S1E23 Good Company, Bad Company

Nah, there are no signs for such things.

“Besuch the red-cappuccino-leapness world in Freiburg”

with Euron Mehlitz, Dürr, Omer, or, in the canal, at the top of the nemen, one who knows everything. Entect our interactive exhibition by the elite tour with Adiogheite and Eimglassek

and the next parvillian, the whole world from red-cappuccino, the red-cappuccino-leapness world only a set-long entfernt. [MUSIC PLAYING] This podcast is a cast with a touchstone production.

[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, I'm John Kerry Archie. Welcome to Dead Draw. What makes us by tick?

As always, we thank you for listening,

and especially we thank you for liking, rating, reviewing, commenting on and sharing the podcast with your friends, your family. Hey, share it with total strangers, too. I appreciate that.

“We're on the mission here to make the world a better place”

through storytelling. The truth, we believe, will absolutely set you free and if ever the world needed some truth telling? Well, it's right now. In this episode, I'm going to introduce you

to a columnist commentator and national security and foreign policy expert by the name of Glenn Carl. Glenn's another former CIA officer who, like me, was involved in counterterrorism operations during the war on terror.

Glenn spent two decades working clandestine assignments for the agency. Also, like me, Glenn opposed the enhanced interrogation techniques that the CIA insisted were legal, and he refused to participate in them.

What's more Glenn insisted, we were deliberately misrepresenting our opponents to ourselves. In a piece that he wrote for the Washington Post back in 2008, Glenn wrote that Gihadists are, quote, "small, lethal, disjointed, and miserable opponents," unquote.

And that, quote, "we do not face a global Gihadist movement, but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature, and almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda," unquote.

In 2011, Glenn wrote the interrogator and education. While Abazabeda is part of that story, the interrogator describes the physical interrogation of another prisoner who we believed was part of the al-Qaeda leadership. As you'll hear, Glenn struggled and still struggles

with the official version of events versus how events actually happened. He's a former and founding member of veteran intelligence professionals for sanity. The other voice you'll hear asking questions during this conversation

belongs to Alan Katz. Alan produces and co-rides the podcast. Thank you for joining us, Glenn.

“Would you mind giving us a thumbnail of how you got into all this?”

John, I was a career at CIA officer. I was an operations officer, which to a lemon is the, they're the officers who we go to watch in movies. You know, we are the real-life versions of James Bond, but really wear a tuxedo.

The women are rarely super models. And there's a lot of paperwork involved in the job. But some of my colleagues actually did the jump out of airplanes and did really wild stuff. I generally didn't do that.

My job and my training and my background was to speak to sophisticated women and cocktail dresses, while clinking wine glasses and salons and Paris, I was highly confident in grain for that. Of course.

And that's said time and cheap, but as also true, I am a Europeanist. And the job does involve the cocktail stuff that you see. I've only been in a casino four times in my life, however, but like many officers in the agency,

if not most, as terrorism became more significant to the United States. This is even years prior to 9/11. And then certainly after 9/11, I was absorbed in drawn into this whole world.

In fact, seven or eight years before 9/11, I started becoming involved in terrorist-related operations. What year was that, was the course? There was the World Trade Center bombing that preceded it, was just the bomb in the parking structure.

Yeah, it was 1993. And it's roughly then, it was a little after in my case, that I started to become involved in terrorist things.

And then the second half of my career was

all terrorism all the time. And my last position was, it's a long-winded title, I apologize in advance, was as the acting, and then the Deputy National Intelligence Officer for transnational threats on the National Intelligence Council.

And what that means to uninitiated, which is everybody, is that the one body in the American Intelligence community, which has 17 agencies, the one that speaks for all 17, and presents the assessment of the community,

and serves his requirements or hers directly,

is the National Intelligence Council. It's very small, they're only 12 National Intelligence Officers. One of whom is for transnational threats, which doesn't only mean terrorism, but in the context of the world that we've all lived, then, the 97% of my time was on terrorism,

almost literally, but 97% of the narcotics and organized crime were the other two main portfolios.

“So that's how I ended up in it and being drawn into it.”

And I worked extensively for years and years on Afghanistan, and then on all Muslim terrorist issues. And that was as one of the more senior, really, analyst in the community, which is unusual for an operations, a field officer. And because I was a field officer, I was also drawn into the operations,

by conducted operations for years before being the National Intelligence Officer, and I was drawn into the enhanced interrogation program, and interrogated someone, like, may not name, but who was one of the top believed to be one of the top people in Alqaeda.

“An enhanced interrogation wasn't good for anyone in the end, was it?”

