Welcome to the theater located at the National Archives building washington dc and i like to give a special shout out to our friends on cspan who are joining us today. Before we hear from philip about his book black site i will tell you about two upcoming programs taking place in the theater we will hear about the forgotten founding father george mason the founding father who gave us the bill of rights. On tuesday september 10th Sidney Blumenthal will tell about his recently released volume number three of his biography of Abraham Lincoln 1856 through 1863 to find more out about these programs please visit our website you will also find printed materials with Upcoming Events as well ass signup sheets to have the electronic version of the monthly calendar. Joining the cia in 1985 as a special agent after september 11 he was a cia member of a small diplomatic11 team for afghanistan then he became Deputy Director for orterrace center and stayed there through 2005 the first Deputy Director of the fbi National Security branch that later became the senior orintelligence advisor receiving numerous awards for his comments about terrorism have been featured in broadcast andnd print news now hes in a company specializing in consultancy public speaking about security issues. A senior fellow at the new America Foundation and the George Washington University Homeland Security policy to serve as senior Global Advisor to a british based firm and sits on the Advisory Board for the National Counterterrorism center for the director of National Intelligence it with a Homeland Security group please welcome philip mudd to the National Archives. [applause] you missed the most important part of that i live in tennessee parttime. [laughter] i was running in midtown memphis which is a historic part wondering if i should write another book and reflectingef on during that excruciating time after 9 11 that some of my colleagues had written their stories but many of the people would never see or never write or never be told to put their stories together in one simple narrative to explain what happened so i decided that morning running 5 miles that i would do that and this is mostly their story its not a history your every document but the story of men and women that i served with so to step back in time going back into a time machine a lot of my colleagues talk about the time to paraphrase when we thought we killed the dragon and only the snakes were left in that where people thought those intelligence challenges wouldnt reach that net magnitude but the counterterrorism people knew they had a problem and that started when bin laden was in sudan accelerated to but when i spoke to those times of the peace dividend of the frustration and sadness that they writ witness the rise of a Global Network and the tools that they had were so limited to look back in retrospect only 20 years ago the tools the cia had were limited if you think of loss of budget and personnel the dragon is gone but if you think about any organization whether attack organization you lose substantial pieces of money and people with your ability to operate declines. There was also the attitude nobody could imagine a world we could conduct lightning raids in afghanistan day after day after day that thought that a read would happen with high risk of american soldiers lives is almost unthinkable so forget about the us invasion just the raid against the compound much less an armed drone to kill a terrorist overseas in a debate for years that never happened now theres atrophy training spies declined in the attitude about terrorism was mixed remember after 1947 and the targets this caa one fbi taste where the big targets like the chinese are the cuban missile crisis i returned from taking leave of absence and was told to go to the Counterterrorist Center because thats where you sent people who werent ready for prime time. [laughter] that changed over time people make a difference in those personalities that i knewna so well that were critical to keep counterterrorism from declining further and george tenet was immersed in counterterrorism and insisted that he get some level of privacy and ensuring that there was leadership that was wellregarded across the agency is not common including the one who raised the quality of people going over there in that respect before 9 11 but make no mistake the peace dividend for intelligence that meant that on that day the cia in the counterterrorist were not only not prepared they cannot be prepared. They all talk to me about before but in those months and years after because on that dy everything changed years of debate about rating afghanistan forget about raids the cia is first and with operatives with money and technology and guidance within weeks big green will invade afghanistan that transition not only in resources that was foundational. Cia director use to ask as i sat in on the threat briefings for years as i was trading back and forth with another colleague with ten or 15 or 20 threats Foreign Security services intercepted communications were al qaeda was talking about coming to the United States one of the things that was so evident around those tables we anticipated a second wave four years thats what we anticipated would be another 9 11 the perhaps worse because they had an anthrax program we did not fully understand. Forth months we do understand the research andno development whether they had taken strains out of afghanistan