Fallon, Mark - Interview master file / Witness to Guantanamo / Duke Digital Repository

Interviewer

Good afternoon.

0:04

-

Good afternoon.

0:06

Interviewer

We are very grateful to you, participating

0:07

in the Witness to Guantanamo Project, we invite you to speak

0:10

of your experiences and involvement with issues,

0:14

evolving around Guantanamo bay, Cuba.

0:17

We are hoping to provide you with an opportunity

0:20

to tell your story in your own words.

0:23

We are creating an archive of stories

0:26

so that people in America and around the world will have

0:28

a better understanding of what you and others

0:31

have observed and experienced.

0:34

Future generations must know what happened in Guantanamo

0:37

and by telling your story, you contributing to history

0:41

and we really appreciate your coming to San Francisco today,

0:44

and your willingness to speak with us,

0:47

-

Well, it's my pleasure.

0:49

Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you.

0:49

Interviewer

Thank you.

0:50

And if there's any time during the interview,

0:52

you'd like take a break, please let us know.

0:54

-

Will do thank you.

0:56

Interviewer

And if there's anything you say

0:57

that you would like us to remove,

0:58

we can remove it right then as well.

1:00

-

Okay, thanks a lot.

1:02

Interviewer

Thank you.

1:02

And I'd like to begin, if you mind telling us your name

1:03

and hometown and perhaps age and date and place of birth.

1:06

-

Sure, my name is Mark Fallon.

1:12

My hometown growing up was Harrison, New Jersey.

1:15

I was born in Jersey city, New Jersey.

1:18

I am 57 years, old born September 2nd, 1957.

1:21

And I've been married for coming on 33 years I believe,

1:26

coming up in January.

1:30

Interviewer

And you have children?

1:33

-

I do, two children and a granddaughter.

1:34

Interviewer

Oh, congratulations.

1:36

-

Thank you.

1:38

Interviewer

And can you tell us about your education?

1:38

-

Sure, I went to a Roger Williams University.

1:40

It was Roger Williams College at the time in Bristol

1:43

Rhode Island with a degree in the administration of justice.

1:45

Interviewer

And what's your current occupation?

1:51

-

I'm currently the director of Club Fed, which is

1:54

a strategic consulting firm that I started a few years ago.

1:56

Interviewer

And maybe we can start that

2:01

with a little bit of your background

2:03

after you left Roger Williams University.

2:05

Maybe you could tell us where you went

2:08

and how you ended up in government work.

2:10

-

Sure, after I graduated from college

2:12

I wanted to pursue a career in federal law enforcement.

2:14

And in 1979, I was hired as a deputy United States, Marshall

2:18

in north New Jersey.

2:23

And I did that for two years.

2:25

And then I went to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service,

2:27

NCIS, I spent 27 years with NCIS

2:31

in a variety of different positions overseas

2:35

and in the States.

2:37

And then for my last two years in the government,

2:38

I was appointed to the senior executive service

2:40

and within the Department of Homeland Security.

2:43

And I was the assistant director

2:46

of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center

2:47

which is in Brunswick, Georgia.

2:49

Interviewer

So maybe we should start,

2:51

just before 9/11.

2:53

What position were you holding

2:55

and what happened when you, when 9/11 hit?

2:58

-

At 9/11 I was the chief of Counter-Intelligence Operations

3:04

for the Europe, Africa and Middle East Division

3:09

of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

3:11

And I was also the commander of the USS Cole task force.

3:14

That was a joint investigation between NCIS

3:17

and the FBI investigating the Al-Qaeda terrorists

3:20

that attacked the USS Cole.

3:24

And interestingly enough, on 9/11,

3:26

I was in route to Brussels, Belgium

3:29

to brief the narrow defense ministers

3:31

about how easily a terrorist cell can set up and attack

3:33

somebody basing on what we learned

3:36

from the attack on the USS Cole.

3:38

Interviewer

So you were heard about 9/11

3:40

while you were in Belgium?

3:42

-

Actually I did, I was stopped over in London

3:43

and I saw it on the television.

3:48

I was staying overnight London before I went on to Belgium.

3:50

Interviewer

And did that change

3:51

your position after 9/11?

3:53

-

Well, it did, we were just winding down at the time,

3:55

we had agents on the ground in Yemen for just about a year.

3:58

The Cole was attacked on the 12th of October

4:03

the previous year of 2000 and actually on 9/11,

4:05

the agents were heading to the airport to leave Yemen.

4:09

We were finally after almost a year being able to

4:12

take our folks out of there.

4:15

And so yes, it changed considerably for me,

4:17

I had quite a bit of counter-terrorism experience prior

4:19

to the investigation of the Cole,

4:24

I worked on the investigation of the World Trade Center,

4:26

bombing, number one with the FBI,

4:29

and then an operation called terse stop,

4:31

which was the operation against

4:34

Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Blind Sheikh,

4:35

and a group of terrorists who were looking to,

4:38

blow up the United Nations 26 federal Plaza,

4:41

Holland Lincoln tunnels.

4:43

And we interdicted that cell,

4:45

prior to them being able to blow anything up.

4:47

So as far as the Department of Defense went,

4:50

I was the most experienced working counter-intelligence

4:53

counter-terrorism operations.

4:57

So after that, the director of NCIS David Brant,

5:00

once flights resumed had asked me to go to CENTCOM in Tampa

5:03

and try to give CENTCOM the benefit of my knowledge

5:09

and experience about Al-Qaeda.

5:13

And so I helped draft what was called

5:16

the counter-intelligence annex operation enduring freedom.

5:19

What was the invasion of Afghanistan

5:22

and I shared a lot of the Intel that we learned.

5:24

We had tremendous intelligence that we gained

5:27

from the Cole investigation,

5:29

interviewing a number of terrorist suspects.

5:32

And so we wanted to ensure that the operators

5:34

in the target tiers had benefited that information

5:37

whether it's Al-Qaeda safe houses routes,

5:40

the things we learned, we wanted to ensure

5:43

while we were writing intelligence reports

5:45

and populating the intelligence community with that

5:47

we wanted to make sure that the target tiers

5:49

could have my insights.

5:52

So I went to Tampa and stayed there to

5:53

shortly prior to the invasion of Afghanistan.

5:56

Interviewer

And can you tell us what CENTCOM is-

5:58

-

Yeah, it's the combatant commander central command

6:01

which is the DOD operational commander responsible

6:04

for the middle east.

6:08

Interviewer

And would they have been planning

6:09

to attack Afghanistan may work you in for advice in

6:13

what advice would you be able to provide them?

6:19

-

Well, the advice was twofold.

6:21

One was to help prepare the counter-intelligence annex.

6:24

So developing what the counter-intelligence strategy

6:27

would be for a war time invasion,

6:29

which is a complex process.

6:32

And then the other piece was to just share my knowledge

6:35

of Al-Qaeda and what we learned from Yemen.

6:38

Interviewer

What did you know about Al-Qaeda

6:42

at that point?

6:44

-

Well, quite a bit.

6:46

I mean, our knowledge of Al-Qaeda as a group evolved

6:46

from the early nineties, when we knew little about 'em,

6:50

little to nothing, to a point where we had a pretty good

6:52

understanding of their network based on the Cole

6:57

predominantly the Cole investigation was a treasure trove

7:02

of intelligence for the US intelligence community

7:06

because we had direct access to a number of suspects

7:09

who attacked us, a number of high ranking players

7:11

in Al-Qaeda, so we're able to determine their order

7:14

or battle, their method of operations,

7:17

travel routes, recruiting strategy, safe houses.

7:19

So that's gives us a tremendous advantage

7:22

when you're looking to target somebody.

7:24

Interviewer

I hadn't thought of this,

7:27

and, but it sounds to me like you might've had some inklings

7:29

in the air about a possible attack, like 9/11

7:33

given how well informed you were.

7:37

I mean, people did say that,

7:39

some people had a sense that something might happen.

7:40

-

Well, there was a sense that something would happen.

7:43

I wouldn't say in 9/11,

7:46

we weren't that insightful and understanding

7:48

what their attack strategy was.

7:52

But we did know that they had planned on a wave of attacks

7:54

with the millennium and a guy named Hassan crossed

7:59

the Canadian border was arrested,

8:02

who was going to target lAX, Los Angeles airport.

8:05

The Al-Qaeda had intended to attack,

8:10

the first US flag vessel,

8:13

that transited through Yemen after the New Year.

8:15

And on the 3rd of October, on the 3rd of January, USS,

8:18

the Sullivans came through and they tried to launch

8:22

a small boat vehicle, borne, explosive waterborne

8:25

explosive attack, and the boats swamped in the surf.

8:28

And, so the Sullivans was spared there, but Al-Qaeda,

8:33

they're very resilient,

8:38

they learned from their mistakes,

8:39

they dry the explosive, they repack the boat,

8:41

they did practice runs.

8:44

They found another area to launch the boat.

8:45

So they wouldn't have that problem.

8:46

And when the Cole came through unfortunately,

8:48

17 of our service members died that day.

8:50

Interviewer

And was Bin Laden

8:52

in the picture very clearly in your investigations.

8:56

-

Yeah, it was early on, you know,

8:59

in the first few days or weeks

9:02

as soon as we started talking to people,

9:04

I mean it had the ear marks, I mean,

9:05

Yemen is Bin Laden's in ancestral Homeland,

9:07

his family's from the hotter Mount region.

9:10

And of course there's a great deal of misunderstanding

9:13

about Al-Qaeda and I've heard political figures say this.

9:17

They don't like us because of who we are,

9:22

and they don't like us because of where we are.

9:25

I mean, Bin Laden's goal was to drive us out of the land

9:26

of the two holy places, Mecca and Medina,

9:30

the Arabian peninsula.

9:32

He refused to even call it Saudi Arabia

9:33

'cause he didn't wanna give deference to the Saud family

9:35

and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

9:38

So having a US war ship come through there,

9:41

would have been quite a trophy

9:44

and they weren't even looking for war ship,

9:46

they just wanted any US flag vessel.

9:48

It just happened to be a US Navy vessel that came through.

9:50

Interviewer

So after 9/11,

9:53

what are you able to offer then in terms of understanding

9:56

how Al-Qaeda work and how it operated,

10:00

so that kind of intelligence came in to Afghanistan.

10:02

They could follow up on the pathway you laid out.

10:05

I'm not sure exactly-

10:11

-

Yeah, correct, and also a target tiers,

10:12

target tiers are those who determine where the initial wave

10:16

of a bombing might be or missiles might land.

10:19

So we understood where the Al-Qaeda safe houses were

10:22

and travel routes, so we gave the target tiers

10:25

information that enabled them to effectively target

10:28

and neutralize some of those locations.

10:31

Interviewer

And did you go to Afghanistan yourself?

10:32

-

Yes, I did, not with CENTCOM.

10:36

When I returned back to NCIS headquarters,

10:39

we learned that the president Bush had issued

10:43

a military order in November,

10:48

that it was a remarkable order in my opinion,

10:52

having worked in federal law enforcement for years,

10:54

having investigated a number of terrorists

10:58

and brought them for trial before the US courts.

11:00

Having seen a military order then they actually transferred

11:05

the primary authority to investigate Al-Qaeda

11:08

to the Department of Defense and the primary responsibility

11:11

to prosecute Al-Qaeda before the Department of Defense

11:14

was to be a significant event in our history.

11:18

It always was remarkable to me that it basically went

11:21

unnoticed, but it certainly was noticed by me, especially

11:25

because I was asked to then,

11:30

initially help create and design and develop the task force

11:33

to do those investigations.

11:37

And then later on, I was asked to remain as the

11:38

chief investigator special agent in charge deputy commander

11:42

by the senior operator running this task force investing

11:45

in Al-Qaeda for these trials by military commission.

11:48

Interviewer

So you talking about Bush's creation of the

11:50

military commissions back in November is that-

11:53

-

Correct, well, what he did is he created, he issued

11:56

a military order, an executive order to the Department

11:59

of Defense that basically gave Secretary Rumsfeld,

12:03

the authority to investigate and try anyone who is

12:06

or was a member of Al-Qaeda, anyone who knowingly aided

12:10

or abetted the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

12:14

So to do this, you know, the order was initially issued

12:18

and it went over to the Pentagon

12:21

and to the office of general counsel,

12:23

which was Mr. Hanes at the time.

12:25

And then to his principal, deputy assistant responsible

12:30

for this, an attorney named Whit Cobb

12:33

and they were responsible for the design and development

12:36

of the process with help from the service JAGs

12:39

and Judge Advocate General's and then they created...

12:44

You need an investigative arm for this.

12:49

And under military doctrine,

12:53

war crimes are the responsibility of the army,

12:56

as the executive agency.

12:59

So they turned to the army,

13:01

the Army Criminal Investigative Command, Army CID,

13:03

General Don Ryder was the commanding general of Army CID,

13:07

and later the provost Marshall general of the army.

13:11

And they asked Don to create an investigative task force.

13:14

And as Don would always describe it,

13:20

he said he did two things, you pick up the phone

13:22

and he called Dave Brant and he picked up the phone

13:24

and he called Eric Patterson, Dave Brant, the director

13:27

of NCIS, Eric Patterson, the commander of Air Force OSI

13:29

and basically said, I can't do this job without you.

13:32

You know, you guys have much more experience

13:36

with the terrorist target than CID did.

13:38

And within the military the different departments run their

13:41

investigative and counter-intelligence arms differently.

13:45

So within the army, Army CID is only an investigative agency

13:48

with no counter-intelligence responsibilities.

13:51

The Air Force and Navy do things differently while NCIS

13:54

and OSI have those responsibilities for their services.

13:58

So NCIS has a counter intelligence responsibilities

14:02

for both the Navy and Marine Corps.

14:04

And so I was asked initially to go down

14:06

and help set this task force up.

14:10

And then after helping design it,

14:12

Don Ryder asked if I would stay on in a leadership position.

14:15

And as I often kidded Dave Brant,

14:19

I was traded for a box of toner and two bags of paperclips.

14:21

Interviewer

It was, you didn't know who was gonna be

14:25

prosecuted or even who was captured at that time right?

14:28

So what was your role at wait to wait to

14:31

see who was captioned men to investigate that?

14:33

-

No, I mean, early on, they were, there were crazy times.

14:35

I mean, it was, how do you design a task force exclusively

14:39

to investigate the Al-Qaeda terrorist target?

14:44

What's the Manning levels?

14:46

How would you set it up?

14:47

How would you structure?

14:48

What would your protocols be?

14:49

What would your facility be?

14:51

Things like that.

14:53

So the initial buildup was creating a task force,

14:54

creating an entity.

14:57

Do you need analysts?

14:58

Do you need lawyers?

14:58

Do you need behavioral scientists?

14:59

How many people do you need?

15:01

Where would you set up your operations?

15:01

How would you investigate?

15:04

What would your report writing system be?

15:05

You know, a myriad of different issues just establishing it

15:07

and then going out and then how do you conduct

15:11

your investigations?

15:14

So that was the initial lash up

15:16

putting the task force together.

15:19

And before we actually went operational

15:22

and we had folks on the ground in Guantanamo

15:24

when the first detainees arrived there.