I could never even convince my mother to believe what I said,

and no one, the average person simply doesn't believe what they feel like believing. And we'll think that it is a sign of wisdom to reflexively disbelieve whatever a CIA officer says, which is silly. Contrary to that conventional view, the CIA has never been in the business of interrogation, doesn't do them historically. The has no background, trainings, not part of the mission. And we didn't do it. Now there are exceptions today.

During the Vietnam War, the CIA wasn't involved in interrogations. After 9/11, the CIA of course, in the hesitation program, that became a big time

“focus of our energies. Well, the CIA was not either in the business of interrogation”

or of enhanced interrogation, which is, of course, the euphemism, taken directly from the Nazis, literally, literally of torture.

I can give you the long detail history of our involvement. I'm not one of my first jobs in the agency,

and perhaps the most controversial one was an assistant to the head of what was called the Central American Task Force, and that was the part of the agency in the United States intelligence community that was leading our effort, frankly, to overthrow the Sandinistas and to support the contours. And in that mission, and during that time, the CIA was accused of having trained what insurgents in El Salvador to garot nuns and for the contours in the garagot

do the same thing. And that actually is not true. We were trying to stop people from garotting anybody, but that did involve us and associate us with people who were doing terrible things, and it was a sort of situation in general, but we actually didn't do torture, which once again, no one were actually believed. But that was in the early mid-80s, early in my career, and then life went on. And the agency had no, to my knowledge, certainly no staff, no training, no approach,

no mission to do any of these things. And then after 9/11, after September 11, 2001, very quickly, within a matter of weeks, the U.S. government, in particular, the CIA, found itself with increasing the large numbers of detainees, largely people who were taken prisoner on the battlefield in Afghanistan, but not only. And the mission of the CIA is to obtain intelligence, and an enemy combatant or a terrorist or someone who is shooting at you or involved in a group that you don't

like, you know, probably has intelligence that you want to find out. And so the assignment was,

"Well, how do we do this?" And the instructions came pretty explicitly from, frankly,

“the office of the vice president. This is what you will do. And that's how the CIA came to be involved”

in, quote, enhanced interrogation. But as you pointed out, the CIA had no mandate to interrogate. That's right. The FBI does, and they're very good at. The U.S. military does. And at least has formal training procedures, parameters, and protocols, standards, and so on. But the CIA did not. You learn practices, and standards, and protocols, and where the red lines are especially. You play as you practice. You fight as you train, and you interrogate as fures, as you're taught

how or if not, then you wing it. And all of a sudden, go quickly, go, you happen. But now, whether it was literally Dick Cheney, or someone from his office, or as is certain, the small number. And we're really talking, it doesn't people, even. It's a fewer than those.

“Of neoconservatives in the Bush administration, largely in the, from the office of the vice president,”

and in the Department of Justice. I was not a firsthand witness to the very top exchanges, but I know how this happened. We found, we, the CIA found itself with detainees. In fact, George Tenet specifically said he needed to brief the president to get the president's signature, and Cheney said, "You briefed me, I'll brief the president, wasn't until the release

of the torture report that any doubt was even cast on the notion that maybe Cheney never briefed

the president. There's always been, historically, there's been this competition between the FBI and the CIA. And many of us, formerly with the CIA, it's hard for us to complement the FBI. But if there's one thing the FBI is really great at, it's interrogations. And they've been doing it since the Nuremberg trials. They're well trained. They have decades generations of experience. And you compare that to somebody in the office of the vice president, just picking up the phone,

all in the CIA and say, "Start doing interrogation." That's literally the case. That's not reductive. That is not unenacurate or unfair. That's pretty much how it happened. We, the Intelligence Agency, this is really the CIA and the military, special forces. We found ourselves with these detainees. And it's a legitimate objective and requirement. What are we going to obtain the intelligence from these people? Okay, that's fine.

Well, John or I, we listen. We talk. We know how to question them. And that's all relevant.

