Video and Transcript: Obama with C-SPAN on Empathy, Justice, and Politics (22 May)

"I want a judge not only to be applying the law in front of them, but also to understand that as a practical matter."

On DAY, President Obama spoke with the cable political network about domestic topics such as the next Supreme Court justice, the economic crisis, the situation of the auto industry, and health care, as well as his relationship with former President George W. Bush.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znZkxN0Ks0M[/youtube]

STEVE SCULLY, POLITICAL EDITOR, C-SPAN: Mr. President, as we speak to you in the White House Library, a constitutional lawyer, former law professor, as you work through the process for you personally in selecting the Supreme Court nominee, what are you thinking?

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, there are some benchmarks that you have to make sure that you hit. Obviously, you want somebody who is highly qualified, who knows the law. I want somebody who, obviously, has a clear sense of our constitution and its history and is committed to fidelity to the law.

Is going to make their decisions based on the law that’s in front of them, but as I’ve said before, I think it’s also important that this is somebody who has common sense and somebody who has a sense of how American society works and how the American people live.

And you know, I said earlier, that I thought empathy wasn’t important quality and I continue to believe that. You have to have not only the intellect to be able to effectively apply the law to cases before you.
But you have to be able to stand in somebody else’s shoes and see through their eyes and get a sense of how the law might work or not work in practical day-to-day living. And a good example of this, the Lilly Ledbetter case that came up a while back, where the justice has I believe misinterpreted the law in closing the door to a lawsuit by a woman who had worked for 20 years and had been paid less than her male counterparts.

She didn’t know that she was getting paid less, when she discovered it, she immediately filed suit to get back pay and the suggestion was somehow that she should have filed suite earlier.

Well, I think anybody who has ever worked in a job like that understands that they might not know that they were being discriminated against it. It doesn’t make sense for their rights to be foreclosed.
That’s the kind of case, where I want a judge not only to be applying the law in front of them, but also to understand that as a practical matter. A lot of times people have weak bargaining power.

Now, in some ways it might cut the other way. I want a judge who has a sense of how regulations might affect the businesses in a practical way. And so, when they’re interpreting a statute that they are saying, is congressional intent being met in this kind of circumstance. So, if there is a farm program somewhere, and you have somebody who can take the time to learn about how farmers work that’s helpful.

So, in all these cases what I want is not just ivory tower learning. I want somebody who has the intellectual fire power, but also a little bit of a common touch and has a practical sense of how the world works.

SCULLY: And that’s what empathy is?

Obama: Well that’s what empathy is to me. And I think that that’s – those criteria of common sense, practicality, a sense of what ordinary Americans are going through everyday. Putting that in the mix, when the judges are looking at cases before them, it’s very important.

Keep in mind that, the Supreme Court by definition only gets the tough cases. And even at the Supreme Court level, probably 95 percent of the cases are going to be determined by some clear statutory language, a strong precedent.

But there is going to be a 5 percent of the cases there, where the language is ambiguous, where the constitutional precedent is not clear. And in those situations you want a judge who has a sense of what’s going on in the day-to-day lives of the American people and has some practical experience. And I’m confident that there are people who combine both the intellectual qualities and the qualities of judgment and common sense that will make them a great Supreme Court justice.

SCULLY: Is it safe to say that an announcement in the next week or 2 with hearings in July?

OBAMA: Well, I think it’s safe to say that we’re going to have an announcement soon. And my hope is, is that we can have hearings in July so that we end up before Congress breaks for the summer – have somebody in place.

One of the things I would prefer not to see happen is that these confirmation hearings drag on and somebody has to hit the ground running and then take their seat in October without having the time to wrap their mind around the fact that they are going to be a Supreme Court Justice. I’d like to given them a little bit of lead time so that they can get prepared.

SCULLY: Are you worried about that?

OBAMA: No I am not worried. I think if you look at how this has worked in the past. Justice Roberts, Justice Alito, it took them approximately 70 days to get confirmed from the time that they were announced. And yes, I think that’s a fair timeframe for us to work with as well.

SCULLY: Is there a justice current or former that you look at as a role model, as kind of the characteristics that you want in a Supreme Court justice?

OBAMA: Well you know, I mean each justice I think brings their own qualities, and you know, there are some justices who are wonderful writers, even justices I don’t agree with, Justice Scalia is a terrific writer, and makes really interesting arguments.

You have people like Judge – Justice O’Connor, who again, I might not have agreed with her on every issue, but you always had a sense that she was taking the law and seeing what the practical applications of the law in this case. She wasn’t a grand theoretician, but she ended up having an enormous influence on the law as a whole.

And on the other hand there are Justices like Brennan or Marshall, who really focused on the broader sweep of history and came at a time during the Civil Rights movement, where they recognized the unique role that – the unique role that courts could play in breaking the political logjam that had locked out too many people in the political process.

And so, different times call for different justices, each justice has their own strengths as well as weaknesses. And what I just want to make sure of is that any justices I appoint are people who have not only the academic qualifications or intellectual capacity, but also the heart and the feel for how Americans are struggling in their day-to-day lives.

And also, an appreciation I think for how, even though, we live in new times there are some time tested principles embodied in our constitution that have to be respected.

SCULLY: Let me follow-up on that, because you could have 2 or 3 more appointments in the next couple of years.

OBAMA: Right.

SCULLY: Is that the imprint that you want on the Supreme Court?

OBAMA: I don’t want to jump the gun. Obviously, nobody else has announced their retirements, but the criteria that I described, a strong intellectual grasp of the law, an appreciation for the timeless principles of the constitution, and a sense of common sense and compassion and empathy for ordinary Americans, so that everybody is heard. Those are all qualities that I think make for a great Supreme Court justice.

SCULLY: William Howard Taft served on the court after his presidency, would you have any interest in being on the Supreme Court?

OBAMA: You know, I am not sure that I could get through Senate confirmation.

SCULLY: Mr. President, let’s move on to health care, because some of the same people who were at odds with President Clinton trying to block his initiatives 15 years ago are at the table today. What’s changed?

OBAMA: Well, a lot has changed. What hasn’t changed is the ever escalating cost of health care. And so, people are seeing since ‘93 when we failed to reform health care that costs have continued to skyrocket.
I think the biggest change politically is, is that businesses now recognize that if we don’t get a handle on this stuff that they are going to continue to be operating at a competitive disadvantage with other countries. And so they anxiously seek serious reform.

The fact that we’ve got hospitals and doctors who also recognize that the system is unsustainable on its current path, fiscal conservatives who recognize that the single biggest component of driving down our deficits and long-term debt is getting control of Medicare and Medicaid costs and that health care reform is critical to bend the curve.

All those things I think are converged. And you are absolutely right. The meeting we had here with insurance companies, drug companies, doctors, hospitals, labor, all the stakeholders involved, nurses, we haven’t seen that before.

Now, it’s still going to be very difficult to get a bill passed. But I’m absolutely committed to keeping this process moving, keeping the conversation going, focusing on how do we reduce costs, how do we increase efficiency, how do we make sure that families have some confidence that they can get health care when they need it and that they won’t go bankrupt because their child gets sick.

I really think that the stars may be aligned here and we potentially can get it done if everybody comes at it with a spirit not of ideological rigidity. But if they come at it with a sense that in a practical hard-headed way, we can really negotiate and compromise and get something done for the American people.

SCULLY: But do you think that’s something that – what ultimately will it look like and when will it happen?

OBAMA: Well, I’ve put forward a plan, a very extensive plan during the course of the campaign that I continue to think was the best approach. And what I would say is you will keep your health care if you already have health care. You can have your choice of doctors. You can have your choice of plans.

But what we are going to do is to invest more in prevention and wellness programs. We are going to manage how treatments are provided more effectively. We are going to initiate things like electronic medical record, something we invested in already in the recovery program that I passed. All these things will drive down costs.

Then what we want to do is also to make sure that everybody has basic coverage. Now, they may not have the gold-plated Cadillac health insurance, but it doesn’t make sense in a country as wealthy as ours that if you are working full time, you should be able to afford health care.

If you are a small business owner, you should be able to get the same low rates that somebody who works for a big company gets. And so, the principle of driving down costs at the same time providing greater care for more people, higher quality care, and making sure that we as a country as a whole are getting a better bang for our health care dollar.

I think those things are achievable. They are not going to be easy. And some of the savings you won’t see for five or 10 years, because the system is going to have to work through some of these inefficiencies.
Health information technology, for example, can be a huge cost saver, because it can eliminate duplicative records, reduce medical errors, but it’s going to take some time for us to build out the infrastructure so that every provider, every small community hospital has these things in place. And that’s part of the role that the government can play.

But the key point here, which I think I want to emphasize again, is if you’ve got health care – I don’t want to take away your choices. I want to add your choices. I want you to be able to keep your doctor, keep your health care, but I want to be able to drive down costs. And if you are dissatisfied with your health care, I want to make sure you get some other options out there.

SCULLY: Yet, it all takes money. You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?

OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we’ve made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we’ve seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.

So we’ve got a short-term problem, which is we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system, we had to deal with the auto companies, a huge recession which drains tax revenue at the same time it’s putting more pressure on governments to provide unemployment insurance or make sure that food stamps are available for people who have been laid off.

So we have a short-term problem and we also have a long-term problem. The short-term problem is dwarfed by the long-term problem. And the long-term problem is Medicaid and Medicare. If we don’t reduce long-term health care inflation substantially, we can’t get control of the deficit.

So, one option is just to do nothing. We say, well, it’s too expensive for us to make some short-term investments in health care. We can’t afford it. We’ve got this big deficit. Let’s just keep the health care system that we’ve got now.

Along that trajectory, we will see health care cost as an overall share of our federal spending grow and grow and grow and grow until essentially it consumes everything. That’s the wrong option.

