S1E23 Good Company, Bad Company

THE BLURB: John wasn't the only CIA officer who refused training in the CIA's new "enhanced interrogation" techniques - despite assurances from the CIA's legal team. This episode's guest, author and former CIA officer Glenn Carle spent two decades in the agency. Like John, Glenn broke with the CIA over the subject of torture. Glenn was part of a team interrogating another high value Al Qaeda target, and, like John, came to appreciate that torture was completely ineffectiv"The Interrogator" here https://glenncarle.com/the-interrogator/e as a way to procure information from a detainee. SHOW NOTES You can learn more about Glenn's book "The Interrogator" here and you can purchase it here https://www.amazon.com/Interrogator-Education-Glenn-L-Carle/dp/B005UVQIAU. For more great podcasts like Dead Drop, please visit https://costardandtouchstone.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Confidence. It's listening to your gut. It's moving forward even when the path ahead is unclear. For nearly 160 years, Pacific Life has helped people keep their promises, building confidence for generations. Whether you're confident in your financial future or just beginning to envision it, we're here to help. Ask a financial professional how. Pacific Life: The Power of a Promise. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 0:37John Kiriakou?

  This podcast, it's a Coster and Touchstone production.

• 0:46John Kiriakou?

  Hi, I'm John Kiriakou. Welcome to Dead Drop: What Makes a Spy Tick. As always, we thank you for listening, and especially, we thank you for liking, rating, reviewing, commenting on, and sharing the podcast with your friends, your family. Hey, share it with total strangers, too. I appreciate that. We're on a mission here to make the world a better place through storytelling. The truth, we believe, will absolutely set you free, and if ever the world needed some truth telling, well, it's right now. In this episode, I'm going to introduce you to a columnist, commentator, and national security and foreign policy expert by the name of Glenn Carl. Glenn's another former CIA officer who, like me, was involved in

• 1:28John Kiriakou?

  counterterrorism operations during the war on terror. Glenn spent two decades working clandestine assignments for the agency. Also like me, Glenn opposed the enhanced interrogation techniques that the CIA insisted were legal, and he refused to participate in them. What's more, Glenn insisted, we were deliberately misrepresenting our opponents to ourselves. In a piece that he wrote for The Washington Post back in 2008, Glenn wrote that jihadists are "small, lethal, disjointed, and miserable opponents," and that "we do not face a global jihadist movement, but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally..."

• 2:10John Kiriakou?

  ...regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of Al Qaeda. Unquote. In 2011, Glenn wrote The Interrogator: An Education. While Abu Zabeda is part of that story, The Interrogator describes the physical interrogation of another prisoner who we believed was part of the Al Qaeda leadership. As you'll hear, Glenn struggled, and still struggles, with the official version of events versus how events actually happened. He's a former and founding member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. The other voice you'll hear asking questions during this conversation belongs to Alan Katz. Alan produces and co-writes the podcast. Thank you for joining us, Glenn. Would you mind giving us a thumbnail of how you got into all this?

• 2:53Speaker 02

  John, I was a career CIA officer. I was an operations officer, which to a layman is the, they're the officers who we go to watch in movies. You know, we are the real-life versions of James Bond, but rarely wear a tuxedo. The women are rarely supermodels, and there's a lot of paperwork involved in the job. But some of my colleagues actually did jump out of airplanes and do really wild stuff. I generally didn't do that. My job and my training and my background was to speak to sophisticated women in cocktail dresses while clinking wine glasses in salons in Paris. I was highly competent and trained for that, of course. And that's said tongue-in-cheek, but is also true.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  I was a, I am a Europeanist, and the job does involve the cocktail stuff that you see. I've only been in a casino four times in my life, however. But like many officers in the agency, if not most, as terrorism became more significant to the United States, this is even years prior to 9/11. And then certainly after 9/11, I was absorbed in, drawn into this whole world. In fact, seven or eight years before 9/11, I started to become involved in terrorist-related operations.

• 4:12John Kiriakou?

  This is Alan Katz speaking. We tend to forget that the Twin Towers bombing wasn't the first attempt to take the towers down. What year did they plant that bomb in the parking structure beneath the towers?

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was 1993. And it's roughly then, it was a little after in my case, that I started to become involved in terrorist things. And then the second half of my career was all terrorism all the time. And I, and my last position was, it's a long-winded title, I apologize in advance, was as the acting and then the deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats on the National Intelligence Council. And what that means to the uninitiated, which is everybody,

• 5:00Speaker 02

  is that the, um, the one body in the American intelligence community, which has seventeen agencies, the one that speaks for all seventeen and presents the, the assessed, assessment of the community, and the one body that reports directly to the president and, and serves his requirements or hers directly is the National Intelligence Council. It's very small, there are only twelve national intelligence officers, one of whom is for transnational threats, which, which doesn't only mean terrorism, but in the context of the world that we've all lived in,

• 5:44Speaker 02

  it meant ninety-seven percent of my time was on, on terrorism, almost literally, about ninety-seven percent. The narcotics and, and organized crime are the other two main portfolios. So that's how I ended up in it and in, being drawn into it. And I worked extensively for years and years on Afghanistan, on, and then on all Muslim terrorist issues. And that was as, um, one of the most senior, really, analyst in the community, which is unusual for an operations, a field officer.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  And because I was a field officer, I was also drawn into the operational, well, I conducted operations for years before being the National Intelligence Officer, and I was drawn into the Enhanced Interrogation Program and interrogated someone I may not name, but who was one of the top, believed to be one of the top people in Al Qaeda.