“But that's not an interrogation. The door attended is John. I think started to explain before”

said to the White House, "We aren't doing anything without clear guidance. We are not going to break the law. We do not break the law." Because in, in deputy directors of the CIA quoted these conversations that they had had and the tentative had to me. They said, "We, and this is, and John will not. I'm sure

on this." We, the CIA, are always left, given the dirty job and that left holding the bag

and were the ones who end up suffering the way John did, or a lot of my colleagues were indicted. And et cetera, et cetera. So that's not going to happen. We follow the rules. We follow the law. What guidance we have in the office of the vice president, Cheney said, "Absolutely, you're absolutely right." Dad, gun it. We'll get you the guidance. And then went to the Department of Justice and they spoke to two political hacks. One of whom is still a professor, shockingly at Berkeley, John U,

and the other guys named, "Slowest My Mind" doesn't matter. And they said, "We need guidance." And so the guidance became, was a memorandum, which is since come to be called the torture memorandum. When Cheney's office is looking for guidance, they, I'm assuming they picked the guidance that they went to. So they must guide, to provide the guidance they wanted. They must have known that John U was going to give them exactly the guidance,

in the exact words that they wanted. Absolutely. The OVP office of vice president went back to tenet and they said, "Here's the guidance." And Tenet said, "This is cleared by the Department of Justice." And this is absolutely. This is all kosher, it's legal, blessed, whatever, you know, metaphor you want to use or analogy. And Tenet goes, "Okay." And this, I don't know firsthand. Cheney went in to speak to President

And Bush asked the correct appropriate question. He said, "Has just this approved this?"

"There's this been cleared with the Department of Justice." "Oh, yes, sir." The Bush then went, "Okay." And that came to the guidance. And the way that came down to me, and this is verbatim. This is firsthand, this is my life. When I was brought into the interrogation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The fellow who was to brief me, I found in the hallway, then the counterterrorism center. It took me two hours to find him because

he was running around, I was running around, I said, "You know, I've been assigned to this operation.

I'm going out to the field to take part interrogation of this fellow. I was told to see you."

And he said, "And these are, this is one of those moments like we all, if we're old enough,

“we remember what we were doing when Kennedy was shot or when the Space Shuttle blew up or when”

the Red Sox won the World Series." And this sort of thing. We're standing in the CTC. So that the hallway was sort of the divider cubicles, things, you know, John, you know what I'm talking about? Because it's like a large bullpen, but it was against the wall. And so we're standing close and it hooks me in the chest as he talks. And he said, "You will do whatever it takes to get him to talk. Do you understand?" And I physically recoiled. And I said, "This is verbatim." And I said,

"We don't do that," said, "Well, we do now." And I thought, "Holding shit." And I said, "Well, I want to just," I said, "Well, we'd need at least a presidential finding to do something like that." Now, a presidential finding is a term of art. It's only for the most sensitive operations

“in the intelligence community in the CTC, which means that you have to have the direct approval,”

authorization and order of the president of the United States signed by him. I was familiar with findings from my career, but no finding had directly come to me in my assignment. I was part of an operation that had findings, you know, and so on. And so I said, we would need at least, you know, I'm a pretty experienced officer at this point in 20 years into my career almost. And so we would need at least a president of finding to do something like that. And he sort of goes,

that sort of sells fast, satisfying the passes, chest, and pretends to have, like an envelope, and he says, "We have it." Well, we are covered. And I thought, "Jesus." And what he was referring to was, what has come to be called the torture memo that we just mentioned a couple of minutes ago. He's pushing torture, you're resisting. Are you aware at the time, as you're having this

conversation, what he's pushing? Oh, never, in any conversation I had, was the word torture used,

ever. Understood. If a dirty, dirty word, I use the word torture at some point, but no, whenever, because we don't torture, we interrogate. But were you clear on the 800-pound gorilla in the room? It was instantaneously clear to me what we were talking about. And I thought in that millisecond, I realized quite consciously. This is not exposed fact-to justification, rationalization, recreate, or recollection. This is exactly what I thought at the time in real time.

What I just said to you, and I, my thought was, this is the greatest, the most significant moment,

“the decisive moment in my career, my career. I think in the history of the agency,”

and one of the significant moments in American history. I was explicitly conscious of that at that moment. I had no question about it. I was. Our colleagues in mind were not, and not that they were being duplicitous, but they were either less experienced, or didn't have the same background I had, or some others were not, but some other colleagues were as aware as I. Did you see it coming? Oh, no, it came completely out of the blue. We've detained someone we believe to be a member of Al-Qaeda,

and we want to fight out an information. This is sure. This is exciting. This is great. This is important. You want to be one of the people doing significant things. All that's fine, but then you will do ever it takes. That was physically, actually, and literally it was stunning to be then, or remains stunning. Our colleagues sincerely believe this, but the conversation went on. I said, "Well, Jesus, you know, we need to at least find it." He says, "We have it."

doesn't get to order this. Oh, but then I thought at the same time, okay, I'm the equivalent of Lieutenant Colonel. I've been brief for two minutes, and I've been informed appropriately, properly, that the president, the vice president, the director of the CIA, the attorney general, the Office of the General Counsel of the CIA, all have deliberated, decided that this is legal, appropriate, necessary, and so ordered. So who do have a lie? A two-minute brief,

Lieutenant Colonel, to challenge the weight of the entire process of any institutions of the United States government, which I had known and taken in most cases accurately, to believe, upheld the law, the law embodied principles, and on the whole was a not just a technically legal, but a seeking to embody a corpus of principles in my whole life down to my level and up to the president. Instantaneously, I'm going to say, "No, this is all wrong now."

