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- [00:00]
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- [01:51]
Alan Katz
This podcast it's a Costard and Touchstone production.
- [02:01]
John Kiriakou
Hi, I'm John Kiriakou. Welcome to Dead Drop. What makes a spy tick? As always, we thank you for listening and especially we thank you for liking, rating, reviewing, commenting on and sharing the podcast with your friends, your family. Hey, share it with total strangers too. I appreciate that we're on a mission here to make the world a better place through storytelling. The truth we believe, will absolutely set you free. And if ever the world needed some truth telling, well, it's right now. In this episode, I'm going to introduce you to a columnist, commentator and national security and foreign policy expert by the name of Glenn Carl Glenn's another former CIA officer who, like me was involved in counterterrorism operations during the war on terror. Glenn spent two decades working clandestine assignments for the agency. Also, like me, Glenn opposed the enhanced interrogation techniques that the CIA insisted were legal and and he refused to participate in them. What's more, Glenn insisted we were deliberately misrepresenting our opponents to ourselves. In a piece that he wrote for the Washington Post back in 2008, Glenn wrote that jihadists are, quote, small, lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents, unquote. And that, quote, we do not face a global jihadist movement but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of al Qaeda. In 2011, Glenn wrote the an education. While abu Zubaydah is part of that story, the interrogator describes the physical interrogation of another prisoner who we believed was part of the Al Qaeda leadership. As you'll hear, Glenn struggled and still struggles with the official version of events versus how events actually happened. He's a former and founding member of veteran intelligence professionals for sanity. The other voice you'll hear asking questions during this conversation belongs to Alan Katz. Alan produces and co writes the podcast. Thank you for joining us, Glenn. Would you mind giving us a thumbnail of how you got into all this?
- [04:07]
Glenn Carl
John I was a career CIA officer. I was an operations officer, which to a layman is the. They're the officers who we go to watch in movies. You know, we are the real life versions of James Bond but rarely wear a tuxedo. The women are rarely supermodels and there's a lot of paperwork involved in the job. Some of my colleagues actually did jump out of airplanes and do really wild stuff. I generally didn't do that. My job in my training and my background was to speak to sophisticated women in cocktail dresses while clinking wine glasses in salons in Paris. I was highly competent and trained for that, of course, and that's said tongue in cheek, but is also true. I was a. I am a Europeanist and the job does involve the cocktail stuff that you see. I've only been in a casino four times in my life. However, like many officers in the agency, if not most, as terrorism became more significant to the United States, this is even years prior to 911 and then certainly after 9 11, I was absorbed in, drawn into this whole world. In fact, seven or eight years before 9 11, I started to become involved in terrorist related operations.
- [05:26]
Alan Katz
This is Alan Katz speaking. We tend to forget that the twin towers bombing Wasn't the first attempt to take the towers down. What year did they plant that bomb in the parking structure beneath the towers?
- [05:37]
Glenn Carl
Yeah, it was 1993. And it's, it's roughly then, it was a little after in my case that I started to become involved in terrorist things. And, and then the, the second half of my career was all terrorism, all the time. And I, and my last position was, it's a long winded title, I apologize in advance, was as the acting and then the Deputy National Intelligence Officer for transnational threats on the National Intelligence Council. And what that means to the uninitiated, which is everybody, is that the, the one body in the American intelligence community which has 17 agencies, the one that speaks for all 17 and presents the, the assessed assessment of the community and the one body that reports directly to the President and serves his requirements or hers directly is the National Intelligence Council. It's very small. There are only 12 national intelligence officers, one of whom is for transnational threats, which doesn't only mean terrorism, but in the context of the world that we've all lived in, it meant 97% of my time was on, on terrorism, almost literally about 97%. That narcotics and, and organized crime are the other two main portfolios. So that's how I ended up in it and in being drawn into it. And I worked extensively for years and years on Afghanistan on, and then on all Muslim terrorist issues. And that was as one of the most senior really analysts in the community, which is unusual for an operations, a field officer. And because I was a field officer, I was also drawn into the operations. Well, I conducted operations for years before being the National Intelligence Officer. And I was drawn into the Enhanced Interrogation Program and interrogated someone I may not name, but who was one of the top, believed to be one of the top people in Al Qaeda.