maybe not the aircraft but anthrax and then that was a fundamental problem we did not understand the adversary the bread and butter of a human source that the people who ran operations could tell you that penetration. So in the midst of america watching horrific videos of people jumping off buildings , we were sitting behind the scenes with the director saying if there is the w second wavesa tomorrow and you say i wish i had done this, why dont you do it today. Intelligence operations, cooperation with the afghans the u. S. Was working with an element of afghanistan, a group called the Northern Alliance was so successful that al qaeda had to flee before they developed a plan and many of them fled east. Its mistakes that allow us in a part of the business in the intelligence that we call targeting that is having individual analysts responsible for the individual tactical level where you know what the terrorist communication patterns are, where his family is, what the network is. We have individual analysts. The drumbeat was the sense that the circle around him almost by the day was getting tighter. And then in the spring the raid happened. He almost died and suffered wounds from the gunfight particularly to his leg and a slight piece of the story by telling the buck ensured he would not die. Another bit of the agility after 9 11 that made the u. S. Response so powerful could you imagine calling a Medical Center saying we would like you to loan us some of the physicians to treat overseas now and we are going to put him on a plane, unimaginable before 9 11. That began the search for what a detainee could tell about an organization they didnt fully understand. Forget about the plot. Those are important. The counterterrorism business a lot of what i witnessed thats what you saw in the newspapers how to find, fix and finish typically by staging a raid operation. The first one who went down the reason he was significant as i mentioned with the lack of understanding. If counterterrorism is often a people business, obviously the first questions you might have would be can you tell us about plots and the second wave, can you tell us whether they are in the United States. But the stuff behind the scenes, can you tell us what the organization looks like and what the hierarchy looks like, who were the facilitators. Who carries messages between those who dont want to communicate between electrons. Thats basic material, the basic material is critical and we didnt have a good understanding of that in the spring of 2002. He talked with him in the memory of the people i spoke with, he shut down and he told his interviewers, his interrogators go home, have babies, dont come back because im not speaking anymore. So, in the intensity of the time when america said make sure this doesnt happen again, when a president of the United States says it sure this doesnt happen again and how did you fail to catch it when the anticipation was a second wave that might include anthrax, cia officers into the decisionmaking in the spring and summer of 2002 said well, if we think hes shutting down, what are the options, we can send them to the Justice System where he will lawyer up and never speak again. We can send him to another foreign country that might have charges against him. The prospect is the other country will interrogate him and we will not sit in the room and a well shielded from most critical intelligence that we need. They also will not have the same priority is that we have. They are going to want us to ask questions about their country and we want to ask questions about america. We will transfer al qaeda prisoners and interrogate them using the harsh technique that has been splashed across every page and newspapers in america for more than a decade. Theres another piece of the process people would ask questions later on and everybody knew that this was not only sensitive, but it would be controversial. That is the program. So, there are conversations between the inspector general, the cia and the war years at the department of justice has hit the wall to say what is appropriate in terms of interrogation for the cia fight, what complies with the u. S. Constitution and what complies with federal law. We want it on paper and we are not moving until it is on paper. Through the summer of 2002, the lawyers and department of justice discussed what could be done. He was already transferred, stable and transferred, but the formal authorization from the department of justice to not arrive until august of 2002. August of 2002 was when my colleagues marked the beginning of the program. He went through tough interrogation techniques. People talk about waterboarding. Theres more than 100 detainees at the facilitys. Three of them were water boarded. He was one of them. One of the challenges of talking to a detainee and one of the challenges of discussing this in a public environment where we dont have the luxury of time that we have in the auditorium as people to loo do look at me y and say come on. If you put somebody under duress, they are going to lie. So let me explain as we went through the process wide, and im not going to defend the program, i am here because i thought tha their views should e explained so americans on either end of the spectrum who want to attack what was done and those who support it and i hear both on the streets we will understand what happened and why. Why would you pressure someone to speak because you know