I mean, the burden for on any individual is almost unbearable to anyone, and this, which is why you're talking to two of the probably, I don't know, five officers, whoever said, "What the fuck?

“You must disobey an illegal order." You must, otherwise, you were breaking the law.”

The overwhelming majority of my colleagues are honorable, principled men and women. There's no question, but circumstances can be impossible. And even if you can see clearly, it takes a Charles de Gaulle, there's only one de Gaulle per century, you know, in per country, to be able to challenge the weight of those moments. And even if you want to, you know, John and I were quite the, this is not quite a perfect analogy, but

imagine you're a German soldier, and you're assigned to some camp and you're told, "Anyone who comes out, you shoot, any one who goes in, you shoot." And if you don't do that, we shoot you. That's the order. Okay, and you're standing at the death camp. What are you going to do? You think this is how, hideous. I can't allow this to happen. Well, your choices either you will die, or you will become complicit. So it continues to get worse. The spiral continues downward.

So I said, and this is all on the first three thing. You know, we haven't, you know, I haven't

gotten on a plane or done anything yet, right? There were two minutes into my involvement, but I was quite explicitly conscious of all this. So I said to my, I thought, "I don't care if the president orders this. The president doesn't get to order this. He can't do that." But I thought, "Okay, you know, I can't challenge the entire jump up and down this instant and challenge this second." So I said, "Well, suppose something happens that I consider

unacceptable." And he looks at me with the stain, then he says, "Well, if something happens, you don't like, you step out of the room. And if you step out of the room, you didn't see anything happen." And so nothing happened, right? And I thought, "Jesus Christ, this is just insane." This is becoming, this is Kafka, this is, this is insane here. And so that I said something

“that case officers don't normally say. And I think John will probably slide with it. Because at”

this point, I had been informed that the lawyers had been involved in this, you know, and when

something gets to the operations officer, it's all theoretically, in most cases, almost always,

it's been staffed out and the whole sort of thing. Then I raised the question, the case officers, don't normally think about it. I said, "Well, what about the Geneva Convention?" Oh my god, how many times did I say that in 2002?" And the guy looked at me, and this is, the became the title of the first chapter of my book, and he says with the stain, he goes, "Well, which flag do you search?" My thought was, well, up yours, buddy. But it was clear that conversation was not going any further,

so I went fine. The conversation ends, the first thing I did, highly unusual for me, because

normally this circumstance had never occurred to me. I immediately, from that conversation,

“went to find the, I don't remember if it was the Counterterrorism Centers or the Nearest Divisions,”

because I was involved with them, lawyer, the Office of General Counselor for the Office, and who my new, and I walk in, usually you want to avoid lawyers, because their job is to say, "No,

close their conversations, they were sensitive. And I said, "Listen, what is the definition of torture?"

And then he gave me the thumbnail operative definition which served for case officers in the field. Which is derived from John Hughes, torture Miranda. And he said, "If a measure of used in interrogations

“does not cause vital organ failure and/or death." And I distinctly remember the phrase "and/or."”

That wasn't ridiculous. This is this, you know. So, "If a measure does not cause vital organ failure and/or death, it does not torture." And I was, I couldn't believe my ears, and I said, "Okay." So, if I whack you on the head with a baseball bat, and you come to, that's not torture. And he goes, "No." And I said, "If I break your arm, it will heal." So, that's not torture either. And he goes, "That's correct." And he said, "Vital organ failure and/or death."

And I thought, "That is just the stupidest, most insane thing I've ever heard." But those were the instructions that that was the guidance. And it was not for you to question where their guidance came from. Well, I had asked, you know, and it had been told that it came from the president.

“And I thought, "Holy smoke." That's how I was first brought into the operation.”

