That begins at 8 00 pm eastern. Enjoy booktv every weekend on cspan2. Good afternoon. I am director of the center on National Security, i am delighted to be joined by ali soufan, author of the black banners declassified how torture derailed the war on terror after 9 11. You probably know ali soufan from some of the events weve done together, a special agent with the fbi, investigated highprofile terrorism cases before, during and after the 9 11 attacks. Is in recent years brought his investigative skills to the private sector, ceo of the founder of the center, his specialty is Global Security affairs from governance culture to state actors to nonstate actors and i will explore as much of that today as we can. I want to deck out each day, we publish the intel brief which is something you should read every day. It is a wonderful deep dive into timely issues that go to the heart of what we are thinking about even if it is not in the headlines. From white to premises him to what is happening with geopolitics of nationstates and regional powers. I encourage you to read it every day and the morning briefs which the stefan Group Sponsors and the director of National Security produces which is in its fourteenth year which brings use the news every day about what you should be thinking about National Security. Thank you for joining me today. Welcome. Thank you. Dont stay mute. This will not be a good conversation. I want to talk about the book and then talk about other things. As you know from your invitation you can buy this book online by pushing a button that says to buy it. And as we are talking we will get to them. I want to start with the title of the book. When the book came out in 2011, it was subtitled the inside story of 9 11 and the war against al qaeda. It focuses on torture. So much was redacted and classified, had to do with torture, your involvement with al qaeda suspects and others and i want to get to derailing the war on terror before we get to what is different about the book. Lets talk about how the war on terror was derailed and how this book brings that too late. When i wrote the book it was supposed to be a book recounting my own personal experience serving the nation in the war on terror. I meant the book to be a publication that can spark a conversation based on reality, all the successes that we had after 9 11 and the successes and failures before 9 11 but also the failures we had on 9 11. The 2003 iraq war for example. When i submitted the book to the fbi has anyone can expect, and annoying process and they asked me to change a couple things which did not create any problems for me. Within the boundaries of any preoccupation but fortunately out of courtesy they sent it to the agency but the Agency Review was it started to get crazy as you have probably seen from the first one. Torture did not work. This is not how we get information regarding it. I cannot say how we get the information, how we identify Khalid Sheikh mohammed as the mastermind. And then amongst everything that has to do with the alleged efficacy of the Technique Program was redacted. I always described the process as distortion i reduction. So if you are forced you can say whatever you want and you can publish it. The review board will give you the green light. But if you have a problem in what happens happened and if ye telling the truth about what took place if these interrogation rooms, you would be heavily censored and heavily redacted. So after nine years of fighting and after the clinic jump to help [inaudible] who challenge the redactions of the black banners First Amendment, the government was asked if they can do another review of the book and this time the review was very fair. For the most part everything that they redacted has been unredacted, and now people can read exactly what happened. The very First Edition of the book was about the war on terrorism in jail, everything that happened from the date bin laden declared jihad on the United States until his death in may. So now it is in the way the same book but there was so much information that has been classified on National Security grounds, the first time, it makes it another book. Its a piece that did not exist in most of that has to do with torture and when you read and when you see it you will see how that program was devastating to u. S. Interests and devastating to all the success, or the lack thereof, in the war on terror. So i i want to take this opportunity to also thank the cia and the leadership of the cia for taking this amazing step of institutional transparency and declassifying the black banners to people now can read the truth. Because what i said in the black banners in 2001, my firsthand experience, right, so i saw was happening, i somehow the information. In many instances i was there when we got information for i personally got the information. When you look into this and you say okay, your account is being declassified on National Security ground. What you actually are admitting is that it is the truth. Because you dont classify lies. If i was lying they wouldve said you can publish it. No, this guideline. So now, ironically, that helped the truth in the long run. Now what people read what happened i would happen with different people who gave him a leases in the book. They will know the truth and they will know they were lied to win so many people who come through all the successes and made it as the result of the socalled interrogation techniques. That is why the decision was made to change the subtitle of the book to focus on torture because this is the first time you will read exactly what happened in interrogation rooms. You will have a front seat to the interrogation room. Its a rare occurrence for something to become declassified by a former official in what yours has been declassified. And