I think the right option is to say, where are the game changers, the investments that we can make now that are going to reduce costs, even if they don’t reduce them this year or next year, but 10 years from now or 20 years from now, we are going to see substantially lower costs.

And if – one of the very promising areas that we saw was these insurance companies, drug companies, hospitals, all these stakeholders coming together, committing to me that they would reduce costs by 1.5 percent per year.

If we do that, it seems like small number, we end up saving $2 trillion. $2 trillion, which not only can help deal with our deficit and our long-term debt, but a lot of those savings can go back into the pockets of American consumers in the form of lower premiums. That’s what we are driving for.

SCULLY: You mentioned the auto industry. What will GM look like a year from now?

OBAMA: Well, my hope is, is that we will see both GM and Chrysler having emerged from this restructuring process leaner, meaner, more competitive with a set of product lines that appeal to consumers, good cars that are fuel efficient and that look at the markets of tomorrow.

Keep in mind what’s happened in the auto industry. Right now, we’re seeing – we’re projecting that maybe this year the auto industry as a whole sells 10 million cars in the United States. Well, replacement numbers for the auto industry, you know, that the number of cars to replace cars on the road is closer to 14, 15, 16 million. And what that means is when the economy recovers and consumers say, you know the old clunker has finally given out. I need to get a new car.

You are looking at a substantial market that is going to be available for U.S. automakers if they’ve made some good decisions now, and if they are building the kinds of fuel efficient, high performance cars that American consumers are hungry for.

I think GM and Chrysler can do that. I think they have been weighed down by a legacy of some bad management decisions, health care costs and the whole host of other things that they are now in the process of cleaning up.

We’re confident that they can emerge and take advantage of that new market and actually be very profitable and thrive, but it means going through some pain now, and the thing I worry about most is that so much of that pain is borne by workers and communities that have historically been the backbone of the auto industry and so we’re going to have to work intensely with those communities.

If some of those auto jobs don’t come back, then what we’ve going to have to do is make sure that those workers are effectively retrained. We’ve got to make sure that those communities are supported that we are promoting green energy and green jobs as an alternative manufacturing base for many of these communities and that’s going to be one of the single-minded focuses of this administration.

SCULLY: When you see GM though as “Government Motors,” you’re reaction?

OBAMA: Well, you know – look we are trying to help an auto industry that is going through a combination of bad decision making over many years and an unprecedented crisis or at least a crisis we haven’t seen since the 1930’s. And you know the economy is going to bounce back and we want to get out of the business of helping auto companies as quickly as we can. I have got more enough to do without that. In the same way that I want to get out of the business of helping banks, but we have to make some strategic decisions about strategic industries.

Our financial system is the life blood of our economy and if banks collapse then businesses across America collapse. We had to make some decisions that insured that the financial system was strong.

In the same way, our auto industry is the foundation for economies all across the Midwest, and ultimately, for the country as a whole and had we allowed GM or Chrysler simply to liquidate that would have been a huge anti-stimulus on the economy as a whole, and could have dragged us even deeper into recession or even depression. Ultimately, I think that GM is going to be a strong company and we are going to be pulling out as soon as the economy recovers and they’ve completed their restructuring.

SCULLY: States like California in desperate financial situation, will you be forced to bail out the states?

OBAMA: No. I think that what you’re seeing in states is that anytime you got a severe recession like this, as I said before, their demands on services are higher. So, they are sending more money out. At the same time, they’re bringing less tax revenue in. And that’s a painful adjustment, what we’re going end up seeing is lot of states making very difficult choices there.

They are cutting programs some of them unfortunately essential and that’s why in our recovery package we provided dollars to make sure that teachers, police officers weren’t laid-off, but there is still some contraction that’s taking place at the state government level.

At the same time you know states have to balance their budgets and so they have got to make some very difficult choices. In California, because of the unique way that California’s government operates, you not only have a legislature and the government, but also have referendum that help determine some of these decisions. You know that’s probably a little bumpier working out some of those issues.

Probably, the biggest place where the states are needing some help right now is, just rolling over their debt issuing bonds. They are still being affected by some of the freezing in the credit markets and the uncertainty and anxiety in the credit markets. And so, we are talking to state treasurers across the country, including California, to figure out are there some creative ways that we can just help them get through some of these difficult times.

SCULLY: Your Senior Advisor David Axelrod describes you as a pragmatist, what does that mean?

OBAMA: Well, I think what it means is that I don’t approach problems by asking myself, is this a conservative – is there a conservative approach to this or a liberal approach to this, is there a Democratic or Republican approach to this. I come at it and say, what’s the way to solve the problem, what’s the way to achieve an outcome where the American people have jobs or their health care quality has improved or our schools are producing well educated workforce of the 21st century.

And I am willing to tinker and borrow and steal ideas from just about anybody if I think they might work. And we try to base most of our decisions on what are the facts, what kind of evidence is out there, have programs or policies been thought through.

I spend a lot of time sitting with my advisors and just going through a range of options. And if they are only bringing me options that have been dusted off the shelf, that are the usual stale ideas, then a lot of times I ask them, well, what do our critics say, do they have ideas that maybe we haven’t thought of.

So, in that sense – I don’t have a lot of pride of authorship on this. I don’t have some need to constantly say, my way or the highway. I think the attitude is let’s sit down and create a process where we can work through and find the best ideas that will help the American people the most.

SCULLY: Have you had any conversation with former President Bush since the inauguration?
OBAMA: I have.

SCULLY: And?

OBAMA: Well, I think that although I’ve only been president four months, I think a general policy of keeping confidence with your predecessors is important.

SCULLY: Yesterday, your speech followed by the former Vice President was described as historic. Was it?

OBAMA: I am not sure it’s historic. I think that I tried to create a context for what we’re doing around issues like Guantanamo, my decision to ban enhanced interrogation techniques, how we can, both preserve our values, uphold our ideals and wage an aggressive battle against organizations like Al-Qaeda that want to do us harm.

And I am confident that we are stronger when we uphold our principles, that we are weaker when we start pushing them aside.

I think there was a period of time right after 9/11, understandably, because people were fearful, where I think we cut too many corners and made some decisions that were contrary to who we are as a people.

I think there were adjustments that were made even within the Bush administration to try to deal with some of those mistakes. There are still consequences, though, to some of those earlier poor decisions, and I think Guantanamo was one of them. And it’s a messy situation. It’s not easy.

We’ve got a lot of people there who we should have tried early, but we didn’t. In some cases, evidence against them has been compromised. They may be dangerous, in which case we can’t release them. And so finding how to deal with that I think is going to be one of our biggest problems.

On the other hand, I am very confident that if we approach this in a way that isn’t trying to score political points, but is trying to create a legal and institutional framework with checks and balances, respectful of due process and rule of law, if we set up that system, then there is no reason why we can’t try either in a military commission or in a federal court people who’ve done us harm and also spend a bulk of our time preventing people from doing us harm in the first place.

SCULLY: When in your day or in your schedule do you have time to think?

OBAMA: Well, you know what? I try to make time during the course of the day. I mean usually I’ve got some desk time during the course of the day where I can review materials that I think are important for decisions that I’m going to have to make later in the day.

I tend to be a night-owl. So after I have had dinner with the family and tucked the girls in, then I have a big stack of stuff that I have taken up to the residence. And I’ll typically stay up until midnight, just going over stuff and sometimes push the stack aside and just try to do some writing and focus on not the immediate issue in front of me, but some of the issues that are coming down the pike that we need to be thinking about.

And there are a whole host of those issues. I’ll give you a good example. We don’t have I think the kind of comprehensive plan to deal with cyber security that the country needs. Now, there is not a cyber attack right now. There is not some emergency virus right now. But that’s a big critical system that is vital to our economy. It’s vital to our public health infrastructure.

And so you’re figuring out how do we set up systems where government is working with the private sector in a way that doesn’t put a crimp on innovation and discovery, but also make sure that the data is secure and the American people are protected. That’s something where you got to get the wheels turning now. And so we’re doing that.

There are a range of examples like that that if you don’t build in some thought time, end up being pushed aside by the constant churning of events.

SCULLY: Let me just ask you one last question about your wife and your family. Time Magazine, out with a cover story about your wife and saying, “No first family has lived with the weight of hope and a hope that has landed on the Obamas.” Do you feel that way?

OBAMA: No, we don’t feel a lot of stress. We don’t think in those terms. We think in terms of mom and dad and kids and now a dog and how do you make sure that your kids are doing their homework, brushing their teeth, treating each other nicely.

When I think about Michelle, I am thinking, am I listening to her and responsive to some of the things she is going through. And I think she is trying to do the same for me. And, we really think of ourselves as a family like every other family. We’ve got some issues like every other family has that they have to work through.
But I – one of the things we’ve found actually is that the White House has been terrific for family life compared to some of our other previous situations like campaigns, because we are all in the same place. I have got this pretty nice home office, and I am home for dinner every night just about that I’m in town. And I can read to the girls, and they can tell me about their day.

I’ve even gotten to go to a couple of soccer games. And so, we also happen to be blessed by two almost perfect children. So we are pretty lucky there.

SCULLY: But you sell a lot of magazines.

OBAMA: Well, you know, Michelle sells a lot of magazines. I don’t about how magazines with me on the cover do. I think Michelle’s do very well.

SCULLY: Let me conclude with the U.S. Supreme Court. What would you tell your wife, your mother-in-law and your two daughters if it weren’t a woman that you are about to appoint?

OBAMA: You know, it’s interesting to me. Actually I can’t tell you the number of women, including Michelle, who say chose the person you think is going to be best. If I end up having more than one nominee, I am pretty confident that it would be reflective there of some diversity.

