he wouldn t go higher than 1.5. so if he doesn t answer and say i m not going higher than 1.5, the assumption is based on how things work in d.c. is that he s willing to go higher, but not much higher. it s a little whacky to claim at this juncture after everything that s gone through voting and the framework on the floor and where we are in the spending process, that it has to be some state secret what you re for. candidates routinely run for the senate and promise to do things then you get in there, you have sinema, said she was going to change the way business works. essentially taking a super secrecy position. whenever you think of mcconnell, republicans, they re public about the level of spending they would go along with and most of the democrats and the president. so she s sort of that outliar there. your thoughts on that, michelle, as well as the numbers that i think bear repeating. the support for key tenants of the bill like drug price reform,
torture, michlin jeffs, the two contract psychologists have written about him. they have given interviews about him. one of them wrote a memoir in they defended the torture. three former cia directors wrote a rebuttal to the senate torture report defending the torture. everybody knows that abu zubaydah was tortured. it s not a state secret. but this is what the cia does with some regulate. they re go into court and just say national security, and oftentimes that s enough to get a case dismissed. but you believe abu zubaydah should be released? i actually do, as crazy as that might sound. he has been incarcerated, not just incarcerated, but tortured mercilessly at guantanamo and at a series of secret prisons for almost 19 i m sorry, almost 20 years now. we captured him on the night of march 22nd, 2002. so here we are 20 years later, and the man has never been charged with a crime.
those details are, quote, state secrets. and yet abu zubaydah s torture has already been confirmed by john kiriakou, the former cia counterterrorism officer who helped capture him. in 2007 he became the first current or former member of the agency to publicly acknowledge its use of torture. and in 2013 under the obama administration, he was imprisoned for leaking classified information. i m joined now by john kiriakou. john, thank you so much for copping on the show this evening. the central issue of abu zubaydah s case is this idea that his torture and detention at a black site in poland is a state secret, even though the facts about his treatment and cia torture are now widely known, partly thanks to you. do you buy that argument? and is it strange for you, the man who caught him, to now be advocating for his release from guantanamo where he has been held without charge since 2006? it is funny the twists and turns that life takes, isn t it? you know, so much has been written about
that his torture and detention at a black site in poland is a state secret, even though the facts about his treatment and cia torture are now widely known, partly thanks to you. do you buy that argument? and is it strange for you, the man who caught him, to now be advocating for his release from guantanamo where he has been held without charge since 2006? it is funny the twists and turns that life takes, isn t it? you know, so much has been written about abu zubaydah, not just by journalists, but by the people who were involved in his torture, michlin and jesson, the two contract psychologists have written about him. one of them wrote a memoir and they defended torture. three former cia directors wrote a rebuttal to the senate torture report defending the torture. everybody knows that abu zubaydah was tortured. it s not a state secret. but this is what the cia does with some regulate.
timeline, which often can make progress, can crystallize for people what is at stake, what we re trying to do here, which is to make life better for the american people. there have been discussions about what the path forward looks like, productive, constructive, as i said in the statement we put out, we feel we made progress, discussions continued today and continue as we speak. that statement i was referring to, anything more you can delineate about what that progress is exactly? press sec. psaki: i think we all know what we re trying to work toward here, it is not a state secret. there are a couple members of the senate who want to be comfortable with what the build back better package looks like. there are a couple members of the progressives caucus, several members, who want to know a path forward on the build back better agenda. what we re working toward is unifying a path to get both