Attacked us, what do they want . And most importantly what else with a planning . Today we take for granted the fact that we know the answers to those questions and wind of the attacks were carried out by alqaeda on the orders of Osama Bin Laden, that they were conceived and executed by his operational commander, a terrorist mastermind named Khalid Sheikh mohammed. In the early days after 9 11 we didnt know any of that. With almost nothing about the enemy who he does. We did note ksm was a mastermind of 9 11 or the command of alqaeda or who his key accomplices were or what theyre planning by way of a followon attack. Unbeknownst to us there were two Terror Networks out there that were waiting to carry out the second wave picked it was in the case and network that of 9 11 and something called the hezbollah network in Southeast Asia terrorist that case and recruit because he knew they would look out for arab men and then a series of attacks planned that are guest today knows very well. But on 9 11 we do know any of that. Then begin in 2002 we begin to capture and interrogate senior terrorist leader, men like abu zubaydah and the mastermind of 9 11, Khalid Sheikh mohammed. These catheters gave us information allowed the cia to round up virtually all the key members of those networks and dismantle them and stop the attack they had planned. And today were honored to have with us the man who interrogated those highvalue terrorists and captain to provide that information that saved so Many American lives, dr. James mitchell. In the 15 years since 9 11 no one has heard from ksm. Hes been nicely from the world first in say a custody assessment custody and then guantanamo bay. Dr. Mitchell has spent thousands of hours with ksm and other operatives. He looked directly into the face of evil and a dizzily came to understand the terrorist mind, what drives that motivates them and the almost, almost anyone in america because that terrorists told him what drives them and what they believe. For the first time dr. Mitchell issuing what ksm toles and put his on use and has a policy, the Bush Administration response to 9 11, his plans for new attacks and why ksm leads ultimately they will prevail against the war against america doctor mitchells new book, enhanced interrogation inside the minds and motives of the islamic terrorists trying to destroy america offers his firstperson account of the cias terrorist Interrogation Program, his personal interactions with them in who planted next to the biggest and worst terrorist attack in the history and people who would do it again gladly if they had the chance. This is the first on dr. Mitchell is speaking in public at a forum like this about this until we are very honored that you chose to join us here at aei. Thank you for coming. Thanks for having me. The details of enhanced interrogation have been widely discussed and debated and ensure when we get to the q a we can get into some of questions bu bi would like to focus today primarily on what youve learned from these terrorists and talking to the. Just the people understand that the conversations with ksm youre describing were not happening when he was strapped to an water board can you explain the difference between enhanced interrogation, debriefing and also what you call, how you do in visits . Walk us through that. Okay. These enhanced interrogations that i was part of really only dealt with about 14 of the top folks. I didnt have anything to do with the midlevel or lowlevel folks at all. And most of these interrogations took place over a period of time over about two weeks. Ksm took about three weeks and then after that there was no enhanced interrogation from ksm. None at all. Our goal in doing the enhanced interrogations was to get them to make some movement, to be willing to engage in the questions instead of rocking and chanting doing the other sorts of things that they had previously been doing. Once they start doing that we switch to social influence stuff because we know that the real way that you get the cooperation that you want is not by trying to coerce it out of them. Its by getting them to provide the information in a way that they dont feel particularly pressured to do it. We had to be very, very careful when we would do enhanced interrogations not to ask leading questions, we were not interested in confessions. I dont ever know, a fact, i dont know a single, ive dealt with 13 or 14 of the worst ones, right . Ksm, abu zubaydah, ramsey, i have dealt with a lot and none of them refused to identify what they had done. So it wasnt, we were not looking for confessions because confessions will not stop attacks. What stops attacks his actual intelligence. The way that you get the actionable intelligence dealt with is by getting these enhanced interrogations, get them working with you so that you can use social influence after that to get the information that you want. Because, so what we did was we moved very quickly to debriefing. And the way that worked was, for the cia, interrogation was questioning the person who was deliberately trying to withhold information and was hostile about providing that. It usually involved at least the possibility of some vips, although we didnt come you might be authorized to do the igs for 15 days but we wouldnt do vips for 15 days. As soon soon as mr. Working with us we moved away from it. And then after that we would gradually bring the subject Matter Expert in because im not the kind of asking the questions. But i want to ask the question is expert on whatever the question is about a half. So we would bring in, in one case a person about the president s pr bees, the presence of daily briefs. Because yet questions that he wanted to ask. So we bring in other people and we would sit in there with them and help them with any kind of coercion at all to ask the questions are hoping to get. And then whats the person was completely able, meaning the detainee, was willing to engage with a debrief her, we got out of it. We stepped back between mice to monitor. We might still going in beginning to things were going, but you need your wmd expert ask about of Undp Jim Mitchell is out the guide to be making an intelligent requirement. Thats done by huge numbers of experts who are experts in the field. What i think its almost irrelevant. They would give me briefings on who these people were, intensive briefings on what was expected before we did it. You had interrogations which of the took about two weeks and then their entire rest of the time they were with the cia, they were never subjected to the eits again. Never. So ksm had three weeks of eits and never again. Not even when they were trying to find out the location of bin laden. Not even when theyre trying to get him to provide information that would allow us to identify the courier. We knew he was lying to us. We do not use eits on it because eits would be used to stop catastrophic attacks. It wasnt an attack, jim wasnt interested in doing it. And since i work for them, they were not interested in doing it either. They dont want to beast people to find it were someone exciting. So there were interrogations which was short and thin debriefings we dealt specifically with intelligence requirements. Then you are a variety of other meetings that we had with the detainees. In my book i call it mean if this is because thats what the cia called in the wind grave concerns about these guys what they started working with us, getting sorry because they were in isolation. We would just stop by and played board games with them or go to the Basketball Court