I think in any given pick, my job is to just find somebody who I think is going to make a difference on the courts and look after the interest of the American people. And so, I don’t feel weighed down by having to choose a Supreme Court Justice based on demographics. I certainly think that ultimately we want a Supreme Court that is reflective of the incredible variety of the American people.

SCULLY: Is this job what you expected?

OBAMA: You know, this is an extraordinary honor and an extraordinary privilege, and it exceeds expectations, both in terms of the challenges, but also the opportunity to just everyday be involved in issues that really matter. It’s a great privilege.

SCULLY: Mr. President, thank you.

OBAMA: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Video: Dissecting the Cheney Speech on National Security

Video and Transcript: Dick Cheney Speech on “National Security” at American Enterprise Institute (21 May)

Keith Olbermann: "Thank you, Sir, for admitting, obviously inadvertently, that you did not take a serious first look in the seven months and 23 days between your inauguration and 9/11. For that attack, Sir, you are culpable, morally, ethically. At best you were guilty of malfeasance and eternally-lasting stupidity. At worst, Sir, in the deaths of 9/11, you are negligent."

I am refraining from an analysis of former Vice President Dick Cheney's comments on national security yesterday, primarily because I hope that his speech --- which should be treated at most as self-justification --- will just go away. This is hope rather than expectation, however. Despite Dan Drezner's comment that President Obama has "adversaries more boneheaded than himself", Cheney's words will be treated as Tablets from the Mount by his supporters in the broadcast and print media.

So, as a pre-emptive strike against the upholding of Cheney's views as the thoughtful alternative in US homeland security and foreign policy, here are video commentaries from Lawrence O'Donnell and Keith Olbermann, followed by a thorough exposure of the former Vice President's distortions and deceptions by McClatchy News Service's Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay:




[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KFy6QhMvBM[/youtube]

Cheney's speech contained omissions, misstatements
WARREN STROBEL AND JONATHAN LANDAY

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.

In his address to the American Enterprise Institute , a conservative policy organization in Washington , Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that's considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were "legal" and produced information that "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."

He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair , as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a "deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country."

In a statement April 21 , however, Blair said the information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general's investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department released last month.

FBI Director Mueller Robert Muller told Vanity Fair magazine in December that he didn't think that the techniques disrupted any attacks.

— Cheney said that President Barack Obama's decision to release the four top-secret Bush administration memos on the interrogation techniques was "flatly contrary" to U.S. national security, and would help al Qaida train terrorists in how to resist U.S. interrogations.

However, Blair, who oversees all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, said in his statement that he recommended the release of the memos, "strongly supported" Obama's decision to prohibit using the controversial methods and that "we do not need these techniques to keep America safe."

— Cheney said that the Bush administration "moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks."

The former vice president didn't point out that Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahri , remain at large nearly eight years after 9-11 and that the Bush administration began diverting U.S. forces, intelligence assets, time and money to planning an invasion of Iraq before it finished the war in Afghanistan against al Qaida and the Taliban .

There are now 49,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan fighting to contain the bloodiest surge in Taliban violence since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention, and Islamic extremists also have launched their most concerted attack yet on neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan .

— Cheney denied that there was any connection between the Bush administration's interrogation policies and the abuse of detainee at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, which he blamed on "a few sadistic guards . . . in violation of American law, military regulations and simple decency."

However, a bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report in December traced the abuses at Abu Ghraib to the approval of the techniques by senior Bush administration officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld .

"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," said the report issued by Sens. Carl Levin , D- Mich. , and John McCain , R- Ariz. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality and authorized their use against detainees."

— Cheney said that "only detainees of the highest intelligence value" were subjected to the harsh interrogation techniques, and he cited Khalid Sheikh Mohammad , the alleged mastermind of the 9-11 attacks.

He didn't mention Abu Zubaydah, the first senior al Qaida operative to be captured after 9-11. Former FBI special agent Ali Soufan told a Senate subcommittee last week that his interrogation of Zubaydah using traditional methods elicited crucial information, including Mohammed's alleged role in 9-11.

The decision to use the harsh interrogation methods "was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaida ," Soufan said. Former State Department official Philip Zelikow , who in 2005 was then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's point man in an internal fight to overhaul the Bush administration's detention policies, joined Soufan in his criticism.

— Cheney said that "the key to any strategy is accurate intelligence," but the Bush administration ignored warnings from experts in the CIA , the Defense Intelligence Agency , the State Department , the Department of Energy and other agencies, and used false or exaggerated intelligence supplied by Iraqi exile groups and others to help make its case for the 2003 invasion.

Cheney made no mention of al Qaida operative Ali Mohamed al Fakheri , who's known as Ibn Sheikh al Libi , whom the Bush administration secretly turned over to Egypt for interrogation in January 2002 . While allegedly being tortured by Egyptian authorities, Libi provided false information about Iraq's links with al Qaida , which the Bush administration used despite doubts expressed by the DIA.

A state-run Libyan newspaper said Libi committed suicide recently in a Libyan jail.

— Cheney accused Obama of "the selective release" of documents on Bush administration detainee policies, charging that Obama withheld records that Cheney claimed prove that information gained from the harsh interrogation methods prevented terrorist attacks.

"I've formally asked that (the information) be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained," Cheney said. "Last week, that request was formally rejected."

However, the decision to withhold the documents was announced by the CIA , which said that it was obliged to do so by a 2003 executive order issued by former President George W. Bush prohibiting the release of materials that are the subject of lawsuits.

— Cheney said that only "ruthless enemies of this country" were detained by U.S. operatives overseas and taken to secret U.S. prisons.

A 2008 McClatchy investigation, however, found that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent citizens or low-level fighters of little intelligence value who were turned over to American officials for money or because of personal or political rivalries.

In addition, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Oct. 5, 2005 , that the Bush administration had admitted to her that it had mistakenly abducted a German citizen, Khaled Masri , from Macedonia in January 2004 .

Masri reportedly was flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan , where he allegedly was abused while being interrogated. He was released in May 2004 and dumped on a remote road in Albania .

In January 2007 , the German government issued arrest warrants for 13 alleged CIA operatives on charges of kidnapping Masri.

— Cheney slammed Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and criticized his effort to persuade other countries to accept some of the detainees.

The effort to shut down the facility, however, began during Bush's second term, promoted by Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates .

"One of the things that would help a lot is, in the discussions that we have with the states of which they (detainees) are nationals, if we could get some of those countries to take them back," Rice said in a Dec. 12, 2007 , interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. "So we need help in closing Guantanamo ."

— Cheney said that, in assessing the security environment after 9-11, the Bush team had to take into account "dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists."

Cheney didn't explicitly repeat the contention he made repeatedly in office: that Saddam cooperated with al Qaida , a linkage that U.S. intelligence officials and numerous official inquiries have rebutted repeatedly.

The late Iraqi dictator's association with terrorists vacillated and was mostly aimed at quashing opponents and critics at home and abroad.

The last State Department report on international terrorism to be released before 9-11 said that Saddam's regime "has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since its failed plot to assassinate former President ( George H.W.) Bush in 1993 in Kuwait ."

A Pentagon study released last year, based on a review of 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after the U.S.-led invasion, concluded that while Saddam supported militant Palestinian groups — the late terrorist Abu Nidal found refuge in Baghdad , at least until Saddam had him killed — the Iraqi security services had no "direct operational link" with al Qaida .

Video and Transcript: Clinton Press Briefing on Aid to Pakistan

Related Post: That US Strategy in Pakistan - A Bit of Money for Two Million Refugees



SECRETARY CLINTON: I appreciate the opportunity to provide some information about what our government and the people of the U.S. are doing with respect to the humanitarian crisis that is affecting Pakistan.

The last time I was in this room, on May 6th, I spoke about the United States' commitment to stand by Pakistan's people and the democratically elected government as they work to restore security in their country. And President Obama is determined to match our words with our actions, because Pakistan's government is leading the fight against extremists that threaten the future of their country and our collective security.

At the same time, though, Pakistan is facing a major humanitarian crisis. Approximately 2 million people have fled their homes, and Pakistan's government, their military, and relief organizations are working to meet the needs of these displaced persons. So many are finding refuge with family members, or in schools or mosques; they are relying on the generosity of relatives and friends. And I'm confident that Pakistan's institutions and citizens will succeed in confronting this humanitarian challenge if the international community steps up and provides the support that is needed.

So today I am announcing that the people of the United States are responding to a request for assistance from the government of Pakistan with more than $100 million in humanitarian support. Now, this money comes on top of almost $60 million that the United States has provided since last August to help Pakistanis who have been affected by the conflicts, and in addition to the other funding for Pakistan that we are already seeking from the Congress.

Providing this assistance is not only the right thing to do, but we believe it is essential to global security and the security of the United States, and we are prepared to do more as the situation demands.

The United States has a history of working with the Pakistani authorities to alleviate suffering. When an earthquake struck the country in 2005, we moved quickly to assist. Altogether, the United States has provided more than $3.4 billion since 2002 to alleviate suffering and promote economic growth, education, health and good governance in Pakistan.

A U.S. Disaster Assistance Response Team -- a so-called DART team -- and embassy personnel from our embassy in Islamabad are on the ground working with and supporting Pakistani authorities in evaluating needs for shelter, food, health, water and sanitation services. And supplies from the U.S. are already flowing to Pakistan. USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance has delivered 30,000 family relief kits, 5,000 tents, FM radios, and generators to provide both light and water.

At the request of the government of Pakistan's special support group, the U.S. military is providing water trucks, halal MREs, and large tents within environment units for hot weather.

At the same time, one of our guiding principles of this assistance package is that it should be more than just the delivery of supplies. It should also be an investment in the people and the economy of Pakistan. So a significant portion of our pledged food aid will go to buy Pakistani grain in local markets, taking advantage of the country's bumper crop of wheat. And we will work to create quick-impact job programs that will put Pakistanis to work, making supplies that will help their countrymen who have been forced to flee the fighting. Our approach to the aid reflects our conviction that all Pakistanis have a stake in resolving this crisis.