• 6:53John Kiriakou?

  Enhanced interrogation wasn't good for anyone in the end, was it?

• 6:56Speaker 02

  I could never even convince my mother to believe what I said. No one, the average person, simply doesn't, believes what they feel like believing and will think that it is a sign of wisdom to reflexively disbelieve whatever a CIA officer says, which is silly. Contrary to that conventional view, the CIA has never been in the business of interrogation, doesn't do them historically, has no background, training, is not part of the mission, and we didn't do it. Now, there are exceptions to that. During the Vietnam War, the CIA was involved in interrogations. After 9/11, the CIA, of course, in the Enhanced Interrogation

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Program, that became a big time focus of our energies. Well, the CIA was not either in the business of interrogation or of enhanced interrogation, which is, of course, a euphemism taken directly from the Nazis, literally, literally, of torture. I can give you a long, detailed history of our involvement. One of my first jobs in the agency, and perhaps the most controversial one, was I was a assistant to the head of what was called the Central American Task Force, and that was the part of the agency and the United

• 8:22Speaker 02

  States Intelligence Community that was leading our effort, frankly, to overthrow the Sandinistas and to support their conquests. And in that mission, and during that time, the CIA was accused of having trained...

• 8:48Speaker 02

  What, insurgents in El Salvador to garrot nuns and for the Contras in Nicaragua to do the same thing? And that actually is not true. We were trying to stop the people from garrotting anybody, but that did involve us and associate us with people who were doing terrible things. And it was a sordid situation in general, but we actually didn't do torture, which once again, no one will actually believe. But that was in the early mid eighties, early

• 9:30Speaker 02

  in my career. And then life went on and the agency had no, to my knowledge, certainly no staff, no training, no approach, no mission to do any of these things. And then after nine 11, after September 11, 2001, very quickly, within a matter of weeks, the US government, in particular, the CIA, found itself with increasingly large numbers of detainees, largely people who were taken prisoner on the battlefield in Afghanistan, but not only. And the mission of the CIA is to obtain intelligence. And an enemy combatant, or a terrorist, or someone

• 10:13Speaker 02

  who is shooting at you, or involved in a group that you don't like, probably has intelligence that you want to find out. And so the assignment was, well, okay, who does, who collects the intelligence? It's the CIA. And so then the issue was, well, how do we do this? And the instructions came pretty explicitly from frankly, the Office of the Vice President. This is what you will do. And that's how the CIA came to be involved in, quote, enhanced interrogation.

• 10:48Alan Katz?

  But as you pointed out, CIA had no mandate to interrogate.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  That's right. The FBI does, and they're very good at it. The US military does. And at least has formal training procedures, parameters and protocols, standards and so on. But the CIA did not.

• 11:07Alan Katz?

  You learn practices and standards and protocols and where the red lines are especially.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  You play as you practice, you fight as you train and you interrogate as you're taught how, or if not, then you wing it and all hell can go crazy. You go, hmm, it happened. But now, whether it was literally Dick Cheney or someone from his office, or as is certain, the small number, and we're really talking a dozen people even. It's restricted even to fewer than those of neoconservatives in the Bush administration, largely from the office of the Vice President and in the Department of Justice.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  I was not a firsthand witness to the very top exchanges, but I know how this happened. We found, we, the CIA, found itself with detainees.

• 12:03John Kiriakou?

  And in fact, George Tenet specifically said he needed to brief the President to get the President's signature. And Cheney said, you brief me, I'll brief the President. It wasn't until the release of the torture report that any doubt was even cast on the notion that maybe Cheney never briefed the President. There's always been, historically, there's been this competition between the FBI and the CIA. And many of us formerly with the CIA, it's hard for us to compliment the FBI. But if there's one thing the FBI is really great at, it's interrogations. And they've been doing it since the Nuremberg Trials.

• 12:46John Kiriakou?

  They're well-trained. They have decades, generations of experience.

• 12:52John Kiriakou?

  And you compare that to somebody in the office of the Vice President just picking up the phone, calling the CIA and say, "Start doing interrogation."