they are going to lie and my answer is straightforward. That isnt the full answer, but an al qaeda terrorist is going to make up stories all day long. That isnt the point. The real point is the analytic effort i mentioned earlier call targeting. You cannot have a successful interrogation of the prisoner unless you know so much about the prisoner, not a midlevel or lowerlevel so much because you have been following for so long that you can come up with in concert with other experts, physicians, psychologists, interrogators you can come up with a package of questions over weeks when the detainee starts to realize these guys know a lot more than i know. When he starts to realize he cant lie his way outcome you start to get answers. Some answers never came, for example vocational information about osama bin laden. But you get what we call compliance. Someone will try to give you bits and pieces of information that they think are less valuable. Those bits and pieces are in valuable gold for the intel. If a prisoner is compliant and gives you what he thinks is throwaway information about somebody that trained a german, french and, im just one example of a trained three years ago, game on for people in my world. Im going to balance that against every bit of data that we have had against all the charitable data travel data and over the course of time it will tell us who that person was trained based on one tiny shred of evidence, shred of information from a compelling and detainee who was giving you stuff he thought was irrelevant. The point im making is of course people why and the only way you can get outofthebox is developing an interrogation package that is so complete a te detainee feels he needs a lifeline and that lifeline was the cia. A lot happened after the initial stages of the abu zubaydah interrogation. When i spoke with lawyers and managers of the program, we talk about the maturation of the program. The first week the first month and years were tough. You have an agency that is now serving a prison conducting interrogations that the cia had never done. They value agility but sometimes they step into programs because they believe nobody will ever do it despite the fact we dont have experience. There are some who may not have been involved particularly over time particularly after some mistakes the program matured. Other things happened that were surprising. I can tell you sitting at the threat table in 2003, 2004 until i shifted to the fbi i thought we were losing. That may come as a surprise to you but the u. S. Army had invaded afghanistan supported by the cia. There was a network i didnt think we were in front o of her years in a volume of threats and attacks we could not contain. Nonetheless, the people i spoke with uniformly said business was good. The architect of 9 11, the highest and prison are they ever held captured in 2003. Architect of the bombing against the u. S. S. Cole. Time and time again they have been faster and faster as the intelligence picture clarified and not only did they matured at the sites matured, the cia needed more sites and they started developing their own custombuilt sites. The expertise and training people to talk to prisoners and determine what techniques were most effective in determining how to build the psychological package around each individual so that you could go in and maximize the prospect so they would say they know more than i ever expected. I better speak. Better and better. But there was a flipside and that was the iraq war, the declining unity after the remarkable unity of 9 11 leading up to the iraq war and increasing questions about whether the cia program was sustainable. Especially as many of my colleagues would view this with some sense of privacy especially since the second wave never happened. Let me put it this way the fact that america had the time and space to discuss what should be done in a Democratic Society resulted partly from the fact there wasnt another major attack. Many of my colleagues are persuaded the decline of the program is partly due to the success of a we are not the bureau of prisons and once we extract that intelligence we are not going to be Holding People for 20 years we dont even necessarily want it for two years to the endgame questions very few were briefed and i was among those briefed them. We told them what we were doing and we told them in some detail but very few were briefed. Increasing questions within the cia with the endgame is and outside of it what are they doing and whatever happened. The white house and the memory of my colleagues was not too excited about dealing with the questions. I dont blame them. I understand once you open the door you have to answer every single question about how and why you authorize that but it led to increasing frustration at the cia including frustration at white house meetings where the officials time and time again told me they were saying we cannot you, the american policymakers asked us to go down this road of detentions. You have to participate in the conversation about what happens after. About a legendary director among the cia officials before and director of the National Security agency, a man with intelligence and the military, highly respected for his discipline, for his mind com, he came into the cia in 2006 after the first detainee and said we have to put this on solid ground if we Read Everything and he was a voracious reader of information about the programs