In addition to supporting the work of Pakistan's democratically elected government, we are coordinating closely with the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. And we appreciate the work that U.N. agencies, the ICRC, and nongovernmental organizations are already doing.

The United States is also deploying new tools to meet these challenges. We are working to support the Pakistani government in launching a text-messaging system that will alert local communities to assistance efforts and will help family members keep in touch.

We have been hard at work in this area for a number of weeks, looking for ways that we can get communications directly to people on the ground. And we know that a lot of the Pakistanis who are being displaced by the conflict have cell phones. So we're going to try to reach directly to them, not only to give them information that will be of assistance to them, but also to provide a way of connecting them up with other people, with the military, with the governing authorities.

Now, Americans can use technology to help, as well. Using your cell phones, Americans can text the word "swat" -- to the number 20222 and make a $5 contribution that will help the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees provide tents, clothing, food, and medicine to hundreds of thousands of affected people. And before I came over here, we did that in the State Department. So we are making some of the first donations to this fund.

President Obama and I hope that individuals who have fled the conflict will be able to return home quickly, safely, and on a voluntary basis. Some have already gone back to their communities. And as they do, the United States stands ready to help Pakistan's government support displaced persons as they rebuild their lives.

But as long as this crisis persists, our assistance will continue. We face a common threat, a common challenge, and now a common task. And we know that the work ahead is difficult, but we have seen an enormous amount of support and determination out of the Pakistani government, military, and people in the last weeks to tackle the extremist challenge. And we're confident that with respect to the humanitarian challenge the people of Pakistan and their government, as well as the international community, can come together and forge not only the assistance that is needed, but stronger bonds for the years ahead.

So I'd be happy to answer any of your questions.

QUESTION: Madam Secretary, how much of this money goes directly to U.S.-run programs that are there where it's sort of the U.S. is in charge of how the money gets disseminated, and how much of it goes to the Pakistani government? And then can you also talk about President Clinton's role with Haiti?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, with respect to the money, the money is going primarily to international assistance efforts that the United States is deeply involved in supporting and helping to coordinate. The top United Nations disaster experts are either on the ground or shortly will be on the ground. We also have a very good working relationship with the Pakistani military coming out of our earthquake experience with them. And we believe that the person who's been put in charge, who was in charge of the earthquake relief, is especially well suited for that.

So we're going to be providing a lot of in-kind contributions and we're going to be providing financial support to multilateral organizations and NGOs. And as I said, we're going to try to be creative in buying locally produced goods and labor, so that the people of Pakistan have a stake in solving this humanitarian crisis. So it's a multitude of approaches, Chuck, and we think that's the smartest way to go.

QUESTION: But not much of it actually goes directly to the government?

SECRETARY CLINTON: No.

QUESTION: It's just mostly -- okay.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes, yes, that's right.

Well, with respect to Haiti, we're very pleased that the United Nations is taking such an affirmative role in trying to assist the people of Haiti. They have not yet recovered from the four hurricanes of last year. This is a high priority not only for the U.N., but also for the Obama administration. And we think that Ban Ki-moon has chosen a high-profile envoy to raise the visibility of the needs of the people of Haiti. And it's the kind of partnership that we're looking for across the board.

We had already begun putting a team together, led by my Chief of Staff and Counselor, Cheryl Mills, to harness the support of the United States government to assist Haiti. And this is going to be an added bit of leverage and focus for us that we can all work on together.

QUESTION: Thank you, Madam Secretary. How much money do you expect to raise through these $5 increments from text messages? And can you really improve the situation in the Swat Valley at $5 increments? And secondly, what does the United States expect in return for this $100 million?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think we can do a lot to improve the conditions of the displaced people coming out of the conflict areas. I'm hoping that we'll have a big response to the text messaging. Just think if a million people in the United States gave at least $5, that's $5 million. And that would be a significant contribution from ordinary citizens, just people who care about what's happening.

We're enlisting the Pakistani American communities. One of the results of our trilateral meetings has been a commitment to help assist Pakistani Americans to establish a 501(c)3 that will solicit contributions from the Diaspora, and then be able to provide that money for this kind of assistance.

So I think it's important on the financial front, but equally important is enlisting people-to-people diplomacy and assistance, which is something that we believe very strongly in. We don't want this just to be government to government. We want Americans weighing in to try to help, and we think this does that.

What we're looking for is what we're seeing, the kind of commitment from the Pakistani government and the military to go after the extremists who threaten the safety and security of Pakistanis and of the nation. And I've been encouraged by the very strong positions that have been taken across the political spectrum in support of the military actions. And that's why it's important that we step up now and help on the humanitarian front.

QUESTION: What assurance do you have that our assistance will not go to expand their nuclear power and arsenal? And what brought it center stage? We've been helping Pakistan for years and years and years, poured a lot of money into it. Why now -- I mean, I don't say why now -- I know the challenge of extremists. But what is it that that has been broken down?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, first I have to say how honored I was to share the podium and the stage with Helen Thomas last week at the NYU graduation ceremonies -- (laughter) -- where we were both given honorary degrees, and in Yankee Stadium, which was a pretty exciting experience.

You know, Helen, I think that it is fair to say that our policy toward Pakistan over the last 30 years has been incoherent. I don't know any other word to use. We came in in the '80s and helped to build up the Mujahideen to take on the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The Pakistanis were our partners in that. Their security service and their military were encouraged and funded by the United States to create the Mujahideen in order to go after the Soviet invasion and occupation.

The Soviet Union fell in 1989, and we basically said, thank you very much; we had all kinds of problems in terms of sanctions being imposed on the Pakistanis. Their democracy was not secure and was constantly at risk of and often being overtaken by the military, which stepped in when it appeared that democracy could not work.

And so I think that when we ask that question it is fair to apportion responsibility to the Pakistanis, but it's also fair to ask ourselves what have we done and how have we done it over all of these years, and what role do we play in the situation that the Pakistanis currently confront.

I believe that what President Obama is doing with our new approach toward Pakistan is qualitatively different than anything that has been tried before. It basically says we support the democratically elected government, but we have to have a relationship where we are very clear and transparent with one another; where we have the kind of honest exchanges that have come out of our trilateral meetings, where we're sitting across the table and we're saying, what do you intend to do about what we view as an extremist threat to your country, which by the way, also threatens us.

And so in the last week I think we've seen an answer, which is very encouraging. And, therefore, it is our responsibility to support the democratically elected government, to be a source of advice and counsel where requested, but also to step in with aid that can try to make this government as successful as possible in delivering results for the people of Pakistan. That's what we are engaged in.

Now, we're doing this because we believe that the future of Pakistan is extremely important to the security of the United States. If we did not believe that I wouldn't be standing here, the President would not be directing us.

QUESTION: Why do you believe that?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, because we think that the advance of extremism is a threat to our security; that al Qaeda and their extremist allies are intent upon attacking not only our friends and allies in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan, but our homeland and American citizens and interests around the world. And as the President has said, our goal, coming out of our strategic review of Afghanistan and Pakistan, was to defeat and disrupt and dismantle the al Qaeda network.

We have seen al Qaeda driven out of Afghanistan to find refuge in the mountains of Pakistan. I don't think anyone doubts their continuing efforts to plot against us. They have not given up on their desire to inflict damage, harm and murder on the United States of America. That is how we in this administration view the threat coming from al Qaeda and their allies. We have walked away from Pakistan before, with consequences that have not been in the best interests of our security, and we are determined that we're going to forge a partnership with the people of Pakistan and their democratically elected government against extremism -- and that's what we're pursuing.

QUESTION: So what is the U.S. role, actually? Is it just transferring money, or is there also going to be a physical presence on the ground, and in particular, any boots on the ground in Pakistan to deliver this aid?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Chip, we're doing what the Pakistan has requested of us. Obviously our military will be delivering a lot of these supplies, but they'll be handing them off to the Pakistani military and to the relief groups, both international and non-governmental organizations. And we think that's the appropriate way to proceed.

We were very pleased that the government appointed General Nadeem Ahmad to head up these efforts, because he directed civilian relief efforts after the earthquake of 2005. He was extremely capable and produced positive results, and where necessary asked for help not only from the United States but from other international groups. And that's what we're expecting will happen this time.

QUESTION: Do you have any idea what the numbers of military would be involved in this? And is there any danger that they could get caught in the crossfire here?

SECRETARY CLINTON: No, no. We are not engaged in any military action whatsoever, and we are not engaged in the delivery of any civilian relief. We are there to facilitate the Pakistani military and the international and NGO relief agencies to be able to do that.

QUESTION: Thank you. Madam Secretary, are you worried the Pakistanis might abandon the fight against the Taliban without this aid? And is the lack of this kind of aid, in your opinion, the reason that former President Musharraf did not prosecute the war against the Taliban as efficiently as the current government?

SECRETARY CLINTON: You know, Wendell, I can't speculate on why former President Musharraf did what he did while he was in power. I just know that at the end of his time in office, the extremists had found safe havens in Pakistan and were stronger than they had been when he came into office, in terms of their willingness to make alliance with al Qaeda as part of what we view as a terrorist network -- a syndicate, if you will.

But what I do believe is that the current democratically elected government and the opposition has recognized the serious threat posed by the Taliban's advance out of their usual territory, moving closer and closer to Islamabad. And I am very encouraged by the comments that the Prime Minister has made, that opposition leaders like former Prime Minister Sharif has made. There is a real national mood change on the part of the Pakistani people that we are watching and obviously encouraged by. And I think it has to do with a recognition that this is no longer about a part of their country that seems quite distant from population centers, like Lahore or Islamabad or Karachi. That this is a potential direct threat to their way of life in Pakistan.