• 13:01Speaker 02

  That's literally the case. That's not reductive. That is not inaccurate or unfair. That's that's pretty much how it happened. We, the intelligence community, which is really the CIA and the military, special forces, we found ourselves with these detainees and it's it's a legitimate objective and requirement. What are we, how are we going to obtain the intelligence from these people? Okay, that's fine. Well, John or I, you know, we elicit, we talk, we might, we know how to question. I mean, that's all relevant, but that's not an interrogation. George Tenet, as John, I think, started to explain before, said to the White House, "We aren't doing anything without clear guidance. We are not going to break the law. We do not

• 13:42Speaker 02

  break the law." Because, and Deputy Directors of the CIA quoted these conversations that they had had and that Tenet had had to me. They said, "We," and this is, and John will nod, I'm sure, on this, "we, the CIA, are always left, given the dirty job, and that left holding the bag, and we're the ones who end up suffering the way John did." Or, "A lot of my colleagues were indicted," um, et cetera, et cetera. So, that's not going to happen. We follow the rules. We follow the law. What guidance do we have? And the Office of the Vice President, Cheney, said, "Absolutely. You're absolutely right. Dad, gun it. We'll get you the guidance." And they then went to the Department of Justice and

• 14:26Speaker 02

  they spoke to two political hacks, one of whom is still a professor, shockingly, at Berkeley, John Yu, and the other guy's name slips my mind, doesn't matter. And they said, "We need guidance." And so the guidance became, was a memorandum, which has since come to be called the torture memorandum.

• 14:48Alan Katz?

  When Cheney's office is looking for guidance, they, I'm assuming they, they, they picked the guidance that they went to. So...

• 14:56Speaker 02

  They picked the guy to provide the guidance they wanted.

• 14:59Alan Katz?

  They must have known that John Yu was going to give them exactly the guidance and exactly the words that they wanted to hear.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Absolutely. The OVP, Office of Vice President, went back to Tenet and they said, "Here's the guidance." And Tenet said, "This is cleared by the Department of Justice?" And they said, "Absolutely. This is all kosher, it's legal, blessed, whatever metaphor you want to use or analogy." And Tenet goes, "Okay." And this I don't know firsthand. Cheney went in to speak to President Bush and said, "Here's the guidance we're giving to the CIA on how to conduct interrogations." And Bush asked the correct, appropriate question. He said, "Has justice approved this? Has this been cleared with the Department of Justice?" "Oh, yes, sir." Then Bush then went, "Okay."

• 15:50Speaker 02

  And that came to the guidance. And the way that came down to me, and this is verbatim, this is firsthand, this is my life. When I was brought into the interrogation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The fellow who was to brief me, I found in the hallway in the counterterrorism center. It took me two hours to find him because he was running around. I was running around this and that. I said, "You know, I've been assigned to this operation. I'm going out to the field to take part in interrogation with this fellow. I was told to see you." And he said, and this is one of those moments, like, we all, if we're old enough, we remember what we were doing when Kennedy was shot, or when the space shuttle blew up, or when the Red Sox won the World Series, and this sort of thing.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  We're standing in the CTC, so the hallway was sort of the divider cubicle things, you know, John, you know what I'm talking about? Because it's a large bullpen. But it was against the wall. And so we're standing close, and he hooks me in the chest as he talks. And he said, "You will do whatever it takes to get him to talk. Do you understand?" And I physically recoiled. And I said, "This is verbatim." And I said, "We don't do that."

• 17:08Speaker 02

  He said, "Well, we do now."

• 17:11Speaker 02

  And I thought, holy shit. And I said, I went just, I said, well, we need at least a presidential finding to do something like that. Now, a presidential finding is a term of art. It's only for the most sensitive operations in the intelligence community, and certainly the CIA, which means that you have to have the direct approval, authorization, and order of the President of the United States, signed by him. I was familiar with findings from my career, but no finding had directly come to me in my assignment. I was part of an operation that had findings, you know, and so on. And so I said, we would need it. At least, you know, I'm a

• 17:54Speaker 02

  pretty experienced officer at this point. I'm 20 years into my career almost. And I said, we would need at least a presidential finding to do something like that. And he sort of goes, gets sort of satisfied and passes a chest and pretends to have like an envelope and he says, we have it. Quote, we are covered. And I thought, Jesus. And what he was referring to was what has come to be called the torture memo that we just mentioned a couple of minutes ago.

• 18:23Alan Katz?

  He's pushing torture you're resisting. Are you aware at the time, as you're having this conversation, what he's pushing?

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Oh, never in any conversation I had was the word torture used, ever.

• 18:36Alan Katz?

  Understood. It's a dirty, dirty word.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  I used the word torture at some point, but no one ever, because we don't torture, we interrogate.

• 18:44Alan Katz?

  But were you clear on the 800-pound gorilla in the room?

• 18:49Speaker 02

  It was instantaneously clear to me what we were talking about. And I thought in that millisecond, I realized quite consciously, this is not ex post facto justification, rationalization, recreate a recollection. This is exactly what I thought at the time, in real time, what I just said to you. And my thought was, this is the greatest, the most significant moment, the decisive moment in my career, my career, I think, in the history of the agency, and one of the significant moments in American history. I was explicitly conscious of that at that moment. No question about it. I was.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  Our colleagues of mine were not, and not that they were being duplicitous, but they were either less experienced or didn't have the same background I had, or some others were not, but some other colleagues were as aware as I.

• 19:48Alan Katz?

  Did you see it coming?