15:26

Interviewer

Did you hire behavioral scientists

15:28

from the beginning?

15:30

-

Well, we didn't hire them from the beginning,

15:31

but I created a team.

15:34

I had worked quite extensively with behavioral scientists

15:36

throughout my career on a number of crimes.

15:38

It could be an arson, it could be looking at an asset

15:40

or an a foreman, how to best motivate and work with them.

15:44

Looking at helping with erosion with an undercover agent,

15:48

targeting individuals,

15:52

doing the television off course profiling.

15:53

So I had worked throughout my career

15:57

with the behavioral scientists.

15:59

And so an element that I felt I really needed was a

16:00

what we call the behavioral science consulting team.

16:04

So I wanted a team of behavioral scientists

16:07

that could be an adjunct resource to me,

16:09

because as an investigator,

16:12

I would use whatever resource I could.

16:13

If I was looking at a building, I looked for engineers.

16:16

And if I was looking at behaviors,

16:18

I'm gonna look for behavioral scientists.

16:20

So I created a unit or a team

16:21

of behavioral scientist to help me.

16:23

Interviewer

And you knew people,

16:25

or you took recommendation?

16:27

-

Both, I knew people, Dave Brant

16:29

was kind enough to allow me to utilize Dr. Michaelis,

16:32

who was the chief operational psychologist for NCIS,

16:38

and someone who I'd worked together for years with.

16:40

And I asked Mike to be the chief

16:43

of my behavioral science consulting team.

16:44

And then we brought in, or we want really

16:47

I'm a big proponent of multidisciplinary

16:50

and folks who have a different perspective.

16:54

So we brought in an operational psychologist from the CIA.

16:56

We brought in one who worked

17:00

with the National Cognizance Office.

17:01

We brought in some former secret service payroll scientists.

17:03

So we brought in teams from Air Force OSI.

17:06

We wanted teams, and when we set up our units,

17:09

each of our operational elements,

17:12

we had folks working the body guards.

17:14

We had folks working in the bombers.

17:16

Financier's each unit had their own behavioral scientists

17:18

to consult with on their targets and what they were doing,

17:22

and then Dr. Gallus was kind of the lead

17:25

or the primary of behavioral scientists on this team

17:29

that was supporting us.

17:32

Interviewer

Can you describe exactly,

17:34

let's say you, would you have once you set this all up,

17:37

could you describe how it would operate then?

17:40

-

Yeah, absolutely.

17:44

The task force, the numbers, we were at probably

17:46

in the low one hundreds about 120

17:49

when we started after Iraq was invaded.

17:52

And then we were given the responsibility to also

17:57

investigate it in case there were any Al-Qaeda ties in Iraq

18:01

we then went up to about 220 people in the task force

18:04

plus we had detailees from other agencies from the FBI,

18:08

from the Custom Service, from INS,

18:13

from a number of different agencies.

18:16

We had Liaison folks at the CIA, at the FBI

18:17

because you wanted to make sure that the greatest fear was

18:21

that we might hold some information that would

18:25

allow somebody else to connect the dots.

18:28

Because unfortunately, as we were following the money

18:30

from the Cole attack, we saw that

18:36

one of the members that we were interrogating

18:39

a guy named Cuso who later on, he became a premier figure

18:43

in Al-Qaeda and open source reports that a predator

18:48

had killed him a few years ago.

18:53

He was on the FBI's most wanted list, but Cuso had told us

18:56

that he went to Kuala Lumpur with funds,

18:59

the leftover funds from the Cole attack.

19:02

So when you're investigating these folks,

19:05

you need money to run an operation.

19:07

So a common investigative strategy follow the money

19:10

just like in an organized crime case or a fraud case,

19:13

follow the money, it takes you where they're going

19:16

and the money actually dead ended there.

19:18

And it wasn't until after the 9/11 attack that the CIA

19:22

revealed that they actually had some coverage

19:27

of that meeting and they knew that the money went there

19:29

and it appears that that money then went on

19:35

to fund flight training back in the United States

19:37

for the 9/11 attacks.

19:40

And I know I would never even speculate

19:42

that we could have stopped it,

19:45

but I certainly would have liked to have had the opportunity

19:46

to try to stop that,

19:48

because had we been able to pursue that for those funds

19:50

and this is all in the 9/11 commission report,

19:52

we would have at least had a fighting chance.

19:56

And, you know, at going after them

19:59

when they came to the States.

20:01

Interviewer

You know Guantanamo,

20:03

were you involved in choosing Guantanamo?

20:05

-

No, no, not at all that that was chosen,

20:07

and again, I was an operator.

20:11

I mean, I wasn't a policy maker at this point.

20:13

My job was to execute my orders, execute my mission.

20:15

So we were told Guantanamo,

20:19

so we set up and we had to determine

20:21

even where our headquarters would be.

20:23

And we felt that we needed to be where the information was

20:25

the information wasn't at Guantanamo, that's just a jail.

20:29

Most of the information resided

20:33

in the investigative intelligence community.

20:34

So our headquarters was on Fort Belvoir, Virginia,

20:36

an army base, we were in a secure location in what's called

20:39

the SCIF, a compartmented information facility.

20:44

So we can have classified information, a secure location.

20:48

And then we had forward deployed elements in Guantanamo,

20:51

Afghanistan and then later in Iraq.

20:53

Interviewer

How did you know that

20:57

there was no Intel in Guantanamo?

20:58

How did you know that, I mean,

21:02

isn't impossible at some of the people-

21:03

-

Oh yeah, yeah.

21:04

The people may have it,

21:05

but what I'm saying is there are a treasure trove

21:08

of intelligence, whether it's overhead satellite imagery,

21:11

whether it's information that we might get from the NSA

21:16

that type of intelligence was not in Guantanamo,

21:20

people were there, but all other witnesses weren't there.

21:22

It would be like saying the FBI would have to have an office

21:26

inside a prison.

21:28

The suspects were there and we needed that,

21:30

and we had access to them,

21:31

but we didn't need the bulk of the task force there.

21:33

We need to folks there to help run leads

21:35

and to do some interviews.

21:37

But this was an investigative task force

21:38

not just an interrogation task force.

21:40

Interviewer

And you had some personnel who went

21:42

down to Guantanamo to interrogate the men in thinking

21:44

that would help your investigation.

21:49

-

Yeah, absolutely, we had an office set up there

21:51

with a resident agent in charge,

21:53

and every day we were doing interrogation seven days a week

21:55

for screening interviews,

21:59

follow-up interviews interrogations.

22:00

So we had a very active and viable element down there.

22:03

Interviewer

And who's we, who exactly, in your staff,

22:05

you don't have to give me names as you want to,

22:09

but what kind of personnel were these,

22:11

who were doing the interrogation?

22:13

-

Yeah, well, one of them, when the task force was set up,

22:14

we wanted to ensure that we had representatives from

22:17

the major military criminal investigative organizations.

22:19

So the commander, the task force was called

22:22

the DOD Criminal Investigation Task Force, the CITF.

22:24

The commander, who was my boss,

22:31

was who at the time was the deputy commander of Army CID.

22:33

So General Ryder said his number two was gonna

22:38

have a dual responsibility to run this task force

22:40

later became a full-time responsibility.

22:43

So Colonel Brit Mallow, a military police by career,

22:45

the deputy grander of Army CID,

22:49

was the commander of the CITF.

22:51

Then I was the deputy commander and the special agent

22:53

in charge, the senior operator, the senior agent,

22:55

the senior investigator, and then the chief of staff,

22:58

and later we changed the title

23:02

to the deputy special agent in charge,

23:03

came from the Air Force,

23:05

Office of Special Investigations, OSI.

23:06

So we wanted to make sure then in the senior leadership

23:09

the executive leadership of the task force

23:12

each of the operational service and investigative agencies

23:14

had a representative to make sure that they can go back

23:17

to their heads of their rescue agency and report back on.

23:21

And so at Guantanamo, being that was a Navy base,

23:25

the resinate in charge of Guantanamo

23:29

was always an NCIS agent.

23:32

And so, while that was the senior operator there,

23:34

was supported by Army CID agents by Air Force OSI agents.

23:39

We set agents down from other agencies,

23:44

the FBI was down there helping us out.

23:46

We had an analyst down there.

23:48

We would send our behavioral scientists down there

23:50

all with the goal of eliciting accurate information

23:52

and intelligence from detainees.

23:56

Interviewer

So you're saying all these different

23:58

resources would interrogate the detainees

24:00

or these different people mentioned?

24:03

-

No on, I always have to usually counter the pop culture

24:05

of the television version of things.

24:11

Generally in the interrogations,

24:13

you'd have two operators in there.

24:15

You'd never have a psychologist,

24:17

I'd never have a psychologist doing an interrogation

24:19

or an analyst doing an interrogation.

24:21

That's the job of a special agent investigators who's

24:23

trained how to do it, but you'd have a support team there.

24:26

You'd have analysts looking at what the collection

24:29

requirements are, what the things that you might wanna know,

24:31

you might have a behavioral scientist helping out observing

24:35

or monitoring both the detainee and the agent to ensure,

24:38

'cause we're worried about erosion,

24:42

we're worried about what the long-term effects are

24:43

on an investigator doing interrogation, day in and day out.

24:47

So we wanted to make sure that we looked at at signs

24:51

where they might be less productive,

24:54

and we might need to rotate people in and out of there.

24:57

And so we had a particularly at NCIS, we had a pretty

24:59

robust rotation schedule, where we didn't want our folks

25:02

there for too long because we're worried

25:05

about a burnout factor.

25:07

Interviewer

And wrote their questions?

25:08

-

Well, it's, you don't normally write the questions.

25:11

-

You don't?

25:15

-

No.

Interviewer

They don't have a-

25:16

-

No, no, generally not,

25:17

and this is a little different the way that

25:19

Federal Law Enforcement,

25:22

the counter intelligence community works

25:23

and where someone who's just a military target

25:25

or might have worked at that time because their capabilities

25:29

have improved greatly since that time.

25:32

But at 9/11, when a number of reservers

25:35

were called to active duty,

25:38

these were predominantly folks who had never

25:41

done a real world interrogation for the most part,

25:43

their training was limited to what they learned

25:46

to Fort Huachuca, the army interrogation school

25:49

which was based on some techniques

25:51

that were designed a few decades ago

25:53

and were found to be very ineffective.

25:56

They didn't have the experience base that a federal agent

25:59

would, when we sent folks down

26:03

they had spent their careers investigating and interrogating

26:05

murderers, robbers, rapists, other terrorists, spies.

26:08

So this was just another person in the booth,

26:13

as we called the interrogation room.

26:15

So quite different.

26:18

So our folks utilized our protocols

26:19

as a more dynamic process.

26:22

It's a process where you will craft out

26:24

and you will have a strategy going in

26:27

but it's a very flexible and adaptive strategy that's based

26:29

on human interaction with an individual.

26:33

So you wouldn't just read off question after question

26:37

there's quite a very ineffective approach.

26:40

The approach is really your rapport building type approach,

26:42

building relationship, trying to baseline

26:45

what particular individual might be,

26:47

had a normal question to see

26:51

if there's some type of change in behavior

26:53

when it's a more difficult question

26:56

or when the cognitive load increases.

26:58

Interviewer

And this is early on,

27:00

this is like spring or January, February of 2002

27:02

you're describing?

27:05

-

Yeah, whenever right from when the first detainees arrived

27:07

they first arrived at Camp X-Ray.

27:11

Interviewer

January 11th.

27:12

-

Yeah, so we had set up right outside of Camp X-Ray

27:13

and then, you know, later we moved to Delta, but the first

27:17

facilities were just horrendous.

27:21

I mean-

27:24

Interviewer

DOD in interrogating suspects,

27:24

(Mark coughing)

27:26

and what you were doing,

27:27

was there a parallel session of interrogations?

27:28

-

Yeah, there were a number of elements

27:32

down at Guantanamo, and to put it in perspective,

27:35

there's a task force that gets activated,

27:38

that was activated at the time called JTF 160.

27:42

And that's a task force that was activated

27:46

in the past for Guantanamo, for instance, when the Cuban

27:48

and Haitian refugee crisis was ongoing, and we needed

27:51

a place to put the detainees then, they established

27:55

or they activated a JTF 160,

27:59

who had experienced as jailers.

28:02

They had experience and training in custodial operations

28:05

and things like that.

28:10

So it was a task force that was created

28:11

when they decided to send detainees to Guantanamo,

28:14

they activated JTF 160,

28:18

but then they decided they needed a separate component

28:21

or element to exploit the detainees for intelligence value.

28:23

And so they created what was called JTF 170.

28:27

So you had two different task forces from the DOD,

28:31

both reporting through, as I mentioned earlier,

28:35

COCOM, combat commander, but they reported to South Comment

28:37

in Miami who was responsible for Central and South America.

28:40

So that was their reporting chain

28:44

to the joint chiefs of staff.

28:46

My reporting chain was quite different,

28:48

we reported to the office of general counsel

28:50

who reported to the secretary of defense.

28:53

So we had a little bit of reporting changed differently.

28:54

Now that was our operational, our administrative chain

28:57

was back through the secretary of the army,

29:00

through Army CID, the secretary of the army.

29:03

So we had different chains of command,

29:04

but different responsibilities also.

29:07

A JTF 160 was the jailer,

29:10

JTF 170 was to exploit them for Intel purposes.

29:12

And then the CITF was responsible for the investigations.

29:16

And so the FBI really, they did not have a role

29:19

in military commissions down there at the time,

29:22

but we had worked with them over the years.

29:25

And so they came down there,

29:28

and their primary responsibility was to see

29:29

if there was any intelligence that may

29:32

apply to their cases,

29:34

ongoing cases that they already had underway.

29:36

And if those information of value to protect the Homeland

29:38

and right from the onset,

29:42

the CITF and the FBI became a unified team.

29:45

The agents in charge from both agencies shared an office,

29:49

the agents did the interrogations together.

29:52

We decided what our goal was to see

29:54

whose equities needed to be reckoned with there

29:57

and to ensure that everyone's equities were met.

30:01

So if someone had a requirement,

30:03

the goal was not to compete with them,

30:05

but to collaborate with them,

30:07

so that everybody got what they needed out of an interview.

30:08

Interviewer

Just so I can clarify,

30:10

were you working with only certain kinds of detainees,

30:12

ones that who might be prosecuted in a multi commissioner

30:17

or were you pretty much interrogating anyone

30:20

who was down at that time?

30:22

-

A second, I just get a drink here.

30:23

Interviewer

Sure.

30:25

-

So I don't lose my voice halfway through this.

30:27

Interviewer

Anytime you wanna stop am going to.

30:29

-

But the defense attorney never let me do that.

30:33

(interviewer laughing)

30:36

-

Well, we did a number of screening interviews

30:38

to start with, so this was unlike a traditional case,

30:41

and this is how things changed quite a bit.

30:44

If you look at the first trade center bombing,

30:48

you had a crime that was committed

30:52

and then you branch off and you find suspects

30:53

and then you do what an investigator does.

