Soufan, Ali - Interview master file / Witness to Guantanamo / Duke Digital Repository

Interviewer

Okay. Good morning.

0:11

-

Okay. Good morning.

0:12

Interviewer

We are very grateful

0:13

to you for participating

0:14

in the "Witness to Guantanamo Project."

0:14

And we invite you to speak of your experiences and evolving

0:18

with issues concerning Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

0:21

We are hoping to provide you with an opportunity

0:25

to tell you a story in your own words.

0:27

We are creating an archive of stories so that people

0:30

in America and around the world

0:32

will have a better understanding of what you and others

0:34

have experienced and observed.

0:37

Future generations must know about what happened

0:41

at Guantanamo and by telling your story, your contributing

0:44

to history and we are very grateful

0:47

for you speaking with us today.

0:50

If at any time during the interview you wanna take a break,

0:53

please let us know.

0:55

And if there's anything you say, you wanna withdraw

0:57

we can we move it if you tell us in time.

0:58

We'd like to begin with just some general background

1:03

on your name and country of origin and age, nationality,

1:06

education, if you wouldn't mind telling

1:12

us a little bit, just so (faintly speaking)

1:14

-

The name is Ali Soufan, I'm a former FBI special agent,

1:17

New York, New York.

1:21

And I am 43 years old. I joined the FBI in 1997.

1:24

I was working mainly terrorism and focusing

1:31

on the bin Laden network and Al-Qaeda.

1:36

I was involved in Guantanamo Bay, conducted interviews

1:40

and investigations in Guantanamo.

1:46

And that's why I'm talking to you here today.

1:50

Interviewer

Do you mind giving us your birthday

1:53

just so that people can figure it out? (faintly speaking)

1:54

-

Yeah. July 8.

1:58

Interviewer

19?

2:01

-

'71.

2:02

Interviewer

And do you mind telling

2:03

us where you were born?

2:04

-

I was born in Lebanon.

2:06

Interviewer

Can we begin, since your story

2:09

is actually really fascinating before 9/11, a little bit

2:12

about when you joined the FBI, what you first worked

2:16

on and how that lead to then your in post 9/11?

2:19

-

After joining the Bureau, you go through a rotation

2:25

of where you work different kinds of investigations,

2:28

terrorism, national security.

2:31

So in New York, there's a rotation that you go through.

2:34

And I finished that rotation and I was assigned

2:37

to the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

2:39

At the beginning I worked Palestinian groups,

2:42

Palestinian terrorist groups

2:44

and Iraqi foreign counter-intelligence.

2:46

And then after that I was assigned to work Al-Qaeda,

2:50

based on a paper I wrote about a dangerous man

2:55

who is gonna probably do a lot of harm to the United States,

2:59

his name was Osama bin Laden, not knowing at the time

3:02

that the Intelligence Community and the FBI

3:05

were already aware of Bin Laden and we had people

3:08

in the office in New York who were focusing

3:11

their investigations on Osama bin Laden.

3:13

So after the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings in Nairobi

3:16

and Dar es Salaam, I was transferred

3:21

from working Palestinian groups to mainly working Al-Qaeda

3:25

and working bin Laden.

3:29

Interviewer

How did you know on your own

3:31

that bin Laden was a threat to America?

3:32

-

Well, it was just based on what he has been saying.

3:35

I mean, he did a declaration of jihad in August of 1996

3:37

to kill Americans and expel them from the Arabian Peninsula.

3:44

He titled the declaration of jihad, " Expel the infidels

3:50

from the Arabian Peninsula," allegedly that's the saying

3:53

of the Prophet Muhammad.

3:55

Then he declared a fatwa in February of 1998

3:58

to kill Americans and plunder their money

4:02

at any place you find them.

4:04

So, he wasn't hiding his intentions, he was very vocal

4:06

about his intentions, starting when he was in Sudan.

4:10

And he was involved in a lot of facilitating at least

4:15

and funding at that point, terrorist attacks

4:20

and extremist activities around the world

4:23

against the United States, against international partners,

4:25

and also against regional partners.

4:29

Interviewer

And, do you think, this is an odd question,

4:32

but do you think the Americans you worked with were familiar

4:37

with bin Laden the way

4:41

you were just from writing that paper?

4:42

-

The people who are working in the FBI on Osama bin Laden

4:45

were definitely familiar with Osama bin Laden

4:49

and familiar with his intention, his intentions,

4:51

I think he had more than one.

4:54

Unfortunately, most of the people in the government,

4:56

the political leadership, even the leadership

5:00

of our agencies, national security agencies, a lot

5:02

of them at the time were not really convinced

5:06

about how dangerous Osama bin Laden might be.

5:08

Somewhere, some people, for example

5:13

in the Department of Justice were very, agreeable

5:16

with the assessments of the Intelligence Community

5:21

and the FBI on this issue.

5:23

For example, Osama bin Laden,

5:25

and that's probably something not a lot of people know

5:27

was indicted secretly in a sealed indictment

5:30

in June of 1998 way before the East Africa embassy bombings.

5:33

So we have been focused on him early

5:37

on and there were a few people in the government that knew

5:40

that this guy is not up to no good and Al-Qaeda

5:44

will probably be a major national security threat

5:47

against the United States.

5:52

Interviewer

What was he indicted for?

5:54

-

He was indicted for conspiracies, terrorism conspiracies.

5:55

Interviewer

And, I believe you spoke Arabic, right?

6:01

-

Yes, I do.

6:04

Interviewer

So what value did you bring to the FBI once

6:06

you wrote that paper and they put you in Al-Qaeda,

6:09

what were they hoping you would do for them?

6:11

-

Well, there was a group, there was a squad that focused

6:14

on these kind of investigations,

6:18

so I was one of the agents on the squad.

6:19

I mean, Arabic can fit in a lot of different squads

6:22

even sometimes with organized crime squads.

6:25

There are a lot of people, there's millions

6:28

of people who speak Arabic in the United States.

6:29

But the focus was, at the time counter-terrorism focus

6:33

was on Osama bin Laden.

6:36

And later on when we start apprehending subjects

6:38

and interviewing them,

6:41

when we start conducting investigations

6:43

and disrupting networks overseas, especially

6:46

in some countries where Arabic is the native language,

6:49

I think it became helpful to me, and I believe

6:53

it helpful to the FBI to have,

6:56

an FBI speaking agent conducting these investigations.

6:59

Interviewer

So where would you send after 1998

7:05

and did you see hints that this might actually,

7:08

9/11 might actually happen?

7:12

-

We did not know that 9/11 might happen.

7:14

Nobody knew, if we knew we could have stopped it.

7:17

So, we were, shocked that, that event took place.

7:19

However, we knew that Osama bin Laden is planning

7:28

to do something against the United States

7:32

and is always conspiring to do something

7:34

against the United States.

7:37

After the East Africa embassy bombing, we were able

7:38

to disrupt various terrorist plots in Europe,

7:41

the Middle East, North Africa, we worked very closely

7:45

with so many different allies around the world.

7:49

In Europe and in the Middle East, we apprehended subjects,

7:53

we prosecuted people.

7:56

So we have been extremely successful in combating Al-Qaeda.

7:59

And most of the plots that they planned to do were disrupted

8:03

in advance, for example, the Millennium Plot in Jordan.

8:07

That plot was supposed to be a major terrorist attack

8:11

that can reshape our views of the millennium.

8:15

They were supposed to hit a few hotels, border crossings

8:19

with Israel, trying to assassinate the Pope

8:22

when he's conducting baptism on the Jordan River.

8:24

And we were able to disrupt that plot, arrest 15 people.

8:28

The person in charge of that plot was actually

8:31

an American citizen, a person who was born in California,

8:33

lived in the United States, lived in Boston

8:37

just before he went to put the plot together.

8:39

He's a Palestinian, Jordanian/American.

8:42

So we were very involved in attacking Al-Qaeda.

8:46

However, Al-Qaeda was able to conduct a successful attack

8:53

against the USS Cole in Yemen, in October 12, of 2000.

8:56

And that was one of the major plots that Al-Qaeda

9:02

was able to successfully conduct after,

9:09

probably the only major one

9:12

after the East Africa embassy bombings.

9:14

Interviewer

Were you there, did you follow

9:16

up on that one too?

9:17

-

Yeah. I was put in charge of the investigation

9:18

as a case agent of the investigation.

9:21

I was here in New York when that happened.

9:23

So there was a flight from Andrews Air Base straight

9:25

to Yemen at the time, the same day of the attack.

9:29

So, I took a small team with me and we went

9:32

in a military flight to Aden.

9:36

Interviewer

And you had no hints there other

9:39

that there might be another plot, obviously you didn't,

9:41

but people didn't talk, that 9/11 was coming

9:46

up from the people you captured after the Cole?

9:50

-

No, I mean, after the Cole, we had some suspicions

9:53

that Al-Qaeda was planning to do something.

9:58

There was amount of money that was taken

10:00

by a person who later became the suicide bomber

10:04

in the USS Cole and the person who videotaped the operation.

10:08

And the money was taken from Yemen to Southeast Asia

10:13

and was delivered to one of the main lieutenants

10:17

for Osama bin Laden over there.

10:20

During the interviews, in the course of our investigation

10:23

in Yemen, we came across this information,

10:28

actually the person who was supposed to videotape

10:31

the operation and, told us about it.

10:34

Later, he was prosecuted, he was released from jail

10:38

by the Yemeni government, until, he became one

10:44

of the leaders of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,

10:47

until he was killed with a drone attack

10:50

in Yemen two years ago.

10:52

Interviewer

Could you tell us his name?

10:54

-

Fahd al-Quso.

10:55

So, Fahd gave us information about the money

10:57

that was delivered to Southeast Asia.

11:00

We asked the Intelligence Community at the time

11:04

about the reasons they think money was taken away

11:06

from Yemen, which is a poor country

11:11

to a rich area of the world and basically they said

11:12

that they have no knowledge about this.

11:16

We asked them if they have a knowledge about a meeting

11:18

that took place over there, we asked

11:21

them if they know anything about, specific individuals

11:22

who were over there and answer was negative.

11:25

And I think on September 12, we were given a file

11:31

that includes all the details of that meeting

11:35

that took place over there in Southeast Asia.

11:38

And some of the members who attended that meetings

11:41

were actually hijackers on 9/11.

11:44

So there was a thorough investigation into all these issues.

11:48

The 9/11 Commission came up to a conclusion,

11:53

came up with a conclusion that if that information

11:55

about Southeast Asia was passed

11:59

to the FBI team investigating the USS Cole,

12:01

9/11 could have been stopped at its early stages,

12:04

possibly could've been stopped by the early stages.

12:07

Also the CIA Inspector General came

12:09

with a similar conclusion that the information regarding

12:12

the Southeast Asia meeting was not passed on timely basis

12:15

to the FBI or to the State Department or to INS at the time,

12:20

we had Immigration and Naturalization Services

12:24

before we had Homeland Security and all these agencies,

12:27

were put together under their own department.

12:33

So they acknowledged that the information was not passed

12:37

on timely basis and that gap, some people said dots

12:40

have not been connected, some people said,

12:48

there is more sinister reasons

12:52

for the information not being passed.