and play basketball or go to the gym and lift weights with them, i watch a movie with them. You would think that from listen to what people say on tv. About what we did. But, in fact, we did a lot of that. And ksm is one of those guys, hes like yoda. He likes to sit there and talk. You might go play basketball, but you wouldnt do that with ksm. He wants to tell you things. He had two kinds of things that he did. He had a chalk, and alcohol board, a dry erase erase board and you love to lecture. So we would go and listen to lectures we would have something to do when he wasnt servicing intelligence requirements. Occasionally something useful came out of that. The other thing he liked to do when we came around and said how are you going, things, he would like to sit there and talking about what was on his mind. Whatever was on his mind. He thought he was a sufi. So like to tell you about his religion. What i do not vote as i take all of the thing that told me over the six, seven, eight years, whatever it was from the beginning and to bring them all together into one place and talk about it in one setting. But those things that i write about in the book, those things i write about in the book are not one session where we sit down and have somebody on a waterborne asking him to tell us about their religion. That would not of work and thats not what we did speak with some vips were to take people from the state of resistance to the scene of cooperation, right . And so was they never fully cooperated. They always had secrets they were going to protect. There was nothing that we couldve done to ksm to get him to tell us bin laden said location. But he told us inadvertently by line, because he was tell that story. Its been a lot of people who said cia Interrogation Program had nothing to do with the operation to get bin laden. They like to you. They resisted. They misled you. You got nothing of value. Is actually other means that got us to bin laden. Right. It is true that ksm lied to us. Whats not true is that we didnt know what that meant. It is a true that abdullah garage lied to us. But it isnt true that we did know what that meant. Ksm was nephew, after eits were done, were not into debriefing stage, tells us that, ksm told me that augment our kuwaiti delivered a letter to abu appointing an extra chief of operations. So now we are interested, write . Because if he delivered a letter from ubl, we believe that they dont know where he is because in 2002, ubl went underground. He didnt even use electronics. It was just a few people but here we have a guy who is saying that there was a courier using his jyoti name, who delivered a letter from ubl. So because they said ksm data, ksm said no, no, no. Back i used to work for me. He was a protege of michael and associate of mine but he died in 2000 or and is always talk about the go back to his nephew is that he says hes a line. I do know with the little guys doing but hes lying to you. And so we think i wonder why ksm as line. Could this guy be important . What most people dont know is we had, they had established a secret way to communicate with each other, the detainees had. The case and could get messages out to the troops. What he did know is that we knew it and i would love to do because it wanted to what he was saying to the troops. So were asking him about how katie and he said that guy, he quit. Then he puts in a secret message whatever you do dont tell them about the courier. Dont tell them about augment. What were thinking is that guy has to be important. Because here is a relatively cooperative guy who some people would say probably experienced the worst outcome you could expect in terms of eit, who was willing to risk going back to that to protect the identity of this one courier. So eventually they got the guy who got the letter and he said i never heard of that guy. I dont even know who youre talking about. There was never a guy like that. But weve been asking all of these other detainees about it. And so we had possible goal, a facilitator that worked with highlevel facility at work with ksm. Egos that could be two, three, maybe more people working with bin laden. He has disappeared. Hes got a small group of people. It could be him. After eits, its him come he does this, he most letters. He most people. He works for him. He made it clear that this other stuff was just a smokescreen and that this was the case. Also we had a detainee who said well, one of bin laden is wise, not his youngest wife who bin laden had with them, one of bin laden zweig gave farage a letter. You got to be thinking of when give them a letter if i dont know who he is. And it writes him since he could actually get to her, you know . So all of these little clues kind of fell into place and then the brilliant men and women at the cia who analysts and marketers were able to put it together. There was a partial to name for the courier that was already in the database out there. But we didnt know how important that was or how to find him. But i interrogated probably the shortest interrogation that ever took place, less than 10 minutes, a guy by the name of yasser, and after that when he moved all, almost immediately from debriefing, he said this guy that youre interested, alkuwaiti has a speech impediment. When he talks he talks in arabic and posh dune. The agency was then able to, means, able to find out where that guy who spoke like that lived. And then the question is, because we knew he was living, what weve been told he was likely to be living with bin laden, staying with bin laden, because essentially he had no outside contact. So then what they did is they tried to find out whether not bin laden was staying with this guy. And thats the process that that happened. It wasnt the case that somebodys hands were taped to a Steering Wheel and someone was cutting the fingers off with it was hard work that was done on the part of the cia analysts to piece together this matrix of stuff. Some actionable intelligence becomes actionable only when it is placed in the greater context of what you know from everybody. The feinstein commission and other people say we already had the name of the guy, we got from someone who wasnt in the program, and we wouldve got this information without eits and without this program anyway. Yeah, the problem with that is when you roll up a detainee in the beginning, they would say tell us everyone that you think Osama Bin Laden knows. They would run off 100 names and knows nothing about a single name that highlights their importance. So so its like picking up a phone book and saying that because somebodys name is in the phone book we should have known he was the guy was going to rob the gas station. Thats just not the way it works. You need something to take you to that piece of information to highlight that guys imports. And another thing, unless im confusing this, its clear in my book but unless im confusing it appear on the stage, the guy who gave them his name thought he was dead. Write . They thought he was dead. And it was a smart clever work by the cia analysts who is able to determine that no, this guy was confusing him with his brother or Something Like that and the guy that actually identified alkuwaiti was still alive. In hindsight its easy to dislike doing one of those little puzzles backwards. In hindsight its easy but, because you know whether at. You know where the cues are. But im telling you, the people put this thing together not interrogators but the analysts put this thing together were brilliant. To be able to get back into the intelligence