And then I thought, very clearly, did I think at that moment? I thought, "Well, this is, this is absolutely without question." The great moment of my career, when, when I have to decide, when do you say, "No, what do you do? What is one to do?" And I thought, "When, okay, what am I going to do?" And I talked to the lawyer, and then I found an officer who had been involved in interrogations, and I spoke with her, she's very good officer. And I thought,

"Well, at least smoke." You know, we have someone really important. It is important. We find out information from the sky. But how can I do this honorably? And what will I do? And then I flew off to do it. When you expressed reticence, Glenn, did you end up with any career back? And the reason

I asked is because when I was first approached, I've never gone public with who I went to see,

but I went up to the seventh floor. And it spoke with somebody, and he told me, "Run screaming from the room. This is a terrible idea. It's going to wreck everybody." When I said that I didn't want to be involved, the leadership of the Counterterrorism Center decided that that was worthy of punishment. Here I had just come back as Chief of Ops in Islamabad, led this capture, and was passed over for promotion. And when I went into Deputy Chief CTC's office for my feedback, my panel feedback,

because I was absolutely stunned that I had been passed over for my 15. He said that the consensus was, and these were his words, I had demonstrated a shocking lack of commitment to counterterrorism. But I wonder if this was also a drag on your career, you didn't jump right into this with both

“feet, like they wanted everybody to do. I think the answer is no, but that's because I had other problems.”

There are other things happening in my career and personal life, which are really dramatic. But it is also clear, I've only been able to piece together after I left the agency. In real time, I was, there were forces that play upon me and my operation and the larger issues that I was not completely aware of. I had enemies on substance and on personal level overlapping, but not identical sets that affected my success or lack of success in working the agency and to handle

this operation as I wanted. And that's always the case, they're always, you know, various

power centers and conflicts, personal and office based. But there were forces that were quite hostile to my approach, various approaches. And they were sincerely opposed and they were not just out to get me, but because I opposed them, then they came, they wanted to get me because I was creating headaches for them on the operation. And that's, in the really brief nutshell is,

for 17 hours a day every, I think day. And I came to conclude that pretty much everything that

we had assessed about him was wrong. Holy smoke. And you don't just sort of show up and say, "Okay, you guys, you know, the 12 years of work that 17 different offices have done and the three rooms of files on this and the assessment of the sub-office of the CTC and CTC is general

“and he also concurring all of you guys are wrong. I'm the only guy who's right and so you have to”

change everything that you've done." I mean, you can't really do that. You know, one of the things that an officer has to learn is how to work the director of operations and the agency. And so

you, you know, at first you say, "Well, you know, the date recorded for a certain meeting was

not June 16, it was June 23 and you get them to accept that." And then you say, "Well, you know, his middle name is actually updool instead of Muhammad or whatever hell it is." And you get them to accept that. And then they start saying, "Hey, you know, Carl actually, he's, you know, he's on the ball on this." And then you start to get credibility and then you get an ally who's not directly in the chain of command, who says, "You know, our assessment can concur as with Glenn." And, you know,

“case officer Carl. And so then you can change maybe how a certain report is disseminated or recorded”

or questions that you will ask. And then you start to own the operation and to shift perceptions reality. But you can't just go in and say, "You guys are all totally messed up." In my case, the assessment was that he was one of the top guys in Al Qaeda. And I accept that. I mean, there was a room full of reporting that had led to this assessment. And I knew my colleagues to be diligent, knowledgeable, honorable, and to challenge our assumptions as a part of our routine.

That's, so I had faith in the assessment. And I went out and I started to talk to the guy and, you know, on and on and I started to find little consistency and then larger wins. And I concluded that, you know, we had detained the man we wanted to detain. And he was, which was not

always the case. Sometimes, you know, they wanted to render the kidnapped Glenn Carl. They did.

But there's some other person named Glenn Carl. He's actually, there actually is an astrophysicist in California someplace named Glenn Carl. And that poor guy was, you know, put a bag over his head and taken away because he had the same name that I do. That was not the case in my operation. The person we wanted was the person we got, but he was not the person we thought. He was. And I am convinced, you know, I'm confident that my assessment is correct.

But you do get into some subjective assessments. Just for clarity, say, what did you think he was before you realized he wasn't? Well, what what the agency had assessment to be, which is one of the very, very most senior officers of Al Qaeda, one of the top several people, which he was not. No, no. What was he instead? That's where the big arguments and the murkiness comes from. I'm pretty confident that he was in the circumstance similar to

the owner of corner variety store who receives a visit, who says, you know, hey, you know, you're great displays here. I like the donuts and, you know, have a hot dog too. It would be terrible if anything happened. I really want you to be able to serve the community going forward. Oh, well, thank you very much. You say, yeah, I need to protect you. So, you know, if you just give me a little retainer of, you know, $500 a month, then everything will be fine. And if you say no,

you know, your store is burned down. And if you say yes, you're a part of this network. Now, and in some ways, that was the circumstance of the fellow I had met. But it's also true. He was not a little mismuffer. He was not an innocent. And he did know who he was dealing with. And he wasn't a member of the of al-Qaeda and he was not a jihadist or a terrorist. But he wasn't only coerced. Even when he was coerced, he and his culture, the world he lived in,

“shared many of the views of and acted in ways supportive of jihadists. What do you do with that?”