The beating of the young woman that was videotaped had an electric effect on people throughout Pakistan. I've talked to a number of Pakistanis and Pakistani Americans who said, "We were shocked by that." You know, sometimes it just takes a visual image or an act to break through your everyday concerns about the economy and politics as usual, and I think that's happened in Pakistan.

The humanitarian relief is the right thing to do, no matter what the politics. People are in need, they're having to leave their homes and their possessions. We hope that they'll be able to return home quickly if the military not only clears the Taliban from their communities but also holds that ground with a combination of military and policing forces.

But this is a tough battle and I don't think anybody should underestimate how difficult it is for the Pakistani military to wage this battle in very challenging terrain. I don't know how many of you have either flown over or visited that terrain, but this is hard. And that's why what the Pakistanis are doing now deserves our full support. They're doing it. And we're encouraging them to do it because we think it's in their interests, but we also believe it's in the interests of our long-term struggle against extremism and, in particular, the al Qaeda network.

Video and Transcript: Bush Official Zelikow Condemns Torture Programmes

Related Post: Revealed - Zelikow Memorandum Says Torture is not OK (Unless It's Effective)
Related Post: FBI Agent Ali Soufan Testifies on Torture

Ironically, as President Obama was trying to tuck away any more photographs revealing the US Government's torture of detainees, former Bush Administration official Philip Zelikow was dissecting the legal and political cover for "enhanced interrogations" in testimony to a Senate committee. He reiterated that the techniques was approved at the highest levels of the Bush White House, including by his immediate boss, Condoleezza Rice, and that his memorandum objecting to the torture  (still classified by the US Government) was blocked by other Bush officials. And he offered this pertinent point: if the torture methods were considered legal in their application against "foreign" detainees, then they would also be legal in application against US citizens.

C-SPAN has decided to charge $60 for the videos of the hearings before the Senate committee, which also included testimony by Ali Soufan (posted in a separate entry), the FBI agent who questioned 9-11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. So we offer two videos --- a summary of the Soufan and Zelikow testimonies and Zelikow's interview with Rachel Maddow --- and the transcript of Zelkow's statement:

VIDEO (Part 1 of 2)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU2BlALKZjM[/youtube]



VIDEO (Part 2 of 2)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANOIHvQ5RNE[/youtube]

ZELIKOW: Mr. Chairman, Senator Sessions, thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear before you today. The declassification of Justice Department legal opinions on the legality of an interrogation program operated by the CIA has reopened an important public debate. The debate is on how the United States should get intelligence from captives taken in the global armed conflict against the violent Islamist extremist organization, al Qaeda, its allies, and its affiliates, as these organizations wage war against our country, and our people.

The Committee has my c.v. so I won’t detail my experience or scholarship. I will concentrate in this statement on my involvement in debates on the treatment of enemy captives in order to discuss the effectiveness of such methods and the legal reasoning employed to judge this and future intelligence programs.

At the outset, I will address a few frequently asked questions:

-- I have no view on whether former officials should be prosecuted. We have institutions to make those judgments. The factual and legal story is complicated, more complicated than is generally recognized. We should let our institutions do their job.

-- There should be a thorough inquiry, yielding a public report, to: comprehend how the United States came to operate such an unprecedented program so that we can learn from that; and evaluate whether the more constrained intelligence program we have been operating against al Qaeda in Iraq for at least four and a half years and against al Qaeda worldwide for at least three and a half years is adequate to protect the country. I think it is. But important people have challenged that view. Since the issue is so important, our current approach should be validated, or it should be changed. -- I have no view on whether Justice Department lawyers acted unethically or improperly. I believed at least some of their legal opinions on this subject were unsound, even unreasonable. But I don’t know how they did their work. Others should judge.

In 2003, while serving as executive director of the 9/11 Commission, some of my staff colleagues and I were concerned because the CIA was unwilling to disclose information about the conduct of the interrogations of key detainees and would not allow access to the detainees or the interrogators.1 The Commission’s concerns deepened as press reports in 2004 indicated that detainees might have been abused. Therefore, in its July 2004 report, the Commission formally recommended that the United States “engage its friends to develop a common coalition approach toward the detention and humane treatment of captured terrorists” drawing “upon Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions on the law of armed conflict,” an article “specifically designed for those cases in which the usual laws of war did not apply.”

This article, common to all four of the Geneva Conventions on armed conflict, was meant to provide a ‘floor’ to handle situations where usual POW status does not apply. It prohibits “cruel treatment” under any circumstances and bans “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” In its recommendation, the 9/11 Commission noted that these “minimum standards are generally accepted throughout the world as customary international law.”

Although the Bush administration accepted most of the Commission’s recommendations, this was one of the few it did not accept. That refusal plainly signaled that the administration was reserving the right to inflict treatment that might violate the so-called “CID” standard. “CID” stands for “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” – a standard expressed, in slightly varying terms, in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions that I just mentioned, in the Convention Against Torture, another signed and ratified treaty obligation, and is a standard also found in a Protocol to the Geneva Conventions that had been accepted by most countries and by the United States during the Reagan administration. The administration’s initial rejection of the 9/11 Commission recommendation on this point was therefore both revealing and troubling.

As 2004 turned to 2005, the controversy about the treatment of captives intensified. There were the revelations of detainee abuse in military facilities in Iraq, and reports of alleged murders. There were reports of past abuses at the Guantanamo facility. There were growing rumors and reports about other sites run by the CIA. I later learned that, in 2004, the CIA Inspector General, John Helgerson, had prepared a secret report that was plainly skeptical and worried about the Agency’s treatment of captives. I was acquainted with Helgerson and respected his judgment; I also later talked to CIA officials who worked on this study. An important critique, the IG report was also another reminder about the outstanding professionalism that can always be found in the Agency’s ranks.

In 2005, I became Counselor of the Department of State. This should not be confused with the duties of the State Department’s Legal Adviser. The “Counselor” is an old office at State, a place where the Secretary puts someone who serves as a kind of deputy on miscellaneous issues. Among my duties, I was to be the subcabinet “deputy” for the Department on issues of intelligence policy or counterterrorism.

By June 2005, President Bush wanted to reconsider the current approach. He asked his advisers to develop real options for the future of the Guantanamo facility, for the eventual disposition of detainees held by CIA, and to look at the standards governing the treatment of enemy captives.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in favor of change. Also supporting change was her Legal Adviser, John Bellinger, who had held the same job for her on the NSC staff. Bellinger was already deeply concerned about detainee policies and carried scars from earlier bureaucratic battles on the topic.

Subcabinet deputies began meeting regularly in highly sensitive meetings to consider these issues. I represented the Department at these meetings, along with Mr. Bellinger. I was thus ‘read in’ to the details of this particular CIA program for the first time.

Why was such a program adopted? I do not yet adequately understand how and why this happened. But four points stand out:

First, the atmosphere after 9/11. The country had suffered the most devastating single attack in its history. Attitudes toward those behind this mass murder were understandably merciless. The feeling of being at war was real, at least in the White House. Almost every morning, President Bush himself received nerve-jangling briefings just on the latest threats. Almost every afternoon, usually at 5 p.m., George Tenet would review the latest engagements as a de facto Combatant Commander in a global war. Some of the threat reports were apocalyptic, some scares have never become public. I saw many such reports when serving on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

One result was that the tough, gritty world of ‘the field’ worked its way into the consciousness of the nation’s leaders to a degree rarely seen before, or since. A large cultural divide shadowed these judgments, a divide between the world of secretive, bearded operators in the field coming from their 3 a.m. meetings at safe houses, and the world of Washington policymakers in their wood-paneled suites. As the policymakers sense this divide, they often and naturally become more deferential – especially in a time of seemingly endless alarms. What policymakers can sometimes miss, though, is that the world of the field has many countries and cultures of its own. Seasoned operators often disagree about what the government should do, and did in this case, but policymakers were rarely aware of these arguments.

Second, the CIA – an agency that had no significant institutional capability to question enemy captives – improvised an unprecedented, elaborate, systematic program of medically monitored physical torment to break prisoners and make them talk. This program was apparently based on the SERE program familiar to civilian and military intelligence officials from their training. The program was reportedly reverse-engineered and then sold to policymakers as being no more than “what we do to our own trainees.” Much about this policy development process is still unclear, though press reports have already discussed some of the fallacies and omissions in the reverse-engineering approach.

There have also been conflicting accounts about the role of “supply” and “demand”: CIA policy entrepreneurs and officials in the White House or in the Office of the Vice President who were pushing for better intelligence. Nor is it clear just how the program evolved. It would be important to grasp how the program was understood and sold at each stage in this evolution. But the program would not have come into being unless an executive department or agency of the government was willing to develop it and defend it.

Third, the leaders of the CIA evidently believed, and told the government’s leaders, that their program would be uniquely effective in getting information from high-value captives. “Uniquely” is the key word. After all, other kinds of interrogation programs were well known to experts in law enforcement and the U.S. armed forces. The Director of the CIA, the de facto combatant commander in an ongoing fight, apparently emphasized that there were no good alternatives to adoption of this proposal.

Fourth, Attorney General John Ashcroft and his Department of Justice, along with the White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales, assured the government’s leaders that the proposed program was lawful. Those assurances were renewed by Ashcroft’s successor, Mr. Gonzales, and by Gonzales’ successor as White House Counsel, Harriet Miers.

I will discuss the legal issues in more detail in a moment. For now, I wish to return to the issue of unique “effectiveness” and the supposed absence of alternatives.