30:56

And you look at what the offenses are,

30:58

and you look at what the elements are.

31:01

And then that's how you investigate the elements

31:02

of offenses, obviously.

31:04

And that might be to an attack that's already occurred

31:07

or an attack that someone's conspired to do like

31:10

Sheikh Rahman in the conspirators in terse stop operation.

31:12

Same thing with the USS Cole, you have an attack,

31:17

and now you're investigating either, you know,

31:20

an ongoing operation where it's a crime

31:22

or one that might've already occurred.

31:25

Well, when president Bush issued his military order

31:27

anyone who is, or was a member of Al-Qaeda,

31:30

anyone who aided a better to knowing the Al-Qaeda

31:33

it opened things up to people who were,

31:36

might've just been a member of Al-Qaeda and

31:39

it's not like being a member of Costco, there's not a card.

31:41

I mean, it's more like being, you know,

31:45

a fan of New York Yankees, you know,

31:47

it's an affiliated group.

31:50

So, it's a little more difficult than

31:51

you would think of a, you know,

31:53

from a Western perspective of what it means to be one.

31:55

And then of course, what a lot of our allies had done

31:59

is rounded up all the usual suspects.

32:04

And so we had hundreds of people at Guantanamo

32:06

that frankly didn't belong there.

32:10

Guantanamo was created, and the goal was supposed to be

32:12

for individuals who could further be exploited

32:16

for their intelligence value or who had prosecuted value.

32:20

That was what the intended purpose was.

32:24

What unfortunately happened was, the war fighter over in

32:28

Afghanistan and CENTCOM didn't wanna have

32:31

prison responsibilities in a hostile environment

32:36

in Afghanistan.

32:39

So they were pushing to get people out of there.

32:40

So unfortunately, the screening process that they

32:43

went through before they got to Guantanamo was actually,

32:47

it was a terrible process.

32:51

Many of the folks there, as we found later

32:53

when we investigated really did no wrong.

32:56

And so they were sent there, they had no prosecuted value,

32:58

they had no intelligence value.

33:01

And so we had to expend a considerable amount of effort.

33:03

Now, how do you get them out of there?

33:07

Investigating to ensure that individuals were released.

33:09

And that's why, hopefully I think projects

33:14

like this are important,

33:17

that we actually learned these lessons,

33:19

and that the next time a crisis happens a decade or so

33:21

from now, we don't really relive the same mistakes

33:24

that we made this time.

33:26

Interviewer

So I want to just clarify,

33:27

at the beginning, CTIF and the DOD were interviewing

33:31

the same people at the at the beginning,

33:37

essentially those who be interviewed

33:41

by two different groups, is that-

33:43

-

Correct.

33:44

-

Okay.

33:45

-

Correct.

Interviewer

And then at some point you

33:46

decided these people are not, they don't have the Intel

33:48

for you and you stopped interviewing some people,

33:51

continue interviewing others?

33:53

-

Little more complex than that.

33:56

I'm sure, at one point,

33:59

we thought might it be better to just bring JTF-GTMO?

34:01

And later, if I can back up a minute,

34:06

at a point, the general in charge of JTF 170,

34:09

General Dunlavey, decided that he was having issues

34:14

with the control that JTF 160 was exerting on the detainees.

34:18

So he felt that to exploit them,

34:24

he needed to control the jailing process also.

34:28

Again, in hindsight I think a great mistake

34:32

that we made there.

34:35

And General Dunlavey oftentimes confused

34:36

compliance with cooperation.

34:40

So, you know, he oftentimes would feel success

34:42

when he got a detainee to comply.

34:45

That didn't mean he was cooperating

34:47

or giving accurate arrival information.

34:49

So what, we had quite a few issues with both-

34:50

Interviewer

Difference in complying?

34:54

-

Well if I can get you comply and do what I tell you to do,

34:56

but it doesn't mean you're gonna give me

35:00

accurate information.

35:02

So you can still give me no information

35:03

or false information or misleading information.

35:05

So compliance, you know, that's fine, I mean, it's great,

35:08

if you're in a jail you want people to make sure

35:13

they obey the rules and things.

35:14

But when you're listening information,

35:16

you're concerned with the reliability, their information.

35:17

So that's a general difference.

35:21

Interviewer

Did you suspect that

35:24

something was going on that was not acceptable to CTIF,

35:27

in terms of the way the DOD was interrogating?

35:32

And when did you begin to suspect that?

35:37

-

Well, there was, there are always some tensions,

35:39

because you had a highly experienced FBI, CID,

35:44

NCIS, OSI agents and police detectives from IPD,

35:50

coming down with a lot of experience

35:53

of investigating terrorists

35:55

doing interviews and interrogations.

35:56

And then you had some very young and experienced JTF

35:59

in a reservist at the time,

36:03

who really didn't have the experience base

36:06

or the proper training necessary

36:09

for what they were doing there at the time.

36:11

And again, things have improved tremendously over the years

36:13

and I'm not trying to disparage these people at all.

36:15

They were serving their country

36:18

and they did the best they could.

36:19

They just didn't have the tools necessary to do the job

36:21

they were given at that time.

36:23

So there was a lot of tension there,

36:26

and at one point we thought, why don't we bring them in,

36:29

and we'll just, we'll all interview them together?

36:31

Because what we found was we were getting a lot

36:34

of intelligence that was useful to JTF 170.

36:37

And so we would give them the information

36:40

so they can disseminate it and intelligence reports

36:43

because that's their mission, and that was ours too.

36:46

I mean, some who try to reshape the narrative would say

36:49

all the CITF cared about was prosecutions, not intelligence,

36:54

nothing could be further from the truth.

36:58

That's saying a police officer doesn't care

36:59

about life and property.

37:00

He just cares about bringing somebody to jail,

37:02

it's ridiculous, it's ridiculous, argument was at the time,

37:04

particularly the agencies with counter intelligence

37:06

responsibility, whose job it actually is to collect

37:08

and disseminate intelligence collected like that.

37:11

So we thought we'd bring these folks in

37:14

to the interrogation rooms, but it just, it failed miserably

37:16

because their training, their experience was so different.

37:21

They weren't able to work with the CITF and the FBI agents

37:24

effectively, and so we had to just break it apart.

37:28

Their training was different,

37:32

they at the time, and they still do quite a bit

37:33

of training in things called pride up and ego down,

37:36

and ego down harsh, were their training had told them-

37:42

Interviewer

Can you give us examples what that means?

37:47

-

Yeah, that is trying to disparage someone,

37:49

so their ego is depleted or yelling at them,

37:52

or trying to make them feel bad.

37:55

And based on the career that I've had

37:58

and that my colleagues have had, we understand

38:01

that's not a good approach,

38:04

not to even mention what that would do to your memory.

38:07

If you're looking to extract information and listen

38:09

to intelligence from individuals, you want someone who's

38:11

in a relaxed state who can recall and remember things

38:14

because a lot of these folks were cooperating.

38:16

A lot of these folks wanted to give us information.

38:18

A lot of times our own tactics are what prevented them

38:21

from getting intelligence.

38:23

So those techniques

38:26

and there's been a lot of research subsequent to that

38:27

and even surveys of some of these folks

38:30

who have that training in the field,

38:33

who now say they'll all revert back

38:34

to rapport building approaches

38:37

because even though they were trained in it,

38:38

when they get to the field,

38:40

they found they just weren't effective.

38:41

Interviewer

Well, how did you feel about

38:43

beginning to hear that in fact, there was this other source

38:46

of interrogations that were, you know,

38:50

kind of reductive as you saw it.

38:54

-

Well, we, we tried to help them.

38:56

We tried to train them.

38:57

It's a US interest, I mean,

39:00

we are all part of the same government,

39:01

we are all part of the same issue,

39:02

we are all trying to get Intel from these guys.

39:03

So we tried to train them,

39:05

and we had some folks who were veterans of Gulf War one,

39:07

who were interrogator and CSA agents who were out

39:11

interrogating interact or in that time.

39:13

And it was interesting 'cause said they had to do the same

39:16

thing then because these techniques that they were trained

39:17

in just were not effective in eliciting information.

39:20

So they had a training and more rapport building

39:24

relationship based type approaches.

39:25

And so we wound up doing the same thing there,

39:27

so we set up training sessions, we set our agents,

39:29

our behavioral science consulting team guys down

39:32

to try to talk about looking at, you know,

39:35

one culturally difference between a shame-based

39:37

and an honor based society, look at where they are

39:41

culturally, look at the way they might think

39:44

as associative thinkers, rather than linear thinkers,

39:47

how they might tell a story.

39:51

So we did a lot of work with our folks,

39:53

training our folks before they got down there

39:56

or deploy to any of our operational units

39:57

on the target that we were charged with investigating.

40:00

And so what we tried to do is share some

40:04

of that knowledge with them.

40:05

Interviewer

And, but how do you feel

40:06

by the fact that the military was doing it?

40:08

Would you call shaming and you didn't seem to,

40:11

I mean it didn't have the effect cause they continued that,

40:14

they were however you trained them it didn't seem to work.

40:17

-

Well, some of them adopted and would use other techniques,

40:20

would use what they learned and some wouldn't, you know,

40:23

it's counter to the way they were trained at the time.

40:27

I felt rather indifferent at the time,

40:31

this was before they started abusing

40:33

and doing things that I thought were-

40:35

Interviewer

How did you find out they were abusing

40:36

detainees, how did you know that?

40:39

-

Well, we would get, we would start getting reports

40:40

and they started to write up an interrogation plan

40:43

on the detainee named, Muhammad Katani detaining number 63,

40:48

who was supposed to be one of the hijackers for 9/11,

40:53

tried to enter the country in Orlando, a very astute CBP

40:58

or at the time was a customs agent, alerted that he was

41:03

suspicious would not let him in the country.

41:07

Didn't know what it was,

41:09

but knew there was something about him,

41:11

when he was talked to later, he said,

41:14

he seemed like an assassin to him.

41:16

And then, you know, later to find out that

41:19

one of the hijackers is actually in the car

41:22

outside the airport, waiting for him to pick him up.

41:25

But he was sent back and, you know,

41:26

ended up not being one of the hijackers.

41:29

So that was, there's been some things written

41:31

about the real 20th hijacker and Bill Deadman, MSNBC,

41:33

did a story on that a few years back talking about Katani.

41:37

But it was with Katani is where they started going down

41:43

a road that I felt was illegal.

41:49

And that was the use of, they were, you know,

41:52

they wanted to desperately use waterboarding, face slaps,

41:54

hitting them in the stomach, while doing walling them,

41:58

abusing a detainee.

42:01

And we had our lawyers look at what they wanted to do,

42:03

and, and-

42:08

Interviewer

When is this, do you remember?

42:09

-

You'd have to look at the record prior to late summer.

42:12

Interviewer

In '02?

42:15

-

Yeah, may have been '03 by then.

42:17

I'm not certain it's been over a decade now,

42:19

but as we saw that, we looked at those techniques and we

42:24

you know, we pulled out the convention against torture

42:28

and we looked at what it said, and we read the element

42:30

and said, this is, you know, certainly a violation

42:32

of the convention against torture.

42:35

We pulled out 18 US code, we said, no, that's a violation-

42:36

Interviewer

Who you saying this to?

42:38

-

This is our own internal assessment with our attorneys.

42:41

I had phenomenal staff, judge advocate,

42:44

senior legal adviser, Sam McCann on the staff there.

42:46

And he would pull the records, and he, you know,

42:50

tell me what the, his legal opinion was, but having gone

42:52

to Roger Williams and I had to do a lot of case briefs

42:56

and things, I wanna see the law myself.

42:58

And so then I'd have to bring it to me

43:00

and I'd read up myself and we, you know,

43:02

we pulled out the uniform code of military justice,

43:04

in each area we looked at, we said, this is clear,

43:07

our estimation violation of law and something, you know,

43:12

we can't be doing, not to mention,

43:14

whether it's morally appropriate,

43:18

not even to mention whether it's strategically appropriate

43:20

and then whether it's tactically appropriate.

43:26

So, you know, the estimation that we made

43:29

and you may have read this in a Huffington post op-ed

43:34

that I wrote, our conclusion was it was illegal, immoral,

43:37

ineffective, and inconsistent with our values.

43:42

So it was just to us, it was a bright line area

43:46

that we were, it was a road, we were not going to go down.

43:49

And it was a road that I had to make the decision that

43:54

it was time to stand up and try to dissuade them

43:57

and anyone else from going down that road,

44:01

because, one of my greatest fears, not only doing it,

44:03

was fearful not only what it would do to any effort

44:09

to try to prosecute these individuals,

44:13

but should that information be disclosed?

44:16

Should that information get out?

44:19

Number one, what might that do to embolden or adversary?

44:22

What might that do to bring more recruits to Al-Qaeda?

44:26

What might that do, and eventually it spread to Iraq

44:29

and eventually based on the military zone investigation,

44:33

Iraq was getting a wised and they felt that those techniques

44:38

that were approved by Guantanamo and with General Miller,

44:41

leaving JTF Guantanamo for Iraq,

44:45

they said that it was getting a wise

44:49

and that helped contribute to what happened at Abu Ghraib.

44:51

And if you talk to operators, who've been in the field,

44:54

two of the largest recruiting tools that cut to

44:57

use to bring new recruits in it,

45:00

bring new money in was Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

45:02

So the greatest fears were revealed

45:06

when the information went public and people knew,

45:09

now also the other great danger,

45:13

and by going down that road was,

45:16

we were supposed to be adhering to the Geneva conventions.

45:18

And even though a decision was made by the government

45:22

at that time, that the Geneva conventions did not apply

45:27

to an uninformed, belligerent is the terminology.

45:32

I'm not a lawyer, but I've worked with lawyers quite a bit,

45:35

that we were told that

45:39

we'd still adhere to those principles.

45:41

And when we pulled that out,

45:43

this did not adhere to those principles either.

45:45

So even though I, again, there's a lot of people

45:48

trying to rewrite history and change the argument.

45:51

They say, well, Al-Qaeda would do this to us,

45:53

well, they're a terrorist group.

45:56

The fact that we, as a law, rule of law country,

45:57

a rule of law nation, who tries to be an example

46:01

for everyone, would resort to these techniques,

46:03

opens up those techniques to any other rule of law country

46:06

to say, well, you did it then,

46:09

so now we're being to, so we can do it now.

46:11

So it was just to me, just a very, very poor decision,

46:13

and I think we'll pay the price for that for years to come.

46:19

Interviewer

So what did you do when you discovered

46:22

that in fact we were mistreating Katani or torturing him?

46:25

-

Well, it first started before they even started that.

46:30

When we saw their plan, when we saw the road,

46:32

they were going down and let me back up a little bit too,

46:36

if I may.

46:39

-

Absolutely.

-

The techniques that they wanted to employ,

46:41

were based on these, you know,

46:45

these enhanced interrogation techniques,

46:47

which is just a euphemism for torture,

46:49

and that's what we're doing at the individuals,

46:51

it's been, it's been real torture.

46:53

And I know that's used quite out there,

46:55

but it is torture and what happened,

46:56

and I'll back way up to when I was at the CITF,

46:59

when we were starting, of course,

47:02

this was the mission of my lifetime.