That's like saying, you know, all Palestinian are all Palestinians members of Hamas because they hate Jews. Well, you know, no, but it's not good that they hate Jews, but we can't, we can't

he was not one of the top members of al-Qaeda. He was not a member of al-Qaeda. He was not a jihadist. And he was a victim of where he lived while being a participant in the values of where he lived, which are antithetical to, individual to and a threat to much of what gives meaning to all of our love. That is not an uncommon theme. You know, it was the same with Abu Zubatah, where we didn't have any

idea until 2007 that he had a first cousin, also named Abu Zubatah. And so if you look at these files,

this looks like a terrorist Superman. He's in Jordan. He's in Afghanistan. He's in Montana. He's talking to the FBI. The day later he's he's in Kuwait. We couldn't keep track of him.

“And that's why we made these assumptions that turned out to be universally false. He was not a”

member of al-Qaeda. He was not even a senior facilitator for al-Qaeda. He facilitated, certainly, as Glenn just noted, this other prisoner, you know, these, these were bad guys, sure, but they weren't the terrorist Superman though. No, not yet a flene for such an end.

Besuch the red captionalitness world in Freiburg with Euron Mellets, Döroma,

or in the channel by clicking on them at the same time, and detects our interactive challenge by the elite storm, audio guide and a classic and the next Parvillung, the whole world from red caption, the red captionalitness world,

“who are in a zikling and found. If you're enjoying dead drop and, of course, we hope you are,”

then while you're waiting for new episodes, I'd like to suggest another great granular story podcast from the cost-art and touch-done family. Just the photographer with David Swanson does for photo-journalism what dead drop does for spies. Pulitzer Prize-winning photo-journalist David Swanson tells you stories

his amazing news photos just can't. What it felt like, being in all those dangerous places like

war zones and natural disasters, doing his job taking pictures. Having been to a few war zones myself, I can tell you this. Just the photographer will put you right there on the ground, right next to David. Inside is head-in-fact. It's a hell of a podcast and you can find it wherever

“you find your favorite podcasts or at cost-art and touch-done.com. There's a link in this episode's”

show notes. In fact, you'll find lots of great story podcasts at cost-art and touch-done, like the donor, a DNA horror story, the hall closet, sage wellness within, and the how not to make a movie podcast. Who knows, your next favorite podcast might be just a click away. Now back to dead drop. You eventually got to yourself away from the enhanced interrogation operation. Well, two things happened. I mean, because it was a surge assignment. It was not a permanent

duty assignment. I was assigned in France for four and a half years. For this, I was drafted because we needed people to do urgent tasks in someone at the film. And I was told, I had to leave within 24 hours of being notified of the operation. I would be gone for a minimum of 30 days, possibly 90 days or longer. I couldn't tell my family where I was going or have any communication with them at all. So, all very exciting, but this is not an easy life for most people. In my

personal circumstances, I had a my wife at the time, had nearly died. She just came out of a coma. I had been told just a couple weeks before one night in the hospital, we will know in the morning if your wife has survived. She survived. But she had real all sorts of challenges. And because we had at that time seven and five year olds, and I was essentially a single parent because I either had a hospitalized or a largely incapacitated spouse to leave for four months in place

with little kids from my wife in all ways couldn't really take care. Everyone has their challenges. So, the agency is as compassionate as the institution can be, and it won't send you away forever.

these people I've alluded to, I clashed with, on any number of professional issues on this operation,

“wanted to get rid of me to have someone who was more amenable to their perspective.”

I also thought it was time to make a move that way myself. So, everyone's sort of agreed that it was time for me to be even so in that, you know, it was a place, but you know, by a good guy. That was not unusual, you know, I wasn't removed, I didn't go myself for, you know, on principle, it was sort of an organic process that happens with temporary duty officers. When enhanced

interrogation came under the microscope, finally, were you dragged into testifying? I never testified

before a public panel. I was interviewed by any number of the investigating committees, you know, there's Congress, there's the counterintelligence staff, there's the Inspector General's office, and all of them, you're trying to make sense of things, and a number of them spoke to me at different times. Sure. What was going through your mind as suddenly, because you had had your doubts, you had been dragged along to a degree, that must have felt really incredibly conflicted in

any number of ways. No, I don't think I ever felt conflicted. We've possibly saw like a contradiction

from what I said, but I didn't, I have always felt, um, pardon the self-praiser. I've always been

very proud of how I handled the operation, what I did, where I, where I drew lines, and where I compromised, and how I try to get things right, and I think that I handled it as well as one can.