- [08:07]
John Kiriakou
Enhanced interrogation wasn't good for anyone in the end, was it?
- [08:10]
Glenn Carl
I could never even convince my mother to believe what I said. And no one, the average person simply doesn't believes what they feel like believing and will think that it is a sign of wisdom to reflexively disbelieve whatever a CIA officer says, which is silly. Contrary to that conventional view, the CIA has never been in the business of interrogation, doesn't do them historically, has no background training, it's not part of the mission and we didn't do it. Now there are exceptions to that. During the Vietnam War the CIA was involved in interrogations. After 9 11, the CIA of course, in the Enhanced Interrogation Program that became a big time focus of Our energies. Well, the CIA was not either in the business of interrogation or of enhanced interrogation, which is of course a euphemism taken directly from the Nazis. Literally, literally of torture. I can give you a long detailed history of our involvement or not. My, one of my first jobs in the agency, and perhaps the most controversial one was I was a. An assistant to the head of what was called the Central American Task Force. And that was the part of the agency and the United States intelligence community that was leading our effort frankly to overthrow the Sandinistas and to support the Contras. And in that mission, and during that time, the. The CIA was accused of having trained. What insurgents in El Salvador to garrot nuns and for the Contras in Nicaragua to do the same thing. And that actually is not true. We were trying to stop people from garroting anybody. But that did involve us and associate us with people who were doing terrible things. And it was assorted situation in general, but we actually didn't do torture, which once again no one will actually believe. But that was in the early mid-80s, early in my career, and then life went on and the agency had no, to my knowledge, certainly no staff, no training, no approach, no mission to do any of these things. And then after 9, 11, after September 11, 2001, very quickly, within a matter of weeks, the US government, in particular the CIA, found itself with increasingly large numbers of detainees, largely people who were taken prisoner on the battlefield in Afghanistan. But not only. And the mission of the CIA is to obtain intelligence. And an enemy combatant or a terrorist or someone who is shooting at you or involved in a group that you don't like, probably has intelligence that you want to find out. And so the assignment was, well, okay, who does? Who collects the intelligence? It's the CIA. And so then the issue was, well, how do we do this? And the instructions came pretty explicitly from frankly the office of the Vice President. This is what you will do. And that's how the CIA came to be involved in quote, enhanced interrogation.
- [12:02]
Alan Katz
But as you pointed out, CIA had no mandate to interrogate.
- [12:06]
Glenn Carl
That's right, the FBI does, and they're very good at it. The US Military does, and at least has formal training procedures, parameters and protocol standards and so on. But the CIA did not.
- [12:21]
Alan Katz
You learn practices and standards and protocols and where the red lines are.
- [12:26]
Glenn Carl
Especially you play as you practice, you fight as you train, and you interrogate as you're, as you're taught how, or if not, then you wing it and all hell can go crazy go happen. Now, whether it was literally Dick Cheney or someone from his office, or as is certain, the small number, and we're really talking a dozen people even. It's restricted even to fewer than those of neoconservatives in the Bush administration, largely from the office of the Vice President and in the Department of Justice. I was not a firsthand witness to the very top exchanges, but I know how this happened. We, the CIA itself with detainees, and
- [13:17]
Interviewer (possibly Alan Katz or another host)
in fact, George Tenant specifically said he needed to brief the President to get the President's signature. And Cheney said, you brief me, I'll brief the President. It wasn't until the release of the torture report that any doubt was even cast on the notion that maybe Cheney never briefed the President. There's always been. Historically, there's been this competition between the FBI and the CIA, and many of us formerly with the CIA, it's hard for us to compliment the FBI. But if there's one thing the FBI is really great at, it's interrogations. And they've been doing it since the Nuremberg trials. They're, they're well trained. They have decades, generations of experience. And you compare that to somebody in the office of the Vice President just picking up the phone, calling the CIA and say, start doing interrogation.