There is quite a bit of empirical and historical information available about interrogation experience in this country, in its past wars, and in the experiences of other democracies facing terrifying threats. I have done some work on the British, French, and Israeli experiences. These experiences and others are highly instructive. They show the damage that these programs can do to the counterterror effort, the process of trial and error as alternatives emerged, and the proven effectiveness of some of these alternatives. America has had extensive experience with interrogation of high-value detainees, especially in World War II when special facilities were created for this purpose. The national policy then was to treat the detainees humanely, even though thousands of lives were potentially at stake in the midst of a brutal, total war. It is not clear how much, if any, of this knowledge was canvassed and analyzed when the critical arguments over adoption of this unprecedented program were occurring in 2002 and 2003.

By the time I began engaging in these arguments, in the spring and summer of 2005, another important source of data had emerged. This was the American intelligence and interrogation effort against al Qaeda in Iraq. This was an interagency effort, including CIA and FBI experts, organized by the military’s Joint Special Operations Command. By 2005, if not earlier, this program was complying with basic international standards in its interrogation of captives. The program was high-tempo and time-urgent. The officers running the interrogation program considered it effective and, at least by mid-2005, the government’s leaders were aware of their positive assessment.

Nonetheless, the intelligence community’s position in 2005, and later, was that a substantial program of intense physical coercion was uniquely necessary to protect the nation. The arguments that have appeared recently in the press are the same arguments, even using some of the same examples, used to defend the program against its internal critics four years ago.

Examples of success cite plots thwarted or terrorists captured. Some of these examples may not be accurate. Others may be exaggerated, or they may mask murky, internal arguments among operatives and analysts about whose source proved out, or which lead was key. Rival claims of credit that often accompany successful cases. But getting into a debate about whether the CIA program produced useful intelligence misses the point.

The point is not whether the CIA program produced useful intelligence. Of course it did. Quite a lot. The CIA had exclusive custody of a number of the most important al Qaeda captives in the world, for years. Any good interrogation effort would produce an important flow of information from these captives.

Complicating the story, the CIA did not just rely on physical coercion. A long-term interrogation program was also being employed, mustering a number of experts using growing skill in patiently mining for more information and assimilating it. Indeed, one of the tragedies of this program is that the association with physical coercion detracts attention away from some of the very high quality work the CIA did do for the country, quality work that has continued in recent years even after this program was substantially dismantled.

So the issue is not whether the CIA program of extreme physical coercion produced useful intelligence; it is about its net value when compared to the alternatives. And, even though the program may have some value against some prisoners, it has serious drawbacks just in the intelligence calculus, such as:

-- constraints in getting the optimal team of interrogators, since law enforcement and military experts could not take part;

-- whether the program actually produces much of the time- sensitive current intelligence that is one of its unique justifications;

-- loss of intelligence from allies who fear becoming complicit in a program they abhor and a whole set of fresh problems with coalition cooperation on intelligence operations;

-- poorer reliability of information obtained through torment;

-- possible loss of opportunities to turn some captives into more effective and even cooperative informants; and

-- problems in devising an end-game for the eventual trial or long- term disposition of the captives.

This skepticism about effectiveness links to wider concerns about how the United States should treat captured terrorists or terrorist suspects. By 2005, the raging controversy over “Abu Ghraib” or “Guantanamo” or “torture” was hurting the United States position in the world more than any other problem in our foreign policy.

As Secretary of State, Dr. Rice placed a high priority on changing the national approach to the treatment of detainees. Therefore, once the President indicated his readiness to hear alternatives, we first attempted to develop a ‘big bang’ approach, a presidential initiative that might take on the whole cluster of issues in a single announcement.

To show what such an initiative might look like and how it could be presented, and with help from Mr. Bellinger, I worked with the deputy secretary of defense, Gordon England, on a joint paper, a notional draft of the building blocks of such an initiative. Deputy Secretary England was aided by DOD’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for detainee affairs, Matt Waxman, and other staff. Our (unclassified) joint paper outlining the elements of a presidential initiative was distributed in June 2005.

However the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, indicated that this paper did not represent his Department’s views. He designated a different official as his deputy for these issues. The NSC staff then felt it was more appropriate for the interagency process to address the specific issues incrementally, rather than take up discussion of this broad paper.

At State we then focused much of our effort on recommending a different legal framework for evaluating the treatment of enemy captives. We felt it was very important to focus on the “CID” – cruel, inhuman, and degrading -- standard.

The administration had always conceded the applicability of the federal anti-torture statute and had repeatedly held that the CIA program did not violate it. The Justice Department’s view was authoritative for the executive branch and was immovable. The anti-torture language, as interpreted by Justice, also turned on medical assessments by CIA doctors, assessments we could not challenge. Taking these facts into account, plus the fact that “CID” was actually a stronger standard codified in three relevant treaties, we concentrated our advocacy on adoption of the “CID” guideline.

The “CID” standard was critical for two other reasons.

-- It was the standard that had been proposed by Senator John McCain and his allies, including Senator Lindsey Graham, in the “McCain Amendment.”

-- The “CID” standard, as codified in Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, is also the relevant standard in the federal war crimes law (18 U.S.C. section 2441) which then stated (it was later amended) that any conduct constituting a violation of Article 3 was a war crime, a felony punishable by up to life imprisonment.

The administration position on all these “CID” arguments had been this: We do not have to measure our conduct against this standard because none of these treaties apply. If the standard did apply, the CIA program did not violate it. The outer defenses, a series of technical, jurisdictional arguments, had received the most attention. Samples can be seen in the OLC opinion of May 30, 2005.

Also, OLC’s view was that Geneva Common Article 3 did not apply because it was meant for civil conflict, not an international war (Article 3 was written that way because its drafters thought international wars would be covered by fuller Geneva protections; they thought civil war was the loophole they were closing with the minimum standard of Article 3.) And, although the federal war crimes statute’s reference to “conduct constituting” could be construed as stating a substantive compliance standard, the OLC did not share that view.

In 2005 State worked to persuade the rest of the government to join in developing an option that would abandon these technical defenses and accept the “CID” standard. An illustration of these arguments, as made at the time, is in an unclassified paper prepared with Mr. Bellinger’s help and circulated in July 2005.

Both deputies and principals battled over these topics on into the fall of 2005, including the issue of how the administration should deal with Senator McCain’s proposed amendment. New press reports, by Dana Priest in the Washington Post, fueled further controversy – especially in Europe.

By the end of 2005 these debates in both the executive and legislative branches did lead to real change. On December 5, as Secretary Rice left on a European trip, she formally announced on behalf of the President that the “CID” standard would govern U.S. conduct by any agency, anywhere in the world.4 On December 30 the McCain amendment (to a defense appropriations bill) was signed into law as well, as the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.

Thus by early 2006 there was no way for the administration to avoid the need to reevaluate the CIA program against a “CID” standard. The work of the NSC deputies intensified, working to develop a comprehensive set of proposals for presidential decision about the future of the CIA program and the future of Guantanamo.

The OLC had guarded against the contingency of a substantive “CID” review in its May 30, 2005 opinion. OLC had held that, even if the standard did apply, the full CIA program -- including waterboarding – complied with it. This OLC view also meant, in effect, that the McCain amendment was a nullity; it would not prohibit the very program and procedures Senator McCain and his supporters thought they had targeted.

So, with the battle to apply the standard having been won, State then had to fight another battle over how to define its meaning. That meant coming to grips with OLC’s substantive analysis.

OLC contended that these subjective terms – like “cruel” or “humane” -- should be interpreted in light of the well developed and analogous restrictions found in American constitutional law, specifically through the interaction of the 5th, 8th, and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. As OLC observed in its May 30 opinion, the Congress had conditioned its ratification of one of the “CID”-type standards, the one found in the Convention Against Torture, on its being interpreted in just this way.

Therefore, to challenge OLC’s interpretation, it was necessary to challenge the Justice Department’s interpretation of U.S. constitutional law. This was not easy, since OLC is the authoritative interpreter of such law for the executive branch of the government. Many years earlier I had worked in this area of American constitutional law. The OLC interpretation of U.S. constitutional law in this area seemed strained and indefensible. It relied on a “shocks the conscience” standard in judging interrogations but did not seem to present a fair reading of the caselaw under that standard. The OLC analysis also neglected another important line of caselaw, on conditions of confinement.

While OLC’s interpretations of other areas of law were well known to be controversial, I did not believe my colleagues had heard arguments challenging the way OLC had analyzed these constitutional rights. With the issue of “CID” definition now raised so squarely, and so important to the options being developed for the President, it seemed necessary to put that legal challenge in front of my government colleagues, citing relevant caselaw.

Further, the OLC position had implications beyond the interpretation of international treaties. If the CIA program passed muster under an American constitutional compliance analysis, then – at least in principle -- a program of this kind would pass American constitutional muster even if employed anywhere in the United States, on American citizens. Reflect on that for a moment.

I distributed my memo analyzing these legal issues to other deputies at one of our meetings, probably in February 2006. I later heard the memo was not considered appropriate for further discussion and that copies of my memo should be collected and destroyed. That particular request, passed along informally, did not seem proper and I ignored it. This particular legal memo has evidently been located in State’s files. It is currently being reviewed for possible declassification.

The broader arguments over the future of the CIA program went on for months, even though the old program had effectively been discontinued. There were continuing issues over whether or how to maintain a different kind of CIA program. Both principals and deputies examined proposals to bring the high-value detainees out of the ‘black sites’ and to Guantanamo where they could be brought to justice (and would give accounts of their treatment to lawyers and the Red Cross); seek legislation that would close Guantanamo; accept fully the application of Common Article 3; and find some way of maintaining a standby CIA program that would comply with legal standards. A new OLC opinion was also being developed in the spring of 2006 to deal with the different circumstances, including the McCain amendment. We at State were concerned about this development, unless OLC had reconsidered how to interpret the “CID” standard.