database and hunt hard and review all those things and piece together this matrix that led to him was amazing. Mike hayden, the analogy used was its like putting together a puzzle with tens of thousands of pieces but you dont have the picture on the cover of the box. What you detainees provide it was the picture and the cover of the box. Is that a fair way to say it . What happened is nearly two detainees were denying that alkuwaiti were ksm and farage. The rest of them were providing bits and pieces of information that could be put into larger matrix. Most of us, nobody has heard from ksm since the 9 11 attacks. The most receipt of him, we noticed an interview with eric the most routine is that disheveled picture of him after his picked up the spirit was his actual capture photo. What was ksm like . Well, in the book i call them a devil and the diva. In the beginning he was belligerent, you know. He was really belligerent. Heres what you need to know about ksm. Ksm for two or three days was held in pakistan, and he was questioned, or tried to be debriefed by cia officers and a standard noncoercive like you would be debriefing and asset and they would try key and respectful conversation to one them dressed up in pakistani dress and spoke you know, perfect. And so, and that guy, ksm he described to me later was a clown. Most of the time, i dont believe he was, but ksm thought he was. Most of the time ksm rocked and prayed and quoted the quran and acted belligerently. And theres a lesson here for today, if i can interrupt this thought, that some people are saying you can get more out of these highlevel detainees with food and little bit of drake, but that didnt work for ksm. He told me im not going to give up my god. Im not going to turn on my god for a handful of dates. What do you think . Because thats when he was describing the behavior of the other person. Then after that he went into a place that in he calls cobalt and he was treated badly there, and then he came to a spirit but in each case he had an opportunity before eits to answer the question with no coercion at all. Just provide this information with no coercion. The way it works with us, me and the doctor, we would do something we call a neutral assessment in the beginning, and that is just a minute talk u. S. A. This is the kind of information we want. So with ksm i went in and i said we need information to stop operations. We know you dont have all that but we think you have some of it. We have reason to suspect your people on the ground in the trinity we have reason to suspect that you have other operations in the works, and you looked at me and told me, you might hear from me when i get to washington, d. C. , midnight cowboy george bush to talk to my lawyer. I thats not going to happen. So i questioned cash but i ask questions of giveaways and he said soon you will know. Im asking him about his other attacks. Soon you will know. And then i go into this in great detail in the book because i do want to waste your time going into it now but basically i had this little spiel that we used, which is i say in every mans life there are moments of opportunity. There are times when the decision you make forever changes your future and you cant go back. I want to be sure that you understand that this is one of those times. You have until i walk out of this room to work with us. We know you dont know everything. You know there are people out there doing there doing things in your name and you may not know precisely where they are but you know something. We are interested in that something. And so the next time you see one of us, things will get rougher, but before that happens you will be given the opportunity to answer this question. And so we asked him the question. And then the next time he comes out before eits start, the asking that question. You just asking the question its called a bridging question of the whole point of the thing is to give them a chance to think about it. Does that answer that . Sure. Once he went to eits, he was belligerent and resistant and once he went to a state of cooperation, what was he like . Immensely charming. He reminded me of yoda. It was like visiting a sufi master. Everybody thinks hes pure evil, and he is a pure evil but what i used to tell the folks who would come after eits were over, i would tell them sometimes you rub the devils belly, sometimes you poking into either quit in the belly rubbing stage with ksm. We will not be doing any eye poking. Not that it would really do i poking the people coming and it would would think they need to be very nascent within your to be some kind of tough debriefer almost an interrogator. Now that was necessary. Unless you have sideways with and if you got sideways with him, heaven help you. I havent seen this much raw brainpower in one place since the last time i sat in a cell with justin. He is probably the brightest person ive ever seen in my life, and ive seen some pretty bright people. And so he was very charming, immensely charming but that is often how evil looks. If evil looks to evil, you can push back against it. If its a charming then you bring people into the fold. You give them to act. He thinks come he thinks hes a jedi master, to an analogy. And that these people out there who he is recruiting our jedi warriors. Abu zubaydah told me i am in a long line of mohawk deans. Youd understand that you already lost. In the timeline the world is already under strict sharia law and as just a warrior who stand in my place. When i fall, another one will come up. You have already lost. You just dont know it. Its passing the way they think about that stuff. Tell us about the time you in his cell and he said go get the lady writes notes. I have something important to tell you spin im going to be careful about this because i dont want to upset her parents. I want to give you the full story. We were pressing him hard, actually we are past yankees and we were dealing with a wmd expert in their come and they were trying to figure out if alqaeda had any nuclear material. The reason for that, and this is really the reason that in the beginning it was as rough as it was. We had credible intelligence that ubl had met with the pakistanis that were distributing Nuclear Technology around the world to these rogue states that were outsourcing terror. Yet met with those pakistanis and the pakistani said the hardest part is to get the nuclear winter. The hardest part is to get the mature and ubl said what if we already have it . So the dubya and the, not jim and bruce jim and persisted in because hes been out of the ft for about a month, a month and half, and we are sitting in there with her and shes asking her questions and shes done, and she leaves. And we do this thing, i call a fireside chat, which is just sometimes when you take people out of one situation and you put them within your situation, the dynamics will pull them to act a certain way. So we go in it we say, the interrogations over. We are still sitting there. The interrogation to vote. Lets talk about how that went for you. Bruce, whose incredibly empathetic and you ksm like a little bit better because he had sons and ksm had sons, and i dont. Bruce says, i noticed that you are uncomfortable at times, that sometimes when the lady would ask you questions you would seem almost like youre going to Say Something but then you would hold back and you wouldnt say anything. We had a couple of those sorts of things, like what were you thinking about that . He said go get the lady who takes the notes, which he is only called everything