12:55

So, some people said it's because of the Chinese wall

12:57

between the intelligence and the criminal

13:01

that the information haven't been passed.

13:03

Unfortunately, the 3000 people who died

13:05

on that day don't care, and their families don't care

13:07

why the information was not passed.

13:10

Because, we failed them, the government failed them.

13:12

Interviewer

Well, Ali, how did you feel that day

13:19

when you found out the CIA had all the information

13:22

and they didn't pass it to you?

13:24

-

It was difficult. I mean, we knew that, we were there.

13:26

we knew that we're able to get information from Fahd,

13:30

we were able to get everything he knew.

13:40

I mean, Fahd will never know more details,

13:42

he was just delivering the money, that's how they operate,

13:44

one cell doesn't know what the other cell is doing,

13:47

typical of terrorist organizations and terrorist groups.

13:51

So we were close, unfortunately, not close enough.

13:54

Interviewer

Where were you in 9/11?

14:00

-

I was in Yemen.

14:02

Interviewer

Still working? (faintly speaking)

14:03

-

Yeah, we were engaging again with the Yemeni government

14:04

and following up investigative leads regarding

14:07

the USS Cole, wrapping up some of the, loose ends

14:10

to put the criminal case together.

14:17

Interviewer

And how did you hear about 9/11?

14:20

-

On TV.

14:22

Interviewer

On TV in Yemen?

14:23

-

Yeah.

14:24

Interviewer

And what happened after you heard,

14:25

did they fly you back to the States?

14:27

-

Well, we stayed I think a day or two in Yemen

14:28

and then we were trying at the beginning to reach out

14:33

for our office in New York, communications were down

14:37

because of, the location of the office Downtown Manhattan.

14:40

And then we get instructions to evacuate Yemen

14:47

and go back home.

14:51

So we were in the airport, going on a plane, all our luggage

14:52

was already on the plane,

15:00

we had a sizeable team at the time.

15:01

And then through some person in the embassy, the FBI called

15:03

and said that they need to talk to me.

15:09

So he literally at the airport the tarmac, we put

15:10

like a satellite phone and try

15:14

to have a secure communication with headquarters.

15:16

And they said that I need to stay, me and Bob McFadden,

15:20

we need to stay.

15:25

He was my co-case agent

15:27

from the Naval Criminal Investigative Services, NCIS.

15:28

And we had no idea why, were like, now we've been attacked,

15:32

I mean, America is under attack.

15:38

At the time, we thought 50,000 Americans were killed,

15:40

we thought that their sleeping cells is gonna be active.

15:44

So our place should be back home, not in Sana'a, Yemen.

15:46

So they said, no, it's basically about 9/11.

15:54

And when you go to the embassy you will know

15:56

why you need to stay.

15:59

So we went to the embassy, everybody left.

16:01

Bob and I stayed, a couple of SWAT guys

16:04

and two other individuals stayed with us.

16:07

And, we went to the embassy and we were given the file

16:10

that we've been asking for since November of 2000

16:15

about the Southeast Asia meeting

16:19

with all the pictures and the photos and stuff like that.

16:20

And, they said, well, most probably some of these guys

16:23

are the suicide bombers, so the hijackers.

16:30

Interviewer

What did you and Bob say

16:39

when you saw that file?

16:40

-

Bob wasn't with me when the file was given.

16:42

I went out and I told him, we expect it was like, anger,

16:45

frustration, pissed off, I mean, you name it,

16:52

sick to your stomach.

16:54

Interviewer

And how much longer did you stay

16:57

then in Yemen before you did come back?

16:58

-

We stayed I believe few months, if I'm not mistaken

17:01

because we were getting a lot of leads about the network,

17:06

about Al-Qaeda, about 9/11, about the people who did 9/11.

17:10

So, all the information that was going straight

17:16

to the leadership in Washington, the political leadership

17:21

and intelligence leadership was coming from us.

17:25

So we were able to identify the hijackers, at least eight

17:29

of them as being Qaeda members with their nationality,

17:33

something that we did not know at the time.

17:36

And we were able to, get a lot of much needed intelligence

17:39

and much needed pieces of information that can help,

17:46

prepare the United State's response against Al-Qaeda

17:50

and Taliban in Afghanistan.

17:53

Interviewer

Yemen had this wealth of information,

17:55

or did you go to Saudi Arabia?

17:58

-

No, no, no. Yemen, as a government, they didn't,

18:00

but Yemen had a lot of members of Al-Qaeda.

18:03

And some of the individuals that we picked

18:06

up in the USS Cole, some of the individuals that we picked

18:09

up in investigating the overall network of Al-Qaeda

18:13

to include Osama bin Laden's bodyguard, personal bodyguard

18:16

were able to provide a significant amount

18:20

of information, basically treasure trove

18:23

of information that helped us.

18:26

They cooperated in the interrogations

18:28

and they provided a lot of good information.

18:31

Interviewer

Did you travel to Saudi Arabia too

18:33

when you discovered most of the men were from Saudi Arabia?

18:35

-

No.

18:38

Interviewer

Was Saudi Arabia on your radar screen

18:41

or on the FBI's radar screen?

18:44

-

Well, sure. I mean, we had all other people went

18:45

to Saudi Arabia.

18:47

Our job was not to investigate the details of 9/11,

18:48

the specific individuals that was on 9/11 squad

18:55

that they were putting together and people were doing it.

18:58

Our job was to deal with the overall network of Al-Qaeda,

19:01

the more strategic investigative kind of reach

19:05

and that's what we were focused on.

19:11

So we were able to provide information that, for example,

19:13

Al-Qaeda for sure were behind 9/11, we're able

19:16

to provide the identity of some of the hijackers,

19:19

which was really significant at the time.

19:22

We're able to provide significant intelligence

19:25

and information that was used to brief, Arab leaders

19:28

and Muslim presidents to include Musharraf in Pakistan

19:33

that links, or that linked, at the time Al-Qaeda

19:38

to the 9/11 attack.

19:42

Remember, a lot of people were very suspicious

19:43

that Al-Qaeda was behind that attack at the time.

19:46

And most of this information came through our interviews

19:49

and interrogations in Yemen.

19:53

Interviewer

Did you see another event occurring

19:56

from your investigation, was there any thought

19:59

that yet there'd be yet other events following 9/11?

20:03

-

Well, not necessarily from that time,

20:07

but every Qaeda member we thought

20:09

of as a potential attacker.

20:12

So we generated a lot of leads, a lot of people

20:15

were picked up and arrested, actually, some of these people

20:19

were picked up and arrested and maybe attacks were disrupted

20:23

because of that, but yes, there was leads

20:28

that we generated off possible conspiracies

20:32

and possible attacks pending against the United States.

20:36

And these leads were followed up with and we worked

20:39

with the intelligence community and other agencies

20:44

to find these individuals and apprehend them.

20:47

Interviewer

So when they started picking up people

20:51

in Afghanistan and Pakistan and purchasing them,

20:54

to some to Guantanamo, did you know about that and that fit

20:58

within what you would doing or?

21:03

-

Well, we thought it's a great idea at the time.

21:05

And it was an idea, we needed a place away

21:08

from the battlefield where we can get these individuals

21:10

that we're picking up and we needed to know who's good,

21:13

who's bad, who's ugly.

21:15

We needed to identify, we know many of Qaeda members

21:17

but we don't know them with their real names,

21:20

we know them with aliases at the time.

21:21

So, we needed to identify who can be a potential source,

21:23

who can be a potential witness, who have blood

21:28

on their hands so they can be prosecuted

21:34

and justice, will be served.

21:37

So we wanted to basically have a place

21:42

and have the opportunity where we can,

21:46

sort through these individuals and we wanted to do it right.

21:48

And I think, Guantanamo Bay, when people said

21:52

they're gonna take all these suspects to Guantanamo Bay,

21:55

we thought it's a great idea.

21:58

Because the moment you bring them to the United States

21:59

that opens a huge can of warm.

22:01

So that was at the time, it began as a good idea

22:04

and it began as something that was really needed.

22:08

Unfortunately later on, politics hijacked the process

22:13

and that good idea became a disastrous idea.

22:19

Interviewer

Well, I'd like to follow

22:23

up on that, but I just wondered,

22:24

when they started grabbing people, essentially for pay

22:26

in Afghanistan and Pakistan, did that make sense to you?

22:31

Is that the only way you could, you didn't know

22:34

who was who so you just...

22:36

-

Well at the time we did not know how these individuals

22:37

are being picked up in Pakistan, we start knowing

22:43

that when they made it all the way to Guantanamo.

22:47

But, the principle of this before they start,

22:52

getting people because some tribes selling other tribes

22:56

and so forth, before that situation started to happen,

22:59

we were picking up a lot of individuals

23:03

from the battlefield, people who made it all the way

23:05

from Tora Bora to Pakistan, people who were fighting

23:07

in the battlefield, people who were picked up on checkpoints

23:10

in Pakistan who were, Arab mujahideen that we actually knew

23:13

who they were, some of them,

23:17

we knew how close they are to Osama bin Laden.

23:19

So what do you do with these things?

23:22

Now, years later, people have the luxury

23:24

to come up with theories and ideas, but at the time,

23:26

what do you wanna do with them?

23:30

And how are we gonna prosecute them?

23:31

How are we gonna put them in the system?

23:33

And we need a safe place to do it.

23:35

We cannot keep them in Pakistan.

23:36

We cannot keep them in Afghanistan with war zone.

23:38

We didn't even know what's gonna happen

23:41

in the war zone at the time, so the battle was ongoing.

23:43

So the idea of taking everybody to Guantanamo Bay in a way

23:47

it made sense.

23:51

Now, things started to have its own,

23:52

and these things happens, I mean, when somebody tells

23:58

you those Al- Qaeda aren't Taliban,

24:01

yes, they are getting per head, but who are you to say

24:04

they are not?

24:08

So, there was a process on the ground in Kandahar, in Kabul

24:08

and other places to go through with this, and many

24:13

of these individuals actually, were released on the ground

24:15

over there, because they realize that they are nobody.

24:18

But some of them were not released

24:22

there and they were brought to Guantanamo.

24:23

And in Guantanamo after further interviews,

24:26

we realized that they were nobody.

24:28

But, at the time Guantanamo made sense.

24:32

I'm talking about the principle, the idea, the reason

24:35

they had a Guantanamo Bay.

24:39

Later on, it became a disastrous on every level

24:40

but it started with good intentions.

24:44

And as they say, the road to hell is paved

24:48

with good intentions.

24:50

(giggles)

24:52

Interviewer

Were you involved

24:53

in the choice of Guantanamo?

24:54

-

No. That was a political decision way higher

24:56

than all of us.

25:00

Interviewer

But that made sense

25:01

to you and you understood that they would first go

25:02

to Bagram and Kandahar and then, was there a logic in that,

25:06

to go to Bagram and Kandahar and then you said...

25:10

-

No, no, no. I'm giving an example about people

25:12

who are selling people.

25:15

Interviewer

Okay.

