i was there when he gave them. but, again, to go back to this, they already told us what they got if enhanced interrogation techniques or waterboarding and what they said is wrong. and it's wrong not because i'm an eyewitness and said that's wrong, it wrong because of of all the investigations that took place. >> rose: but your opinion is that they're lying when they say it came from enhanced interrogation and they know it. >> politicians, bureaucrats, look at the c.i.a. r.g., for example, the c.i.a. inector general. they said the c.i.a. program is a great success. however, the program is not all about waterboarding. the c.i.a. i. i.g. explained what the program was. the program had... the biggest components of it is facing them with intelligence information about them, facing them with pocket litter, facing them with each other. so there's a lot of successes that happen. however, the enhanced interrogation techniques is a very small component.

think about it this way. they tried to tell us that because of waterboarding america is safe. do you know how many people we waterboardd? three. that's it. so three people we waterboarded changed the whole outcome of the war on terrorism? three? we thought this guy... >> rose: zubaydah and k.s.m. and who se? >> it's zubaydah, k.s.m. and gnashry, the mastermind of the "cole." three, that's it. so we kept western civilization alive because we waterboarded ly three people. they have to be way more powerful than bin laden. doesn't make sense. >> rose: this is why u left the f.b.i.? >> part of it. >> what's the other start >> it's just like you just feel... part of you feel burned. pa of you feel your... some other agencies kind of like

declared you as persona non-gras a. so it's difficult. >> rose: you felt persona non-grat a? >> not with the f.b.i. i felt persona non grata with people promoteing interrogation techniques. >> rose: do they have reason to suspect that because you're persona non-grat a that this is getting even? this is your opportunity to fight back to them for what they made your life uncomfortable? difficult to do your job and you felt like you were a patriot? and they didn't appreciate what you were doing so here's an opportunity to... >> no, if you look at the booshg they are insignificant. even the enhanced interrogation technique is very small, it's about the history of al qaeda and history of our war against al qaeda, all the auk sayss, all the failures and if you look...

i'm sure you read it. it's dedicated not only for the f.b.i. people in the fld but also for the c.i.a. people and for the military. many of the heroes of the book are c.i.a. officers. so this is people in the field versus people in washington if you want to call it that. >> rose: ali soufan written with daniel freedman "the black banner: the inside sry of 9/11." thank you. >> thanks.