the person who was three times as smart as we were, was actually asking the questions. But the g hardy islamist g hardy he said go get the lady who takes the notes we bring her back. He describes killing daniel pearl. He describes cutting his hat off and dismembering him and burying him in a hole. I know recall, the arbor is but one of us asked him, was a typical for you to do, thinking emotionally, this had to be hard to do. He said no, i had sharp knife. The toughest part was getting through the neck bone, just like that. Then he started kind of mugging and happy and it was creepy. That was when the sp what was it like sometimes he is yoda but then the evil side spirit the evil shines through. He referred to daniel pearl as daniel and just that tone of voice, daniel, you know . What you have to understand about ksm is ksm thought that what he was doing to daniel pearl showed his god, he assumes god, the god of islamists, not the god of islam but the god of islamists, is showed his god how much he loved his god. Because for ksm taking the life of someone who is helpless to prevent it, like you see ice is doing when they burn people in cages or when they crucified children, taking someones life who is helpless to prevent it shows his glory, shows how much his influence is. Its almost like an act of worship to him. Not a hostile act. So he is talking about daniel pearl as if they had some intimate moment. Its just creepy. After its over, we were walking back to the cell and one of the guards, lots of guards there, says to me, that guy needs to die. And he didnt mean that we should kill them. He meant that the world would be a better place if that particular monster was gone. Dont take what im saying out of context. What i am saying is these islamists who want to destroy our way of life have a set of beliefs that make it incredibly dangerous. So your question was . Describe what he told you about what they believe it he said islam is a religion of pleased. One of the conversations i had with him was i said you guys are telling us that islam is a religion of peace. What that about . You said it is a religion of peace. What will be at peace with sharia law is imposed on the whole world. So we are a religion of peace because we are trying to impose sharia law on the whole world. Right now it is not at peace because you have all of these different groups who believe they can influence how things are going. Western democracy and true sharia law could not coexist because we foolishly believe we get a vote and how we live. Or we can decide what our fashions are, that we can decide the laws that need to be enforced. Not true. In his mind, how we are supposed to live with established 1400 years ago in the corona and the perfect words and deeds of the prophet. Theres no question how we do that. I said how can you say that there is freedom of choice in your version of islam. How can you say that . And he said i am free. The perfect word of the prophet and the corona tells me everything i need to do in my life so i have to make no choices. I dont have many choices to make so im free to do whatever is allowed. If the exact opposite of the way that i think. The exact opposite of the way thing. He told us that americans didnt have the moral courage to do what would be necessary in order to prevent them from prevailing. He told me and this is one of those conversations. Not when he is being interrogated and not what we are trying to get intel out of him. He told us that our civil liberties, our willingness to be tolerant of other people, our openness, those were all flaws at all a had put into our character to ensure that islamists could win. Because they are just going to continue to do what they do what we make excuses for them. This excessive Political Correctness. Im certain if i sit down and say what he think about this excessive Political Correctness committee with their flawed and tell me essentially what happens is its a cloaking device so they can operate in the open without being confronted. And that is a big deal. He said to me that al qaeda he wasnt a member of al qaeda. Yet not sworn by al qaeda. Hes basically a free agent at that particular point. Al qaeda dreams of bringing down america with catastrophic attacks. The railway the target is its not buildings, and not our road spirit the minds of the american spirit we dont have to defeat you. Well may have to persist long enough for you to defeat yourself. We only have to persist long enough. I talked to abu hottie one time it was a military commander and did a lot of attacks against americans. I was asking about how he stages ambushes, where they didnt stay there longer, fight longer, try to kill my people. He said well have to go one or two americans because its not the americans over there we are trying to kill. We can defeat them, but the American People like you to turn tail and run. And when you do, we will be able to take over. That is the way they think. They think they think that they have been given a special position by their god and the right to dominion over the world. Im talking about the islamists. Not islam in general. They been appointed by their god to determine what your childs future is. And if they dont do that, this is the piece that so hard for people to understand. If they dont do that, they will suffer the torments in the grave. They will be judged. Whether or not they participate in the jihads and whether or not they continue to do that in spite of all of the difficulty is, part of what happens when at the end of their lives theres this accountability. The piece that i come away knowing that i didnt know then was that they first off, the deaths of their belief. I dont think most americans understand that they know kidding believe what they believe. They really do believe that there is a paradise. They really do believe they are going to end up with 72 spiritual beings that become virgins every time you sex with them. They really do believe theyll be treated like rock stars up there and never have to walk for anything. They believe that stuff. It sounds ridiculous to me, but they believe it. To those people who say 9 11 had nothing to do with islam, nothing to do with islam, i would say i beg you in the World Trade Center they were people who thought the attack had nothing to do with islam, nothing at all to do with islam. But thats not what the little guy who drove that plane into the building. It had everything to do with islam. What we are doing thats incorrect because im the guy that interested in finding them and killing them. I can imagine a situation in which someone has crucified and childers said someone on fire in a cage or through people off the building or nailed people to trees. I can imagine a situation in which i say to that person, heres how it really is. With aikido like us. Here is i didnt think of it that way. Not that you put it like that, im going to quit doing these horrible things. They dont think like that. What i say to them, we want to get a law. We would like to get along with you. Theres no reason for us to fight. The first bank asm thinks that thats a weakness. That and they got it in your hand so i can manipulate you. Thats what he thinks. We have to start inking about terrorists the way they think about themselves and not have a big thing. In another life before i got caught up in a cia interrogation things, i used to do forensic evaluations for horrible people. , murderers, child molesters. And what does it them thought about by the perpetrator with a tacky man had nothing to do. Theyre not at what the