probably unprecedented in your particular case and your circumstances. Why do you think they got declassified . Do you think it has anything to do with reports, or the cia tried to send a different message . How do you account for this . I think, first of all im grateful, grateful for the law clinic. Im grateful for all the people who helped and supported david kelly, my attorney who was with me from day one, fighting figure an agency for declassification. But i believe a lot of people wrongfully, and you and i talked about this, believed that the torture program was a cia program. I dont believe it was a ca program, and you and i have these discussion before. The torture program even the cia Inspector General defined as the cpc program, that is it Different Program units in the cia. A lot of people in the cia, officers in the cia for not under cpc as youll see it now in the book, or against this program more than i was, and in this program. So thats why so many people went and complain to the Inspector General, and Inspector General did an investigation and their investigation, and in his investigation he made it clear he could not find in of the threat that was disruptive to be intimate, number one, number two he basically said yes, the Interrogation Program worked, traditional interrogation worked. The i. T. , welcome its a subjective matter, very difficult, and really dont think theres anything. He defined as a cpc program. The second mistake that a lot of people make, fbi versus cia. Im glad that the book has been unredacted because it shows it was not fbi versus cia. It was washington hiring a contractor to oversee a bigger program, bigger than him and big and basically the cpc at the time. And how that would look at everything that happened and we find out what i was talking about in 2002 and has been redacted and the people can read. Now you can see it happening, for example. We cannot prosecute any of these people for anything even though they have american blood on the hands because what they went through at the black site. I believe theres a lot of people in the cia good people, a lot of good people in the government that belief in with the cia Inspector General concluded, that believed in what im saying here in the book, that belief in what the report came up with. Those people were not involved in all the problems of the past. They didnt make these decisions in the past. Those people left. I think a lot of people wanted to turn the page and once put everything out. There is a transparency here that we did not see in the last two decades of anything. Thats why the timing of the release of this book is extremely important because what we face today is a political culture that is based on alternative facts, on partisan talking points, on conspiracy theories but these did not start with trump. This has been in our political culture for a long time. What we see with trump is just a step towards, a next logical step if you want to call it to whats happening. [inaudible] if you believe in law of order, are you most republican and if you dont, your most probably democrat . We need everything to be a partisan issue. Thats why President Trump or at the time candidate trump was saying i want to bring back waterboarding. Because of something that can bring the cheers of the crowd. But now you have the opportunity to see the facts behind this, to see the truth behind the disinformation about the efficacy of the interrogation techniques and waterboarding. And you will see how so many Different Levels operationally and strategically totally failed and hurt our National Security interests. Lets talk about that because we often hear the phrase, this has been partisanized a whatever that verb is, which is torture doesnt work, right . Ive always been curious what does that statement mean lex it can mean totally different things. It can mean you dont get information. They can meet all of them. You dont get information at all. It means that you get bad information. It means a variety of things that you can talk but institutional down the road like not being able to try people but to you when you say torture doesnt work, eits didnt work. Tell us about the universe you are talking about. You are right it means a lot of things but im going to talk about it from your perspective. Im not going to touch on pushing around the country i dont want to go back and show you that the terrorism that we have today came out of egyptian jails because theyre torturing. Im not going to go down that path. Lets talk about the United States. We are a nation based we have prosecutions, and limits that prohibit these kind of inhumane treatments, right . So he took an oath to protect the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And these constitutional protections have speedy trials, have humane treatment, have all these kinds of things that we are talking about. But also the cornerstone of all our International Policy and who we are as a nation, is a nation that believes in freedom, in democracy, like Ronald Reagan said, that shining city on the hill. We advocate for human rights. We have the goshen state department stating and calling enemies and allies who practice sleep deprivation, temperature deprivation. These things are taken from the 2002 state Department Report about allied countries in the world and we were doing it ourselves. So when you have significant contradiction between the laws, between who we are as a nation, between what we say publicly, and then between our strategy, when these things dont go handinhand together, its a total failure. It fits within what was said, if you know yourself and you know your enemy, you will imagine if you forget about yourself in new york and you no clue about the enemy, you are going to fail and thats why members of alqaeda on the eve of 9 11 caused