that he could master the details. Let me Read Everything and figure out what the right path is. I think in talking to my colleagues, his effort led to the interrogations but by that point even in 2006, the writing was on the wall. Five years after 9 11, just four years after the 2002 capture of abu zubaydah the program is already declining. The appetite wasnt there. Waterboarding was dropped and the interrogators said we dont think despite the conversation about this, we dont think this is the most specific technique and we dont need to use it anymore, sleep deprivation for example comes up as a technique that was successful. People dont like to be tired and they start to lose their will to not speak, so he scaled back the program. There were more and more conversations with the department of justice. Sometimes the program was shut down because the department of justice officials were starting to scale back on the original opinions. Every time they scale back the leadership a couple of times said if you want to change the documentation we are not moving until you change it. We dont move without paper and it has to explain how would we are doing is in compliance with the constitution of the federal law. But the writing was on the wall. And of course george bush made his announcement, his famous announcement and said we have these prisoners, there were these black sites and we are transitioning them to guantana guantanamo. Some of them including Khalid Shaikh mohammed still o bar. That wasnt the final end of the Program Including under general heageneralhayden or a couple moe prisoners authorized funds for president made the announcement i think ann richards that you could say that was the beginning of the end of the final chapter. Now some cia officers went to briefed president elect obama on the program was and shortly after he came to office, he said the United States had committed what he had called torturing some folks. I think the colleagues i spoke with grizzled out that for a simple reason. They have the right to change policy. But we had been told and this is a lesson of covert action from the beginning of time we had been told by one administration this is not only the policy of the land but this complies with the wall of the land and been told that what you did doesnt comply with the law of the land and doesnt comply with basic values that we all sign up for. That was painful and of the program was done. I did spend time with every one of the individuals i spoke with. Some of them had unique questions because of their jobs. I asked about interrogations and senior managers i asked about including the cia directors about white house deliberations. I think when my colleagues look back, d they look back with the knowledge that anybody on september 122001 would have said there will be a second wave we were not prepared for this and if you argue against the second wave, if you said there will not be another catastrophic attack in the country people would have said you were crazy. So, in terms of reflecting, there was a fair amount of unanimity in this. Many of my colleagues looked back and said i was a tiny piece of the puzzle that ensured another nearly 3,000 people didnt die. They look back on the program itself. I would say not with regret they feel it is a piece of the puzzle that might have kept america safe. But they do look back i think with the knowledge that an america thats once said to do anything to ensure there isnt a second event very quickly i think supposedly said what you did was wrong. Not because they regret it or because they are embarrassed about it or because they thought that it was ineffective, but they know as people have experienced in these moments, they know that if a program like that are ordered by another president comes years on the road three years, five years, ten years what did you do, why did you do it and now you may be called for legal action in the next administration. Some were investigated by the department of justice. Maybe we help ensure that another kid gets to grow up with their parents. I think that the best capture of this is one of the most thoughtful officers. I dont name people in the book because i told them i would not and i dont like them getting hate mail. One gave me a snapshot of ethical thinking that a lot of us witnessed what is the law of the u. S. Government, does it allowed you to do something, thats the department of justice piece of pape paper that says wt you are giving complie doing coe constitution and federal law. What is the regulations they come at a forma formal of itemst says what youre doing complies with this agency has written down and as a formal policy. Then you start getting tough. Those are pretty straightforwa straightforward. There is a classic question as he stepped down a list of ethical questions how clearly can you explain this in a public audience. We used to call this the Washington Post test. If you are in front of a journalist coming and i do cnn for livinfor a living suit simie Washington Post test can you capture what you are doing and why in the one sentence that your mother would understand and if you cant, be careful. And the last one, did i think my friends have to thin got regulaf regularly what would your mother say. I dont care what the law says or regulations with the Washington Post. What would your mother say. Using those tests to look back on the program i think most people still look back and say