• 19:50Speaker 02

  Oh, no, it came completely out of the blue. We've detained someone we believe to be a member of Al Qaeda, and we want to find out information. This is sure. This is exciting. This is great. This is important. That's what you wanted. You want to be one of the people doing significant things. Well, that's fine, but then you will do whatever it takes. That was physically, actually, and literally. It was stunning to me then. It remains stunning. Our colleagues sincerely believe this. But the conversation went on. I said, well, Jesus, you know, we need at least to find it. He says, we have it.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  This is literally what I thought. I don't give a shit if the president orders this. The president doesn't get to order this. Oh, but then I thought at the same time, okay, I'm the equivalent of a lieutenant colonel. I've been briefed for two minutes, and I have been informed appropriately, properly, that the president, the vice president, the director of the CIA, the attorney general, the office of the general counsel of the CIA, all have deliberated, decided that this is legal, appropriate, necessary, and so ordered it. So who the hell am I, a two-minute briefed lieutenant colonel,

• 21:10Speaker 02

  to challenge the weight of the entire process of institutions of the United States government, which I had known and taken, in most cases accurately, to believed upheld the law, the law embodied principles, and on the whole was a...

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Not just a technically legal, but a seeking to embody a corpus of principles in my whole life, down to my level and up to the president. Instantaneously, I'm going to say, no, this is all wrong now. I mean, the the burden on any individual is almost unbearable to anyone. And this, which is why you're talking to two of the probably, I don't know, five officers, whoever said, what the fuck? You must disobey an illegal order. You must. Otherwise, you are breaking the law.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  The overwhelming majority of my colleagues are honorable, principled men and women. There's no question. But circumstances can be impossible. And even if you can see clearly, it takes a Charles de Gaulle, and there's only one de Gaulle per century, you know, and per country, to be able to challenge the weight of those moments. And even if you want to, you know, John and I weren't quite the, this is not quite a perfect analogy, but

• 22:47Speaker 02

  imagine you're a German soldier and you're assigned to some camp and you're told, anyone who comes out, you shoot. Anyone who goes in, you shoot. And if you don't do that, we shoot you. That's the order. Okay. And you're standing at the death camp. What are you going to do? You think this is hideous. I can't allow this to happen. Well, your choice is either you will die or or you become complicit. So it continues to get worse. The spiral continues downward. So I said, and this is all in the first briefing. You know, we haven't, you know, I haven't gotten on a plane or done anything yet, right? And we're two minutes into my involvement. But I was quite explicitly conscious of all this. So I said to my, I thought,

• 23:29Speaker 02

  I don't care if the president orders this. The president doesn't get to order this. He can't do that. But I thought, okay, you know, I can't challenge the entire, jump up and down this instant and challenge, you know, at this second. So I said,

• 23:43Speaker 02

  well, suppose something happens that I consider unacceptable.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  And he looks at me with disdain, then he says, "Well, if something happens you don't like, you step out of the room. And if you step out of the room, you didn't see anything happen, and so nothing happened, right?" And I thought, "Jesus Christ, this is just insane. This is, this is becoming, this is Kafka. This is, this is insane here." And so then I said something that case officers don't normally say. And I think John will probably smile with this.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Because at this point, I had been informed the lawyers had been involved in this, you know, and, and when something gets to the, an operations officer, it's all theoretically, in, in, in most cases, almost always, it's been staffed out and the whole sort of thing. Then I raised the question that case officers don't normally think about. I said, "Well, what about the Geneva Convention?" Oh, my God, how many times did I say that? In 2002. And, and the guy looked at me, and this is, it became the title of the first chapter of my book. And he says with disdain, he goes, "Well, which flag do you serve?" My thought was, "Well, up yours, buddy." But it was clear that the conversation was not going any further, so I went, "Fine." The conversation ends, and the first thing I did,

• 25:02Speaker 02

  highly unusual for me, because normally this cir-, well, normally, this circumstance had never occurred to me. I immediately, from that conversation, went to find the, I don't remember if it was the counterterrorism centers or the mid-east, uh, near-east divisions, because I was involved with them, uh, lawyer, the Office of General Counsel for the office, and I, whom I knew. And, and I walk in, usually you want to avoid lawyers, lawyers, because their job is to say no all the time, you know? And so I, I closed the door, highly unusual in the agency. I closed their conversation, he's very sensitive. And I said, "Listen, um, what is the definition of torture?"

• 25:43Speaker 02

  And then he gave me the thumbnail operative definition which served for case officers in the field, which was derived from John Hughes torture memorandum. And he said, if a measure of used in interrogation does not cause vital organ failure and/or death. And I distinctly remember the the phrase and/or that was ridiculous. This is this, you know. So if a measure does not cause vital organ failure and/or death, it is not torture. And I was, I couldn't believe my ears. And I said, okay, so if I whack you in the head with a baseball bat, and you come to, that's not torture. And he goes, no. And I said, if I break

• 26:28Speaker 02

  your arm, it will heal. So that's not torture either. And he goes, that's correct. It is vital organ failure and/or death. And I thought, that is just the stupidest, most insane thing I've ever heard. But those were the instructions that that was the guidance.

• 26:44Alan Katz?

  And it was not for you to question where their guidance came from?