“One could very fairly say, you should resign at principal, and at the end of that, I didn't,”

and I don't think that I think I did the right thing by trying to get it right. So, I never felt conflicted about it. I didn't feel, you know, I was worried that everyone, myself included involved in this program, would go to jail for having been involved in torture, because this clearly was illegal. It was just no doubt to me. Whatever, you know, people I admire have said in public, that, oh, this is all legal and we didn't torture. You know, well, that's because no one wants to be

conflicted as a war criminal. That's the only sensible explanation, but there is one other explanation. That's not correct. That's one of the other one is that, and it's been a fascinating psychological experience to observe. I saw, I described in positive terms, draws in my colleagues, and I mean that sincerely, but I was at the time stunned to find that as soon as we were informed,

that the president and the Department of Justice had decided that X's legal and we never engaged in

torture instantaneously, and in complete sincerity, at least half of my colleagues, what like this and said, oh good, everything's fine now, and they were totally sincere about it, and I thought, oh my god, what, what, how can you do that? It's a fascinating psychological phenomenon that they sincerely accepted, the paradigm had been defined from in a way that they thought was appropriate, they're the acceptable way that life should be perceived and conducted, because the agency's good,

the U.S. are good guys, and we don't break the law, and that was it, and these are great people, but they sincerely believe it. It's a very similar phenomenon I had found concluded to what we are all experiencing in the threat to our democracy with the Trump phenomenon. There are dozens and millions of fine people who are in most ways rational people. There are these are normal people,

“they are nut jobs, who vote for Donald Trump, who clearly is a fascist. I think the first person,”

this is my great claim to fame in my life, I think I was the first person in public to say that he was approached by, manipulated by, and probably working with Russian intelligence, and and yet people I admire sincerely think that I'm a communist now, because I oppose the guy, and it's the same thing in the agency with draws in my colleagues who still buy into this whole different paradigm. It is Kafka, I don't know if you've ever read the good soldiers should like,

in the Austrian army, he was killed during the War before he finished his book, but he is, it's

Graham Green, Arman and Ivana, and Cash 22, and yet that's the crazy world that we're

“just as serious people. No, no, no, no, not for such a thing, because the red captioning life is”

in the free book with the United States, and in the channel, from the book, which is all about the years, and it's our interactive exhibition by the elite tour with audio guide and a classic and the next parvillion, the whole world of red captioning, the red captioning life is only a zikling and found. We'll do nut job stuff. What we didn't bring out clearly enough is relevant for there's a beta case and the junk and speak more directly from firsthand experience more than

the I. I was involved in the beta, when I was on the National Intelligence Council receiving his stuff, and was then involved when the decision was, well, holy smoke, this is all screwed up. We have to stop. We have to stop taking and tell it quote and tell it's from this guy,

“everything is compromised, it's all wrong, much as this made up, and it's all selling, and”

then, well, no, no, no, you can't do that. It's really good, and then we had this huge fight sink between the pro, you know, he's a real baddie, and the people who were horrified that everything has screwed up the sides. But there was information that came in before he was enhanced, and information that came in after the interrogations got enhanced. Was there a difference in the quality of the information that came, not that I'm aware of,

but that I'm aware of what I was aware of was that the, at first it was the stuff that's

great, and you know, it was given sort of marquee status, and then the decision was, well, we cannot use any information that has been illicitly obtained, and therefore is very, doubtful, one is unusable in a legal way, and also it's some of it will be disinformation, and a lot of it is, it's not intelligence, it's extracted statements, kind of that, and so everything was retroactively, and this is a really nuclear act in the intelligence community,

was all expunged, there are burn notice that everything has to be removed, that was any utterance from this man's lips has the beat removed from every file in the universe. This is after it was decided that it was illegal, or while it was being considered

