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