47:03

I mean here a career federal agent,

47:05

who's investigating charges before,

47:09

is now the chief investigator to investigate Al-Qaeda,

47:10

with orders from the president to do so.

47:13

And a lot of folks knew our mission,

47:16

'cause we were looking for a lot of help.

47:18

So people were coming to us to help us.

47:20

The army tells us command, I mean, you name it,

47:23

people were coming to my door, knocking on my door,

47:25

how can we help you?

47:27

Everyone wanted to do, they can do.

47:28

Well, one day some folks from SERE unit,

47:31

a Search Evasion Rescue...

47:36

Search Escape Rescue and Evasion unit came to me,

47:38

and that's an element within the military

47:41

that does things to our service members

47:45

to try to help them resist interrogations.

47:48

And it's based on what the north Koreans

47:51

did to our soldiers, and they did to get propaganda.

47:55

They didn't get it to elicit accurate information,

47:58

they got it to make our service members

47:59

say what they wanted them to say.

48:01

And so we have processes

48:04

and this is all open source material,

48:07

where our folks go through that

48:09

and they get things done to them.

48:11

And it's all controlled condition

48:13

with medical personnel there,

48:14

and even the folks, and it was never done to me

48:16

but even the folks who've gone through it, who I know,

48:18

I would say, yeah, but they knew it was gonna end 'cause,

48:20

you know, service members doing it to them.

48:22

So a little different when people try to equate,

48:24

we did it to our people so we could do it to other people.

48:26

So anyway, the SERE's personnel came to me,

48:29

a Colonel and his Lieutenant Colonel and said,

48:32

hey, we wanna help.

48:35

I said, great, how can you help?

48:37

Well, we have these SERE techniques and this is what we do,

48:39

and we can help train your people knows.

48:42

And I naively said, why would I wanna do something

48:44

that would actually harden resistance to somebody

48:48

I wanna extract information from?

48:50

It's encounter intuitive from the beginning

48:52

and what they wanted to do, and I said,

48:55

listen, I know I've been interrogating Al-Qaeda for years,

48:56

this is what I do for a living, I don't need,

49:00

anyway, thanks for your offer.

49:03

But we just laughed it off, never thinking anyone

49:04

would actually accept that offer.

49:07

Interviewer

Where did they go

49:08

after you turned them down?

49:10

-

Well, I don't know if it's the same element or not,

49:11

but eventually, two folks latched on to that.

49:14

The CIA decided to go against

49:22

the advice of many of their internal people.

49:26

I know people who've been targeted with CIA,

49:29

I know behavioral scientists for the CIA,

49:32

operational psychologist who was involved in these things,

49:33

and they advise them against going down this road.

49:37

But there were a few psychologists,

49:40

a guy named Mitchell and Jensen, Justin.

49:42

And again, this is widely reported

49:45

and they were contracted by the CIA.

49:48

These were individuals who had never done any interrogation

49:50

before in their life, knew nothing about Al-Qaeda,

49:53

knew nothing about any of the areas that they were working.

49:56

And so they started going down a road,

50:00

that they called force helplessness and they equated it to,

50:02

if you put a dog in a cage

50:07

and you just beat the dog for whatever they did,

50:10

they wouldn't know what was right or wrong

50:13

and they'd start complying to whatever.

50:14

And again, as I mentioned earlier,

50:16

compliance is different than cooperation.

50:18

So it was a road that was just a road to disaster,

50:21

again based on my experience at the time.

50:25

So when we saw that JTF-GTMO was looking

50:29

to employ these techniques,

50:31

one we tried to dissuade them from doing it.

50:35

And then we won on a campaign for lack of a better term

50:38

felt as a leader in the government,

50:43

and at the time the global war on terror,

50:46

the war against Al-Qaeda, I felt an affirmative duty

50:48

and obligation to report up my chains.

50:51

Things that I saw that I thought would be pretty

50:54

devastating to our country.

50:57

And so that's what I did.

50:59

Interviewer

Can you describe exactly what you did?

50:59

-

Sure, well, initially we tried to dissuade JTF Guantanamo,

51:02

from going down that road, first JTF 170.

51:07

Well, at the time it started under General Michael Dunlavey,

51:11

who was the commanding general for JTF 170,

51:14

when they transitioned to JTF Guantanamo,

51:17

it was a Major General Jeff Miller.

51:20

And again, when you go back to people who've worked Al-Qaeda

51:23

General Dunlavey, was a reservist who worked signals

51:27

intelligence, he says he was worked some things

51:31

back in Vietnam, that was a long time ago,

51:33

but he had no experience with Al-Qaeda, had no experience

51:37

at least a modern day interrogation.

51:40

So you had someone who really didn't know the target

51:41

and didn't know the operational end of the business.

51:44

Interviewer

Well, what would his response be to you

51:46

then if you were so much more expert than he was

51:48

what was his response?

51:51

-

He was a general.

51:52

Interviewer

Meaning?

51:53

-

Well, meaning some people confuse grade level

51:55

with talent level.

51:59

And so some people believe because they have some authority,

52:01

that it might come with with some knowledge and wisdom.

52:05

Unfortunately, they're not always consistent

52:08

with each other.

52:11

So with and later with General Miller,

52:13

he's probably a fine soldier,

52:17

but he was an artillery officer.

52:19

Interviewer

What if they got orders

52:21

from someone above that they refused to hear you 'cause,

52:23

I mean it seems like you had the expertise.

52:27

They would want to hear that even if they were arrogant?

52:30

-

You sound like Alberto Mora, and he said the same thing.

52:33

When I, when we started going down this road,

52:38

trying to dissuade them, I remember I reported it back up

52:42

through my CITF chain of command,

52:47

which is my operational chain,

52:49

back up to the office of secretary defense to Whit Cobb,

52:51

who didn't know what was going on,

52:55

and Whit Cobb, and his, the first chief prosecutor

52:59

for military committee commissions, Bill Lietzau,

53:04

we're unable to affect any change in the road

53:07

that JTF 170 and JTF-GTMO later was going

53:11

was trying to go down with that.

53:15

And at the time I never realized

53:17

how high these decisions were made.

53:21

Later on I realized that these were sanctioned

53:24

by the white house, but at the time this was, you know,

53:27

I just thought that these people were either uninformed

53:31

or being misinformed and just lack the experience

53:36

to effect a sound decision.

53:39

Interviewer

It just relates to me more.

53:42

So you knew and went to Whit Cobb and to Lietzau

53:45

and you knew that they tried

53:49

and just bumped against a wall, or what did you know?

53:51

And did you wonder why they just hit a wall?

53:55

I mean, what was really happening at that time?

53:58

-

Yeah, yeah, I wondered why I would say,

54:02

but is not surprising, and it was the way that

54:07

secretary Rumsfeld operated.

54:12

The generals down there would have a direct pipeline to him.

54:16

They would often time avoid their COCOM,

54:20

their combat and command, SOUTHCOM,

54:23

fly directly up there and meet with secretary Rumsfeld,

54:26

you know, unfiltered access to the senior decision maker

54:30

in the Department of Defense.

54:33

We didn't have that, I've never met secretary Rumsfeld,

54:36

even though I worked for him there,

54:39

this task force reported to him.

54:40

He was no one I met with and no one who looked

54:42

to elicit any information directly from me.

54:45

Interviewer

And what about Whit Cobb and Litzaeu,

54:47

did they have access to Rumsfeld?

54:49

-

That I'm not sure, I mean, their reporting chain

54:52

what was to Bill Haynes, and so that that's,

54:55

and again, I was an operator.

55:00

I was, we working 20 hour days working seven days a week,

55:03

we were going to have Charisse.

55:08

So it was getting a decision made, call the ball, move out.

55:10

I'd rented the Pentagon a couple of times a week

55:14

for meetings, and I'd get back to the task force.

55:16

I be on a plane to Guantanamo, I'd be in Afghanistan,

55:17

later in Iraq, back around.

55:20

So we had an operational task force

55:22

trying to track down Al-Qaeda.

55:23

So, we were pretty busy at the time,

55:25

but when that was an ineffective,

55:29

then I went back to the army chain,

55:32

back through General Ryder,

55:35

and again, through the army chain.

55:38

And at the time I didn't realize how much effort

55:41

the army chain actually put in to trying to dissuade it.

55:44

At the time, from my perspective, General Ryder was

55:47

either unwilling or unable to effect change.

55:51

I learned later, he tried, and so did the army chain,

55:55

the army JAGs in the military,

55:58

JAG and judge advocates try to do their best

56:01

to stop the Department of Defense from going down this road.

56:06

Interviewer

Do you know, what General Ryder did

56:08

if he went to Rumsfeld, if he had access-

56:11

-

Well, he would not go to Rumsfeld,

56:12

he'd go through the army.

56:13

And again, he would go through the army chain,

56:15

through the army general council and through

56:17

the secretary of the army and the army, it stopped there.

56:19

It didn't cross deck the way that when I went back

56:25

to my NCIS chain because at the time,

56:29

there was just some disagreement for a small period

56:34

between myself and the commander of CITF,

56:37

my close friend, Britt Mallow.

56:39

Where his position was that that our agents,

56:41

if these are approved and we learned

56:47

they were approved by secretary Rumsfeld,

56:48

if they were gonna do these techniques

56:51

that our folks should be in the room there

56:53

because it may prohibit them,

56:56

it may serve as more of a chilling effect

56:58

and maybe they wouldn't be abused as much

57:01

'cause we were afraid knowing how adrenaline is,

57:02

knowing what a young soldier is,

57:05

knowing what a young agent would be.

57:07

I know when I was young,

57:09

if somebody told me I could wall somebody,

57:10

the next guy try to see

57:12

if he can get them higher on the wall.

57:13

And while you're slamming someone into a wall,

57:14

that's an assault consummated by battery.

57:16

So we were really concerned that

57:19

there would be drift and abuses would occur

57:21

if you were even allowed to do these techniques

57:25

even at the most minimal level.

57:27

So the controversy that came on the task force

57:31

between Brant and I was,

57:35

and he thought for the right reason,

57:36

I can understand what he though he was thinking.

57:38

And then our folks would be witnesses at some point

57:41

should this ever become something that they

57:44

could be investigated for?

57:46

'Cause it was clear in our mind that these are crimes.

57:47

My position was, as a sworn federal law enforcement officer,

57:50

that I could not be present and my people could not

57:54

be present when a felony was being committed.

57:57

And I couldn't guarantee that an agent would be in there

58:01

and see somebody slapped in the face and intervene,

58:06

instinctually 'cause their training would, might take over.

58:11

So to me, it would have been disastrous,

58:14

so at that point is, was a point when I felt

58:17

I would probably have to leave the CITF.

58:22

And later Brit, after a short period,

58:25

he told me I was able to commit to him

58:29

very quickly and change his mind.

58:31

But to me it seemed like an eternity at the time,

58:33

'cause it was that bright line for me.

58:34

And then my last chain of command is going back through

58:37

my parent organization was NCIS

58:40

and I brought the information to the director Dave Brant,

58:42

brought it to Alberto Mora,

58:45

and Alberto was really the first figure,

58:47

and I told him many times he restored my faith

58:51

in political appointees, because he's a very honorable man

58:54

and felt ethically compelled as that I,

58:58

that there was something we could not just sit highly

59:02

that we had affirmative action,

59:05

do everything within our power to try to dissuade

59:07

our seniors from going down this road.

59:10

And so Alberta, and the first thing you said was one thing

59:12

that you had said earlier, he said,

59:15

how can they not be listening to you?

59:17

Do me a favor before I go forward,

59:20

just get on the plane one more time and go down and talk

59:22

to him one last time and try to convince General Miller.

59:24

And I went down and General Miller quote was,

59:28

if you don't wear the same uniform, you're not on my team,

59:32

and just kinda similarly dismissed me.

59:35

And I had to explain to him, you know,

59:37

I actually wasn't on his team.

59:39

I had my own mission reporting to the secretary

59:41

and you know, I sworn allegiance

59:43

to the constitution of the United States

59:44

not to the secretary was authorized this.

59:46

So I, you know, we both need to do what we need to do

59:48

and went back to Mora.

59:51

And that's when he decided he had to go to,

59:53

Mr. Haynes, because I failed in my efforts to dissuade

59:56

it on the ground in Guantanamo.

1:00:00

Interviewer

So I need to ask you,

1:00:01

was it you or David Brant then who informed Mora

1:00:03

of What happened?

1:00:06

Did you inform Brant to inform Mora the first time,

1:00:08

Or did you directly go to him?

1:00:10

-

Yeah, no, no.

1:00:12

The first time it was Dave Brant and Dave,

1:00:13

and then Mike Gellis,

1:00:15

talk to Alberto, and then Mike and I went over

1:00:19

and sat down with with Alberto

1:00:22

and the most senior lawyers in Navy Marine Corps,

1:00:23

both civilian and military, that

1:00:26

the OJAG for the Navy, the senior JAG officer,

1:00:28

the judge advocate general for the Marine Corps

1:00:32

of the civilian attorneys,

1:00:34

And we sat in a room and we assessed it

1:00:35

and they looked at the legal argument for doing it.

1:00:37

And basically they all concluded that it was flawed

1:00:41

a legal argument by Diane Beaver, the SGA for Guantanamo,

1:00:44

who later in congressional hearings said,

1:00:48

well, she always thought it would be overturned

1:00:52

above her level.

1:00:54

So I guess maybe she might have suspected it

1:00:56

might've not been the most sound legal logic

1:00:58

that she applied there.

1:01:01

Interviewer

Did Mora come back to you and tell you

1:01:03

that Hayne said he would take care of it?

1:01:05

Did you hear that part or-

1:01:10

-

Yeah, absolutely.

1:01:12

I mean, I felt a great sense of relief

1:01:13

and I knew that I did not have the ability to dissuade

1:01:18

the CIA from going down the road, they were going down.

1:01:23

Although I tried to also talk to them about it,

1:01:26

but I felt I worked for the Department of Defense

1:01:29

and I had a senior role in the war with Al-Qaeda.

1:01:32

And so I felt an obligation.

1:01:35

And so I felt a sense of relief that at least

1:01:37

within the Department of Defense, the agency I worked for

1:01:39

that we were able to stop these abuses from occurring.

1:01:44

Interviewer

So what happened when you heard a few weeks

1:01:47

later that in fact they were still occurring.

1:01:50

-

Once again, I failed,

1:01:52

I went back to Alberto through de brand and said,

1:01:57

and for me it was a, I want to say a precarious position

1:02:01

but I was detailed to the army.

1:02:05

So, I mean, going back to my parent chain,

1:02:07

was the ultimate act of last resort,

1:02:10

could be perceived as disloyal and it was not.

1:02:13

But I mean, doing that, you know,

1:02:16

a military officer might not do that.

1:02:18

You know, I just felt compelled to my organization,

1:02:21

that's the credentials I carried in my pocket.

1:02:24

That's the badge I loved for so many years.

1:02:26

That's what I represented.