25:16

-

People were picked up not only

25:17

from Bandar, from Kabul or Kandahar or Bagram,

25:18

or any other areas, people were coming to Guantanamo.

25:23

Anyone, I mean, in Guantanamo was basically focused

25:27

on people who are picked up in the theater,

25:30

in the war theater against Al-Qaeda.

25:33

Interviewer

And when was the first time

25:37

you went to Guantanamo?

25:39

-

I think late January, early February of 2001.

25:41

Interviewer

2002.

25:47

-

2002, sorry.

25:48

Interviewer

Then why did you go that soon?

25:49

-

Because this is when we start to bring

25:52

in people to Guantanamo.

25:53

And a lot of the people at that time we had maybe

25:55

about that time, I forget how many, maybe few dozens,

25:57

not that much.

26:03

But most of them were involved in Al-Qaeda or members

26:05

of Al-Qaeda, to include all bin Laden's bodyguards,

26:13

to include his inner circle.

26:17

We were able to identify them early on and started

26:19

the process of interrogating them and interviewing

26:24

them for information.

26:26

Interviewer

And did they send

26:27

you there 'cause you spoke Arabic or?

26:28

-

Well, they send

26:30

me there because I've been working Al-Qaeda for awhile.

26:31

So, regardless to the Arabic thing, I mean, they had a lot

26:33

of interpreters down there, but, I was one

26:35

of the case agents for Al-Qaeda so I have a lot of knowledge

26:41

in the organization.

26:45

I've been targeting the organization for a long time

26:46

and I was one of the few people

26:50

that we had at the government at the time

26:52

that had significant institutional knowledge,

26:53

plus their language.

26:56

So, I went there not alone, I went there with my team

26:57

who basically, I was a member of a team that shared

27:02

the same knowledge of Al-Qaeda and the bin Laden network.

27:10

And they have been working it for a while,

27:15

so we went together.

27:17

Interviewer

And was your goal for intelligence

27:18

or for law enforcement?

27:20

-

At the time, they didn't have all these kinds of things.

27:22

At the time we were thinking, we'd go there,

27:25

again, we saw through the good, the bad and the ugly,

27:28

some people were picked up.

27:30

The people who have American bloods on their hand,

27:31

we bring them, we prosecute them.

27:34

The people who can generate some intelligence that can help

27:35

in the battlefield, the war was ongoing at the time

27:38

and we needed intelligence to go, to help, the fighters

27:42

on the front lines.

27:46

So we needed to disrupt attacks, if anybody

27:47

had any knowledge of any attacks, so, it was both.

27:50

But, soon after, I think in mid February, the idea

27:54

that Guantanamo is mainly for intelligence, and don't worry

28:01

about Miranda, don't worry about any

28:06

of these kinds of things, was communicated to us.

28:08

Many of the individuals who were there from the FBI,

28:14

from different task forces, especially the cops,

28:18

we had some detectives from NYPD over there.

28:21

And we kind of understood it, it was like, okay, yeah,

28:24

it's an intelligence collection, the FBI is a member

28:26

of the Intelligence Community, it was like fine,

28:29

it's not a problem, the lawyers will figure out how to make

28:31

a statement admissible.

28:36

But the detectives had a significant problem with that.

28:38

And some of them, fought back and they said,

28:42

we cannot interrogate a person or interview

28:44

a person without reading them their Miranda Rights.

28:46

So, the FBI had to send some legal people from DOJ

28:49

and from the FBI to explain, the whole idea of intelligence

28:54

and criminal versus criminal and the reason

28:59

of Guantanamo and stuff like that.

29:02

So, some people in the field in Guantanamo, fought back

29:04

about the whole idea

29:09

of just an intelligence collection, base.

29:10

Interviewer

These are New York cops who there?

29:16

I had no idea that New York cops were part of the team-

29:18

-

Yeah, absolutely. We have many detectives assigned

29:21

to the JTTF in New York, the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

29:26

And when you are assigned to the JTTF, we don't discriminate

29:29

if you're an FBI or NYPD or Homeland Security

29:33

or State Police, or, name it, Port Authority,

29:37

everybody is, have the same access as any FBI agents.

29:40

They have the same clearance as any FBI agents,

29:44

they have the same access to even the FBI network

29:47

as any FBI agents, we consider them as, FBI agents.

29:52

And they are all deputize, federal agents.

29:56

So the New York JTTF is the oldest JTTF in the nation.

30:01

So members of the JTTF in New York, our colleagues,

30:10

some of them have a lot of information on Al-Qaeda.

30:14

They have been working Al-Qaeda with us from the beginning.

30:19

They worked on the East Africa embassy bombings,

30:21

they worked on the USS Cole, they worked

30:23

on other destruction plots around the world.

30:25

Some of them were involved

30:27

even in the first World Trade Center, (muffled speaking).

30:29

So, they had a lot of institutional knowledge

30:33

and they were with us, they were our partners.

30:35

Interviewer

Did they continue going to Guantanamo,

30:41

the New York JTTF or did

30:45

they continue all the time?

30:48

-

Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

And not only from New York, we have other JTTFs

30:51

around the nation.

30:53

Well, we have JTTF in Washington, we have JTTFs

30:54

in different field offices and people were going there.

30:57

Interviewer

Did your role then turn

31:04

into an intelligence role essentially for the FBI that was?

31:04

-

Well, the information that we were gathering

31:09

were considered intelligence information.

31:11

We were identifying individuals,

31:13

linking them to the network,

31:16

linking them to different terrorist attacks that took place

31:19

around the world, we were generating intelligence

31:22

against Al-Qaeda network, generating information

31:27

that can help us figure out what happened

31:29

and what might happen.

31:31

So, at the beginning, early on, all the information

31:32

were extremely important because the battle was ongoing,

31:35

the war was ongoing.

31:38

So, and that was the role that I played at the time.

31:41

Interviewer

And, do you feel

31:45

that you actually heard actionable intelligence

31:47

in those early days?

31:51

-

Early on?

31:52

Interviewer

Yeah.

31:53

-

Yes, absolutely.

Early on, yes.

31:54

Early on we had actionable intelligence,

31:56

we had some good information, we knew more

31:58

about what happened on 9/11, for example, how the plot

32:02

was even, put together, what is the role of KSM?

32:06

Remember, KSM wasn't in custody yet,

32:11

how bin Laden left Tora Bora, a lot of information

32:14

that continued to help down the road.

32:17

And actually some of this information even helped

32:19

to track bin Laden years later, but it's information

32:22

that we were able to get early on in Guantanamo.

32:26

Interviewer

Were you were involved in capturing KSM or?

32:29

-

No.

32:33

Interviewer

Is that how you discovered,

32:35

while in Guantanamo that KSM was involved in the plot?

32:36

-

We discovered, not in Guantanamo, we discovered

32:39

at another location that KSM was the mastermind of 9/11.

32:43

And that was classified, as it stands today,

32:50

the location is still classified.

32:55

But I was involved in it, yes.

32:58

Interviewer

Can you tell us who you interrogated

32:59

to find the information or is that classified?

33:02

-

Well, no, the person that we were interrogating

33:04

was Abu Zubaydah, and that has been declassified.

33:06

But, the location is still classified.

33:11

Interviewer

And how did you know

33:16

that Abu Zubaydah was connected?

33:17

-

Well, we knew about Abu Zubaydah because Abu Zubaydah

33:20

was connected to the Millennium Plot,

33:23

and I was the case agent on the Millennium Plot

33:26

from the FBIs side, in Jordan,

33:29

during the investigation in Jordan.

33:33

So we knew that Abu Zubaydah is connected to the network.

33:36

We knew that he's not a Qaeda member however,

33:39

he is an individual who is connected to Al-Qaeda

33:42

and worked very closely with Al-Qaeda

33:45

and helped them to facilitate movements and so on.

33:47

So, when he was picked up, he was considered

33:52

the first high-value target and I was involved

33:56

in his interrogation.

34:01

Interviewer

I mean, I had read, but perhaps

34:02

you can clarify that he was tortured

34:04

and you did not wanna participate in that?

34:08

Could you tell us a little bit?

34:13

-

Well, most of the stuff surrounding

34:14

the Abu Zubaydah situation has been classified.

34:17

If you look at my book, a lot of the redactions

34:21

have to do with some

34:24

of the high value detainees' interrogations

34:26

to include Abu Zubaydah.

34:28

However, I testified publicly in the Senate

34:30

on the Abu Zubaydah interrogation.

34:35

And until now, until today, 2014, that interrogation

34:37

is still the only, sorry, that statement to the Senate

34:43

is the only under oath statement given

34:46

on the Abu Zubaydah interrogation.

34:49

Abu Zubaydah cooperated early on, not fully,

34:55

you don't expect people to just talk

34:59

in the first second when you're interrogating them,

35:00

but he provided actionable intelligence literally

35:03

from the first ten minutes.

35:06

And it was a regular interrogation,

35:09

sometimes it's stuff, sometimes it's, easy, you play

35:13

that mental chess game with them,

35:17

you play the poker mental game with them.

35:22

And, you glean information and intelligence.

35:24

So, and then about 10 days after his interrogation,

35:28

10 days after we started and he was injured at the time

35:38

so we were balancing, getting the intelligence versus,

35:40

the treatment that he was receiving.

35:46

10 days later we get contractors

35:49

that came over, and they took over.

35:51

And after that, we gave it a chance, we tried to control

35:55

the situation, we found out that the decision

36:00

of what was going to happen is way higher than us.

36:04

It had been reported to the FBI headquarters

36:08

and the Director of the FBI at the time gave instruction

36:11

for us to get out, and we pulled out.

36:14

And, later on, years later, when people were saying,

36:19

after the documents of the Office of the Legal Counsel

36:26

were declassified, they were saying, hey,

36:32

look at all the intelligence we got from Abu Zubaydah.

36:34

And it was really shocked because all that intelligence

36:36

we got before the enhanced interrogation techniques started.

36:38

So I wrote an op-ed about that in the New York Times,

36:44

"My Torture Decision."

36:47

And that op-ed was like one of the top seven op-eds

36:48

in the history of the op-ed page in the New York Times.

36:54

Interviewer

Well, how did you feel when the FBI

36:58

was pushed out and the CIA was brought in?

37:01

-

It wasn't that the FBI were pushed up and the CIA

37:07

were brought in, I mean, we were working closely

37:09

with the CIA at that location.

37:12

And a lot of people think

37:14

of enhanced interrogation techniques,

37:17

and as the precedent now called a torture,

37:19

a lot of people think that it's FBI versus CIA, it's not.

37:22

Actually, some people from the CIA left the site

37:25

even before I did.

37:28

And they said, hey, you know what?

37:30

We don't do this, screw that. And they left.

37:31

So, it wasn't FBI versus CIA.

37:35

And later on, it became part of the,

37:38

kind of like institutional credibility

37:40

of the different organizations.

37:43

But, if you look at the CIA OIG Report, the reason

37:45

the CIA Inspector General did an investigative report

37:50

in 04 and 05, is because so many CIA officers

37:54

and so many CIA analysts came to his office and complained

37:58

about what they have been seeing

38:01

in the undisclosed locations on the black sites,

38:02

that's why they conducted the investigation.