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Well, I had asked, you know, and been told it had came from the president. And I thought, holy smoke, that's how I was first brought into the operation. And then I thought very clearly, did I think at that moment, I thought, well, this is, this is absolutely without question, um, the great moment of my career, when when I have to decide when, when do you say no? What do you do? What is what is one to do? And I thought, when, okay, what am I going to do? And, and I talked to the lawyer, and then I found an officer who had

• 27:30Speaker 02

  been involved in interrogations, and I spoke with her, she's a very good officer. And I and I just, I thought, well, holy smoke, you know, we, we have someone really important. It is important we find out information from this guy. But how can I do this honorably? And what will I, what will I do? And then, then I flew off to do it.

• 27:56John Kiriakou?

  When you expressed reticence, Glenn?

• 28:00John Kiriakou?

  Did you end up with any career back? And the reason I ask is because when I was first approached, I've never gone public with who I went to see, but I went up to the seventh floor and spoke with somebody, and he told me, "Run screaming from the room. This is a terrible idea. It's going to wreck everybody." When I said that I didn't want to be involved, the leadership of the Counterterrorism Center decided that that was worthy of punishment. Here, I had just come back as Chief of Ops in Islamabad, led this capture, and was passed over for promotion. And when I went into Deputy Chief CTC's office for my feedback, my panel feedback, because I was absolutely stunned

• 28:44John Kiriakou?

  that I had been passed over for my 15, he said that the consensus was, and these were his words, "I had demonstrated a shocking lack of commitment to counterterrorism." But I wonder if this was also a drag on your career. You didn't jump right into this with both feet, like they wanted everybody to do.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  I think the answer is no, but that's because I had other problems. There are other things happening in my career and personal life, which were really, really dramatic. But it is also clear, I've only been able to piece together after I left the agency. In real time, I was, there were forces at play upon me and my operation and the larger issues that I was not completely aware of. I had enemies on substance and on personal level, overlapping but not identical sets, that affected my success

• 29:48Speaker 02

  or lack of success in working the agency and to handle this operation as I wanted. And that's always the case. There are always, you know, various power centers and conflicts, personal and office-based.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  But there were forces that were quite hostile to to my approach, various approaches. And they were sincerely opposed, and they were not just out to get me, but because I opposed them, then they came, they wanted to get me because I was creating headaches for them on the operation. And that's that in in a really brief nutshell is I came quickly. I was the only person who had ever met with this person. I was meeting with him for seventeen hours a day, every effing day. And I came to conclude that pretty much everything that we had assessed about him was wrong.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Holy smoke. And you don't just sort of show up and say, OK, you guys, you know, the the twelve years of work that seventeen different officers have done and the three rooms of files on this and the assessment of the sub office of the CTC and CTC as general and NE also concurring. All of you guys are wrong. I'm the only guy who's right, and so you have to change everything you've done. I mean, you can't really do that. You know, one of the things that an officer has to learn is how to work the director of operations and the agency. And so you, you know, at first you say, well, you know, the date recorded for a certain meeting was not June sixteen, it was June twenty three. And this and you get them to accept that.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  And then you say, well, you know, his middle name is actually Abdul instead of Mohammed or whatever the hell it is. And you get them to accept that. And then they start saying, well, hey, you know, Carl, actually, he's, you know, he's on the ball in this, and you start to get credibility. And then you get an ally who's not directly in the chain of command who says, you know, our assessment concur is with Glenn and, you know, case officer Carl. And so then you can change maybe how a certain report is disseminated or recorded or questions that you will ask. And then you start to own the operation and to shift perceptions of reality. But you can't just go in and say, you guys are all totally messed up. In my case, the assessment was that he was one of the top guys in Al Qaeda. And I accept that.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  I mean, there was a room full of of reporting that had led to this assessment. And I knew my colleagues to be diligent, knowledgeable, honorable, and to challenge our assumptions as a part of our routine. That's so I had faith in our assessment.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  And I went out and I started to talk to the guy and, you know, on and on. And I started to find little consistencies and then larger ones. And I concluded that, you know, we, we had detained the man we wanted to detain. And he was, which was not always the case. Sometimes, you know, they wanted to, to render, to kidnap Glenn Carl. And they, they did. But there's some other person named Glenn Carl. He's actually, there actually is an astrophysicist in California someplace named Glenn Carl. And that poor guy was, you know, put a bag over his head and taken away because he is the same thing that I do.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  That was not the case in my operation. The person we wanted was the person we got, but he was not the person we thought he was.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  And I am convinced, you know, I'm confident that my assessment is correct. But you do get into some subjective assessments.

• 33:36Alan Katz?

  Just for clarity's sake, what did you think he was before you realized he wasn't?

• 33:42Speaker 02

  Well, what, what the agency had assessed him to be, which is one of the very, very most senior officers of Al Qaeda. One of the top, top several people.

• 33:55Alan Katz?

  Which he was not.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 33:59Alan Katz?

  What was he instead?

• 34:01Speaker 02

  That's where the big argument in the murkyness comes from. I, I'm pretty confident that he was in the circumstance similar to the owner of a corner variety store who receives a visit. Who says, you know, hey, you know, you have great displays here. I like the donuts and, you know, I'll have a hot dog too. It would be terrible if anything happened. I really want you to be able to serve the community going forward. And you know, well, thank you very much. You say, yeah, I need to, I have to protect you. So, you know, if you just give me a little retainer of, you know, $500 a month, then, then everything will be fine. And if you say no, you know, your store is burned down. And if you say yes, you're a part of this network now.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  And in some ways, that was the circumstance of the fellow I had met. But it's also true, he was not Little Miss Muffet, he was not an innocent. And he did know who he was dealing with. And he wasn't a member of the, of Al Qaeda. And he was not a jihadist or a terrorist. But he wasn't only coerced. Even when he was coerced, he and his culture, the world he lived in, shared many of the views of and acted in ways supportive of jihadists. What do you do with that?