1:02:28

And that's why I worked for, so I felt, you know,

1:02:30

I had to go back through that chain,

1:02:31

but a great a sense of panic,

1:02:33

that they were going down that road.

1:02:37

I continued to report back to Alberto through NCIS chain,

1:02:40

the things they were doing to Katani,

1:02:46

'cause to me, and I know,

1:02:48

that it's been read before congressional hearings.

1:02:51

I wrote an email, my faith,

1:02:54

my most published work was an email I wrote saying that,

1:02:56

this is the type of things congressional hearings

1:02:59

are made of and of course that's how they opened up

1:03:01

the congressional hearings about it.

1:03:04

And you know, the other thing that I said that was

1:03:08

about what the courts would perceive this,

1:03:11

any court very negatively upon this and this week

1:03:14

and it's actually remarkable to me that the US media

1:03:22

has not been covering the trials,

1:03:26

but this week there's been hearings down at Guantanamo Bay

1:03:29

on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 suspects,

1:03:32

and the Cole suspects.

1:03:34

And the very issue of torture is the issue that the

1:03:36

defense attorneys are bringing up

1:03:39

in the defense of their clients.

1:03:41

Totally foreseeable.

1:03:45

I mean, you know, anybody who had experience

1:03:47

working terrorism would understand this.

1:03:50

I don't know why our leaders at the time,

1:03:52

did not foresee this eventuality but right now,

1:03:54

there were, there were hearings, they concluded today.

1:03:59

They'll begin again in December,

1:04:01

but the theme of the hearing was the torture

1:04:03

that was committed against the detainees on trial

1:04:05

especially Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for a capital offense.

1:04:08

Interviewer

I wanna go back to that

1:04:10

but I just wanna finish up on this part.

1:04:12

So after you heard that in fact the abuse

1:04:15

was still continuing, by the way was it continuing

1:04:19

to other people and not just Katani?

1:04:22

-

Yeah, it eventually spread that the most egregious abuses

1:04:25

were Katani and Slahi.

1:04:28

I called them in chiro and down there at 760,

1:04:32

we did them all by numbers,

1:04:34

I mean names were kinda similar, oftentimes,

1:04:36

so, the agents would often just use numbers-

1:04:38

Interviewer

Do you know why

1:04:40

he was selected to receive so much-

1:04:42

-

Well, another high-value target.

1:04:43

When we had folks that we identified,

1:04:46

our goal, you couldn't apply all of your

1:04:48

investigative resources to everyone.

1:04:52

So you would try to call out the highest value targets

1:04:54

for prosecution, and then go after them,

1:04:57

you coordinate with your prosecutor's

1:05:01

office of the military commission,

1:05:02

the chief prosecutor, and say, okay, let's pick

1:05:03

the top targets that you'd like to try

1:05:05

and we'll go after them.

1:05:09

So of course, someone who was part of the original

1:05:10

9/11 conspiracy, Katani was one that I felt

1:05:13

for victims of 9/11, we needed to go after.

1:05:16

So from my perspective, the highest targets that I wanted

1:05:20

to prioritize from investigation prosecution, were the 9/11

1:05:24

and the Cole suspects.

1:05:28

I was the the lead NCIS guy on the Cole,

1:05:30

so that was, you know, they were still my targets.

1:05:33

So that's who we were going after.

1:05:36

Interviewer

So when you found out

1:05:38

that it was still going on what did you do then

1:05:41

after you went to Alberto a second time then?

1:05:45

-

Well, I just continue to report, I would send,

1:05:48

we were reviewing the interrogation logs,

1:05:54

so we saw some of the things that were doing

1:05:57

and we saw that Katani was died of hypothermia.

1:05:59

They were having to give him enemas to rehydrate him.

1:06:02

They were doing some very, putting panties on his head,

1:06:07

making them, you know, dog leash on,

1:06:11

you know, blasting music at him.

1:06:14

I mean, just some amateuristic things that,

1:06:17

you know, would only hardened resistance.

1:06:21

And at one point, they wouldn't let him use the bathroom,

1:06:24

and it was almost, it could be a Saturday night, sitcom

1:06:26

where they wouldn't let him use the bathroom

1:06:31

until he told them something.

1:06:33

And then he finally told him, and then he used the bathroom,

1:06:34

and then came back and said,

1:06:37

no, I just said so I can use the bathroom.

1:06:38

You know, it was just, it was a it's embarrassing.

1:06:39

I mean, you know, and it's embarrassing

1:06:43

that ever became known publicly.

1:06:46

Interviewer

What about to Katani?

1:06:49

-

Katani was not.

1:06:51

I mean, if there was one thing that at least

1:06:52

with the many things I failed at doing,

1:06:58

the one thing I was successful in with this was,

1:07:00

no one to my knowledge within the Department of Defense,

1:07:05

within DOD certainly at GTMO ever waterboarded a detainee.

1:07:08

So at least we were able to stop the most in my opinion,

1:07:13

the most egregious offense where,

1:07:17

you actually replicates suffocation,

1:07:19

is what you're doing to an individual.

1:07:21

Let me ask you to just take a break

1:07:26

just to cool off a little bit.

1:07:27

Interviewer

Yeah, why don't we take a break-

1:07:28

-

It's hot (laughs) my jacket, have a little more drink.

1:07:29

Man

We're rolling.

1:07:32

Interviewer

Okay, did you ever,

1:07:33

you never personally met with any detainee.

1:07:35

You mentioned the light off?

1:07:38

Your lights are fine?

1:07:41

Man

Yeah, lights are good.

1:07:42

Interviewer

I'm sorry.

1:07:43

You never met with any detainees or did you, when you went

1:07:44

to Guantanamo, did you ever speak to detainees?

1:07:47

-

Ooh sure.

1:07:49

Interviewer

You did for what purpose?

1:07:50

-

I say, hello, walk through the-

1:07:51

Interviewer

you walked for the-

1:07:52

-

Oh, many times, sure.

1:07:54

Interviewer

Did you ever interrogate a detainee?

1:07:55

-

No, not, not there.

1:07:57

Nope, not in my CITF time.

1:07:58

I never did interrogate, I observed many of them.

1:08:00

-

You did?

1:08:03

-

Oh yeah.

Interviewer

Could you describe?

1:08:03

Did you observe in Guantanamo?

1:08:06

-

Sure.

Interviewer

Could you describe one that you observed?

1:08:07

-

Sure, I just two folks sitting in a room,

1:08:11

three folks sitting in a room,

1:08:15

sometimes four with the translator, having a discussion.

1:08:16

Our folks, sometimes they might be sitting

1:08:20

on the floor having some tea.

1:08:21

We'd sometimes bring McDonald's in, French fries,

1:08:23

you know, some of them like that.

1:08:28

I mean, your goal is to put the person at ease,

1:08:30

develop a rapport and try to get them to recall,

1:08:33

some things that may happen a long time ago,

1:08:38

it's hard to remember.

1:08:39

So you're trying to put 'em in a state where

1:08:41

they can actually have their best recall also,

1:08:42

which again it doesn't normally come under fear and duress.

1:08:45

Interviewer

And what makes you decide

1:08:47

whether to bring them tea or McDonald's?

1:08:50

How do you come to that?

1:08:51

-

Well, oftentimes you'll ask them,

1:08:53

I mean, some of them may have certain preferences,

1:08:55

likes, I mean you would develop,

1:08:58

our folks who develop rapport relationships

1:09:00

with the detainees down there, I mean, after, you know,

1:09:03

you're the only outside of they're talking to.

1:09:06

Interviewer

And would you talk to them too,

1:09:07

or you would just observe?

1:09:09

-

No, I would just observe.

1:09:11

I would not go in the booth with a detainee.

1:09:12

Interviewer

You would be looking through a mirror?

1:09:15

-

Correct.

1:09:18

Interviewer

And what would you,

1:09:19

what would be the purpose for you to observe?

1:09:20

Why would you do that?

1:09:21

-

Well, one, I mean, I'm overall responsibility

1:09:23

for the operations of the CITF.

1:09:25

So you wanna see how it's going, you know, to listening

1:09:27

and you wanna check on how,

1:09:29

how your agents are doing things like that.

1:09:31

Interviewer

Did you use women agents?

1:09:34

-

Yeah, we did.

1:09:36

Interviewer

And did you have a different reaction

1:09:37

from the men when you had women?

1:09:39

-

Actually, we did an actually changed the way

1:09:41

we thought of things.

1:09:44

The conventional wisdom when we started was

1:09:45

that they probably would not respond to a woman very well.

1:09:48

And what we found is,

1:09:53

some of our better interrogators were female.

1:09:54

Interviewer

Why so?

1:09:56

-

Well I'm uncertain for sure.

1:09:57

Maybe it's the maternal instinct,

1:10:01

maybe they felt more at ease with a woman.

1:10:02

And maybe just the female agents we brought down,

1:10:05

were better interrogators.

1:10:08

But some of our, when I look back some of our more

1:10:09

effective, illicit, or as those who

1:10:14

got us good information just happened to be willing.

1:10:17

And initially we thought that would not be the case.

1:10:21

Interviewer

Did women dress in a certain way

1:10:23

when they met with these men?

1:10:26

-

We basically wore polo shirts

1:10:27

and utility shorts, you know, utility pants.

1:10:30

Interviewer

And women also?

1:10:33

-

Yeah, yeah, the same thing.

1:10:35

We wanted a casual look, we didn't wanna wear suits.

1:10:37

Although we were mix of civilian in military,

1:10:40

we'd never wore a uniform,

1:10:43

it was a very casual, a polo shirt, had the CITF logo on it,

1:10:45

and CIS, OSI, CID and FBI for the GTMO guys

1:10:52

had it on the shirt.

1:10:55

And that was the standard uniform

1:10:57

for lack of a better term.

1:10:59

Interviewer

And if the detainee ever said to

1:11:00

(Mark coughing)

1:11:02

one of your interrogators,

1:11:03

people already asked me these questions

1:11:05

or they were harsh to me, or, you know, they talked

1:11:06

about other interrogations besides yours,

1:11:09

did you ever get that kind?

1:11:11

-

Oh sure, we had,

1:11:12

it was quite difficult.

1:11:14

We would make progress with the detainees at some point

1:11:16

and find that the JTF folks went in the middle of the night

1:11:18

and it started to, you know,

1:11:23

interrogating them very harshly.

1:11:24

And it would disrupt the progress we made

1:11:26

and we'd have to rehabilitate it and things like that.

1:11:29

It was just a lot of things that

1:11:31

they created JTF-GTMO,

1:11:33

what they call the frequent flyer program.

1:11:37

Interviewer

Can you discuss that further?

1:11:38

-

Well, it was a method of sleep deprivation,

1:11:40

where they would wake them up in the middle of the night

1:11:43

and shift them around, and then they felt very proud that

1:11:45

they were able to disrupt their ability to communicate

1:11:47

with each other by moving them.

1:11:50

But again, when your goal is to listen information,

1:11:53

you know, when you've got someone in to try to do

1:11:56

an interview interrogation of after that occurred,

1:11:59

they would generally be very upset, angry, resistance.

1:12:02

So, you know, while you may have got them to comply,

1:12:06

you may show them who's boss, that you can do that.

1:12:09

Again if your goal is a listening reliable

1:12:13

and accurate information,

1:12:15

it is inconsistent with the ability to do so.

1:12:16

Interviewer

Would that frustrate you and your team?

1:12:18

-

Of course, particularly when you had to rehabilitate

1:12:20

somebody and you knew that, you know, you'd made progress,

1:12:24

now you've taken a couple of steps backwards,

1:12:26

so it was very difficult for us.

1:12:28

Interviewer

And there's nothing you can do about that?

1:12:29

-

Well, I mean, you could complain about it

1:12:31

and they'd say, well, you know,

1:12:33

we have our mission to get intel and you have yours

1:12:34

and you know, we're gonna do what we want.

1:12:37

You can't, you know, we'll do what we wanna do.

1:12:38

And you do, what you've got to.

1:12:40

Interviewer

And would they kind of observe

1:12:41

who you chose to interrogate

1:12:44

and perhaps pick that person for themselves next?

1:12:46

-

Yeah, at times we saw that, what we saw was,

1:12:49

when we started to get some good intel

1:12:51

and provide it to them, even though they were disseminating

1:12:55

the intelligence information report,

1:12:58

they would oftentimes wanna get their folks in there,

1:13:00

to do it themselves.

1:13:02

And I don't know if it was an ego thing

1:13:03

or a pride thing, or just, you know,

1:13:06

they felt they wanted to get it themselves,

1:13:08

out of there or maybe they wanted to try to justify

1:13:10

how good they were by going into someone

1:13:12

who's already told us.

1:13:15

I don't know the rationale,

1:13:16

I just know it's kinda counterproductive to do so,

1:13:17

made it very difficult for us.

1:13:20

Interviewer

And had you heard about women for the DOD,

1:13:21

who were somewhat abusive to the men?

1:13:24

I mean, there's stories about that.

1:13:26

-

Yeah, I mean,

1:13:28

as part of some of the investigations where, you know,

1:13:30

female JTF-GTMO interrogator put red ink or red dye

1:13:32

in a detainee and said it was her menstrual blood

1:13:38

and things, I mean, just some, some ridiculous.

1:13:40

Interviewer

Did you hear that when you were down?

1:13:41

-

No, I was not aware of that back then,

1:13:43

that that was occurring.

1:13:45

Interviewer

So what were your impressions in Guantanamo,

1:13:47

how often were you down there?

1:13:50

-

It depends, may be once a month,

1:13:53

Britt mallow, the commander and I would go down

1:13:55

and frequently, you know, check on the true spoke.

1:13:58

You know, of course we had folks also in Afghanistan, Iraq

1:14:00

and in Fort Belvoir, and of course we had senior,

1:14:03

so we would never have both of us

1:14:05

out of the headquarters at the same time.

1:14:08

So either Britt or I, we're always kinda traveling

1:14:11

around trying to, you know,

1:14:14

trying to check on our, you know, our operation.

1:14:16

Interviewer

And over how many years is this going down?

1:14:18

-

Well, I was there for just about two and a half years,

1:14:21

I was there from the beginning until about May of 2004

1:14:25

I think May June some of thereabouts,

1:14:29

when I went back to NCIS headquarters.

1:14:31

Actually I went first to be a special advisor

1:14:33

to Gordon England, who was the secretary of Navy,

1:14:37

when he was trying to create the office

1:14:40

for the administrator view of a detained enemy combatants,

1:14:43

which, and that is who Alberta actually worked for,

1:14:47

secretary of the Navy has to die with NCIS.

1:14:51

And that was an effort to try to find ways

1:14:54

to reduce the size of Guantanamo,

1:14:57

to get the detainees out of there, who had no value

1:15:01

and who shouldn't have been there in the first place.

1:15:06

So it was another effort by the DOD,

1:15:08

to try to send folks back repatriate

1:15:10

and back with their countries or somewhere else

1:15:12

but it was an administrative view process.

1:15:14

So I spent a little bit of time

1:15:16

just as a special advisor to him,

1:15:19

one giving my insights for Guantanamo and not terrorism,

1:15:21

and then trying to help them shape this new capability

1:15:24

that they were forming to do so, it was called the, OARDEC.