38:05

And they came up with the same conclusion that the FBI came

38:07

up with really early on, and resulted in pulling us out

38:10

from the sites.

38:14

Interviewer

So you're saying it's a personal decision,

38:16

many of the people there personally were frightened

38:18

by what they saw and left?

38:21

-

Sure.

And the CIA before the FBI, a lot of CIA guys left before.

38:23

So it wasn't, at the time when it began

38:27

it wasn't a CIA versus an FBI thing.

38:29

But later on, unfortunately,

38:32

some people start having ownership of it and they made

38:34

it about the institutions even though

38:37

it wasn't about the institutions,

38:39

it was about their own personal credibility

38:41

and their own personal legacy.

38:43

Interviewer

Was there ownership from people high

38:46

up in the CIA or from government itself?

38:49

-

I think it's a combination. It's a combination.

38:51

There are people who are high up in the government

38:54

and there are people who are high up in the agency

38:56

as we know and they are talking publicly about that.

38:58

So it's a combination of both.

39:03

Interviewer

Did you get any blow back

39:05

from your editorial, did some people not

39:08

like that you wrote that?

39:10

-

Well, it depends who you talk to.

39:12

People who are, invested in torture, they didn't like it.

39:13

People who were not invested in torture

39:20

and were against torture from the government,

39:23

even from the CIA, they loved it.

39:25

I mean, the reason I wrote it is because a lot

39:26

of people reach out for me and they asked me,

39:28

they said, look, you're out, you're not in the government,

39:31

you can talk.

39:34

We're still on the government, we can't,

39:36

you need to put the truth out.

39:37

Remember, with the OLC memos, after they were declassified

39:40

there was a significant push from the former administration

39:44

from Vice President Cheney,

39:49

from the former Attorney General, Mike McAsey,

39:50

from Mike Hayden, the former CIA Director,

39:53

actually my McAsey and Hayden wrote a joint op-ad

39:56

in the Wall Street Journal,

39:59

basically saying how the Western civilization was saved

40:01

because of waterboarding.

40:04

And this is when a lot of people in the government

40:05

who knew better were reaching out for me and saying,

40:07

you have to do something about it,

40:10

you have to open your mouth, you have to talk about it.

40:11

So I wrote that op-ed and I sent it to the FBI

40:14

and it was approved by the publication people in the FBI,

40:17

by the PR person, and then we gave it to New York Times.

40:22

And I was contemplating, should I write?

40:27

Shouldn't I write? I was confused about it.

40:30

I wanted that thing to be behind me.

40:33

I was like, you know what? I did enough.

40:35

I sacrificed enough.

40:37

I paid dearly for, standing up against torture

40:38

and doing all these things.

40:41

It's just like, I don't want anything to do with it.

40:43

And then, the New York Times contacted me,

40:46

I didn't even know that they know about me.

40:49

And they ask, can you write an op-ed?

40:51

And I was just thought that that's basically kind

40:55

of like a heavenly intervention that I need

41:00

to write an op-ed.

41:03

I assumed some people in the government told

41:06

the New York Times about, so, and I did.

41:08

Interviewer

So once they called you,

41:13

you weren't as apprehensive, you're willing

41:15

to just stand up-

41:17

-

Well, I was still apprehensive by then, I had to make

41:18

a decision and I made the decision

41:21

that I'm gonna basically push back against the apologists.

41:23

Interviewer

And so, I'll just ask you again, did some

41:28

of those apologists go after you, after you wrote that?

41:30

-

Yeah. I mean, there was a lot of attacks,

41:33

at the time people didn't know much about me, what I did.

41:36

Some people on TV, some talking heads on TV saying

41:40

that I'm disgruntled employee didn't know,

41:43

what I did in the government and my relationships

41:46

with the government.

41:49

Some people claimed that, I don't know

41:50

what I'm talking about, some people claimed that I'm lying.

41:53

Some people tried to take things out of context,

41:57

different stuff and putting them together

42:00

and come up with different stories.

42:02

I was accused of being a liar publicly by so many people.

42:10

But, interestingly enough, when there was a hearing

42:14

in the Senate and I went to testify under oath,

42:18

none of these guys who said I'm lying showed up.

42:21

Because they don't wanna, lie under oath.

42:24

(laughs)

42:27

So, my statement is still the only statement,

42:29

as we speak today, under oath in the Senate

42:33

on the whole EIT stuff.

42:36

Interviewer

Really. And when you said you paid dearly,

42:39

how did you pay dearly before that?

42:42

-

Well, it's a combination of things.

42:46

It's, you stand up against torture, you come back,

42:48

you are talking about it to people in the government,

42:52

people in your agency, some other agencies believe

42:56

that the FBI were pulled out because of you.

42:59

And then you had the 9/11 Commission, with 9/11 asking a lot

43:06

of questions regarding the Southeast Asia meetings

43:10

and so forth, so it's kind of like a perfect storm.

43:14

And then, so some people really didn't appreciate,

43:18

individuals saying the truth and standing

43:22

up for what this country is all about.

43:24

Interviewer

Were you surprised

43:28

to find yourself in that role?

43:29

-

I was angry to find myself in that role but,

43:34

Interviewer

Because?

43:40

-

Well, you put yourself in a very difficult positions.

43:41

The easiest thing is to look the other way and lay low.

43:48

And, but I don't know, it wasn't written,

43:51

maybe there was a heavenly intervention that I didn't look

43:59

the other way.

44:02

Because I hope that I contributed to showing up to the world

44:04

what America is all about, that even in our darkest days,

44:11

there are people in the United States,

44:18

and me and many others, not only me, who stood up.

44:21

Because I was a voice of so many people as reflected

44:25

in my statements, as reflected in my book.

44:28

That even in our darkest moments, we had people

44:31

in the United States who believe

44:36

in what America is all about, stood up for the right thing,

44:37

did the right thing and did not get about the consequences.

44:40

And America is a better place

44:44

because of the actions of these individuals.

44:46

Interviewer

After you left that black site,

44:53

did you then work in New York?

44:56

-

Yeah. I continued. Actually, I even went

44:59

to other black sites after that.

45:03

Interviewer

For the same reason, for interrogations?

45:05

-

For interrogations and I continued

45:07

to do different investigations on this,

45:09

what I was doing before, so it didn't stop.

45:12

Interviewer

And if you saw that kind of mistreatment

45:15

or torture or whatever at the other black sites?

45:18

-

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We've seen it.

45:20

Interviewer

Did you report that as well? I guess-

45:23

-

Yeah. You have a mission, and you have lives to save.

45:25

So when you see these kinds of things and you don't agree

45:31

with it, but you report it through your channels

45:34

to your headquarters and like hey,

45:39

this is what's happening here.

45:40

It wasn't like, you're not reporting it,

45:44

you're not being angry or not,

45:47

you have to basically would what work.

45:48

I mean, I am not against these techniques

45:50

because they are inhumane.

45:54

I'm being totally honest about it.

46:01

I am against these techniques because they don't work.

46:03

I mean, if I believe that torturing a person can save lives,

46:08

I will do it.

46:15

Interviewer

And how do you know they don't work?

46:18

-

My experience, I saw them.

46:20

Remember, I spent a few weeks with those contractors.

46:22

And we've seen the guy talks and when they start doing

46:28

their stupid techniques, they stopped talking

46:31

and then they bring us in again, to, I mean, I cannot talk

46:34

in many details about this but hopefully, the SSCI Report

46:37

is gonna be coming out soon.

46:41

And hopefully, eventually, my book will be unredacted

46:44

and people can read how the information

46:46

were generated and how we get the intelligence that we got.

46:49

And then, people can can make up their minds.

46:54

Interviewer

Do you keep requesting

46:58

for your book to be unredacted, is that?

46:59

-

Well, it been a longer process,

47:01

but even if the Senate cannot unredact their report,

47:02

I don't think I'm gonna be successful redacting

47:06

my book at this time.

47:08

Interviewer

Who did redact your books, the CIA?

47:09

-

The CIA. The FBI approved the book.

47:11

Interviewer

And the CIA had the right

47:14

to interfere with it?

47:15

-

Supposedly they do, it was surprising

47:17

to me because I did not work with the CIA.

47:20

I did not work for the CIA.

47:25

I did not work on anything that has to do with the CIA.

47:27

I was an FBI agent that was doing my work

47:31

as an FBI investigator.

47:34

The FBI took the book, they spend

47:36

about three months reviewing it.

47:38

It was reviewed by three different departments.

47:40

And they asked me to make some changes which I made,

47:43

they made sense.

47:45

They can probably, affect the FBI or the government

47:47

or relationship with a foreign government or,

47:53

expose sources and methods.

47:57

I understood that, they made perfect sense

47:59

and I changed them and I deleted some stuff.

48:01

But then after the approval was given from the FBI

48:05

they said, by the way, now the CIA has to do it.

48:10

And that was a big, as we all know now about the process,

48:13

not only from me but also from the Senate report

48:20

and from even the Director of the CIA, Panetta,

48:24

with what we hear now on the news,

48:27

so the process wasn't as easy.

48:30

Interviewer

So that was a surprise to you.

48:34

You had no idea that was coming,

48:35

the CIA would also have to review you book...

48:37

-

Well, I was actually told before the,

48:38

at the time the FBI was reviewing the book

48:41

and they told me that, okay, now everything is okay,

48:44

I get a phone call from a journalist and he said,

48:48

are you writing a book?

48:50

And I was surprised that he knew somebody in Washington.

48:51

And I said, yeah, who told you?

48:55

He said, well, I heard from some sources in the FBI

48:57

that they would never allow that book to be out.

48:59

And that book was supposed to be out

49:02

on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

49:06

I said, no, it's being reviewed

49:11

and he said, well, that's I heard from my sources.

49:14

And few days later, I heard that the CIA need to review

49:16

my book, I'm like, son of a gun, he knew.

49:20

(laughs)

49:23

Interviewer

And the FBI couldn't push back

49:27

against the CIA, they could push?

49:29

-

I don't know. They have no interest in pushing back.

49:32

Interviewer

Really?

49:37

-

And why should they?

49:38

Interviewer

Well you work for them.

49:40

-

So? They not gonna create a problem with another agency

49:42

because of somebody writing a book, from their perspective,

49:46

they cleared the book and it's somebody else's problem.

49:52

Interviewer

Just as an aside, did you work

49:58

with John Walker Lindh at all?

50:00

-

No.

50:02

Interviewer

When you said that Guantanamo failed

50:04

as it moved on, could you kind of elaborate how you see

50:07

that happening, what happened?

50:12

-

Well, first of all, at the beginning, Guantanamo

50:14

was supposed to be a place

50:17

where we can sort out these individuals.

50:18

But later on, it became part of a bureaucratic process.

50:21

And, we have a lot of people coming in with no idea

50:25

how are they gonna come out, how they can get out.

50:29

We were not able to do a lot of the things that we hoped

50:32

we will able to do.

50:36

We prosecuted a few people in Guantanamo.