We nonetheless believed these issues were moving in an encouraging direction, though the administration certainly remained divided. Options for action on all the major issues had been developed for possible presidential decision and had already been discussed repeatedly by the principal officers of the government.

Then, on June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. That decision held that Geneva Common Article 3 applied to the U.S. government’s treatment of these captives as a matter of law. Immediately, the potential exposure to criminal liability in the federal war crimes act became real.

Internal debate continued into July, culminating in several decisions by President Bush. Accepting positions that Secretary Rice had urged again and again, the President set the goal of closing the Guantanamo facility, decided to bring all the high-value detainees out of the ‘black sites’ and move them toward trial, sought legislation from the Congress that would address these developments (which became the Military Commissions Act) and defended the need for some continuing CIA program that would comply with relevant law. President Bush announced these decisions on September 6.

I left the government at the end of 2006 and returned to the University of Virginia. Both Secretary Rice and Mr. Bellinger remained deeply involved in these issues for the following two years, working for constructive change. Mr. Bellinger, in particular, also deserves credit for exhausting, patient diplomacy to carry forward the idea of working with our key allies to build common, coalition approaches on these tough problems. He has conducted several international conferences that have successfully advanced this effort.

The U.S. government adopted an unprecedented program of coolly calculated dehumanizing abuse and physical torment to extract information. This was a mistake, perhaps a disastrous one. It was a collective failure, in which a number of officials and members of Congress (and staffers) of both parties played a part, endorsing a CIA program of physical coercion even after the McCain amendment was passed and after the Hamdan decision . Precisely because this was a collective failure it is all the more important to comprehend it, and learn from it.

For several years our government has been fighting terrorism without using these extreme methods. We face some serious obstacles in defeating al Qaeda and its allies. We could be hit again, hit hard. But our decision to respect basic international standards does not appear to be a big hindrance in the fight. In fact, if the U.S. regains some higher ground in the wider struggle of ideas, our prospects in a long conflict will be better.

Others may disagree. They may believe that recent history, even since 2005, shows that America needs an elaborate program of indefinite secret detention and physical coercion in order to protect the nation. The government, and the country, needs to decide whether they are right. If they are right, our laws must change and our country must change. I think they are wrong.

Transcript: FBI Agent Ali Soufan Testifies on Torture

Related Post: Bush Official Zelikow Condemns Illegal Programmes

Testifying behind a screen, former FBI agent Ali Soufan told a Senate hearing yesterday about the damage caused by the Bush Administration's "enhanced interrogations". Soufan was one of the first agents to question Al Qa'eda operative Abu Zubaydah, and by "connecting" with the detainee, he learned the identity of 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Shortly afterwards, CIA operatives took over the question, applying techniques including waterboarding. Abu Zubaydah, mentally and physically broken, offered little from that point.

Soufan's testimony can be read next to his opinion piece, published last month, in The New York Times.

Mr. Chairman, Committee members, thank you for inviting me to appear before you today. I know that each one of you cares deeply about our nation's security. It was always a comfort to me during the most dangerous of situations that I faced, from going undercover as an al Qaeda operative, to unraveling terrorist cells, to tracking down the killers of the 17 U.S. sailors murdered in the USS Cole bombing, that those of us on the frontline had your support and the backing of the American people. So I thank you.

The issue that I am here to discuss today – interrogation methods used to question terrorists – is not, and should not be, a partisan matter. We all share a commitment to using the best interrogation method possible that serves our national security interests and fits squarely within the framework of our nation's principles.

From my experience – and I speak as someone who has personally interrogated many terrorists and elicited important actionable intelligence– I strongly believe that it is a mistake to use what has become known as the "enhanced interrogation techniques," a position shared by many professional operatives, including the CIA officers who were present at the initial phases of the Abu Zubaydah interrogation.

These techniques, from an operational perspective, are ineffective, slow and unreliable, and as a result harmful to our efforts to defeat al Qaeda. (This is aside from the important additional considerations that they are un-American and harmful to our reputation and cause.)

My interest in speaking about this issue is not to advocate the prosecution of anyone. People were given misinformation, half-truths, and false claims of successes; and reluctant intelligence officers were given instructions and assurances from higher authorities. Examining a past we cannot change is only worthwhile when it helps guide us towards claiming a better future that is yet within our reach.

And my focus is on the future. I wish to do my part to ensure that we never again use these harmful, slow, ineffective, and unreliable techniques instead of the tried, tested, and successful ones – the ones that are also in sync with our values and moral character. Only by doing this will we defeat the terrorists as effectively and quickly as possible.

Most of my professional career has been spent investigating, studying, and interrogating terrorists. I have had the privilege of working alongside, and learning from, some of the most dedicated and talented men and women our nation has– individuals from the FBI, and other law enforcement, military, and intelligence agencies.

In my capacity as a FBI Agent, I investigated and supervised highly sensitive and complex international terrorism cases, including the East Africa bombings, the USS Cole bombing, and the events surrounding the attacks of 9/11. I also coordinated both domestic and international counter-terrorism operations on the Joint Terrorist Task Force, FBI New York Office.

I personally interrogated many terrorists we have in our custody and elsewhere, and gained confessions, identified terror operatives, their funding, details of potential plots, and information on how al Qaeda operates, along with other actionable intelligence. Because of these successes, I was the government's main witness in both of the trials we have had so far in Guantanamo Bay – the trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a driver and bodyguard for Osama Bin Laden, and Ali Hamza Al Bahlul, Bin Laden's propagandist. In addition I am currently helping the prosecution prepare for upcoming trials of other detainees held in Guantanamo Bay.

There are many examples of successful interrogations of terrorists that have taken place before and after 9/11. Many of them are classified, but one that is already public and mirrors the other cases, is the interrogation of al Qaeda terrorist Nasser Ahmad Nasser al-Bahri, known as Abu Jandal. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, together with my partner Special Agent Robert McFadden, a first-class intelligence operative from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), (which, from my experience, is one of the classiest agencies I encountered in the intelligence community), I interrogated Abu Jandal.
Through our interrogation, which was done completely by the book (including advising him of his rights), we obtained a treasure trove of highly significant actionable intelligence. For example, Abu Jandal gave us extensive information on Osama Bin Laden's terror network, structure, leadership, membership, security details, facilities, family, communication methods, travels, training, ammunitions, and weaponry, including a breakdown of what machine guns, rifles, rocket launchers, and anti-tank missiles they used. He also provided explicit details of the 9/11plot operatives, and identified many terrorists who we later successfully apprehended.

The information was important for the preparation of the war in Afghanistan in 2001. It also provided an important background to the 9/11 Commission report; it provided a foundation for the trials so far held in Guantanamo Bay; and it also has been invaluable in helping to capture and identify top al Qaeda operatives and thus disrupt plots.
The approach used in these successful interrogations can be called the Informed Interrogation Approach. Until the introduction of the "enhanced" technique, it was the sole approach used by our military, intelligence, and law enforcement community.

It is an approach rooted in experiences and lessons learned during World War II and from our Counter-insurgency experience in Vietnam – experiences and lessons that generated the Army Field Manual. This was then refined over the decades to include how to interrogate terrorism suspects specifically, as experience was gained from interrogations following the first World Trade Center bombing, the East Africa Embassy bombings, and the USS Cole bombing. To sum up, it is an approach derived from the cumulative experiences, wisdom, and successes of the most effective operational people our country has produced.

Before I joined the Bureau, for example, traditional investigative strategies along with intelligence derived from human sources successfully thwarted the 1993 New York City Landmark Bomb Plot (TERRSTOP), a plot by the Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, to attack the UN Headquarters, the FBI's New York office, and tunnels and bridges across New York City, -- as a follow-up to the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. That remains to this day the largest thwarted attack on our homeland. I had the privilege of working with, and learning from, those who conducted this successful operation.

The Informed Interrogation Approach is based on leveraging our knowledge of the detainee's culture and mindset, together with using information we already know about him.

The interrogator knows that there are three primary points of influence on the detainee:

First, there is the fear that the detainee feels as a result of his capture and isolation from his support base. People crave human contact, and this is especially true in some cultures more than others. The interrogator turns this knowledge into an advantage by becoming the one person the detainee can talk to and who listens to what he has to say, and uses this to encourage the detainee to open up.

In addition, acting in a non-threatening way isn't how the detainee is trained to expect a U.S. interrogator to act. This adds to the detainee's confusion and makes him more likely to cooperate.

Second, and connected, there is the need the detainee feels to sustain a position of respect and value to interrogator. As the interrogator is the one person speaking to and listening to the detainee, a relationship is built – and the detainee doesn't want to jeopardize it. The interrogator capitalizes on this and compels the detainee to give up more information.

And third, there is the impression the detainee has of the evidence against him. The interrogator has to do his or her homework and become an expert in every detail known to the intelligence community about the detainee. The interrogator then uses that knowledge to impress upon the detainee that everything about him is known and that any lie will be easily caught.

For example, in my first interrogation of the terrorist Abu Zubaydah, who had strong links to al Qaeda's leaders and who knew the details of the 9/11 plot before it happened, I asked him his name. He replied with his alias. I then asked him, "how about if I call you Hani?" That was the name his mother nicknamed him as a child. He looked at me in shock, said "ok," and we started talking.

The Army Field Manual is not about being nice or soft. It is a knowledge-based approach. It is about outwitting the detainee by using a combination of interpersonal, cognitive, and emotional strategies to get the information needed. If done correctly it's an approach that works quickly and effectively because it outwits the detainee using a method that he is not trained, or able, to resist.

This Informed Interrogation Approach is in sharp contrast with the harsh interrogation approach introduced by outside contractors and forced upon CIA officials to use.

The harsh technique method doesn't use the knowledge we have of the detainee's history, mindset, vulnerabilities, or culture, and instead tries to subjugate the detainee into submission through humiliation and cruelty. The approach applies a force continuum, each time using harsher and harsher techniques until the detainee submits.