1:15:28

Interviewer

Were you advising

1:15:30

on which detainees should be sent back home?

1:15:33

-

Yeah, actually we were,

1:15:36

at one point and JTF-GTMO and CITF,

1:15:37

both were in unison in the fact that there were people there

1:15:41

that didn't belong there.

1:15:44

I mean, it was quite clear.

1:15:46

So the goal was,

1:15:48

how do we reduce the size of this population?

1:15:50

So we created what was called a Transfer Review Board,

1:15:52

TRB, and I chaired the Transfer Review Board

1:15:58

and so weekly, we would pick a certain number,

1:16:01

we had a whole unit that would just be looking

1:16:05

at who to release.

1:16:07

And so then they would present to me

1:16:08

on a weekly basis on a Wednesday,

1:16:11

cases and it was the Transfer Review Board was comprised

1:16:15

of investigators, analysts, lawyers, behavioral scientists

1:16:19

and they would present a findings to me, what they concluded

1:16:26

on what the risk of a detainee might be.

1:16:31

And we developed a risk matrix,

1:16:33

to look at how radicalized the individual might have been.

1:16:36

For instance, if someone wasn't in Afghanistan

1:16:42

prior to 9/11 and got picked up there,

1:16:47

possibly we might say that might be a lower risk

1:16:50

than someone who went into Afghanistan after the invasion,

1:16:53

'cause the other person was just there by circumstance.

1:16:56

Or one made a conscious decision to go after US was at war.

1:16:59

So we would look at factors like that,

1:17:03

and then basically I would what we say, call the ball.

1:17:06

I mean, based on what I heard,

1:17:09

based on the available evidence, available intelligence,

1:17:10

the legal readout, the behavioral science readout

1:17:12

and then I would make a determination

1:17:15

on what our position would be

1:17:17

whether detainees should be released

1:17:20

and then it would go through an inter-agency process.

1:17:22

So JTF-GTMO had their process

1:17:24

and then it would go up to the Pentagon

1:17:27

and then Pentagon would cross it over to state department

1:17:29

and to the Intel community to try to see

1:17:32

if a detainees should be released.

1:17:35

Interviewer

But you we're making the

1:17:37

bottom line decision?

1:17:40

At your level, you were the person making-

1:17:41

-

For the CITF, most times I was the chair of the board

1:17:43

when I was in there, Britt Mallow would chair it.

1:17:46

But that was one of my responsibilities

1:17:48

as the deputy commander is to chair these

1:17:50

Transfer Review Boards.

1:17:52

Interviewer

Did you know that some of the men,

1:17:53

I've heard numbers as high as 80 to 90% were sold to the US,

1:17:56

had you heard those stories?

1:18:02

-

I don't know the percentage, but yes,

1:18:03

I am aware that detainees were purchased.

1:18:05

Interviewer

Right, and were you aware of it back then?

1:18:10

-

Yes.

1:18:13

Interviewer

Did that strike a chord with anybody?

1:18:14

Did people think that was odd or-

1:18:17

-

Well, when you first heard it, you thought,

1:18:18

well, you know, that's fine because, you know,

1:18:22

we have actual terrorists that are turned over to us.

1:18:26

Unfortunately, the reality was that they weren't,

1:18:29

you know, it was a Ponzi scheme.

1:18:34

You know, we picked up

1:18:37

a lot of boxes that didn't have the camcorder on it,

1:18:38

there were bricks inside.

1:18:41

Interviewer

And how did you know that

1:18:43

these were not notorious?

1:18:46

How did you figure that out?

1:18:48

I know it might be obvious, but I'd like to know.

1:18:50

-

Well through investigation, through,

1:18:52

you know, intelligence.

1:18:54

I mean, it was quite clear.

1:18:55

I mean, this is the difficult part, you know,

1:18:57

for folks who have been working Al-Qaeda for years.

1:19:02

At the time of 9/11, the range, the estimate range

1:19:06

or the number of people who you would consider

1:19:11

Al-Qaeda probably range between two and 400.

1:19:13

How many thousands now do we consider

1:19:18

them on the around So Al-Qaeda?

1:19:20

So, you know their numbers have grown

1:19:22

in spite of all of our efforts.

1:19:26

Now they're franchised.

1:19:29

Interviewer

Did you come upon wiggers?

1:19:30

-

Oh yeah.

1:19:33

Interviewer

And did you realize right away they were,

1:19:34

shouldn't have been-

1:19:37

-

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

1:19:38

The problem that we had with the wiggers was

1:19:39

the fear what the Chinese would do to them,

1:19:43

when they were returned.

1:19:46

So the challenge wasn't, you know, whether they had Intel

1:19:49

or prosecuted value, they had none.

1:19:53

The problem became now that you bought it, what do you do?

1:19:55

As Colin Powell said, once you break it, you buy it.

1:19:59

So you know, now we have these folks here

1:20:02

and what the general public probably is unaware of

1:20:05

is the amount of thought that went into,

1:20:10

what would happen to a detainees should they be released?

1:20:13

You know, if you released them to a country like China,

1:20:17

what might they do, what might that detain these fate be?

1:20:20

In some other countries.

1:20:25

So we exercised great care in trying to assess

1:20:27

the environment that you could release somebody to.

1:20:32

Interviewer

You were involved in there, too?

1:20:34

-

Oh, sure I was part of our decision-making matrix.

1:20:37

We wanted to look at that and make sure

1:20:40

that folks knew that, you know, based on, you know,

1:20:42

what we knew about whatever country X,

1:20:45

this might not be a better environment

1:20:48

than the environment they're in.

1:20:50

Interviewer

Hmm, and did you interact

1:20:52

with the ICRC at all?

1:20:54

-

No.

1:20:56

Interviewer

And what about when nations apparently sent

1:20:57

their own ministers down to interview

1:20:59

or meet with detainees, were you involved with at all?

1:21:06

-

Some.

1:21:08

-

How so?

-

Well, if they were, you know,

1:21:10

we actually brought some folks down, you know,

1:21:12

our contacts with in the, in our ally countries, security

1:21:15

or investigative services.

1:21:20

Interviewer

why would you bring them down?

1:21:21

-

Well to see the operation, if we had detainees

1:21:23

from their country, we want them to know what was going on,

1:21:26

so we were in constant interaction with the countries

1:21:29

that most of the detainees were from.

1:21:35

Some that you talked to in the UK, Australians

1:21:38

with Hickson Habib, you know, you name it.

1:21:42

You know, folks, we turned back over to Belgium.

1:21:45

You know, we wanted to make sure that, you know,

1:21:47

we were integrating,

1:21:50

we knew everything that they had on a person,

1:21:51

and if we're turning them over,

1:21:53

that they knew everything that we knew

1:21:54

about a person, you know,

1:21:56

that they were being repatriated back to their country.

1:21:59

Interviewer

You were aware,

1:22:02

I'm sure of the juveniles who were in Guantanamo-

1:22:04

-

Khadr.

1:22:07

-

Well, Khadr is one-

1:22:08

-

No.

-

There were others, I mean, what was your thoughts

1:22:10

and what were the thoughts of the CITF

1:22:12

and people you work with in terms of holding juveniles?

1:22:14

(Mark coughing)

1:22:18

-

Well, it was more a legal readout.

1:22:20

Again, what was, you know,

1:22:21

the concern was is it legal to do so?

1:22:23

And we were told whether detained enemy combatants,

1:22:25

with Khadr, it was,

1:22:28

well, let's investigate this to find out what he did.

1:22:30

And the other great misconception generally

1:22:32

about at least NCIS and the CITF is,

1:22:38

we don't investigate to prosecute,

1:22:42

we investigate find out the facts.

1:22:44

So you conduct an investigation to actually

1:22:46

find someone not guilty also, whereas innocent of a crimes.

1:22:48

So for us, it was, that's fine, he's in custody.

1:22:51

We need to investigate this because,

1:22:54

if he is not guilty of a crime,

1:22:56

it's, it's our job to prove that.

1:22:59

Interviewer

Well, weren't you worried

1:23:01

how the world would see us holding juveniles,

1:23:04

(Mark coughing)

1:23:08

and treatment of juveniles with,

1:23:09

in a prison such as Guantanamo?

1:23:11

-

At the time, it didn't cross my mind.

1:23:13

I mean, that was a prison operation,

1:23:16

I mean, he wasn't being abused in interrogation.

1:23:17

I mean, the things that would alert my attention

1:23:22

weren't occurring with him.

1:23:25

There was a lot of care about how they should treat him

1:23:26

segregating from other detainees.

1:23:28

So I knew that there was concerned about his age

1:23:30

and others ages over there

1:23:33

but from an investigative perspective, okay, fine

1:23:35

we've got to investigate the facts of this

1:23:38

because whether it's the juvenile or not, you know,

1:23:39

he might have done something, or might've done nothing.

1:23:42

Decision makers need to know,

1:23:44

what he may or may not have been involved in.

1:23:46

Interviewer

Did you hear stories about people being kept

1:23:49

in isolation for long periods of time?

1:23:52

-

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

1:23:56

I was another decision point for us.

1:23:58

JTF made a decision point

1:24:01

that they would use solitary confinement, isolation.

1:24:03

And I think there's a distinction between the two,

1:24:08

one, I have no problem with segregating a detainee

1:24:12

from the detainees.

1:24:16

So they can't collaborate on a story for a short period

1:24:16

or things like that.

1:24:20

Interviewer

Was that done?

1:24:20

-

Well, I wish we had the ability to do so

1:24:23

of course, at X-Ray they were cages, so it was feudal.

1:24:26

And in the other population,

1:24:32

had I been able to set that up to start with,

1:24:35

I would have had barriers between cells and things

1:24:37

so that people couldn't go right back and talk to everyone

1:24:40

or be influenced by everyone in, you know,

1:24:43

if you're doing an interrogation, somebody

1:24:45

for five days straight, you don't wanna going back

1:24:47

and telling everyone or being influenced by everyone.

1:24:49

So I wish I had the ability to do so, but

1:24:51

when as the facilities improved

1:24:54

and they did have the capabilities to isolate

1:24:55

and to put people in solitary JTF-GTMO made a decision

1:24:58

that they would use that for someone

1:25:04

who wasn't giving them information.

1:25:06

So from a negative perspective,

1:25:08

the guidance we gave to the CITF is, you may use rewards

1:25:12

as inducement with somebody cooperating, but we will not

1:25:16

use punishment with anyone who is not.

1:25:19

In other words, and again, this is the irony of the argument

1:25:24

over whether we should send someone to GTMO

1:25:28

because the interrogation will be different

1:25:31

because they don't read them the rights are or whatever.

1:25:33

I see this every time a terrorist is arrested,

1:25:35

there's a political debate of whether they should go

1:25:38

to federal district court or military commission.

1:25:40

And the argument among some is,

1:25:42

the interrogation to be better at Guantanamo.

1:25:44

Well, whether I need to read you your rights or not,

1:25:46

you can still remain silent.

1:25:48

You know, you can just not talk.

1:25:50

So for us in our approach was we treated a detainee

1:25:52

at Guantanamo, no different than we would any other

1:25:57

US detainee with two exceptions.

1:26:00

One is we did not to read them their Miranda rights or

1:26:02

or article 32 warnings are they're in the military.

1:26:06

You know, the rights waiver and the number two was

1:26:08

they did not get to have an attorney present

1:26:12

during questioning should they elect to do so.

1:26:15

Now having said that, and in most of those other

1:26:17

terrorist investigations that I participated

1:26:21

in over the years, they were read their rights

1:26:23

and they waived the rights and they talked to us anyway.

1:26:26

So, I mean, it was never a real hindrance to us

1:26:29

in the field in the past.

1:26:34

But you can't make somebody talk, there is no true serum,

1:26:36

you don't talk under duress and there's no

1:26:40

magic bullet that gets someone to talk.

1:26:43

It's hard work, and it's developing rapport

1:26:45

and soliciting information that may be useful,

1:26:47

that is what your goal is there.

1:26:50

Interviewer

You ever meet, Omar Khadr's brother

1:26:50

who was also in Guantanamo for a short period?

1:26:53

-

I never met either of them,

1:26:56

I saw them at a distance, but I never met either of them.

1:26:58

Interviewer

And you don't know the story about

1:27:02

his brother who was there for a short time,

1:27:04

who claimed he was a CIA agent.

1:27:06

Had you ever heard that story?

1:27:08

-

Not that I recall.

1:27:10

Interviewer

Did you ever work with Jose Padilla?

1:27:12

He was in the Naval brig in South Carolina.

1:27:17

-

I never worked with Jose Padilla,

1:27:20

our investigators talked to him.

1:27:22

We sent people down there to see if he had any information

1:27:24

of value to see if he might be someone who might be,

1:27:26

the president might wanna try for military commissions.

1:27:32

And here's the interesting piece about the beginning

1:27:34

of the CITF the way that the protocols were is,

1:27:38

the only person who could decide if someone went

1:27:42

to military commission was the president himself.

1:27:45

So we put a lot of effort into what we called

1:27:48

a reason to believe reports, RTBs.

1:27:51

And so we would do a preliminary investigation on detainees

1:27:54

to determine whether that detainee actually fell

1:27:58

under the provisions of president Bush's military order.

1:28:02

That says anyone who is a member or was

1:28:06

Al-Qaeda, what I said earlier.

1:28:08

So with Padilla it's okay, let's go down and see

1:28:11

if this is someone who might be subject to that

1:28:14

so we can divide seniors of that.

1:28:18

So, yes, our folks went down to the break

1:28:20

and talked to him and came back and reported on.

1:28:21

Interviewer

Did they also report

1:28:24

that he was mistreated or-

1:28:26

-

No.

1:28:29

Interviewer

Do you think he was at that time

1:28:29

or you don't know?

1:28:32

-

I mean, I think his case is a very challenging one

1:28:34

for our country as a US citizen,

1:28:38

being detained in that manner.

1:28:41

I find it a bit troubling.

1:28:44

I wonder how history will look back on that.

1:28:46

I know he was a citizen of Hispanic, American origin,

1:28:49

and you know, he tried to affiliate with Al-Qaeda,

1:28:54

but the way that we were interpreting the CITF jurisdiction

1:28:57

military commissions was, it was for non US citizens.

1:29:01

It was the alternative for a belligerent,

1:29:05

and of course we, and, you know, we looked at the

1:29:07

Michael Walker situation, Mike Walker Lindh

1:29:10

and things like that-

1:29:14

Interviewer

Micheal Walker Lindh,

1:29:15

you actually interview him too?

1:29:16

-

Actually, we sent people to interview him too,

1:29:17

after he was tried.

1:29:20

-

After he was-

1:29:21

-

Yeah, yeah.

NCIS agents actually interrogated him early on,

1:29:23

when he was first brought to the ship.

1:29:26

And then later on in jail, we sent folks to talk to him

1:29:28

and he was very helpful.

1:29:32

Because-

1:29:33

-

And he was very helpful?

-

Yeah, 'cause he's a linear thinker.