50:38

Some of them were people that I interrogated

50:40

because the interview was very clean

50:43

and I went and I testified down there in Gitmo

50:45

we have at least one individual, I think, that we brought

50:47

who was involved in the East Africa embassy bombing,

50:51

that we brought in from Gitmo was prosecuted

50:53

in the Southern district of New York and he was convicted.

50:55

So, but to the most part, we had a military commission,

50:59

a system that hasn't been tested, brand new system.

51:04

A lot of people confuse the military commission

51:07

with the Military Justice.

51:11

Military Code of Justice is very similar

51:13

to Articles Three courts.

51:15

And even when you interrogate someone, you need to read

51:17

them their rights, which is very similar to Miranda Rights.

51:19

So when you're talking about Military Justice,

51:23

is very different than the military commission.

51:25

The military commission is something that we actually made

51:28

up after 9/11, we made up after the Guantanamo,

51:31

we thought we can create new law, new system,

51:36

a third system, 'cause we have the Article Three courts

51:42

and we have the military courts, and then we thought, okay,

51:45

let's do a military commissions too.

51:48

And that system wasn't really, thought well

51:51

when they executed it.

51:57

So it was challenged twice, I believe, to the Supreme Court

51:59

and twice the Supreme Court actually sided

52:02

with the bad guys in Guantanamo against the government

52:05

and Congress had to change the military commission.

52:08

Even when you do prosecutions in military commission,

52:11

there's a lot of technical issues that's still missing.

52:14

For example, conspiracy, now there is a lot

52:17

of debates, conspiracy, which is the number one, violation

52:21

that you use in prosecuting terrorists.

52:28

Is it part of the military commission or it's not part

52:31

of the military commission?

52:35

And this debate, this legal debate is still going

52:36

on and being argued, I believe, even in front

52:39

of the Supreme Court, if I'm not mistaken.

52:42

So, there are a lot of things, I mean, sentencing guidelines

52:44

there is no sentencing guidelines.

52:47

Somebody is convicted on some, violations

52:48

that's in Federal Court will say will probably

52:53

they will serve about 25 to 30 years

52:55

and in the military commission they get like seven years,

52:58

with time served.

53:00

So, a lot of issues, a lot of tools, legal tools,

53:01

it's not, clear and the military commission

53:08

and that what made the process extremely lengthy

53:11

and extremely long.

53:16

Every time the whole system is challenged all the way

53:17

to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court rules

53:20

against the system and you make new system

53:24

and you do improvements to the system,

53:26

you have to start from scratch.

53:30

And this is the problem. This is the issue.

53:32

In the meantime, you have all these individuals

53:35

in Guantanamo, and they are actually, even people

53:37

if they were not radicals when they went to Guantanamo,

53:42

living with all these Taliban and Qaeda guys

53:47

is gonna make them radicals.

53:49

I mean, the perfect example is ISIS today.

53:50

If you look at the top leadership of ISIS,

53:53

all of them were in Bucca Camp.

53:56

Bucca Camp is a detention facility down in Southern Iraq.

53:59

Now in Bucca, you had the extremists, religious extremists,

54:04

Islamist extremists, and you have the Baathists,

54:09

you had the Secular, we put them all in one camp.

54:12

So all the Baathists and all the people who used

54:14

to run the intelligence and the military for Saddam's

54:17

and the government for Saddam's army came out radical's,

54:20

working closely with Al-Qaeda.

54:25

So we actually put the, oil and fire together

54:26

and we said, hey, please meet each other

54:29

so you can work against us down the road.

54:32

And that's what happened.

54:34

And now you look at ISIS and the leadership of ISIS

54:34

were all people who never knew each other

54:38

before they were guests in our detention facilities.

54:40

Interviewer

So you're saying we did

54:46

that in Guantanamo too?

54:47

-

Well, I'm saying, in Guantanamo, the process of,

54:49

first of all, no end in sight.

54:57

Second, you have individuals who were not involved

55:02

in radical activities who ended there and stayed

55:05

for a long period of time,

55:08

before we start releasing individuals,

55:09

definitely had an impact on this.

55:13

And I think there is some studies and statistics

55:15

about individuals who were not involved

55:18

and who were released from Guantanamo.

55:20

Because at the time, even during the Bush Administration,

55:22

we released way more people during the Bush Administration

55:25

than under the Obama Administration.

55:28

But, some of these individuals, I don't know

55:30

the exact number from the top of my head,

55:33

who were not in involved in anything,

55:35

that the Bush Administration released them,

55:37

ended up blowing themselves up in US troops.

55:39

Interviewer

Did you see that unraveling

55:42

as you kept returning to Guantanamo, did you begin

55:46

to see some of these problems you're describing?

55:49

-

We start seeing the lack of benefits of Guantanamo

55:51

because, we kept going years after.

55:57

And then the information that you're getting

56:01

from these people were not actionable intelligence

56:04

in any way, shape or form.

56:07

I mean, yeah, they can tell you what the Farouq Camp is,

56:09

well, we know what the Farouq Camp is, we are there.

56:11

They can tell you where this guy are, well, we know.

56:14

I mean these are not actionable intelligence anymore.

56:16

Also in the same time, we had a problem with the people

56:21

who were going there.

56:27

A lot of the people who were going to do interrogations

56:28

in Guantanamo don't know much about Al- Qaeda,

56:31

don't know much about even the culture of Al-Qaeda

56:33

and bin Laden's, I'm not talking about just a culture

56:39

in the regular definition of culture

56:43

but the institutional culture of the organization.

56:46

How people are recruited, how people go to training camp,

56:49

where they fight, where they train, what is the significance

56:52

of that specific individual train you?

56:56

What is the significant significance if you went

56:59

to Al-Farouq Camp versus going to (muffled speaking) camp,

57:01

all these small little things can give you a lot

57:04

of information about the individual that you're talking to.

57:08

The great majority of the people who went

57:12

to do interrogations in Guantanamo were not people

57:14

who have a lot of these experiences.

57:17

And it ended up, people just saying, hey, you know what?

57:19

I already talk about all these things.

57:22

Look at it, it's in the file.

57:24

And everybody's saying, it's in the file.

57:26

It became like, I'm sure you've probably heard

57:28

it from so many people that you talked to.

57:30

And unfortunately, the whole system became stale,

57:33

there's no fresh air in that system anymore.

57:38

And it became just like you go there, it's a routine,

57:41

you meet with those guys, you talk to them.

57:44

Most of them, they sit there, they don't even talk to you.

57:47

And then, put more papers in the file, later on.

57:49

But at the beginning it was different.

57:55

At the beginning, there was information,

57:57

there was excitement.

57:59

There was, a lot of energy going on but the system,

58:00

I believe, the political system,

58:07

the bureaucratic system kind of like suffocated

58:08

the oxygen out of that energy in Gitmo.

58:11

Interviewer

Why did that happen?

58:14

Why did the government send so many different interrogators

58:14

to just replicate?

58:17

-

It's the bureaucratic system, the institutional system.

58:20

I mean, if you're not assigning people to be full-time

58:23

in Gitmo, it's very difficult.

58:26

So, people go there for 30 days, 60 days

58:28

and then they come back.

58:31

So the institutional knowledge is not there.

58:34

There are few people who continue to be there.

58:36

And then every agency starts focusing on what, their focus,

58:39

to include us, I mean, to include me.

58:45

Every time I went there to Gitmo,

58:50

I mean the Bureau doesn't want me to be there full-time

58:52

because there's a lot of other things going on.

58:55

There are a lot of people outside that we are trying

58:57

to bring inside.

58:59

But every time I went in, I went for a specific reason.

59:01

I went to, for example, get this information

59:04

about that specific individual or that specific plot.

59:07

'Cause I knew a guy down in Gitmo who might give

59:13

me that information, so I went down to talk to them.

59:15

So I was, targeting my interrogations and my interviews

59:17

so I wasn't down there for a long time.

59:23

Interviewer

Did you ever interview al-Qahtani,

59:26

what people think the 20th hijacker.

59:28

-

Yeah.

59:30

Interviewer

Could you tell us?

59:31

-

I don't know what has been classified

59:32

and what hasn't been classified about that,

59:34

but yes he is the 20th hijacker, no doubt

59:36

in my mind about it.

59:38

Interviewer

No doubt.

Really?

59:39

-

No doubt in my mind.

59:40

Interviewer

How about KSM, were you able

59:45

to interview him?

59:47

-

No.

59:47

Interviewer

And did you interview Salim Hamdan before?

59:49

-

Yep.

59:52

Interviewer

Did you know of him when you?

59:53

-

Well, actually, I testified in his case,

59:56

I'm the guy who basically led

59:59

the interrogations against him.

1:00:01

He cooperated, he cooperated fully,

1:00:02

probably among quotations, but yeah.

1:00:08

And then that information they used to prosecute him.

1:00:11

But I knew of him before from interrogating Abu Jandal

1:00:18

who's his brother-in-law.

1:00:23

Abu Jandal was a personal bodyguard of bin Laden,

1:00:25

Hamdan was a personal driver of bin Laden.

1:00:28

So, Abu Jandal gave me a lot of information about Salim.

1:00:31

And when we knew that Saqr is down there,

1:00:34

that's his alias, Saqr al-Jedawi,

1:00:36

I went down there and, he wasn't cooperating

1:00:39

for a few months, he was, I think has been

1:00:44

in custody for awhile.

1:00:47

So after, we talked to each other and he decided

1:00:49

to help and cooperate.

1:00:53

Interviewer

And Abu Jandal, what happened to him?

1:00:56

-

He's in Yemen, he's free.

1:01:01

Interviewer

And how did that happen

1:01:03

if he was a bodyguard for bin Laden that they didn't pick

1:01:04

him up and bring him to Guantanamo?

1:01:08

-

Well, he was in Yemen.

1:01:10

So we had a deal with the Yemenis early on, that any members

1:01:11

of Al-Qaeda, arrested in Yemen would be prosecuted in Yemen,

1:01:15

by the Yemenis, won't be brought to the United States.

1:01:21

They claimed it was against their constitution

1:01:26

to extradite their citizens.

1:01:29

So he stayed there, so as Fahd al-Quso, so as many people

1:01:32

who were involved in the Cole and then they all

1:01:37

were released at one point and joined again,

1:01:39

the battle with Al-Qaeda, they joined Al-Qaeda again,

1:01:44

they joined Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

1:01:51

But Abu Jandal doesn't seem to join.

1:01:54

He is now like freelancing, I guess.

1:01:56

Interviewer

So that must have been really frustrating

1:02:00

for the agencies to watch these people just be released?

1:02:02

-

There was a lot of frustration, and I think

1:02:06

there was a lot of discussions with the Yemeni Government.

1:02:08

I know the former director of the FBI visited Yemen

1:02:11

a few times, and talked to Ali Abdullah Saleh

1:02:14

about the release of these individuals,

1:02:16

the former president, but, it is what it is at the time.

1:02:21

I mean, that's one of the things that kind of frustrating

1:02:25

about the whole experience of the war on terror.

1:02:31

How hard we worked to put people in jail and how easy

1:02:33

it was for these guys to be released after, we put

1:02:36

them in jail, because of pardon or because of,

1:02:40

or Ramadan is coming, so let's say the guys who blow

1:02:43

up the Cole just go out of there, or, we forgot to lock

1:02:45

the door of the jail today.