• 35:28Speaker 02

  That's like saying, you know, all Palestinian, are all Palestinians members of Hamas because they hate Jews? Well, you know, no, but it's not good that they hate Jews, but we can't, we can't detain 2 million of them. So it's murky in multiple, at multiple levels. But he was not a member of, he was not one of the top members of Al Qaeda. He was not a member of Al Qaeda. He was not a jihadist. And he was a victim of where he lived. While being a participant in the values of where he lives, which are antithetical to, inimical to, or a threat to much of what gives meaning to all of our lives.

• 36:10John Kiriakou?

  That is not an uncommon theme. You know, it was the same with Abu Zubaydah, where we didn't have any idea until 2007, that he had a first cousin also named Abu Zubaydah. And so if you look at these files, this looks like a terrorist Superman. He's in Jordan, he's in Afghanistan, he's in Montana, he's talking to the FBI. The day later, he's, he's in Kuwait. We couldn't keep track of him. And that's why we made these assumptions that turned out to be universally false. He was not a member of Al Qaeda. He was not even a senior facilitator for Al Qaeda.

• 36:53John Kiriakou?

  He facilitated, certainly as Glenn just noted, this other prisoner. You know, these, these were bad guys, sure. But they weren't the terrorist supermen that we thought they were.

• 37:06Speaker 04

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 37:40Speaker 05

  Hi, everyone. It's Katie Couric. And on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households. Yet, many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected, whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years, so its customers can keep theirs.

• 38:22Speaker 05

  Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska; and in New York, Pacific Life Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 38:43John Kiriakou?

  If you're enjoying Dead Drop, and of course, we hope you are, then while you're waiting for new episodes, I'd like to suggest another great granular story podcast from the Costard and Touchstone family. Just the photographer with David Swanson does for photojournalism what Dead Drop does for spies. Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Swanson tells you stories his amazing news photos just can't. What it felt like being in all those dangerous places like war zones and natural disasters, doing his job, taking Having been to a few war zones myself, I can tell you this, just the photographer will put you right there, on the ground, right next to David, inside his head, in fact.

• 39:26John Kiriakou?

  It's a hell of a podcast and you can find it wherever you find your favorite podcasts or at costardandtouchstone.com. There's a link in this episode's show notes. In fact, you'll find lots of great story podcasts at Costard and Touchstone, like The Donor, A DNA Horror Story, The Hall Closet, Sage Wellness Within, and the How Not to Make a Movie Podcast. Who knows, your next favorite podcast might be just a click away. Now, back to Dead Drop.

• 39:56Alan Katz?

  You eventually got yourself away from the enhanced interrogation operation?

• 40:03Speaker 02

  Well, two things happened. I mean, because it was a surge assignment, it was not a permanent duty assignment. I was not, you know, I was, I was assigned in France for four and a half years. For, for this, I was drafted because we needed people to do urgent tasks and someone had to fill them. So, and it was also, you know, I was told I had to leave within 24 hours of being notified of the operation. I would be gone for a minimum of 30 days, possibly 90 days or longer. I couldn't tell my family where I was going or have any communication with them at all. So, all very exciting, but this is not an

• 40:46Speaker 02

  easy life for most people. In my personal circumstances, I had a, my wife at the time had nearly died. She'd just come out of a coma. I'd been told just a couple of weeks before, one night in the hospital, we will know in the morning if your wife has survived. She survived, but she had real, all sorts of challenges. And because we had at that time... Seven and five year olds and I was essentially a single parent because I either had a hospitalized

• 41:30Speaker 02

  or a largely incapacitated spouse to leave for four months someplace with little kids from my wife. In all ways couldn't really take care of this is a these are you know, everyone has their challenges. So the agency is as compassionate as an institution can be and it won't send you away forever. And so you're rotated out after a number of months. So that was one certain one thing. And the other was these people I've alluded to, I clashed with on any number of professional issues on this operation, wanted to get rid of me to and have someone who was more amenable to their perspective.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  I also thought it was time to make a move that way myself. So everyone sort of agreed that it was time for me to to leave. And so I left and I was replaced by, you know, by a good guy.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  That was not unusual. And I wasn't removed. I didn't remove myself for, you know, in principle, it was sort of an organic process that happens with temporary duty officers.

• 42:42Alan Katz?

  When enhanced interrogation came under the microscope finally, were you dragged in to testify?

• 42:49Speaker 02

  I never testified before a public panel. I was interviewed by any number of the investigating committees, you know, there's Congress, there's the counterintelligence staff, there's the inspector general's office and all of them were trying to make sense of things. And a number of them spoke to me at different times. Sure.

• 43:13Alan Katz?