1:29:35

And when you're dealing with someone

1:29:38

who's an associate thinker and doesn't think in timelines

1:29:40

and who doesn't might not know their birthday.

1:29:43

And so when you were trying to establish a timeline,

1:29:46

which is another way you investigate someone.

1:29:51

If you don't know, if you only know what season it was,

1:29:54

it's so difficult, it's a narrow down.

1:29:57

Where Lindh, would we'd have a more precise date,

1:29:59

so if he was somewhere in someone else's home where

1:30:03

at the same time we, we could lock that person

1:30:05

into a closer period, then it was cold.

1:30:08

It was warm or some other, some other way

1:30:10

that they described where they were when they were so sure.

1:30:13

Interviewer

So Lindh was actually helpful?

1:30:16

-

Sure, yeah, I actually took out a map

1:30:18

and he charted his routes and where he went on map

1:30:22

and who was with him and did a very nice job for us,

1:30:24

helping out.

1:30:28

Interviewer

Was that recognized by the government?

1:30:29

Do you think before they agreed on the 20th sentence?

1:30:31

-

I don't know.

1:30:36

Interviewer

You never met him.

1:30:37

-

No, I did not.

1:30:39

-

You just had your people-

1:30:40

-

Correct.

Interviewer

And that was the impression they gave you,

1:30:43

that he was very cooperative.

1:30:46

-

Oh yeah, absolutely, sure.

1:30:47

Interviewer

And you were to report to that effect too?

1:30:49

-

No, absolutely.

1:30:52

Yeah, we hung his map in the CITF,

1:30:55

so we can lock down locations and routes and where he went,

1:30:57

he went to a number of different camps.

1:31:00

He was, you know, nobody wanted him.

1:31:02

Interviewer

Really?

1:31:04

-

Yeah, I mean, he wasn't a good fighter.

1:31:05

He didn't speak the language,

1:31:07

other than a US passport,

1:31:08

he wasn't a very much value to them.

1:31:10

Interviewer

Do you think he was a threat to the US,

1:31:11

given from the interview that you had with him?

1:31:14

-

Well, by that time he wasn't a threat.

1:31:19

He was in jail, so, you know, and then

1:31:21

that's the challenge with any westerner,

1:31:23

you know, their ability to seamlessly come through.

1:31:28

I mean, whether it's a hex with an Australian passport,

1:31:31

you know, a bag and a bossy with UK passports,

1:31:35

a Katter with a Canadian passport, you know,

1:31:39

or a Michael Walker Lindh with a with a US passport

1:31:42

or any of these others.

1:31:45

That US passport or those Western passports

1:31:47

and blue eyes and blonde hair, or, you know,

1:31:51

what an American look and might draw less scrutiny

1:31:55

than someone who might become with a Yemeni passport.

1:31:57

Interviewer

I guess I wanna go back before we leave.

1:32:05

Guantanamo and then go to what you're doing currently.

1:32:08

But what are your general impressions

1:32:12

Like Guantanamo was starting in '02 to '04,

1:32:14

I think that'd be really valuable for historians

1:32:17

and scholars over time.

1:32:21

You probably saw an evolution that might be very different

1:32:22

over those two and a half years.

1:32:27

Do you have any-

1:32:29

-

Yeah, I have some very distinct opinions on that.

1:32:30

I think it was an opportunity lost.

1:32:34

This was an opportunity for us to show the world,

1:32:37

set an example for the world.

1:32:44

I think, had we treated the detainees with greater dignity

1:32:46

and respect, we would have elicited more information

1:32:51

earlier from them.

1:32:54

I think had we tried detainees in a fair and just process?

1:32:56

Had we released detainees after giving us information rather

1:33:03

than keeping them,

1:33:07

it would have opened up a greater collection of intelligence

1:33:08

in the US, how did we finally break organized crime?

1:33:11

We got people on the inside, we made deals with them,

1:33:15

they gave us information, we took care of them,

1:33:18

they didn't go to jail, they were released, so if someone

1:33:21

actually wants to go home,

1:33:24

what better example is there than having someone

1:33:26

who has been cooperative be sent back home?

1:33:29

Had we let the court system work out the kinks

1:33:34

in the military commission process early on,

1:33:37

we probably have a pretty good process today.

1:33:41

A decade later, we're still struggling,

1:33:43

down there with the process that was created.

1:33:46

So in hindsight, the other piece,

1:33:50

there was no effort to deradicalize or disengage

1:33:54

or rehabilitate detainees there.

1:33:58

And so the fear had always been,

1:34:00

if you took someone who was not guilty

1:34:03

and you placed them with some,

1:34:06

'cause there were some pretty bad people down there.

1:34:07

You placed them together with some pretty bad people

1:34:09

and you did not treat them very well,

1:34:11

and you took them away from their families.

1:34:13

Might you not have created the very adversary

1:34:15

that you feared in the beginning,

1:34:18

even though they might might've been that dangerous

1:34:19

when they got there.

1:34:22

So I think it was really an opportunity lost,

1:34:23

the irony right now is, the best way to leave GTMO,

1:34:25

was to be tried, because those who've been tried

1:34:29

before really aggressions, or pleaded guilty are,

1:34:32

have now been released, they've served their sentences.

1:34:35

And those that have not, are still there.

1:34:37

So, had we had a process where we tried them early,

1:34:43

some might've already served their sentence

1:34:49

and been released.

1:34:50

Interviewer

Why didn't we have a process?

1:34:51

-

Well, there was a great debate.

1:34:53

At the time, there were people who were just

1:34:56

and people have people the public.

1:35:00

Some our senior leaders, have made this adversary much worse

1:35:03

better trained and more dangerous than they are.

1:35:08

Excuse my vernacular, being from Jersey,

1:35:12

but to me, most of them are just a bunch of punks.

1:35:14

I mean, these are street criminals,

1:35:17

this isn't about ideology as a common belief.

1:35:19

This is about where it's not about religion,

1:35:22

they joined Al-Qaeda because it's about identity.

1:35:23

I've done studies of this,

1:35:26

I've talked to a lot of detainees.

1:35:28

Al-Qaeda, Tommaso, Mia, IRA, loyalist, combatants,

1:35:29

kinda around the world talking to them,

1:35:33

since I left the government.

1:35:35

And they'll all say the same thing, it's about identity.

1:35:36

That's why they joined,

1:35:40

and the key is to get them to disengage.

1:35:41

And so had we started releasing detainees back then,

1:35:43

we might've gotten others to disengage

1:35:50

rather than keeping them and having Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib

1:35:52

and the very process that we've

1:35:56

designed and developed be something that continues to be,

1:35:57

something that Al-Qaeda and other groups use to make us

1:36:03

look the way it had Bin Laden was claiming we were.

1:36:09

Interviewer

why didn't we do it back then?

1:36:11

What were you seeing back then that caused us not to

1:36:14

think the way you were describing,

1:36:18

what were you probably thinking back then?

1:36:19

-

Fear.

1:36:21

I mean fear, if you look at

1:36:23

what some of our senior officials were saying,

1:36:26

Al-Qaeda, no, all through the hydraulic cables of planes

1:36:31

to take it down, you know, they had-

1:36:36

Interviewer

You think they believed that?

1:36:37

-

I do, I think the public fear them,

1:36:40

and I think a lot of the challenges we faced,

1:36:42

might be from pop culture.

1:36:48

Because on television or movies they create this

1:36:51

image of what a terrorist is.

1:36:56

They also create an image of what it takes to elicit

1:37:00

information from a terrorist.

1:37:04

And I don't care if it's Matt Damon or Pierce Brosnan

1:37:06

or you name your superhero.

1:37:09

They always can resist giving up information

1:37:11

when torture applied to them,

1:37:13

and what's the first thing they do?

1:37:15

They apply a little bit of pain and they get the information

1:37:17

and save the day.

1:37:19

And so,

1:37:20

I believe that if you don't have

1:37:23

real-world experience and that that's what your environment

1:37:25

has told you is the way to do things,

1:37:29

the show 24 was a big show at that time.

1:37:32

And everyone thought they were, you know,

1:37:35

they were the big CT guys.

1:37:36

And again, I think that there was fear.

1:37:39

And I think there was a fear that should we release somebody

1:37:42

in a bonafide for you never want them blowing anybody up.

1:37:47

But again if you release someone in the Hills of Yemen,

1:37:50

what might their ability be to actually get out of there?

1:37:57

Once you have biometrics on them, you know who they are,

1:37:59

you know, things like that.

1:38:02

And the other difficult part,

1:38:03

having done a lot on disengagement

1:38:05

and looking at different programs around the world,

1:38:07

if you take someone from an environment

1:38:11

and you put them in Guantanamo for a number of years,

1:38:14

and this is as well they went back to the fight

1:38:16

and then you release them back to the same environment

1:38:20

that got Guantanamo on the building and in the beginning.

1:38:22

Well, I'm not sure the results are gonna be any different,

1:38:25

if the environment has changed.

1:38:27

If the tribal chief, then our leader says,

1:38:28

pick up an AK 47 and you're back in this tribe and,

1:38:31

you know, in Pakistan or Yemen or Somalia,

1:38:34

you pick your country where it's where the government

1:38:39

doesn't have hold and in a lot of areas,

1:38:44

they're gonna do whatever that environment tells them to do.

1:38:46

So, but is that a real threat over here is the question.

1:38:48

And then the other question is, have you embolden others

1:38:53

because of your policy on the one?

1:38:57

Have you created a hundred, 'cause you're holding one?

1:38:59

Interviewer

We've picked up for these interviews

1:39:02

that a lot of people believe that the military early on

1:39:05

was actually working by the seat of its pants

1:39:09

that didn't know from day to day

1:39:11

kinda have to lend the operation.

1:39:13

It was each day was coming here with new policies,

1:39:15

that didn't seem to be very clear what policies to impose.

1:39:18

And there was no clear vision from anybody, apparently.

1:39:23

Did you get that impression at all from people you observed?

1:39:26

-

Sure, I mean, you know,

1:39:30

this has never happened to us before, it was difficult.

1:39:32

And like I said, I mean,

1:39:35

I was amazed when, I remember when, when Dave Brant

1:39:36

who went down and told me to see Don Ryder

1:39:40

and see why he wants you.

1:39:43

And I came back and I explained why he was gonna

1:39:44

set up this task force and we're gonna investigate Al-Qaeda,

1:39:47

and he was like, are you telling me that, you know,

1:39:49

Don Ryder wants sub task force to create a team

1:39:51

of military colonel investigators.

1:39:55

Most of whom had not worked terrorist cases before

1:39:57

to investigate Al-Qaeda, to try before some process, cobalts

1:40:00

or commissions that none of us,

1:40:03

are have you heard of or know what it is,

1:40:05

and he expects us to help him.

1:40:08

And I said, that's about it boss,

1:40:09

and of course, he turned me into go down and help him.

1:40:11

But it was I think, a remarkable time in our history

1:40:13

and it was difficult.

1:40:18

And I mean, there's a lot of people who really

1:40:19

tried to do well.

1:40:23

I mean, I admire what Whit Cobb,

1:40:24

tried to put together and Bill Lietzau,

1:40:27

I mean to me, people forget the crisis ran.

1:40:29

It's always easy in hindsight, but I mean,

1:40:32

in those weeks and months after we were attacked,

1:40:35

we wanted to prevent the next attack.

1:40:38

So we didn't know what might be coming,

1:40:40

so people did their best, but it was hard.

1:40:43

I mean, as an investigator, you look at offenses

1:40:45

and elements of offenses.

1:40:48

Well, when we started investigating,

1:40:50

we didn't have offenses.

1:40:52

We didn't, and so we couldn't have elements of offenses,

1:40:53

we didn't know early, do we read them the rights?

1:40:57

Don't read them their rights.

1:40:59

What did we do?

1:41:00

So there was, there was a lot of things

1:41:01

that were done on the fly and that's the nature of war.

1:41:03

And I mean, we did our best.

1:41:07

I feel I served honorably and I feel my colleagues,

1:41:10

you did the best you can, with what you have at the time.

1:41:14

Interviewer

I wanna ask you about the work

1:41:16

you're doing today, and also your thoughts

1:41:18

about Guantanamo closing, but...

1:41:20

Okay, so could you tell us what work you are doing today,

1:41:23

'cause it fits into this project?

1:41:27

-

Sure, well, since I left the government,

1:41:30

I've done a number of things.

1:41:33

One, I worked for an international consulting company,

1:41:35

and I did a research project,

1:41:39

that we were presenting in conjunction

1:41:43

with the 79 general assembly of Interpol in Doha, Qatar,

1:41:45

a few years ago.

1:41:49

And we went around the world talking to former

1:41:51

and incarcerated terrorist.

1:41:54

And we brought together research scientists

1:41:57

and people who had operational experience from the CIA

1:42:01

and NCIS and the FBI.

1:42:05

And we went around the world talking to,

1:42:08

for instance, Ali Amaron, who was one of the Bali bombers,

1:42:10

who serving a life sentence down in jail in Indonesia,

1:42:13

went to Malaysia, went into Singapore, went into France,

1:42:19

went into Norway, went into Sweden, Ireland,

1:42:22

Northern Ireland, the UK, and we went into the jails

1:42:25

and we talked to people who've been released.

1:42:29

We talked to people who were trying to work

1:42:31

on de-radicalization programs, and we looked

1:42:33

at the different policies, different countries had

1:42:36

because we knew, this time it was about 10 years after 9/11.

1:42:38

We're gonna have to determine

1:42:42

what our release strategies are,

1:42:43

what our release policies are,

1:42:45

because although the policy might say,

1:42:46

some of the lawyers in policy positions have concluded that

1:42:53

we can hold Al-Qaeda indefinitely because their religions,

1:42:57

I'm not certain we can, I'm not certain as a nation,

1:43:03

we're prepared to keep someone in custody

1:43:06

and that's gonna be our challenge.

1:43:09

That's our challenge with Guantanamo right now is,

1:43:10

what happens if we try a major, one of the 9/11 suspects

1:43:14

or Cole suspects, nationally that the, you know,

1:43:20

the maritime commander of Al-Qaeda who, you know,

1:43:23

masterminded of the Cole attack

1:43:26

and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed masterminded 9/11,

1:43:28

what happened should they be found, not guilty?

1:43:31

What happened should their sentence not be

1:43:34

for the rest of their life or not be a capital case?

1:43:37

Are we prepared to release those individuals?

1:43:41

And if not, then why are we trying them?

1:43:45

So that's a challenge that we're gonna have as a nation,

1:43:50

about the process we created.

1:43:56

Interviewer

What investigation are you doing,

1:43:59

'cause I think you told me off camera

1:44:01

you're investigating those high profile detainees-

1:44:03

-

Oh, yeah.

1:44:07

Subsequent to that study, I left that company

1:44:07

and I formed my own strategic consulting company,

1:44:13

Club Fed, LLC is my company.

1:44:16

And so now I have a client base of clients

1:44:19

in both the public and private sector.

1:44:22

And I work on kind of knowledge development

1:44:24

and I try to help them better understand context of things.

1:44:27

And when the president Obama took office,

1:44:31

he issued an executive order that basically said

1:44:36

as a nation, we do not torture, we will not torture.