1:02:49

Or, yeah, they dug a tunnel all the way

1:02:50

from the maximum security jail to the woman's bathroom

1:02:53

in the mosque in the neighborhood, next to the jail.

1:02:56

I mean, we heard all excuses.

1:03:01

But, all the guys who became the leaders of AQAP early on,

1:03:03

to include the leader of (muffled speaking) a Yemeni,

1:03:08

who is now the leader of AQAP, who is now the link

1:03:13

between Al-Qaeda Central and all the different affiliates,

1:03:16

was in jail, we put him in jail.

1:03:20

Interviewer

In Yemen?

1:03:22

-

In Yemen. And he was one of the 20 something people

1:03:23

who dug a tunnel and came out of the national security jail

1:03:26

to the woman's bathroom in adjacent neighborhood

1:03:30

to where the maximum security jail is.

1:03:35

So, you know what?

1:03:38

(clicks)

1:03:39

Fiction is way better than, sorry, reality

1:03:40

is way better than fiction.

1:03:43

Interviewer

So if you had to do it over again,

1:03:46

where did it go wrong and, if you were in charge,

1:03:51

how could it have been different?

1:03:56

-

I think we had a major knee jerk reaction after 9/11.

1:03:59

And a lot of the things that actually worked before 9/11,

1:04:03

we kind of like disregarded, for example, the use

1:04:07

of law enforcement, the use of American law.

1:04:10

I think there are a lot of things, instead, we went totally

1:04:13

to the other side of the field, was focusing only

1:04:18

on intelligence and giving this whole war on terror for,

1:04:23

to make it as an intelligence operation.

1:04:27

I think we should have dealt with the reasons

1:04:30

that, that information about Southeast Asia not passed,

1:04:36

focused on these issues.

1:04:40

We should have held people accountable for things

1:04:42

that they've done or they did not do, and move forward.

1:04:45

But the lack of accountability that existed

1:04:49

in the system from 9/11 to EITs to Guantanamo,

1:04:51

actually, the more you mess up, the higher you get promoted,

1:04:56

that created an environment that was poisonous.

1:05:00

And 14 years after 9/11, we have more people who adhere

1:05:04

to Osama bin Laden ideology today than we had in 2001,

1:05:09

there's a reason for that.

1:05:14

More people today believe in BinLadenism

1:05:16

than we had in 2001.

1:05:19

In 2001, on the eve of 9/11, we had 400 Al-Qaeda members,

1:05:20

now there are thousands of people who believe

1:05:24

in Binladenism, different types of affiliates,

1:05:26

different names, but it is the same ideology.

1:05:29

Bin Laden never dream that he wouldn't have, affiliates

1:05:33

and believers in his rhetoric, from the west shores

1:05:38

of Africa to Southeast Asia.

1:05:43

That's the reality we have today.

1:05:45

Interviewer

And who should we have held,

1:05:49

accountable early on?

1:05:51

-

I don't wanna go with names, but people who were involved

1:05:53

in not passing the information of 9/11, people who messed

1:05:56

up the EIT things, people hired contractors,

1:05:58

there's a lot of mistakes that were done.

1:06:02

And I know that a lot of people say, well,

1:06:04

it's hindsight 20/20, and, there's a lot

1:06:06

of Monday morning quarterbacking here.

1:06:10

But to be honest there was not,

1:06:12

it's not the Monday morning quarterbacking, it's something

1:06:14

that we fought every stage of the way early

1:06:18

on and people now are talking about it,

1:06:20

and people are writing books about it.

1:06:22

So, there was an argument at the very beginning

1:06:26

and unfortunately, that argument was lost.

1:06:29

And we went from one side totally to the other.

1:06:35

And I think there's a happy medium where we can fight

1:06:39

this war, defeat the terrorist, using every tool available

1:06:45

in the toolbox, not only one tool,

1:06:49

not only the intelligence tool or the military tool.

1:06:51

But, we have a toolbox that have law enforcement,

1:06:54

that have laws, that have diplomacy,

1:06:58

that have economic programs, political programs,

1:07:01

aid, educational programs.

1:07:04

So there have a lot of things that also we can use

1:07:07

to counter the ideology.

1:07:11

We never touched ideology, the danger of Osama bin Laden

1:07:12

is in his ideology, not in his group.

1:07:16

So Osama bin Laden died but the ideology continued.

1:07:19

We never done anything to counter that ideology.

1:07:22

We never done anything to counter the fuels that feeds

1:07:25

into terrorism and feeds into violent extremism.

1:07:30

We never held allies accountable for using extremism

1:07:34

as proxies against each other.

1:07:37

So there are a lot of mistakes that were done.

1:07:40

And unfortunately we saw that mistakes happening,

1:07:43

it's kind of like seeing an accident

1:07:46

in slow motion early on, because we have been involved early

1:07:48

on in the fight against Al-Qaeda.

1:07:52

And many people stood up and talk about it,

1:07:54

but, eventually, the decisions were made

1:07:58

and we're a country of law

1:08:02

so when the political leadership make the decision

1:08:05

and make the law, we follow it.

1:08:08

And, unfortunately that was the wrong decision.

1:08:11

And we're paying for it dearly today with ISIS

1:08:15

and with Boko Haram, and with the different groups

1:08:18

that we're seeing, popping up like, (muffled speaking)

1:08:21

all over the place.

1:08:25

Interviewer

When the torture amendments were released,

1:08:27

were you aware of them before they were released?

1:08:30

(muffled speaking)

1:08:32

-

The OLC memos?

1:08:36

Interviewer

Yeah.

1:08:37

-

No. I was just like listening like everyone else

1:08:38

on the news, I didn't know about their release at the time.

1:08:40

Interviewer

And how do you feel

1:08:43

that, that seemed probably not surprising

1:08:44

to you given what you had seen?

1:08:47

-

I wasn't surprised that there are memos and so forth,

1:08:48

it's like something not surprising.

1:08:51

But I was surprised on some of the stuff written

1:08:53

in these memos, and I'm not talking

1:08:56

about the legal justification, this is way

1:08:57

above my grade level, lawyers can, spin things.

1:08:59

But I was surprised about some of the stuff that was written

1:09:07

that's completely unfactual.

1:09:10

Like for example, in Bradbury Memo, he said that you've told

1:09:12

us that, waterboarding basically caused Abu Zubaydah

1:09:18

to identify Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as a mastermind of 9/11

1:09:26

and disrupt a dirty bomb.

1:09:30

Interestingly enough, the dirty bomb meeting, the Padilla,

1:09:33

interestingly enough, waterboarding didn't start officially

1:09:40

until August 1st of 2002, unofficially started

1:09:46

like a week maybe earlier.

1:09:52

But Padilla for example, was arrested in May.

1:09:55

So unless you have a time machine going backward,

1:10:00

how can waterboarding caused him to give Padilla,

1:10:04

we got the information about Padilla in April.

1:10:08

And we were looking for him in an international manhunt,

1:10:10

until we finally knew where he was and he was coming

1:10:13

to Chicago, and we picked him up from Chicago.

1:10:16

So that happened, I mean, the Attorney General

1:10:19

of the United States did a press conference about that.

1:10:22

But you look at the efficacy memo,

1:10:24

which is still classified, but, it is referenced in a lot

1:10:27

of these OLC memos, you see that they change just a year.

1:10:29

So instead of saying that he was picked up in 02,

1:10:34

they said he was picked up in 03, so then it makes sense.

1:10:40

And these things are, so in the Office

1:10:45

of Professional Responsibility investigation,

1:10:49

and that has been declassified,

1:10:52

they asked Bradbury, they said, well, Padilla was picked

1:10:54

up in 02 not 03, but you based your opinion

1:10:59

that he was picked up in 03 and waterboarding works.

1:11:02

He said, yeah, my job is not to check the facts.

1:11:06

And that is a quote in an op-ed report

1:11:11

that has been declassified.

1:11:16

So these are the things that really shocked me,

1:11:18

how dates were changed.

1:11:23

Like for example, another document

1:11:26

that was declassified claimed that Ramzi bin al-Shibh,

1:11:28

something referenced in the McAsey and in Hayden op-ed

1:11:32

in the Wall Street Journal that I told you about.

1:11:38

In that declassified document, it said that bin al-Shibh

1:11:44

was picked up in December,

1:11:48

he was arrested in December of 2002.

1:11:50

Well, interestingly enough, bin al-Shibh was arrested

1:11:55

on the first anniversary of 9/11, on 9/11, 2002.

1:12:00

I was there, I'm in Karachi, picked him up.

1:12:06

So, they made a timeline, but then if it doesn't fit,

1:12:11

change the date, change one, instead of September,

1:12:18

make December, instead of 02 make it 03,

1:12:22

and then the timeline fits.

1:12:25

And then you classify the timeline, over classify

1:12:26

that people in the government,

1:12:31

people who have been defending the program,

1:12:33

I'm not saying that they unlike, I'm not saying

1:12:35

that Mike Hayden is lying or Judge McAsey is lying.

1:12:38

But those guys, imagine yourself in McAsey's shoes

1:12:41

or Hayden's shoes, they are so invested into the program

1:12:45

at this point and to their defense,

1:12:50

that's something totally different.

1:12:52

But you go to a SCIF area, a secure area, you sit there,

1:12:54

they hand you a file, there's a timeline on the file.

1:12:58

This is waterboarding. And this is when we get this guy.

1:13:01

This is when we got this guy, this is how we arrest this,

1:13:03

this is how we disrupt this.

1:13:06

You'll look at it. And you're convinced.

1:13:07

And you think that we really saved lives.

1:13:09

But if you actually Google these things,

1:13:11

Google it, open source information,

1:13:14

you see that the attorney general

1:13:17

of the United States did a press conference in Moscow

1:13:19

when Padilla was picked up in 03, in 02.

1:13:21

So this what shocked me the most about the OLC memos

1:13:25

and this is what made me angry that,

1:13:29

I believe that things were falsified.

1:13:32

Now, when we start talking about these things,

1:13:35

they said, no, it was typos, it was mistakes and typos.

1:13:37

That's a lot of mistakes and typos,

1:13:40

very important mistakes on typos too that shaped

1:13:42

the political opinion of peoples from the top.

1:13:46

Like when George Bush said in his speech about EIT,

1:13:49

I truly believe he believes every word of it,

1:13:54

because that's what he was told, he's the president.

1:13:57

He's not gonna investigate the details of all these things.

1:13:59

And we know the process of cover up that happened.

1:14:02

And now this is why that SSCI Report

1:14:07

is not declassified yet.

1:14:12

And as we know when the SSCI start doing

1:14:14

their investigation and getting all this information,

1:14:17

from documents, because SSCI didn't talk to anyone,

1:14:20

SSCI decided that the truth is basically,

1:14:23

is in the, millions of documents that exists

1:14:26

in the different agencies' databases.

1:14:29

So they actually reviewed over the years,

1:14:31

all these documents.

1:14:34

And then when they start getting to the bottom

1:14:35

of it and figuring out that, you know what?