im not sure i can give you the perfect answer on every question. But i am sure of one thing. If you step back in time and drive down the gw parkway in the spring of 2002 and recollect people jumping off buildings and you thought maybe you were a tiny sliver of the response that prevented that from happening again, they still sleep at nig night. Thanks for listening to my story. [applause] we will take questions because there is a televised component im going to insist you go to the microphones of this can be captured for the tv audience. From the perspective of the what is aspect, the soviets, russians, whatever departed afghanistan however they had infrastructure there and knew aspects that could have been interesting was that possible from the perspective of people that were there that the u. S. Could have somehow relied on . Thats a great question. I dont render anybody ever raising that. The relationship in the Russian Security service, i dont want to give too much in the details was and i assume still is with russian intervention tenuous even after 9 11 there was a lot of talk about facing common threats etc. I dont think that they were a greagreat partner even after 9 , so the prospect that they would be helpful at a tactical level i dont remember. Its a great question and i will now have to ask my friends. I dont remember that coming up that old. You started strong. I never thought about that. If everybody else could do that that would bwould be great. Thank you. Thanks so much for your stories as someone who grew up i was in first grade in 2001 so it interesting to hear from somebody that was there at the time a fully formed member of the Intelligence Community making hard decisions about the tragedy on that day but im curious to know if in your view you think that its on its way out i know that these days the discussion is i think rightfully focusing on power competition and domestic instances of what could be called terrorism, the proliferation of the rightwing extremists in the u. S. And is thithe sort of counterterrorism really on its way out. This is a rare moment i will give you an answer, yes or no. But im not sure for this and reason its declined dramatically remember theres like 2014 when isis was in the news every single day. You look for two characteristics in the organization that is a threascript breaking through ale noise. I look for the leadership that is visionary dont just take out the local Police Station the americans or the threat and i would look for leadership in a timely space to act. You dont see that today some of the leadership is gone but the speed with which an organization can constitute leadership and a safe haven in a place like this, i wouldnt rule out and im a pretty optimistic person i wouldnt rule out that the Group Emerges to see them in this. Another thing i agree with you on the shift in focus to the more traditional post1947 what about iran, north korea, russia, south china sea. Its not hard to envision a world where within a year some Group Emerges in place where the local government doesnt have the capability or the will to take them out. Two quick things finally i would say on that. Some of the tactics and chasing people i could see. Im not talking about the law just Analytical Capabilities i could see easily transferred to the white supremacist groups. Im not suggesting they would do that or that we should do that. Im talking about the techniques so if america starts to say we have a different threat and they learned a lot about how to look at people and not just big threats so i see it changing but im not sure that america has the stomach if there is a terrorist that shoots up something in america but they have any stomach to say anything but now weve got to do this all over again. Im not sure. Thank you for the top. I wantetalk. I wanted to ask youe language used around what happened. My personal view would be that regardless of the ethics what occurred and using words like enhanced interrogation is more a euphemism so im wondering what language do you prefer to use and how do you see the debate . Most people dont ask that question politely. I get attacked a lot. I never went to the site. Im not denying i didnt know everything going on but the one speaking partly as a result of my conversation that is a fair question. I can give you a couple of answers just technically speaking the word torture is illegal so if you say you are acknowledging that you should be in a federal prison, the technical way people look at it as a couple phrases and legal concepts. One is doing something that would result in longterm physical or psychological damage so that you can say im uncomfortable with waterboarding. I think that it meets my sort of human definition of torture technically im not excusing it and just giving you an explanation. There was another phrase that was called shock the conscience that is a phrase meaning if you pick up somebody for stealing gum you are not going to put them in a black site. If you pick up someone participating in the murder of almost 3,000 americans that doesnt shock the conscience if you express them to sleep deprivation. I would close by saying the right conversation to have isnt what the law is and of course this is from someone who never got close to both school. It is please dont look back we did this in the congress and said is this where we want america t to be and if the answr is no, simply create the wall to stop it. But if