perpetrator thought. In matters like they came. Doesnt matter what i mean. So whether i think it has anything to do with islam or not is completely irrelevant. It matters what they think. It doesnt matter if we were in a religious war with him. What you cant still realize is we are in a battle of civilizations. Our civilization will defeat your civilization in part because you dont have the moral fortitude to recognize this for what it is. You may not be in a religious war with me, but im in a religious war with you and we are going to win because you dont acknowledge that. And if you think back, if you are asm and using that, it doesnt matter that we would like to live with them and get along with said and all that stuff. Makes no difference at all because he will continue to press forward. Weve heard a lot of voices on both the left in the right in recent as the rise of isis estimates in the resent the al qaeda attacked us nine 9 11 was that wanted to dry quagmire in afghanistan and that is that isis is trying to do in iraq and syria. They want to drive in and get us to bog down so they can kill us there. Kf anthology something very different about what he thought would be the response to the 9 11 attacks. The were asking him long after they were over. Bruce and i, dr. Justin and i are there and we go one that we go milk. Both were you guys thinking . Look tired means the brain. Thats what he liked to be called. So we win and we are sitting within only go what are you thinking . What did you think we were going to do and you wanted to take out the Capitol Building. And he said first off they were surprised the World Trade Center fell. When the World Trade Center itself, he said i thought it was a sign from allah that it was time to rest out. It was the beacon to draw other jihadist to us. The muslims around the world who stared the same night that would rise up and attack america. And then he goes, but then i was lucky to survive the night. I thought you would do what you always do. I thought you would turn tail and run. In 1983, the Marine Barracks in beirut has blown up. Reagan turned tail and ran. Its 2000. The cole was blown out. They make it an fbi issue. You guys turn tail and run. 1998, two embassies or not. Turn it over to the fbi. Nothing happened. So what i thought was you turn it over to the fbi. They would be this long investigation. You asked the taliban to extradite a family would have time to pull off another attack. And then he looks down and make us how was i to know that cowboy george bush would say he wanted us dead or alive and invade and to get us . Instead of just about take that, like he was befuddled, like he couldnt imagine it. What is he doing . Apparently he was the only one who didnt know you dont mess with texas. Its not because of the terrain and the attitude of the people who live in texas. So he was startled by it. In fact they had made steps to ensure the taliban wouldnt allow them to be turned over. They have helped the taliban killed the Afghan Northern Alliance leader and an agreement that it helped him kill that guy, they wouldnt allow them to be extradited. He told us that he had been funding to the tune of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of all its not work and already had people lined up. I dont remember whether they were already in Flight School are on their way to fight old. If we had handled it as a line for that matter, he wouldve had time to launch that attack and married the big smoking holes in los angeles, seattle and chicago because those are the targets he had read what he said was the veracity and the swiftness of george bushs response, initially they were fleeing for their lives. They were trying to stay alive. It got them off balance and off kilter and they couldnt pop up on the radio. They couldnt reach it with people overseas. Theyre incredibly frightened to do anything. When they started getting that thing back on track because it was too late initially by ferocity and swiftness of george bushs response. We have captured people and through the use come at a very brief to use them, they were falling like dynamo. So what ended up happening was the people involved in it of being captured and the whole thing was disrupted. So i dont know about you guys, but im actually grateful that president bush did what he did. What else did he say about bush . What is his view of george bush . Well, every time he referred to when caught in that cowboy. In that tone of voice. That cowboy. He just he thought bush was plain unfair. Thats the thing that was so weird as he thought it was unfair that we didnt follow the template that we have followed before. There is a lesson to be learned here. This is the lesson for Going Forward. They based how vulnerable we are and what they could get away with it by what we had done in the past few years. Look at what weve done in the last eight years and ask yourself, what is isis and al qaeda thinking now . Im not you know, i just dont think we can treat im going to make a little comment here thats going to anger some people. We are seeing increased attacks because weve been trying to manage it like a problem. Weve quit trying to find and kill those people who are going to destroy us and were trying to figure out a way to live with them and are meant. Thats not going to work for these guys. It might work for 99 . If youre an islamist and you think you want to take over the United States by voting for out breathing masks, i do not an issue with you. I really dont. Good luck. I dont think you can do it. If youre pessimistic is the way to do it is to crash a plane into the Capitol Building until legislators, i have a problem with it. I dont want to see it happening. And thats the problem. So, he told you a lot of ideas he had for plot that could easily be carried out. I dont want you to say anything that would endanger us, but could you give us a flavor of his kind of thinking and also how dangerous would eat if he was able to freely communicate with the outside world . It would be horrific. It would be absolutely horrific. Al qaeda dreams these largescale attacks. But he got fascinated by the outlay a sniper. Remember when that was going on in the other guy mohammed. They were hiding in the trunk of cars and shooting people. I think they killed 17 people. He was fascinated by that. You would spend hours talking about that and then he would talk about the economy of scale and what that means for planning attacks because thats what hes always doing. He gets up everyday and tries to figure out how to kill more americans. What he said was these largescale catastrophic attacks and that would be great. But thats not all that goal. It is too slow. The target is enter buildings or tanks or military. The target is our minds. It not going to be one with blood and bullets. Its going to be one in our heads. So what he said is we need lots of lone wolf. He didnt collect that. He called them single martyrs, shahid who would go into the American Culture and pull off lowtech attacks. With enough of those attacks like happened with the beltway shooter, it would cripple america. And i cant really go into the attacks because they were incredibly easy and horrific, you know. But he said what we can expect is what we are going to see more of because likeminded brothers are going to emigrate to the United States. Hes not saying that al qaeda is going to deliberately sent people over although theyve done that in the past. What he is saying is that other islamists like himself are going to migrate to the United States, wrapped themselves