1:14:37

That's not what happened.

1:14:39

These guys did not say the truth in front of Congress.

1:14:40

They did not tell the president the truth.

1:14:43

They even now we know that they tried

1:14:45

to hack their own computers.

1:14:48

So that means that there is significant effort to kind

1:14:50

of cover up that era.

1:14:56

And I think we should turn the page.

1:15:00

I think we should turn the page, because most of the people

1:15:04

who were involved in this are not there anymore.

1:15:06

And all the agencies, the people like in the CIA,

1:15:09

the people in the FBI, everyone, their heart

1:15:12

is in the right place and they're doing whatever they can do

1:15:17

to save this nation, to save you and me so we can sit

1:15:19

in New York and do this interview.

1:15:24

I understand that, we need to move forward,

1:15:27

we cannot continue to go backward.

1:15:29

But we can never move forward until we close that chapter.

1:15:32

And I think the best thing we can do is allow SSCI,

1:15:36

allow the CIA, allow all these agencies to turn that page

1:15:39

and close that chapter.

1:15:43

Hacking computers, trying to do all these things

1:15:45

and, kind of like follow up or trying to defend something

1:15:48

that is totally indefensible at this point,

1:15:53

is not the way to go.

1:15:56

And America, as Winston Churchill said,

1:15:57

eventually we will do the right thing,

1:16:01

after we exhaust all other means.

1:16:03

Interviewer

Well, when you say close the page,

1:16:06

you don't wanna close the page

1:16:08

until you reveal-

1:16:09

-

No, I said close

the book on that area, close the chapter, turn the page.

1:16:11

Interviewer

And close the chapter correctly

1:16:15

with where the truth is out? (faintly speaking)

1:16:17

-

Absolutely. This is part of history, and the truth

1:16:19

is gonna be out, the truth is gonna be out.

1:16:22

If it's not in our lifetime, it's somebody else's lifetime.

1:16:24

Something like this, I mean this, SSCI, after millions

1:16:28

of documents, they know the truth.

1:16:31

People who have been talking,

1:16:35

in the different government agencies, they know the truth.

1:16:38

You don't want the president of the United States come out

1:16:41

and say, we tortured people, he knows the truth.

1:16:44

We know the truth, we just need to turn the page and we tell

1:16:47

the American people what really happened,

1:16:51

even if we're gonna hurt the feelings

1:16:53

of couple of individuals who personally were invested

1:16:55

in the program and we move forward.

1:16:58

For the sake of the CIA, for the sake of the United States,

1:17:01

for the sake of the FBI, for the sake of every man and woman

1:17:04

who putting their life on the line,

1:17:07

defending this great nation.

1:17:10

Interviewer

Well, why won't Obama do that?

1:17:12

-

It's a good question, I think they are working

1:17:16

with the Senate in doing it, I don't know.

1:17:18

We'll keep our fingers crossed.

1:17:19

Interviewer

When he was elected, did you think

1:17:21

he was gonna close Guantanamo?

1:17:23

-

I think that he was gonna do it, but I think also

1:17:27

I knew he was gonna fail in doing it.

1:17:33

Because, Guantanamo became one of these things

1:17:37

that is there, I mean, what do you do now?

1:17:41

Do you take all these guys

1:17:45

who are like cold-blooded killers, many of them,

1:17:46

and you put them on the streets?

1:17:49

I mean, we have a lot of people in Guantanamo

1:17:52

that we don't have anything against them.

1:17:56

We know they are bad.

1:17:59

Other people telling us who they are, we know who they were,

1:18:01

but we don't have anything that meets the threshold,

1:18:05

not even for military commission.

1:18:07

(grunts)

1:18:10

So we talked about, read, it's on the file,

1:18:11

we talked about this.

1:18:15

So how are you gonna bring them here?

1:18:17

And people who talked about them are probably,

1:18:18

not available to testify.

1:18:21

So do you release them so they can kill more people?

1:18:23

Do you bring them to the United States and we won't be able

1:18:27

to prosecute them and they have to be released

1:18:32

and they don't meet the threshold?

1:18:34

So the situation became very complicated.

1:18:36

And without finding a home to all these people

1:18:38

in Guantanamo, especially the Yemenis in Guantanamo.

1:18:43

Interviewer

Why especially the Yemenis?

1:18:47

-

Because, they dig a tunnel and they get out in Yemen.

1:18:48

And all of these guys have the close inner circle

1:18:52

of Osama bin Laden.

1:18:54

So do you release them, do you send them back to Yemen

1:18:55

so the Yemenis will put them on the street the next day,

1:18:57

and they will join Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

1:19:01

and then we have to basically try to find ways

1:19:03

to get them again, I mean, what do you do?

1:19:07

What do you do in this situation?

1:19:10

So the situation is very complicated, very complicated.

1:19:12

Interviewer

Was Obama naive? (muffled speaking)

1:19:15

-

I don't know if he's naive, I think

1:19:17

he has good intentions, but I think it was complicated.

1:19:19

And also, on the same time, he should have coordinated

1:19:21

with Congress because, it seems that everybody was thinking

1:19:27

about something totally different and, as we know,

1:19:31

Congress prevented any actions in Guantanamo.

1:19:34

Interviewer

I just wanna back up for a minute,

1:19:42

when you mentioned Jose Padilla, did you interview him?

1:19:44

-

Jose Padilla?

1:19:46

Interviewer

Yeah.

1:19:47

-

No.

Interviewer

That wasn't part of...

1:19:49

-

No.

1:19:50

Interviewer

When you mentioned Binladenism,

1:19:59

I hadn't heard that term, is that your term

1:20:00

or is that a term that's now used among agencies?

1:20:02

-

I don't know. I always talk about Binladenism,

1:20:06

so I hope the term catches up.

1:20:10

Interviewer

Did you use that term for many years?

1:20:13

-

Yeah. I've been using the Binladenism term, yeah.

1:20:15

I wrote an op-ed on the anniversary of 9/11

1:20:20

about BinLadenism in the Guardian, so, yeah.

1:20:22

Interviewer

And what do you mean by that terms as you-

1:20:27

-

People who believe in the ideas of Osama bin Laden.

1:20:29

A lot of times we don't talk about the ideology

1:20:32

because we think it's part of religion and you're talking

1:20:34

about Islam, and you're talking about radicalism

1:20:37

and who are you to decide who's a radical

1:20:40

and who isn't a radical and a religion,

1:20:42

so it gets very confusing.

1:20:43

So, it's not about the religion, it's about the ideology

1:20:47

of Osama bin Laden that's based on using violence,

1:20:51

killing people who don't agree with what you agree with,

1:20:54

declaring war on the West, killing Westerners,

1:20:57

plundering their money for no reason

1:21:01

just because they are Westerners, believing

1:21:03

in that conspiratorial access of the Jewish,

1:21:06

Crusader alliances, trying to destroy the Muslim world,

1:21:09

all these conspiracies things,

1:21:12

it's really busy in their head.

1:21:14

And I think that is Binladenism, I mean, you can call

1:21:16

it the (foreign language) kind of, Jihadi ideology.

1:21:20

And this is the same ideology that, connect Boko Haram

1:21:26

to Al-Shabaab, to ISIS to al-Nusra to Al-Qaeda,

1:21:31

all these groups come from the same ideology.

1:21:34

And that's why you see a lot of these affiliates pledging

1:21:37

by Al-Qaeda and operating under Al-Qaeda's umbrella

1:21:40

and under Al-Qaeda's banner until ISIS actually came out

1:21:44

from Al-Qaeda's sphere of influence and Baghdadi declared

1:21:48

his own thing, but it used to be part of Al-Qaeda too,

1:21:53

so it's the same ideology.

1:21:56

The thing that if you talk to ISIS people and you monitor

1:21:58

what they say, ISIS say we are bin Laden's Al-Qaeda,

1:22:01

not Zawahiri's Al-Qaeda.

1:22:05

So the whole idea is about the leadership

1:22:06

of Ayman al-Zawahiri rather than the ideology

1:22:08

of Osama bin Laden.

1:22:11

Interviewer

Well, do you see

1:22:13

that this is just gonna keep exploding,

1:22:14

that we're just gonna see more and more of these radicals?

1:22:17

-

Well, I think if we don't deal with the incubating factors

1:22:19

if you don't deal with the factors that's fueling extremism,

1:22:22

that's fueling radicalism, that's fueling terrorism,

1:22:32

the regional vacuum that exists, the sectarian proxy war

1:22:36

that's existing between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

1:22:40

If we don't deal with, the role of woman in a society

1:22:43

where women is totally marginalized of any contribution

1:22:47

to their own countries.

1:22:52

If we don't deal with, the political issues

1:22:53

and political representations where people can feel part

1:22:58

of a system, if you don't deal on solve all these issues,

1:23:01

I think we're gonna have to see these things going

1:23:05

for a long, long period of time.

1:23:09

This is an ideological issue and that ideology

1:23:12

there's a lot of things that feed it.

1:23:15

The terrorism, the Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, Shabaab,

1:23:18

all these groups are the fruit of the poisonous tree,

1:23:23

so you can get, one of the fruit and you destroy it.

1:23:26

But if you don't cut the tree, if you don't,

1:23:29

destroy the root of that tree, more fruits gonna come out.

1:23:33

Interviewer

So you talked about counter ideology before.

1:23:38

So how do you do that? I mean, it's not easy.

1:23:41

It's probably maybe impossible,

1:23:45

it's something very complicated.

1:23:47

-

I don't think it's impossible. I think it is very easy.

1:23:48

And I think it's very easy when we basically convince,

1:23:51

our allies in the Middle East to start stopping

1:23:57

what's feeding that ideology, and this is a difficult part.

1:24:03

The difficult part is having a consensus

1:24:06

about fighting that ideology.

1:24:10

But as long as people believe that they can use

1:24:11

these extremists in the proxy war against their neighbors,

1:24:14

for example, this is gonna be very difficult to do.

1:24:17

As long as people believe that, yes, this form of ideologies

1:24:21

are bad but they are bad only when they operate

1:24:30

within our borders,

1:24:33

but we fund them when they operate outside our borders,

1:24:34

we are gonna have a problem.

1:24:37

So there are a lot of issues and with this,

1:24:39

I think we're looking, with this issue with terrorism,

1:24:43

we're looking at three-dimensional complex,

1:24:45

sorry, we're looking at three-dimensional conflict.

1:24:49

We have the domestic issues, Sunni vs Shi'a,

1:24:52

this tribe versus that tribe, we're creating

1:24:55

a lot of vacuums where, extremism is filling that vacuum.

1:24:59

And that is a result of a regional conflict that's going on.

1:25:04

Turkey versus Saudi Arabia, Egypt versus Turkey,

1:25:08

Iran versus all the others.

1:25:12

So that is creating that tension.

1:25:14

And also, the lack of solution regionally

1:25:17

is because we have a global tension

1:25:20

between basically Russia and China and between the West,

1:25:24

between regional governments that's coming out

1:25:27

of their zones and trying to say, hey, I'm trying

1:25:30

to reestablish my own legitimate place in my region.