“maybe illegal. The legality, I think was, and it's certainly relevant, but I think was secondary”

to the intelligence issue, which is that you can't use compromise information, and then much of it has been shown to be untrustworthy, and so therefore, what we verify is untrustworthy, lead us to be alarmed about the things that we can't substantiate or disprove, and so therefore, nothing can be taken. That was related to what's separate from the legal question. But if the information was procured legally, and you all thought it was being procured legally,

then why is that an issue? If the president says, it's an issue, even if it's legal, if it's bad information were obtained in a way that raises doubts about it, you still can't use it. You're just kidding. It's not only unprofessional, I think it's probably illegal for us to we intelligence officers, and so it was all retracted. That was the proper step taken, but that also became controversial, because then it became involved in the

polemic between the faction that said, "Well, you guys are all pussy, isn't this as a real deal?" And the others just said, "Well, he's a nutjob, he makes stuff up, a lot has been disproved, and we can't use it anyway given how we obtained it." I finally, at that point, I don't know that we ever, we the community, the CIA ever went to that trough again. I don't think so. I don't think so. He was removed, eliminated from any further questioning.

How far into his enhanced interrogation was it decided? The good stuff was being outweighed by

Bolshev. There was always controversy about that from the get-go, but the decision was when

I was there would have been 2004 or five, is when I became aware of it. I think that's when

the acceptability of the information, the reporting of the operation, became aware of water boarding and has the interrogation and so on. This is a holy shit, we can't know if the stuff and then it was shut down. That's when the Inspector General became aware of it as well. It was in 2004, and then the IG report was published internally in 2005, took four more years to declassify it. But Glenn's recollection of the chronology is correct. It took several years,

and then they just said we can't use this. We shouldn't use it. Yeah, that's when I was involved in the receding end of the product. I was not involved at all in the decision. I had been involved in my own cases and knew what was going on that way. And this stuff was still funneling into the

“system. I think it was the New York Times broke the story. Many people in the community didn't”

know any of this and everyone wrote the involved and said what stop, we have to stop everything, not only do you stop doing that kind of quote interrogation, but anything any product from anything touching upon any of these operations is unusable. It raised legal questions, up to the questions, blah, blah, blah, blah, and stop. We call, take out. And that was that. Totally shut down all the stuff. hugely controversial, because the people who were the proponents of it

started to jump up and down with heroin that had fires in that we were all compromising national security by being Marcus Aquinsbury. It's interesting with, you know, there aren't a lot of

“people who have done, who's both in this stuff. There are so many aspects of the culture of”

the Director of Operations of the Counterterrorism Center of the enhanced interrogation program of the Director of Operations that inform how one perceives and one expresses events and reactions that it is a throwback, but pleasant to see with, have John and the screen, because there aren't a lot of people who have lived in this strange universe. It's sort of, it's, I don't know, they're rewarding that the word. It's nice to find somebody who

knows what I'm talking about. But, you know, there have always been

simplifying a bit. Two schools have thought that I've touched upon those who think that the enhanced interrogation isn't tortured, makes sense and we need it. And it's an overlapping set, if not identical, set. Those who believe that the terrorist threat is existential for the United States and Western civilization, global, and that the jihadists are all part of this vast coherent coordinated network, so that

Jamaslamia in Malaysia and Lashgaritaiba in Kashmir and the Al-Qaeda in Sudan and then in Afghanistan and then in Iraq are all part of the same issue. So to stop means that you're surrendering and we will be destroyed. Those who will continue to think

that and then opposing them and I at first was agnostic because I hadn't done as my

thin terrorism and I came to be one of the strong advocates because of my function and national tells and counsel of those who said, well, yeah, there are people trying to slip my throat and rape my wife and we obviously have to stop them, but a member of the Islamic the jikam is the group, is let me the combat them out. The Moroccan Islamic combat in the group I'm afraid that they wouldn't call it in English. Um, is jihadists they are murderists they are,

but they are not al-Qaeda. They share a theology, but they are different. It's not one problem.

“And so therefore you have to look at much more organic and textured approach to counterterrorism”

and that fight I thought would be, you know, I'm absolutely certain that my party is correct,

but even after Obama served his years in the agency the dominant framework remained the first

Thanks again Glenn for sitting in today. It's important to remind ourselves and the audience that

“in the end decency one out. Though plenty of otherwise good people went along with something”

that was downright evil, there were and there still are people with real moral character out there

fighting the good fight and more than ever that fight is necessary. In the next episode we'll

“pick up our story again what makes this spy tick. We're getting close to the moment of truth.”

Please don't forget to like, review, comment on and share the podcast. We thank you in advance for

doing it. Until next time I'm John Kiryaku. Dead drop is written by John Kiryaku and Alan Katz,

“costart and touchstone productions produces the podcast and John Kiryaku, Alan Katz,”

and Nick mechanic are its executive producers. It's podcast, it's a cast with touchstone production.