in our civil rights to protect themselves, live off our welfare system, feed themselves, spread their jihadist message and when the time is right, rise up and overthrow us from within. And he was pretty good at predicting the future. He said that about walmart to. In 2004 and he was just sitting around talking about this stuff. This is whats coming next. Get ready for it. He had a lot of ideas for these attacks. President obama wanted to put these guys in federal pay a cent. How dangerous would it be to put someone like asm in a federal prison. The mob not return prison, drug cartels run out of prisons. If case and was able to communicate from federal prison, what would that mean for our security . Well, and hopefully nobody would even can better giving him access to the outside world. I mean, that would be crazy. I have mixed feelings i have to tell you. I dont like asm on u. S. Soil. But ive seen a National Security prison. He would be a lot worse off there than he is here. I wish we could build one on guantanamo. If these 23 hours a day in isolation and one hour out in the yard and is not allowed anybody else, and that would be coming in now, some form of justice for him. But i dont think it would have been that way. Im for leaving him in guantanamo are doing what they shouldve done in the first place. Let me tell you my reaction to having his confession set aside. K. Sm told me he was ready to be a martyr, that he was ready to martyr himself, meaning he was ready for the u. S. To execute him. When he got to guantanamo, he made out this long list of things that he had done him a 28 of them. And he pled guilty in front of the military commission. And then the Obama Administration that that aside because they wanted to try him in new york. Let me tell you what that little monster thought. He thought this is aside from god that im not supposed to martyr myself now but instead ends up is to continue to jihads inside the system. As soon as i saw him do that, i thought that little guy is going to be the most obstructionist defendant probably in the history of the military commissions. If you look at all the things hes done to disrupt that, youll see what im talking about. He is a master at that sort of stuff and he thinks that his scott has not commanded him to drag this out as long as he can because he believes the oil palm where likeminded jihadist to the cause. Some of the plots he conceived came out, like for example poisoning reservoir. People poohpoohed them over here and said thats ridiculous. How much poison which you need to poison a reservoir. When you told him this, he was actually offended. I went back and that was his business about poisoning brilliant man. During the campaign, donald trump said we will bring back waterboarding and worse. After meeting with general mattis, he said general mattis told me thats never really worked for had and we are going to use cigarettes and to convince. I dont know if that was taken out of context. You know how things get taken out of context when somebody says something thats a good sound bite. Perfectly like to address that. We know that didnt work for ksm because he had two days of conversation and tea. All he did was rock and pray and talk to interrogators. So there was plenty of opportunity for the tea and sympathy to work with ksm. This is the question i would ask general mattis or i would ask you. Would you give information that would get americans killed if you are captured by a space or al qaeda or a michelob and a pack of wednesdays. I dont think so. Its insulting to suggest that the general would do that. Ksm wouldnt do that either. Somewhere between waterboarding and worse than whats in the army field manual, i think there needs to be some form of legal, let me reemphasized that in the legal coercion to move them along so that you could start using social influence to get them talking again. Because here is the way i would say the way i think about the yankees. I think about them like a dental phobia, right . Have you ever known anybody with a dental phobia . When is it they tried the hardest to get out of the dentist . And they are reaching for the door. Rent with their ration for the door of dentist office. Theyre looking for an excuse not to go in that. So what we found because of the way we put the program together was that when they were likely to give up information was that when we were waterboarding them for whatever we were doing. Its before the next session started. What i told you as we would ask i told gillespie was asked on a bridge in question. I might ask him where he got his tie. He doesnt want to tell me. We do enhanced interrogation and when its over, i say to him, go back to your cell and think about this. This is. This doesnt have to happen this way. This is your choice. Next i would. Next on the come on im going to ask you where you got that tied. And if you tell us this wont happen again. We dont want to do this. It doesnt have to happen. The next time they bring them out in the first thing we ask is where did you get that tied . If he tells us note eit, were involved in, so he moves out of it and has been working with us for months. Its the cold bomber, gets caught and we do the neutral assessment and we come back and we know we will have to use eit on him because hes unwilling to provide information hes going to tell us everything about the attack, but we are not i was not sent there to be a Law Enforcement officer. I was not sent there to be a Mental Health worker. I was sent there to use what i know about psychology and the weapons against the people who are trying to destroy us by getting them to talk to us and we say we dont want to do this. We dont want to water board him or use the its on him. You up to help us. Tell us how to get around this and he said no, you have to do this for all of them and im literally thinking what and he goes, if they help you its a sin and they will suffer the torment of the gray, so you have to do this in either me or bruce said, you mean we have to use more and he said no, not more, just enough because if you choose more than required all luck will know that and then he will punish you. If you use less than required and the brother gives up the information he will punish him. All of this not expect that because he knows i cant do it and he doesnt spirit expect me to carry a burden thats too great to bear and he knows that when i get tired i will set that down because i cannot do it, so the brother has to be pushed to the points that he is right with his god so he can save face with his god and not suffer the torment of the gray and i said so you are saying we need to do this to everyone because im starting to not like it and he said, no, some brothers cant stand any pain and the only reason im same pain because he said pain, not because i think it was necessarily painful and he said some brothers cannot stand any pain. They already known they cannot hold out and it would be a scene a sin and all that would punish you. Other brothers, there was nothing you could do to get them to talk and there was no way could do anything physical to get them to talk. All and knows that any future i and you hurt those people then they will punish you. In the middle there were all these people who need to resist to the best of their ability and then when their burden is too great they can set it down and freely talk to you without worrying about the torment of the gray and that profoundly change the way i think about it because what it did for me is help me to switch my perspective from what jim mitchell, the