1:44:39

And he asked for a task force to be set up,

1:44:43

a bipartisan task force to look at,

1:44:48

what are the best techniques to lawfully elicit accurate

1:44:51

and reliable information from somebody detained.

1:44:55

And that task force came up with a few recommendations

1:44:58

which have since been implemented.

1:45:01

The task force recommended that the government try

1:45:03

to identify a team of our top interrogators,

1:45:07

so that the next high value target

1:45:13

that we have the best team, the best trained team,

1:45:15

the best equipped team,

1:45:18

whose sole purpose is to elicit information

1:45:20

of intelligence value to our national security.

1:45:23

And that unit was created,

1:45:26

and it's called the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.

1:45:28

And the group is a multi-agency group,

1:45:32

that reports up through the national security staff.

1:45:35

And the director is an executive detailed from the FBI.

1:45:38

One of the deputy directors

1:45:42

and executive details from the CIA

1:45:44

and another deputy director is a executive detail

1:45:46

from the Department of Defense.

1:45:51

And this unit also has another responsibility,

1:45:52

not only to be an operational unit,

1:45:56

but to conduct research.

1:45:58

And there is a lot of scientific research underway

1:46:00

as we speak, and that has been ongoing for years now,

1:46:05

on the best methods to elicit accurate

1:46:08

reliable information, the best methods to aid recall,

1:46:11

the best methods to detect deception.

1:46:15

And I was fortunate enough that this unit

1:46:17

with that responsibility decided to create what they call,

1:46:21

the HIG, the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group

1:46:26

research committee, and this committee meets quarterly.

1:46:29

And we act as a sounding board for the HIG research unit,

1:46:34

looking at the research that's available.

1:46:38

And we've brought into the research committee,

1:46:41

folks from human rights first to get their perspective,

1:46:45

forensic anthropologist, ethicists,

1:46:49

people from the CIA people from NCIS, you know,

1:46:52

it's a very large group,

1:46:56

people who understand research, but it's multidisciplinary.

1:46:59

And so we meet, we just met a few weeks ago

1:47:04

for a quarterly meeting,

1:47:06

where we did a symposium where the best scientists

1:47:08

in the world, renowned scientists from Sweden

1:47:12

and from the UK, you know, from Australia,

1:47:15

from South Africa, have come together and are advising

1:47:19

The Hague on what the best techniques are.

1:47:24

And my challenge, when I was trying to dissuade people

1:47:28

from going down the enhanced techniques,

1:47:33

the abusive techniques was that it was my opinion,

1:47:38

while it was an opinion based on experience.

1:47:43

I was unable to pull out scientific literature

1:47:47

to support my position.

1:47:50

Well, fortunately, the science is in,

1:47:53

and the science tells us that rapport based approaches,

1:47:58

are lesser bit more accurate, reliable information,

1:48:02

it's easier to tact and then there's techniques that we use,

1:48:05

but it's easier to detect deception

1:48:08

through these techniques.

1:48:11

And that subjects are less resistance,

1:48:12

and some of that includes surveys of people

1:48:14

who've done previous high-value detainees targets,

1:48:18

people who've done just a number of interrogations.

1:48:21

And it's quite clear now that the science is in,

1:48:23

that the approaches that we were trying to

1:48:27

encourage people to take were the ones

1:48:29

that the science now supports are the most effective ones.

1:48:32

It's unfortunate that the community did not have benefit

1:48:38

of that research back then.

1:48:42

Interviewer

Were they listened?

1:48:43

-

Well, you know, looking back in hindsight,

1:48:46

I think I might have been possibly a little

1:48:50

more persuasive had it,

1:48:54

I had the science behind what I was saying rather

1:48:56

than just my experience because

1:48:59

and the other unfortunate thing is, and again,

1:49:01

there has been congressional hearings on this.

1:49:04

And just last week, the former,

1:49:07

one of the former general counsels at the CIA indicated

1:49:11

that they misled Congress.

1:49:14

There were people that were claiming these techniques

1:49:17

were accurate.

1:49:19

President Bush had said that we arrested Jose Padilla

1:49:20

as a result of enhanced interrogation techniques.

1:49:25

Well, I'm sure he said that because that's what he was told.

1:49:28

Now, if you simply timeline that out

1:49:31

another investigative technique, you find out

1:49:33

that Jose Padilla was arrested,

1:49:36

before these techniques were even approved.

1:49:38

So either one of two things happen,

1:49:41

these techniques were applied before they were approved,

1:49:45

or somebody got their facts wrong,

1:49:47

and the timeline is different.

1:49:50

So-

1:49:51

-

What do you think?

-

Well, I think clearly they just got the timeline mixed up.

1:49:53

I don't think they did it,

1:49:57

two months before it was approved,

1:49:58

but, you know, it was just people,

1:49:59

you know, trying to cherry pick bits of information.

1:50:01

And I I've seen so much out there about,

1:50:03

how these things were effective, people-

1:50:07

Interviewer

Have you been voice captured

1:50:09

because of her harsh tone.

1:50:11

-

Oh, absolutely not.

1:50:12

No, absolutely not.

1:50:13

There whether it's Senate committees looking at it,

1:50:16

whether it's people I know,

1:50:20

the CIA own inspector general looked at it,

1:50:22

The Hague has looked at it.

1:50:26

We cannot find any bonafide fact,

1:50:28

that enhanced interrogation techniques resulted

1:50:33

in actionable intelligence of any value.

1:50:36

And especially any that you can't link to something else.

1:50:39

And even if it did, might you got that information

1:50:43

even quicker, if you actually use rapport

1:50:46

but because that's what the science tells you.

1:50:48

Interviewer

Did you do any interrogation

1:50:50

or were you watching interrogation of KSM

1:50:53

or any of the other high value detainees?

1:50:56

-

No, when I was in the CITF,

1:50:58

they were not at Guantanamo, not that I was aware of.

1:51:02

And I had already left in 2004,

1:51:05

but when they got transferred there,

1:51:09

but there was also quite a controversial point.

1:51:10

And I had some debates at Langley with the CIA about it,

1:51:15

because our position, the CITF was give us access,

1:51:18

let us do the interrogations.

1:51:23

You can still have the Intel, don't do what you're doing

1:51:24

because what are your alternatives?

1:51:27

What is your, what are you, what strategically

1:51:29

what are you gonna do when you're done?

1:51:31

And I had some quite heated discussions at the CIA

1:51:34

about what are your, what are your options?

1:51:39

You're, you're gonna do things to him

1:51:42

that will most likely make them untryable

1:51:44

or at least difficult to try as we're seeing now.

1:51:47

And are you prepared to then hold them indefinitely

1:51:50

as a CIA now, a correction bureau, or are you gonna

1:51:54

give them to another country who may do something to him

1:51:58

that's actually a violation of US law?

1:52:01

Interviewer

How did they respond to you?

1:52:02

-

Not very well.

1:52:04

-

Meaning?

-

Some debate and argument I would say,

1:52:09

and kind of discuss, you know,

1:52:10

the folks on the Intel side at the time that were debating

1:52:13

felt very passionate about their mission

1:52:16

that they needed to get the Intel, and they didn't care

1:52:18

about anyone else or any second order effect.

1:52:20

Our approach was, we needed to look at everyone's equities.

1:52:25

So that's the thing, JTF-GTMO, only wanted the Intel,

1:52:28

they didn't care what we could prosecute or not.

1:52:31

CIA didn't care about prosecuting or not,

1:52:34

our job is just the Intel.

1:52:36

We cared about the Intel and prosecuting,

1:52:37

So, and as a career, CT guy, national security professional,

1:52:40

what's the strategic, what's the consequence,

1:52:45

five 10 years down the road, if this continues?

1:52:49

So I was trying to look strategically and that that's

1:52:52

I think, again, one of the problems we had at that time, too

1:52:55

many people were thinking tactically and not strategically.

1:52:59

So, and that's what I, when I advise a lot of my clients

1:53:02

is we need to transition from tactical approaches

1:53:06

to strategic approaches.

1:53:10

Interviewer

Were you ever in Camp Seven?

1:53:11

Where they were holding that high-value detainees?

1:53:13

-

I don't think so.

1:53:18

If I was, it wasn't complete at the time.

1:53:18

I had gone down there one time after I left CITF,

1:53:21

when I was helping the OARDEC, but still,

1:53:24

that was still the 2004 timeframe.

1:53:26

So I don't believe that facility was complete at then.

1:53:29

Interviewer

Could you tell the audience what OARDEC is?

1:53:31

-

The Office for the Administrative Review

1:53:34

of the Detention of Enemy Combatants

1:53:36

Interviewer

And what was it's purpose?

1:53:38

-

That was the purpose that the deputy secretary of defense

1:53:40

when the secretary Navy was shifting over Gordon England,

1:53:45

he was charged with creating some capability to try

1:53:49

to see if they can develop a process,

1:53:53

one to kind of codify, keeping a detainee

1:53:55

and two, try to determine if detainees could be released.

1:54:00

Interviewer

Were you involved in OARDEC too?

1:54:04

-

I was involved in helping them set it up,

1:54:06

but then I left the OARDEC to go back to NCIS

1:54:09

to be the deputy assistant director for counter-terrorism.

1:54:12

Interviewer

Is there anything that,

1:54:14

before I ask you about closing Guantanamo,

1:54:17

is there anything between the years you left

1:54:19

and joining NCIS and then now your own project

1:54:21

that I didn't ask you that might be interesting for viewers?

1:54:25

-

I don't think so.

1:54:29

I think we covered quite a bit.

1:54:30

Interviewer

Could you, so do you think,

1:54:35

given what you've told us you think Guantanamo,

1:54:38

will ever we'll close in Obama's administration,

1:54:40

we'll have a close or-

1:54:44

-

Well, it's a little difficult with a polarized Congress.

1:54:45

I mean, president Obama has tried to close Guantanamo,

1:54:49

but legally the ability to bring those terrorists

1:54:52

to the United States has been prohibited by the Congress.

1:54:56

So we're in a position now where there is not an alternative

1:55:01

to Guantanamo for president Obama.

1:55:05

The only hope is that we can make these trials fair

1:55:09

and just, and transparent,

1:55:12

so that we are actually demonstrating

1:55:15

that we promote the rule of law and

1:55:18

that we're treating people fairly and justly.

1:55:21

But right now, you know, there was a time when I said

1:55:24

absolutely, I mean, it became a rallying cry.

1:55:27

And the argument that we cannot try

1:55:30

these terrorist in the States, I think is just ludicrous.

1:55:32

The Federal District Court system is totally capable

1:55:35

of doing someone has done so for a years so,

1:55:38

they certainly have the capability to do so.

1:55:41

The challenge is the same challenge that Guantanamo

1:55:45

is having now is, things are discoverable,

1:55:48

and right now that the debate going on right now

1:55:51

at the pre-trial hearings are about they wanna photograph

1:55:55

the scars on KSM's ankles and wrists,

1:55:58

for the court to see for, when he was in CIA custody.

1:56:01

They wanna detail the injuries of another detainee

1:56:06

down there was on trial who was in CIA custody.

1:56:08

So these abuses are coming to light more and more,

1:56:11

and of course the federal court rules and procedures

1:56:16

would ensure that they are brought to the forefront

1:56:20

and military commissions are still enacting rulings.

1:56:24

That according to a lot of lawyers that are covering it

1:56:28

and there's not a lot of people covering Guantanamo

1:56:31

right now, if you read what the writing,

1:56:33

we would tend to indicate there's a lot less transparency

1:56:37

going on down there,

1:56:40

than certainly they believe was promised.

1:56:41

Interviewer

And the people who weren't gonna be tried

1:56:42

'cause only a handful will be tried.

1:56:45

Those people and this 84, who are supposed to be secure

1:56:48

for release, but there's another group of as many as

1:56:52

40 or 60, who are just in limbo, will they

1:56:55

always be in Guantanamo and die in Guantanamo

1:56:58

from your perspective?

1:57:02

-

Again, that's a policy decision.

1:57:03

Again, I, you know, I understand the argument that we,

1:57:06

have having talked to a lot of military

1:57:10

and international lawyers about, you know, the rules of war,

1:57:13

the rules of land warfare, where you have a belligerent,

1:57:17

but after World War II, as I like to say,

1:57:21

I've heard Bill Lietzau brief before,

1:57:25

we told the farmers, okay, war's over,

1:57:27

we won, go back to your farm.

1:57:29

And we try just the leaders,

1:57:32

and that's not what we did with Guantanamo.

1:57:34

We just picked up everyone, and it's not just the leaders,

1:57:37

we've tried, and so now the challenge is

1:57:41

when is the war over?

1:57:45

Well, the president Obama and the government is now

1:57:47

winding down the war in Afghanistan.

1:57:52

We already say the war in Iraq is over.

1:57:55

So again, you need an international lawyer to do

1:57:58

an assessment on what's the legal basis.

1:58:01

Now that even your war that was created to go

1:58:05

after these people, who's now considered over.

1:58:08

Bin Laden's dead, the leaderships, you know, in custody,

1:58:11

most of the hierarchy and in a lot of those others have

1:58:16

been neutralized out there

1:58:19

through a number of different means.

1:58:20

So can we sustain a policy of indefinite detention or not?

1:58:22

I think it's difficult to,

1:58:28

if we're not gonna accept Russia doing it or China doing it

1:58:30

or another country doing.

1:58:37

How can we have an exception list type position,

1:58:38

and tell others they shouldn't do what we're doing.

1:58:43

So it's quite a challenge for us.

1:58:45

Interviewer

So is there something I didn't ask you,

1:58:48

that you'd like to share and maybe close with just

1:58:52

your thoughts about what Guantanamo is to the world.

1:58:54

What do you think is the message to the world?

1:59:00

-

Yeah, I mean, what, what I'd like to close with is,

1:59:04

that while most of the media attention for anything is about

1:59:08

the negative things that have gone on.

1:59:15

I'm very proud of the CITF, the people I served with,

1:59:19

the people I worked for, in their stand against this.

1:59:23

I'm proud of the ability to keep the Department of Defense

1:59:28

out of waterboarding, down at GTMO,

1:59:33

I'm proud of those in the chain of command

1:59:36

that that helped make sure that that didn't happen.

1:59:38

I wish that people would look at those that served honorably

1:59:44

and that did their duty as they understood it,

1:59:48

that understood that the oath we take to officers

1:59:51

to the Constitution of the United States,

1:59:53

it's not to a political leader,

1:59:55

it's to some principles and some values.

1:59:57

And I know scores of people who stood tall

1:59:59

and did that and said, we're not gonna do this.

2:00:03

Not just no, but hell no.

2:00:06

And we're gonna stop anybody who does,

2:00:08

so that would be my closing thought.

2:00:10

Interviewer

That's great, that's great.

2:00:14

Wait, we need 20 seconds of-

2:00:17

-

White noise time.

-

Yes

2:00:20

Man

Okay, begin room tone.

2:00:22

Okay, that'll do it.

2:00:40

-

Thanks so much.

Fallon, Mark - Interview master file

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