the United States trillions of dollars just to become or a thousand members today, right . I now theyre not only in afghanistan, they are on in some aldie, in yemen, you name it. Im not even mentioning isis looking at of alqaeda. They lasted in a war thats longer than world war i, world war ii, vietnam wars altogether. And guess what. We are in such a dangerous situation today, and thats because a lot of these things. This is because of from strategic perspective, our laws and our strategy, okay, were not in sync together. This is number one. Operationally speaking, its a totally different situation. The biggest disaster, and they would agreedupon, even President Trump, we launched the biggest disaster in iraq were in 2003, iraq war. We went to iraq, invaded the country, hundreds of thousands of people are dead, trillions of dollars wasted. You name it. We gave a new birth for alqaeda. Alqaeda was dying before the 2003 war in iraq and ultimately we gave birth to isis. At the time they wanted evidence that saddam and alqaeda were working together. Everybody in the cia and the fbi and the pentagon who knew these things come we know there were not working together. But that was not good enough, right . So they took a guy who worked with alqaeda. They tortured him and he said yes, they are working together. Absolutely that developing wmd program together. We took this information to the United Nations he could counsel, i think everybody remembers. Secretary chao holding that small little too with the George Kennedy kent behind talk about how alqaeda and saddam are working together to develop wmd which would be devastating to any American City or any city around the world once we got iraq without everything was a lie. We kind of knew it was a lie. Colin powell was forced to go into it. He did not make sense. But when we look back to the sheikh and said to them why did you lie . Because you were torching me, i gave you anything you wanted to hear. So operationally speaking, there is a big difference between compliance and between cooperation. Compliance is when i get what i want to hear. Dick cheney wants to hear saddam and the logic working together, fine. He gets his is one thats exacy what happened. So it was very difficult for us to go to white house and say well, torture produced that information because we cut information we wanted, right . So now cooperation, you get the truth. A difference between compliance and between cooperation. We dont have unlimited resources to chase ghosts around the world, like in some instances we did because of the fake and the false information they were getting. We wanted which is in his book and how were getting facts, now what they did with these facts and some of the threats, for example, about the brooklyn bridge, for example, you know, theyre watching tv and watch a movie that showed a guy stepping over bridge. They started joking, how many infidels would die if we blow up that bridge . Suddenly weaving on television less than 24 hours on cnn, we were watching alqaeda wants to blow up the brooklyn bridge. Thats a big gap between what we reported and what had been sold to the American Public at the time. Theres a a big difference betn compliance and cooperation. So this is from an operation perspective. The other elements of the operations that we do overtime is basically justice towards the end, and Justice Kennedy liberty justice, intelligence justice or legal justice. What we have today are people have blood on their hands. We have a mastermind who admits killing more than 3000 americans. We cannot prosecute even in a military court because of what they went through and its program. The cia Inspector General warned about that back in 2004. All these things when fully back in 2002. But towards the end we would have a lot of what a going to do with these guys . Yet to think the longterm because after all, as i sit in the bacon are the United States of america and we have laws. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about guantanamo and the mr. Commissions and out torturers ts affected because as a disconnect military commission we want to get around the evidence with torture and hard to get by the fact they had been tortured all of these things complicate a just legal process. Do you think they will ever be tried . I dont know. I think its going to be a difficult situation. I seriously, i think some of these guys went through black sites and a lot of the information became tainted. And now how do you proceed with prosecuting someone when youre trying to classify the time period that they were in a black site . Thats the complexity, thats why 19 years after 9 11 and we still cannot prosecute Khalid Sheikh mohammed or others. His case was so strong to buy look at profiles so. Believe me i know i was a case agent. We help the yemenis secured him in yemen, and suddenly they had more rules of evidence that we have in the United States. We were able to find a yemeni judge to convict him and to sentence him to death. So we know what we have internationally in her own case files but, unfortunately, we were not allowed to talk to him because of the torture program and we were not working information resulted from the harsh treatment that he went through. Now hes in Guantanamo Bay and people he killed include the sailors murdered on october 12, 2000 in the gulf of aden, still waiting justice. We have one of the questions from our audience, somebody who worked in middle east for more than five years and hurt frequently have damaging the abu ghraib episode was to the United States. Do you think we have moved beyond that episode . If not, what do we need to do to move beyond that episode . You know, whats great about the United States that we eventually do the right thing. The whole world is seeing all these things happening. They a