white guy that grew up in rural florida thinks about how these interrogations should be done and got to be focusing on whats in their head and how they interpret what we are doing. For example, this ability that is too great to bear, at the worst of times when we were still in the middle of eits i wanted a way to suggest to him that he could work with us that he didnt have to continue to do what he was doing, so this would be another social influence thing and i used i told him, i dont know about your god, but my god does not expect me to carry a burden i cannot carry. He knows at some point im going to put it down and he goes my god feels the same way, so im not telling him what islam thinks. Although, im using that as a way to get him, planting the idea he does not have to continue to resist. Did i answer your question . Why do we take some questions from the audience. Sure. Do we have microphones . Thank you. I can almost hear you. Can you hear me now . Yes. I wanted to bring you back to your point earlier that there seems to be some legal coercion. Can you describe what that would look like . Also, i would like to get your reaction to the condemnation you have received from the American Psychological association who lambasted you and your partner after the senate should report came out on torture. Thank you. First let me respond to the American Psychological association. Those people are not part of my life and i dont care what they think. Thats a report is full of mischaracterizations. The suggestion the cia somehow colluded with the American Psychological association to justify interrogation is poppycock, crap, so i dont i mean, zero impact on my life and i dont care. Second point he asked me about is what it should look like. I dont know. What jim mitchell thinks it should look like is a relevant. I think the market public needs to have a debate about how they want to protect themselves. I think they need to ask themselves and i would ask president elect trump of this, what are you going to do when you have a credible evidence like the cia did of another pending catastrophic attack that we did not know had been disrupted that could potentially involve Nuclear Weapons and the person you are interrogating or questioning isnt responding to the army manual . What you going to do . There are people in who in our government who say well, what we would expect in those cases is that the cia interrogators would do the right thing. They would use whatever means necessary to get the information out of them and then at trial, at their trial we would take that into consideration. If, if they save lives. The problem with the disruptive attacks is they dont happen and when they dont happen the people he doesnt happen to begin to think maybe it wasnt going to happen, so as a guy who has been under the bus more than one time in my life about this issue, i would say those people who say that wanted to live under the protection of the men and women who are willing to sacrifice their life to protect them, but they are unwilling to provide the protection of law and i dont want to be a part of that. I have said before to people and what i have said is that at some point if theres deceptive Political Correctness continues we will be standing on the moral high ground looking down into a smoking hole that used to be several blocks in los angeles. At some point, someone will have to make some hard decisions. What did we do in the past . In the past we turn them over to other countries who really did torture them. The same thing has happened to the word torture that has happened to the word racist. Its been used so often that it has lost its meaning. I do reporter asked me one time im not going to say that. Just because of the audience. I dont want to say that. I want to say my response. Maybe i will. [laughter] he said, was this thing you did torture and i said no. If it was torture they would not had to pass a law in 2015. Torture is already illegal. Half the Justice Department and the land would not have opined five times that was not a torture one time after i personally water boarded an assistant attorney general before he made that decision three or four days later, so the time to tell me it was torture was when the attorney general got off the water board. That would have been an excellent time to tell me. I would have been listening had he told me, but thats not what he said. He said, i felt like i was going to drown, but i dont think its torture. He did not say that at the time. He said that later in his opinion. The other thing it sucks. I water boarded almost as many lawyers and up at this out there if there are any lawyers in the group there. [laughter] i water boarded almost as many lawyers as i did paris. Im one down. I just need one. I could get that off my bucket list. Although, i would be willing to do more than one. [laughter] anyway, it sucks, but if its done properly and im not advocating waterboarding work i dont want to be the poster boy for waterboarding. I did not like it. Most people dont know every single time waterboarding was stopped by the cia that it was the interrogators that wanted to stop. There were people in the building who wanted to continue and they wanted to use it more often. We just said, the person is working with us and theres no point. So, i had to thought and i got off on a rampage. Give me the question again . Host Going Forward what should we be doing . Guest its not my future. Im a crabby old white guy whos heavily armed with a concealed carry permit. My house has more stingers than a portuguese manofwar. My entire military career was spent learning how did defend my myself and my wife is a better shot than i am took its not my future they are coming for. Its the future of your kids they are coming for cause of the American Public has to decide what they want. What are they going to do when they get credible intelligence theres another catastrophic attack and the army fuel does not work . If ks and had been willing to talk the cia doesnt give a rats high knee where they get their intelligence if they can get it from you while they are willing to give it than they are happy with that. I would never had been there. If all had Law Enforcement had been working than i would never have been there. The fact is on the worst of the worst those people who know the most about those folks trying to kill us, there needs to be some sort of strategy. We have to think it through. Host questions . Visage on right there this gentleman right there. Im from human. I mean, it seems like isis are more i did then an organization and even though you differentiate between islam and muslims, they have common sharing thoughts, which offer a very wide area to recruit people, so how do you think can be to counter the narratives and among muslims even inside islam countries are outside islam countries to mitigate the number of people recruited to these groups . Guest okay. So, thats a very complex question that has about eight different phases to its. Let me give you the answer of how i think we should go about finding out the problem. The answer, not what the answer is. We used to have a thing called the terrorist think tank and once these guys started to cooperate with us we had them all relatively close to each other so that when we got a threat or picked up a piece of intel or captured someone got there pocket litter we could go to each one of them one after the other so, i could show abu zubaydah a surveillance photo and has who is this guy and he would say its soandso. Than i would go to Sheikh Mohammed