yo youre asking the technical question about how we talk about it, some of the language that was used in the philosophy behind the program. Thank you. That is a fair question. Its been about 17 years since the beginning of these sites. This year it dramatically expanded the identity protections act and kind of a broadway so one of the reasons they justified it is saying because of the issues so based on your experience talking about the black site program. From your experience what could those issues be and why would that come up now . Ive seen commentary trying to protect the identities of secret officers more aggressively. I havent looked at the y. I can just tell you from the personal perspective would be the two things together. The anger in this culture is something that i havent seen before. Its fueled by both sides of the political debate and the second piece i see elements of that. The level of anger and violence in the culture today is high so if you just do mathematics 330 million americans accused of exposing a cia officers, what is your statistical chance that one person who is angry isnt going to show up at somebodys door because you can find peoples residences by public records. I dont worry about that because i work in a public world and im on cnn. People come up a lot. But i can understand just looking at the world as i see it and knowing my colleagues in this culture that want to send mail saying you should die of cancer that may be we should work harder to protect those who took a great risk because in the culture today even in contrast with ten years ago i wouldnt guarantee somebody isnt going to knock on the front door. I dont want to complain its not harmless but most of it is somebody is ticked off in their basement. If its any indication that bill is worth it because the volume of people that write and the language they use is unprintable everyday. I think about that and i can understand why people would want to be protected. Anyway, yes please. You had mentioned the first wave that we waited for the second wave that never came being anthrax. Is it the fault of that we are now on three or four and just skipped ahead and that these were different modes of the second is just one that never came . That is a good question. Im going to give up soon because im tired. We focused on a large group biggest threat. Nobody talked about homegrown in 2002. Im not sure we use that word. So, our concept of second wave was another Major Organization there was a movement of likeminded individuals who didnt understand the ideology but thought that their anger was allocated. Typically people that were not connected to the Central Group except by watching a youtube video. You start to see people who want to see the video. This may pick up on what you were just talking about. Im interested in what you learned about the motivations of the people youve interrogated in the future to anticipate or to dispel in the forming of more and more groups. Theres two basic groups of people. The book talks about this they would sit in front of a whiteboard and explain. They were also very proud of 9 11. They thought they were not apologetic. Again one explanation for why it was hard to get them to speak. The motivation was interesting from an American Perspective that typically is shortsighted and in some ways selfish whats in it for me. The motivation would be able to would say it wont come in my generation. It will not come to my childrens generation but maybe my grandchildrens generation there will be an acknowledgment that the only way to live is by the rule of the book that the nations across the world like they would say saudi arabia and egypt dont rule by the rule of the boothat because the leaderse corrupt and its the only way to take up the government is to get rid of the americans because they are the backstop to these regime so their philosophy was that you get the American South and they thought we were weak, the strike at an economic target, political targets to congress, very strategic fight. They said the americans are so soft in the underbelly they will get out the support for the regimes and then we can move in more aggressively and take out the regimes in place like egypt and saudi arabia over 50, 75 years. That was their philosophy. Now one caveat. This changed when the Homegrown Movement started in whatever it was, the late 2,000. My experience and its similar with isis, the further you get away from the organization into the home grounds and 18yearold in georgia, the less likely that person is to understand what the ideology is. They will come at this with some ideology and they might be angry about something that they witnessed a school. Think of it as a culture and not a religious group. They validate their anger and they can give you three minutes on what the organization is all about. We will validate your anger and give you a video that helps you understand why we exist. So, differences between the Poor Organization that can give you chapter and verse on ideology and homegrown where the ideology is glaser dan. The likelihood is much higher. After a while they cant explain what they were thinking. So the approach is to someone whos a committed years long terrorist and homegrown kid who went the wrong way when he was 17 in terms of how you indoctrinate significantly different. Thank you for the question. [applause] thats why i came. Okay
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.