1:25:33

And as long as we don't find that global solution,

1:25:38

we're gonna always have that regional problem.

1:25:42

And as long as we have the regional problem,

1:25:45

we're gonna always have the vacuum where the only people

1:25:47

who are able to fill it, extremist groups.

1:25:51

Interviewer

Can the US really do anything?

1:25:56

-

I think we can, we still have a leadership position

1:25:59

in the world, we will continue to have a leadership position

1:26:02

in the world.

1:26:04

I think we have to deal with,

1:26:05

supporting grassroots organization from these countries

1:26:08

to stand up against extremists.

1:26:13

Sawha for example was very successful,

1:26:15

but after we left Iraq, Moloki start fighting

1:26:18

the people who are fighting the extremists, Sawha,

1:26:22

and that generated a larger conflict in Iran.

1:26:25

So I think boots on the ground is definitely a no-no,

1:26:28

that can just take us back 10 years backward.

1:26:34

And then, we had 120,000 troops in Iraq and the moment

1:26:37

we left look what happened, so that's not gonna help.

1:26:41

But what's gonna help is putting a lot of energy

1:26:46

in developing grassroots organizations, allies who can stand

1:26:48

up against the extremists and the face

1:26:54

of that should be regional countries, not us.

1:26:58

So they won't look as if they are,

1:27:02

proxies to the United States.

1:27:04

And, a lot of people have a lot of interest

1:27:05

in stability now.

1:27:08

The Saudis, believe it or not, have interest

1:27:09

in the stability, because now ISIS on their borders.

1:27:11

The Jordanians have a lot of interest in stability

1:27:13

because ISIS on their borders.

1:27:16

Oregon just realized that, that Syria thing

1:27:17

has been a disaster because now he has the Curds

1:27:19

on his borders, he's not worried about ISIS,

1:27:22

he's worrying about the Curds.

1:27:24

Egypt want this to be over because, the more

1:27:26

the Syria conflict is gonna go, the more, Islamist groups

1:27:31

that sympathetic to the brotherhood is gonna grow

1:27:35

and that will create danger

1:27:38

against the Egyptian regime today.

1:27:40

I mean, the same thing in Libya, the same thing in Tunisia.

1:27:43

I mean, all these countries are surrounded with these chaos.

1:27:48

So everybody has a reason to end it.

1:27:50

However, they cannot agree on what terms.

1:27:53

And I think what the United States need to do is to find

1:27:56

a term sheet that a lot of people agree on.

1:28:01

At least Kerry has been successful in creating

1:28:04

that coalition, that all of them said, okay, we wanna

1:28:07

be part of a coalition against what?

1:28:10

That's still a big question mark.

1:28:13

As we see, Turkey is part of the coalition

1:28:17

for something totally different than Saudi Arabia

1:28:21

and Saudi Arabia is part of it's totally different

1:28:24

than Jordan, Egypt is part of it is totally different

1:28:27

than everyone else, so everybody has their own reason

1:28:30

for joining that coalition, but that's the first step.

1:28:33

Interviewer

Well, so, looking back

1:28:38

to where you were in 1997, and even in 2001,

1:28:40

could you ever have imagined

1:28:44

that this is where we are today?

1:28:46

-

I don't know. I don't know if we can imagine.

1:28:49

I mean, I knew one of the reasons that I thought

1:28:52

I wanna leave the government, and I told a lot of colleagues

1:28:55

at the time, I said, we are creating more terrorists

1:28:57

than we were getting, or killing or arresting.

1:28:59

And unfortunately, it continues but, it does not mean

1:29:04

that we did not have successes.

1:29:09

I mean, we have a lot of successes.

1:29:12

The government has a lot of them, they continue

1:29:15

to have a lot of successes.

1:29:16

Unfortunately, all our successes has been tactical.

1:29:18

So we can disrupt a plot, we can arrest individuals

1:29:21

who are involved in doing something, we can kill a bad guy.

1:29:28

So those are tactical wins that saves a lot of lives.

1:29:31

However, that's not a strategy to combat terrorism.

1:29:34

There's a big difference between tactics and strategy

1:29:39

and a set of tactics don't necessarily make a strategy.

1:29:41

Drones, for example are not strategy by themselves,

1:29:46

they are a tactic that they need to fit

1:29:49

under a bigger strategy.

1:29:51

A bigger strategy should include all the tools available

1:29:53

in the toolbox.

1:29:57

Interviewer

So why doesn't Obama's Administration hire

1:29:58

you as a consultant?

1:30:01

-

I don't know. I didn't apply for a job there.

1:30:03

(laughs)

1:30:05

Interviewer

Johnny, is there something

1:30:09

that you'd like to ask?

1:30:10

Johnny

I don't think so.

1:30:14

Interviewer

Is there something that I didn't ask

1:30:16

you that you would like to share?

1:30:18

Because I'm thinking that there are other questions

1:30:19

about Guantanamo but I kind of feel like you see

1:30:23

a much larger picture and than people

1:30:25

have talked about Guantanamo.

1:30:27

So I'm gonna leave those out unless something

1:30:29

you wanna share about that.

1:30:32

But, I kind of feel that, people a generation from now

1:30:33

are gonna be watching this video, and two generations

1:30:37

when they finally come to terms with what happened today,

1:30:40

that's when they'll start looking back and listen

1:30:43

to voices saying, look, this is what happened,

1:30:46

this is what I saw.

1:30:48

And I think you were very revealing, especially,

1:30:49

so in saying that, we changed the data,

1:30:52

we changed the years, I mean, that's really important

1:30:57

for people to hear.

1:30:59

Are there other things that you think people

1:31:00

should know a generation from now, when they look back

1:31:02

and wonder why did we act the way

1:31:04

we did and why we didn't do better?

1:31:06

-

Well, I think part of me, I find ways to justify

1:31:09

for people who made decisions, on a very high level.

1:31:15

After 9/11 there was a lot of fear.

1:31:23

We did not know what's coming.

1:31:26

And we thought that if it is a possibility, then for sure

1:31:28

it's gonna happen.

1:31:37

And that what drove a lot of our policies.

1:31:38

And I think people just wanted to be 100% sure

1:31:43

that nothing is gonna happen.

1:31:50

But unfortunately, people will think that way are people

1:31:55

who actually don't know how things happens.

1:32:00

You know what I mean?

1:32:04

So, how organizations functions,

1:32:05

how interrogation take place,

1:32:10

so there was a knee jerk reaction.

1:32:14

Interviewer

By the administration or by who,

1:32:19

who was that knee jerk (faintly speaking)

1:32:21

-

To the most part, by the administration.

1:32:22

People in some institutions took advantage

1:32:24

of it to get a lot of power,

1:32:26

people in even the administration took advantage

1:32:29

of it to get a lot of power as we know.

1:32:32

But, now I think people looking back at that era,

1:32:35

I think there's a feeling that, people who are calling

1:32:46

the shots are not necessarily the best people

1:32:56

to call the shots at the time and I think

1:33:00

we can start feeling that.

1:33:03

But, over-classifying facts and the truth is not gonna make

1:33:06

the truth go away, eventually people will know exactly

1:33:13

what happened at that time.

1:33:17

They know the argument that took place at that time.

1:33:18

There are some reports that has been declassified

1:33:21

about Guantanamo, about black sites, the talk about many

1:33:23

of the arguments that me and others who are involved in.

1:33:29

So, we're not doing Monday morning quarterbacking here,

1:33:32

we're talking about stuff that we were vocal in discussing

1:33:36

in 2002, and 2003, and 2004 and so forth.

1:33:40

And, a lot of people know the truth,

1:33:47

I mean, it's not a coincidence that the only people

1:33:51

who were prosecuted in Guantanamo like (muffled speaking)

1:33:54

and Hamdan and stuff are people who,

1:33:56

their interrogations were done in a clean manner

1:33:59

and they were not tortured,

1:34:02

that's why we can prosecute them, I mean,

1:34:03

and all the others, we can't do anything about them.

1:34:05

People should be thinking why Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,

1:34:08

13 years after 9/11 and he's still in jail,

1:34:12

didn't even get prosecuted yet, that gives you an idea

1:34:16

about the mistakes that has been done.

1:34:19

Again, look at the number of Islamic extremists today

1:34:23

versus in 2001, that gives you an idea about how successful

1:34:27

or unsuccessful we've been in combating the threat.

1:34:32

So the threat is not only a person who wanna blow up a car

1:34:36

in Midtown Manhattan, the threat is also that ideology

1:34:39

and the containment of that ideology that's spreading

1:34:44

like wildfire around the world.

1:34:48

Interviewer

I mean, that's your really big point

1:34:50

and I'm really glad you spoke through that.

1:34:52

I think I only have two more questions unless, at least

1:34:54

there's something else but, one is, you kind of mentioned

1:34:56

it earlier, was what you know, was Osama bin Laden captured

1:34:59

because of torturing people?

1:35:03

-

No, no. And that's something, I can't talk much

1:35:07

about this with the declassified stuff.

1:35:12

But I wrote about it, I wrote an article, an op-ed

1:35:16

in the New York Times about the movie "Zero Dark Thirty"

1:35:19

and I discussed some of the issues regarding

1:35:26

how we got Osama bin Laden.

1:35:29

And I think by now the, hopefully by when people

1:35:31

are watching this the SSCI Report

1:35:34

will be definitely declassified, at least

1:35:36

the executive summary of it.

1:35:38

And they can read exactly how we got Osama bin Laden.

1:35:39

Interviewer

You expect that to be in the report?

1:35:42

-

I'm sure it is.

1:35:44

That's what they have been saying at least.

1:35:45

Interviewer

And if there was another 9/11,

1:35:47

do you think we'd be back in that same state of fear?

1:35:50

-

Absolutely. Yep. I think we'll go back.

1:35:53

I think everything that we're talking

1:35:55

about will be flying out of the window and people

1:35:58

will be like, yeah, whatever, do whatever.

1:36:00

Interviewer

Just save us, people think.

1:36:03

-

I'm totally convinced that, that might happen.

1:36:07

Interviewer

Can you just close, tell us a little bit

1:36:12

about the work you're doing now, I think that people

1:36:14

would like to know that given

1:36:16

your exceptionally strong background and understanding of-

1:36:18

-

We have a security company, basically strategic security.

1:36:23

We do training, advise and consultancy.

1:36:26

Interviewer

To who?

1:36:30

-

Governments, multinational corporations,

1:36:32

it's all former governments.

1:36:35

As you've seen here in the office, we have MI6

1:36:37

we have NCIS, we have FBI, we have CIA.

1:36:41

All of us, we used to work together in the field

1:36:44

and now we continue to work together.

1:36:47

We believe that we're continue to contribute

1:36:51

to the fight against evil and that's what we do today.

1:36:55

Interviewer

If there's nothing else you want to add,

1:37:05

Ali, I think I'm finished.

1:37:07

-

Am good.

1:37:10

Interviewer

That was wonderful.

1:37:12

We need 20 seconds of room tone where Johnny

1:37:13

just has to have us both be silent and he starts room tone.

1:37:16

Johnny

Okay. Begin room tone.

1:37:23

Soufan, Ali - Interview master file

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