and say who is this guy, same guy. He would say he soandso, but that time the back is a sniper and we have been training him to go to the us and shoot the ex president s. Thats a piece of information, so then im going back to abu zubaydah in seconds, so i think the thing we lost and i know we had to do it, but the thing that we lost when they were transferred to guantanamo is that think tank, where we could ask the terrorists if we were going to disrupt you how would we do that we would have to be clever about how we asked that question because, you know, obviously. Thats how we should have been able to answer the question, but its not how we can because we no longer have a terrorist think tank. We have a bunch of academics who are telling us what we need to do instead of the people who are most knowledgeable with what we need to do. Questions . This gentleman here. I like your hat. Gerald chandler. Thank you for coming. Could you tell me the process your company was selected. As i understand it got a Consulting Firm and you did not speak arabic, so what were the important parts of your background to select to have your copy selected . Guest well, that company existed in 2005, so the period we are talking i didnt exist and by 2005, i had had a tremendous amount of experience. It was an open bid and we bid on it using the same Government Contracting laws that feinsteins husband did on when he bid on a multibilliondollar contract he had and its evaluated the same way. The cia decided it was a sole source did and i dont know what their decisionmaking process was. We fully expected it to be a open bid for the companies and they decided if you want to know the decisionmaking process then you need to ask the cia, not me because i was not in those rooms. Gentleman a right here. Guest the other thing is i dont think the company necessarily needs to speak the language of everyone else. The most brilliant interrogator i have ever seen is the man who wrote that oped in the weekly standard, jason beall. Never worked for me, doesnt work with me and isnt someone thats a pseudonym, not his real name. He speaks fluent arabic and does his interrogations in english. Do you know why . Because sometimes the bad guys say things to the linguist that they would not say to the good guys. Please keep an open mind about why people do what they do. Following up on your first question, you kind of said it was really my generations problem and not yours, which is true , but i think just from my perspective there is legitimate criticism of the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration with dealing with terrorism and islamists, but it kind of seems like its more of an issue of prevention and management than just winning. Guest first off, youre not going to win. Heres the deal, its like a cold sore. All they will do is retreat. Its like a virus. You have to treat the vectors and you have to treat the source. We make it look sexy for them because we allow them to operate in the open and that is one of the things that pull young people into it. We make it instead of confronting them, we try to get them to like us enough that they want to attack us in all that does is convey to them that we are weak, that allah has put in our mind this thing that makes us vulnerable because we cant you know what, someone said isis and al qaeda did not represent the next essential threat to the United States. Levitate with that means. Im a guy that has been right at the point of the spear and when someone says that i hear they cannot kill enough americans to bring down our government, but our government doesnt exist so you can stack up americans like would. It exist to protect america. Its the opposite. Im disturbed by that sort of stuff, that kind of talk because it makes us look weak. Host nine being told our time is up. Went in ks am told you is that he predicted your country would turn on you. Itos about that . Guest sure, this is a 2004, probably. He said i understand why you do what you do. I would do this to myself to protect my country and our ideology he said, but your country will turn on you. Your leaders will turn on you. The American People will turn on you. The American Press will turn on you. Your leaders will turn on you to save themselves. The press will turn on you and they will portray the war and thats his words, not my words, the war against islam as too difficult to win and to cruel and not appropriate and the American People will turn on you and all of all that will do is stiffen the hearts bring joy to the hearts of other likeminded jihadis because they will see you as we can divided and that will bring them to our cause, so expected and he was pretty much right, just as soon the same people who criticize the cia for being to forward leaning with the same ones who brought them into the Senate Chambers and dress them down for missing the first attack, so as soon as they felt safe again they crawled back out from under that rock and started attacking the same folks that they had demanded that they do more. We were told to do everything that was legal. To walk right up to the line at 130s right on the line and we depended on the department of justice to tell us what that was. They had four, maybe five chances and each time a salt told us the same thing. Something happen inside the cia that was wrong. Jim mitchell who is pretty tough about these things but it was probably torture. But, it wasnt. Wasnt part of the official program and leaders of the cia found that those things out and they took the appropriate action. Host i will close by saying simply that the American People never turned on you. 2015 Washington Post poll found 76 of americans said they would do it again if necessary to protect the country. Looking forward, should we use these techniques and 17 said we should use them often, 40 said sometimes, 19 really and only 20 never justified. Guest let me say this. Im not for legally torturing anyone. If its torture, dont do it. If its illegal, dont do it. If, if our government believes that the death of 3000 people because you want to use the army fueled manual is a way to go and we can live with those losses because its on a next essential threat to the people who live in this area, then i would expect the American People would not put up with that crap. Im not advocating that we torture people. On advocating that we have a civil debate about whether there are forms because one of the underlying assumptions i know we are out of time one of the underlying assumptions is that they had the right to remain silent, that these people who have taken up arms voluntarily against us, who are not american citizens have the right to protect the information so they can kill us. The other thing about it is sometimes they say they could not do anything to stop them. There was an easy thing they could do to stop them. They could stop in the instant when they said ill answer that question. They wouldve gone away and then they did as quick as we could. Jim, i have four kids and because of what you did and your colleagues did we were not hit again, so on behalf of millions of americans who are grateful to you, thank you for keeping our country safe and thank you for joining us here today. [applause]. Guest i just want to say the book is about me, but i was not the only when there and by no means deserve the bulk of the credit, so the men and women in the cia and the military can keep us safe from our enemies, but they cant keep us safe from ourselves. Host jim will find copies of the book outside, if you are interested. Thank you