mr kaplan you yourself supported torture before you were against it what happened what changed your position well let me correct you on that and this is something that that i think most americans missed in my original n.b.c. interview i was trying to draw a distinction between whether torture was right and wrong or whether it worked i believed it was wrong and i called it torture and i said that torture was official policy that's on the one side on the other side the cia had told us internally at the time that it was working what year was that that was in two thousand to two thousand and three they were telling us that it was working we now know from the inspector general's report that was released in the spring of two thousand and nine that that was a lie that the cia was lying even to those of us inside the cia and i think it was just to protect themselves and to protect the policy but it never worked did you have a personal experience related to torture where you personally involved in torture no thank god i was never a person involved in torture when i returned from pakistan in the early

law you worked with him i did i worked with john brennan for many years and i know him pretty well mr kaplan you yourself supported torture before you were against it what happened what changed your position well let me correct you on that and this is something that that i think most americans missed in my original n.b.c. interview i was trying to draw a distinction between whether torture was right and wrong or whether it worked i believed it was wrong and i called it torture and i said that torture was official policy that's on the one side on the other side the cia had told us internally at the time that it was working what year was that that was in two thousand to two thousand and three they were telling us that it was working we now know from the inspector general's report that was released in the spring of two thousand and nine that that was a lie that the cia was lying even to those of us inside the cia and i think it was just to protect themselves and to protect the policy but it never worked. did you have a personal experience related to torture are you personally involved in tortur

law you worked with him i did i worked with john brennan for many years and i know him pretty well mr kaplan you yourself supported torture before you were against it what happened what changed your position well let me correct you on that and this is something that that i think most americans missed in my original n.b.c. interview i was trying to draw a distinction between whether torture was right and wrong or whether it worked i believed it was wrong and i called it torture and i said that torture was official policy that's on the one side on the other side the cia had told us internally at the time that it was working what year was that that was in two thousand to two thousand and three they were telling us that it was working we now know from the inspector general's report that was released in the spring of two thousand and nine that that was a lie that the cia was lying even to those of us inside the cia and i think it was just to protect themselves and to protect the policy but it never worked. did you have a personal experience related to torture are you personally involved in tortur

mr. kaplan spoke at the louisville free public library in kentucky. >> i admire those who do but that's not what i do. what i'm interested in is policies and ideas. where do these ideas come from? i mean, they don't just drop from the sky. usually they are not things that just automatically appeal to everybody as a matter of logic. where do the ideas come from? who are the people who advanced the idea? there's a lot of competing ideas. how did this particular set of ideas get translated into policy with the resistance? how is the resistance overcome? it usually isn't just one person, it's a community. how did this community form? what was the basis of it? that's what history is all about. it's a story. that's what these stories are about, it's about the interplay between personalities and politics, and policy. an accident, going to disappear so that's what i'm interested in. and why do i, i'm interested in how this applies, war, i mean, in all the arenas of human conduct, this is the most high profile thing areas. i mean, it's the difference between life and death for thousands of people. i