  What was going through your mind as suddenly because you had had your doubts? You had been dragged along to a degree that must have felt really incredibly conflicted in any number of ways.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  No, I don't think I ever felt conflicted, which possibly sounds like a contradiction from what I said, but but I didn't. I have always felt. Pardon the self-praise here. I've always been very proud of how I handled the operation, what I did, where I drew lines and where I compromised and how I tried to get things right. I think that I handled it as well as one can. One could very fairly say, you should resign at principle and that's the end of that.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  I didn't, and I don't think that, I think I did the right thing by trying to get it right. So I never felt conflicted about it. I didn't feel, you know, I was worried that everyone, myself included, involved in this program would go to jail for having been involved in torture because this clearly was illegal. There's just no doubt to me, whatever, you know, people I admire have said in public that, oh, this is all legal and we didn't torture, you know, well, that's because no one wants to be convicted as a war criminal. That's the only sensible explanation, but there is one other explanation. That's not correct.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  That's one of, the other one is that, and it's been a fascinating psychological experience to observe. I saw, I described in positive terms, John's and my colleagues, and I mean that sincerely, but I was at the time stunned to find that as soon as we were informed that the president and the Department of Justice had decided that X is legal and we never engage in torture, instantaneously and in complete sincerity, at least half of my colleagues went like this and said, oh, good, everything's fine now.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  And they were totally sincere about it. And I thought, oh, my God, what, what? How can you do that? It's a fascinating psychological phenomenon that they sincerely accepted that the paradigm had been defined from in a way that they thought was appropriate or the acceptable way that life should be perceived and conducted because the agency is good, the US are good guys, and we don't break the law. And that was it. And these are bright people, but they sincerely believe it. It's a very similar phenomenon, I have found, concluded, to what we are all experiencing in the threat to our democracy with the Trump phenomenon.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  There are dozens of millions of fine people who are, in most ways, rational people. These are normal people, they aren't nut jobs, who vote for Donald Trump, who clearly is a fascist. I was, I think, the first person, this is my great claim to fame in my life, I think I was the first person in public to say that he was approached by, manipulated by, and probably working with Russian intelligence. And yet, you know, people I admire sincerely think that I'm a communist now because I oppose the guy. And it's the same thing in

• 46:43Speaker 02

  the agency with Johns and my colleagues, who still buy into this whole different paradigm. It is Kafka. I don't know if you've ever read The Good Soldier Shvike. I highly recommend it. It's a classic. It was written by a guy named Hasek in World War I. He was in the Austrian Army. He was killed during the war before he finished his book. But he, it's Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana, and Catch 22. And yet, that's the crazy world, where sincere people do nut job stuff.

• 47:28Speaker 04

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 48:02Speaker 00

  Confidence. It's listening to your gut. It's moving forward even when the path ahead is unclear. For nearly 160 years, Pacific Life has helped people keep their promises, building confidence for generations. Whether you're confident in your financial future or just beginning to envision it, we're here to help. Ask a financial professional how. Pacific Life: The Power of a Promise. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  What we didn't bring out clearly enough, it's relevant for the Zabata case, and John can speak more directly from firsthand experience more than I. I was involved in Zabata when I was on the National Intelligence Council, receiving his stuff, and was then involved when the decision was, well, holy smoke, this is all screwed up. We have to stop. We have to stop taking, quote, intelligence from this guy. Everything is compromised. It's all wrong. Much of this is made up, and it's all sullied. And then, well, no, no, no, you can't do that. It's really good. And then we had these huge fights between the pro, you know, he's a real baddie, and the people who are horrified that everything is screwed up sides.

• 49:18Alan Katz?

  But there was information that came in before he was enhanced and information that came in after the interrogations got enhanced.

• 49:28Alan Katz?

  Was there a difference in the quality of the information that came in?

• 49:32Speaker 02

  Not that I'm aware of, not that I'm aware of. What I was aware of was that the, um, at first it was, this stuff is great and, you know, it was given sort of marquee status. And then the, the decision was, well, we cannot use any information that has been, um, illicitly obtained and, and therefore is, um, very, um, doubtful. One is unusable in a legal way and also it's, some of it will be disinformation and a lot of it is, um, it's not intelligence. It's extracted statements kind of thing. Um, and so everything was,

• 50:15Speaker 02

  uh, retroactively, and this is a really, uh, a nuclear act in the intelligence community, was all expunged. There are burn notices that everything has to be removed. That was, that any utterance from this man's lips has to be removed from every file in the universe.

• 50:31Alan Katz?

  This is after it was decided that it was illegal or while it was being considered maybe illegal?

• 50:38Speaker 02

  The legality, I think, was certainly relevant, but I think was secondary to the intelligence issue, which is that you can't use compromised information and that much of it has been shown to be untrustworthy. And so therefore what we verify is untrustworthy leads us to, um, be alarmed about things that we can't substantiate or disprove. And so therefore nothing can be taken. That was, that was related to, but separate from the legal question.

• 51:09Alan Katz?