The idea behind the technique is to force the detainee to see the interrogator as the master who controls his pain. It is an exercise in trying to gain compliance rather than eliciting cooperation. A theoretical application of this technique is a situation where the detainee is stripped naked and told: "Tell us what you know."

If the detainee doesn't immediately respond by giving information, for example he asks: "what do you want to know?" the interviewer will reply: "you know," and walk out of the interrogation room. Then the next step on the force continuum is introduced, for example sleep deprivation, and the process will continue until the detainee's will is broken and he automatically gives up all information he is presumed to know.

There are many problems with this technique.

A major problem is that it is ineffective. Al Qaeda terrorists are trained to resist torture. As shocking as these techniques are to us, the al Qaeda training prepares them for much worse – the torture they would expect to receive if caught by dictatorships for example.

This is why, as we see from the recently released Department of Justice memos on interrogation, the contractors had to keep getting authorization to use harsher and harsher methods, until they reached waterboarding and then there was nothing they could do but use that technique again and again. Abu Zubaydah had to be waterboarded 83 times and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 183 times. In a democracy there is a glass ceiling of harsh techniques the interrogator cannot breach, and a detainee can eventually call the interrogator's bluff.

In addition the harsh techniques only serves to reinforce what the detainee has been prepared to expect if captured. This gives him a greater sense of control and predictability about his experience, and strengthens his will to resist.

A second major problem with this technique is that evidence gained from it is unreliable. There is no way to know whether the detainee is being truthful, or just speaking to either mitigate his discomfort or to deliberately provide false information. As the interrogator isn't an expert on the detainee or the subject matter, nor has he spent time going over the details of the case, the interrogator cannot easily know if the detainee is telling the truth. This unfortunately has happened and we have had problems ranging from agents chasing false leads to the disastrous case of Ibn Sheikh al-Libby who gave false information on Iraq, al Qaeda, and WMD.

A third major problem with this technique is that it is slow. It takes place over a long period of time, for example preventing the detainee from sleeping for 180 hours as the memos detail, or waterboarding 183 times in the case of KSM. When we have an alleged "ticking timebomb" scenario and need to get information quickly, we can't afford to wait that long.

A fourth problem with this technique is that ignores the end game. In our country we have due process, which requires evidence to be collected in a certain way. The CIA, because of the sensitivity of its operations, by necessity, operates secretly. These two factors mean that by putting the CIA in charge of interrogations, either secrecy is sacrificed for justice and the CIA's operations are hampered, or justice is not served. Neither is a desirable outcome.

Another disastrous consequence of the use of the harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the "Chinese Wall" between the CIA and FBI – similar to the wall that prevented us from working together to stop 9/11. In addition, the FBI and the CIA officers on the ground during the Abu Zubaydah interrogation were working together closely and effectively, until the contractors' interferences. Because we in the FBI would not be a part of the harsh techniques, the agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An FBI colleague of mine, for example, who had tracked KSM and knew more about him than anyone in the government, was not allowed to speak to him.

Furthermore, the CIA specializes in collecting, analyzing, and interpreting intelligence. The FBI, on the other hand, has a trained investigative branch. Until that point, we were complimenting each other's expertise, until the imposition of the "enhanced methods." As a result people ended doing what they were not trained to do.

It is also important to realize that those behind this technique are outside contractors with no expertise in intelligence operations, investigations, terrorism, or al Qaeda. Nor did the contractors have any experience in the art of interview and interrogation. One of the contractors told me this at the time, and this lack of experience has also now been recently reported on by sources familiar with their backgrounds.

The case of the terrorist Abu Zubaydah is a good example of where the success of the Informed Interrogation Approach can be contrasted with the failure of the harsh technique approach. I have to restrict my remarks to what has been unclassified. (I will note that there is documented evidence supporting everything I will tell you today.)

Immediately after Abu Zubaydah was captured, a fellow FBI agent and I were flown to meet him at an undisclosed location. We were both very familiar with Abu Zubaydah and have successfully interrogated al-Qaeda terrorists. We started interrogating him, supported by CIA officials who were stationed at the location, and within the first hour of the interrogation, using the Informed Interrogation Approach, we gained important actionable intelligence.

The information was so important that, as I later learned from open sources, it went to CIA Director George Tenet who was so impressed that he initially ordered us to be congratulated. That was apparently quickly withdrawn as soon as Mr. Tenet was told that it was FBI agents, who were responsible. He then immediately ordered a CIA CTC interrogation team to leave DC and head to the location to take over from us.

During his capture Abu Zubaydah had been injured. After seeing the extent of his injuries, the CIA medical team supporting us decided they were not equipped to treat him and we had to take him to a hospital or he would die. At the hospital, we continued our questioning as much as possible, while taking into account his medical condition and the need to know all information he might have on existing threats.

We were once again very successful and elicited information regarding the role of KSM as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and lots of other information that remains classified. (It is important to remember that before this we had no idea of KSM's role in 9/11 or his importance in the al Qaeda leadership structure.) All this happened before the CTC team arrived.

A few days after we started questioning Abu Zubaydah, the CTC interrogation team finally arrived from DC with a contractor who was instructing them on how they should conduct the interrogations, and we were removed. Immediately, on the instructions of the contractor, harsh techniques were introduced, starting with nudity. (The harsher techniques mentioned in the memos were not introduced or even discussed at this point.)

The new techniques did not produce results as Abu Zubaydah shut down and stopped talking. At that time nudity and low-level sleep deprivation (between 24 and 48 hours) was being used. After a few days of getting no information, and after repeated inquiries from DC asking why all of sudden no information was being transmitted (when before there had been a steady stream), we again were given control of the interrogation.

We then returned to using the Informed Interrogation Approach. Within a few hours, Abu Zubaydah again started talking and gave us important actionable intelligence.

This included the details of Jose Padilla, the so-called "dirty bomber." To remind you of how important this information was viewed at the time, the then-Attorney General, John Ashcroft, held a press conference from Moscow to discuss the news. Other important actionable intelligence was also gained that remains classified.

After a few days, the contractor attempted to once again try his untested theory and he started to re-implementing the harsh techniques. He moved this time further along the force continuum, introducing loud noise and then temperature manipulation.

Throughout this time, my fellow FBI agent and I, along with a top CIA interrogator who was working with us, protested, but we were overruled. I should also note that another colleague, an operational psychologist for the CIA, had left the location because he objected to what was being done.

Again, however, the technique wasn't working and Abu Zubaydah wasn't revealing any information, so we were once again brought back in to interrogate him. We found it harder to reengage him this time, because of how the techniques had affected him, but eventually, we succeeded, and he re-engaged again.

Once again the contractor insisted on stepping up the notches of his experiment, and this time he requested the authorization to place Abu Zubaydah in a confinement box, as the next stage in the force continuum. While everything I saw to this point were nowhere near the severity later listed in the memos, the evolution of the contractor's theory, along with what I had seen till then, struck me as "borderline torture."

As the Department of Justice IG report released last year states, I protested to my superiors in the FBI and refused to be a part of what was happening. The Director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, a man I deeply respect, agreed passing the message that "we don't do that," and I was pulled out.

As you can see from this timeline, many of the claims made in the memos about the success of the enhanced techniques are inaccurate. For example, it is untrue to claim Abu Zubaydah wasn't cooperating before August 1, 2002. The truth is that we got actionable intelligence from him in the first hour of interrogating him.

In addition, simply by putting together dates cited in the memos with claims made, falsehoods are obvious. For example, it has been claimed that waterboarding got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Jose Padilla. But that doesn't add up: Waterboarding wasn't approved until 1 August 2002 (verbally it was authorized around mid July 2002), and Padilla was arrested in May 2002.

The same goes for KSM's involvement in 9/11: That was discovered in April 2002, while waterboarding was not introduced until almost three months later. It speaks volumes that the quoted instances of harsh interrogation methods being a success are false.

Nor can it be said that the harsh techniques were effective, which is why we had to be called back in repeatedly. As we know from the memos, the techniques that were apparently introduced after I left did not appear to work either, which is why the memos granted authorization for harsher techniques. That continued for several months right till waterboarding was introduced, which had to be used 83 times – an indication that Abu Zubaydah had called the interrogator's bluff knowing the glass ceiling that existed.

Authoritative CIA, FBI, and military sources have also questioned the claims made by the advocates of the techniques. For example, in one of the recently released Justice Department memos, the author, Stephen Bradbury, acknowledged a (still classified) internal CIA Inspector General report that had found it "difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks."

In summary, the Informed Interrogation Approach outlined in the Army Field Manual is the most effective, reliable, and speedy approach we have for interrogating terrorists. It is legal and has worked time and again.

It was a mistake to abandon it in favor of harsh interrogation methods that are harmful, shameful, slower, unreliable, ineffective, and play directly into the enemy's handbook. It was a mistake to abandon an approach that was working and naively replace it with an untested method. It was a mistake to abandon an approach that is based on the cumulative wisdom and successful tradition of our military, intelligence, and law enforcement community, in favor of techniques advocated by contractors with no relevant experience.

The mistake was so costly precisely because the situation was, and remains, too risky to allow someone to experiment with amateurish, Hollywood style interrogation methods- that in reality- taints sources, risks outcomes, ignores the end game, and diminishes our moral high ground in a battle that is impossible to win without first capturing the hearts and minds around the world. It was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaeda.

For the last seven years, it was not easy objecting to these methods when they had powerful backers. I stood up then for the same reason I'm willing to take on critics now, because I took an oath swearing to protect this great nation. I could not stand by quietly while our country's safety was endangered and our moral standing damaged.

I know you are motivated by the same considerations, and I hope you help ensure that these grave mistakes are never made again.

Thank you.