  But if the information was procured legally and you all thought it was being procured legally, then why is that an issue? If the president says-

• 51:17Speaker 02

  It's an issue of, I mean, even if it's legal, if, if it's bad information or obtained in a way that raises doubts about it, you still can't use it. You just can't. It's, it's not only unprofessional. I think it's probably illegal for us to, to, um, we, intelligence officers. And, and so it was all retracted. That, that was the proper step taken. Um, uh, but that also became controversial because then it became involved in the polemic- Between the faction that said, well, you guys are all pussies and this is the real deal. And the others just said, well, he's a nut job. He makes stuff up. A lot has been

• 51:57Speaker 02

  disproved and we can't use it anyway, given how we obtained it. And finally, at that point, I don't know that we ever, we, the community, the CIA, ever went to that trough again. I don't think so. I don't think so. He was, you know, removed, eliminated from any further questioning.

• 52:21Alan Katz?

  How far into his enhanced interrogation was it decided the good stuff was being outweighed by bullshit?

• 52:31Speaker 02

  There was always controversy about that from the get go. But the decision was when I, I was, it would have been 2004 or five is when I became aware of it. I think that's when the decision was taken. So, and that was because the, the people making assessments of the use, utility of, and the, the acceptability of the information, the reporting of the operation, became aware of waterboarding and has interrogation and so on. And they said, holy shit, we can't, you know, no, we have to stop. And then, then it was shut down.

• 53:14John Kiriakou?

  That's when the inspector general became aware of it as well. It was in 2004. And then the IG report was published internally in 2005. Took four more years to declassify it. But, but Glenn's recollection of the chronology is correct. It took several years and then they just said, we can't use this. We shouldn't use it.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's when I, I was involved in the receiving end of the product.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  I was not involved at all in the decision. You know, I had been involved in my own cases and knew what was going on that way. And this stuff was still funneling into the the system. I think it was the New York Times broke the story. Many people in the community didn't know any of this and and everyone remotely involved said, what? Stop, we have to stop everything. Not only do you stop doing that kind of quote interrogation, but anything, any product from anything touching upon any of these operations is unusable. It raises legal questions, substantive questions, blah, blah, blah, blah. And stop, recall, take out, and that was that.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  Totally shut down all the stuff. Hugely controversial because the people who were the proponents of it started to jump up and down with hair and fires, saying that we were all compromising national security by being Marcus of Queensbury. It's interesting with, you know, there aren't a lot of people who have done, been involved in this stuff. There are so many aspects of the culture of the Director of Operations of the Counterterrorism Center, of the enhanced interrogation program, of the Director of Operations that inform how one perceives and one expresses events and reactions that it is a throwback, but but pleasant to see with have John on the screen

• 55:11Speaker 02

  because there aren't a lot of people who have lived in this strange universe.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  It's it's sort of, it's, I don't know, rewarding is not the word. It's a

• 55:24Speaker 02

  nice to find somebody who knows what I'm talking about. But, you know, there have always been, simplifying a bit, two schools of thought that I've touched upon. Those who think that enhanced interrogation isn't torture, it makes sense and we need it. And it's an it's of an overlapping set, if not identical set. Those who believe that the terrorist threat is existential for the United States and the Western civilization,

• 55:57Speaker 02

  global. And that the jihadists are all part of this vast coherent coordinated network. So that Jamaa Aslamia in Malaysia and Lashkar-e-Taiba in Kashmir and Al Qaeda in Sudan and then in

• 56:19Speaker 02

  Afghanistan and then in Iraq are all part of the same issue.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  So to stop means that you're surrendering and we will all be destroyed. There are those who will continue to think that and then opposing them. And I at first was agnostic because I hadn't done as my thing terrorism and I came to be one of the strong advocates because of my function in the National Intelligence Council. Of those who said, well, yeah, there are people trying to slit my throat and rape my wife. And we obviously have to stop them, but a member of the Islamic, the Jikam is the Group Islamic Combatant, the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, I forget what you call it in English,

• 57:11Speaker 02

  is jihadist they are, murderous they are, but they are not Al Qaeda. They share a theology, but they are different. It's not one problem. And so therefore you have to look at a much more organic and textured approach to counterterrorism. And that fight I thought would be, you know, I'm absolutely certain that my party is correct.

• 57:44Speaker 02

  But even after Obama served his years in the agency, the dominant framework remained. The first of those two, which is a really simple minded and ultimately self-destructive approach.

• 58:07John Kiriakou?

  Thanks again Glenn for sitting in today. It's important to remind ourselves and the audience that in the end decency won out. Though plenty of otherwise good people went along with something that was downright evil, there were and there still are people with real moral character out there fighting the good fight. And more than ever, that fight is necessary. In the next episode, we'll pick up our story again. What makes this spy tick? We're getting close to the moment of truth. Please don't forget to like, review, comment on, and share the podcast. We thank you in advance for doing it. Until next time, I'm John Kiriakou. Dead Drop is written by John Kiriakou and Alan Katz. Costart and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast.

• 58:51John Kiriakou?

  And John Kiriakou, Alan Katz, and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers.

• 59:10Speaker 04

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasiapro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 59:44Speaker 05

  Hi, everyone. It's Katie Couric. And on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households, yet many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected, whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years, so its customers can keep theirs.

• 1:00:26Speaker 05

  Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 1:00:44Speaker 05

  Aston Touchdown Production.