- [14:16]
Glenn Carl
That's literally the case. That's not reductive, that is not inaccurate or unfair. That's pretty much how it happened. We, the intelligence community, which is really the CIA and the military special forces, we found ourselves with these detainees, and it's a legitimate objective and requirement. How are we going to obtain the intelligence from these people? Okay, that's fine. Well, John or I, you know, we elicit, we talk, we might. We know how to question. I mean, that's all relevant, but that's not an interrogation. George Tenet, as John, I think, started to explain before said to the White House, we aren't doing anything without clear guidance. We are not going to break the law. We do not break the law because. And deputy directors of the CIA quoted these conversations that they had had and the Tenant had had. To me, they said what we. And this is John will nod, I'm sure on this. We, the CIA, are always left, given the dirty job and that, left holding the bag. And we're the ones who end up suffering the way John did, or a lot of my colleagues were indicted, et cetera, et cetera. So that's not going to happen. We follow the rules, we follow the law. What guidance do we have in the office of the Vice President? Cheney said, absolutely, you're absolutely right, dad. Gummett, we'll get you the guidance. And they then went to the Department of Justice and they spoke to two political hacks, one of whom is still a professor, shockingly, at Berkeley, John Yu. And the other guy's name slipped my mind, doesn't matter. And they said, we need guidance. And so the guidance became. Was a memorandum which has since come to be called the torture memorandum.
- [16:02]
Alan Katz
When Cheney's office is looking for guidance, they, I'm assuming they, they. They picked the guidance that they went to.
- [16:10]
Glenn Carl
So they picked a guide to provide the guidance they wanted.
- [16:13]
Alan Katz
They must have known that, John, you was going to give them exactly the guidance in exact words that they wanted.
- [16:19]
Glenn Carl
Absolutely. The OVP Office of Vice President went back to Tenet and they said, here's the guidance. And Tenet said, this is cleared by the Department of Justice. And. And they said, absolutely. This is all kosher, it's legal, blessed. What metaphor you want to use or analogy. And Tenet goes, okay, and this I don't know firsthand. Cheney went in to speak to President Bush and said, here's the guidance we're giving to the CIA on how to conduct interrogations. And Bush asked the correct, appropriate question. He said, has justice approved this? Has this been cleared with the Department of Justice? Oh, yes, sir. The Bush then went, okay. And that came to the guidance and the way that came down to me. And this is verbatim, this is firsthand. This is my life. When I was brought into the interrogation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The fellow who was to brief me, I found in the hallway in the counterterrorism center. It took me two hours to find him because he was running around. I was running around this and that. I said, you know, I've been assigned to this operation. I'm going out to the field to take part in interrogation with this fellow. I was told to see you and you. And he said, and these are, this is one of those moments like we all, if we're old enough, we remember what we were doing when Kennedy was shot or when the space shuttle blew up or when the Red Sox won the World Series. I mean, this, this sort of thing. We're standing in the ctc, so the, the hallway was sort of the divider cubicle things, you know, John, you know what I'm talking about because it's a large bullpen, but it was against the wall. And so we're standing close and he tooks me in the chest as he talks. And he said, you will do whatever it takes to get him to talk. Do you understand? And I physically recoiled and I said, this is verbatim. And I said, we don't do that. Said, well, we do now. And I thought, holy shit. And I said, I went just, I said, well, we need at least a presidential finding to do something like that. Now a presidential finding is a term of art. It's only for the most sensitive operations in the intelligence community and certainly the CIA, which means that you have to have the direct approval, authorization and order of the President of the United States signed by him. I was familiar with findings from my career, but no finding had directly come to me in, in my assignment. I was part of an operation that had findings, you know, and so on. And so I said, we would need it at least, you know, I'm a pretty experienced officer at this point. I'm 20 years into my career almost. I said, we would need at least a presidential finding to do something like that. And he sort of goes, that's sort of self satisfied and passes his chest and pretends to have like an envelope. And he says, we have it, quote, we are covered. And I thought, Jesus. And what he was referring to was what has come to be called the torture memo that we just mentioned a couple minutes ago.
- [19:37]
Alan Katz
He's pushing torture. You're resisting. Are you aware at the time as you're having this conversation what he's pushing?
- [19:44]
Glenn Carl
Oh, never in any conversation I had was the word torture used, ever understood.
- [19:51]
Alan Katz
It's a dirty, dirty word.
- [19:53]
Glenn Carl
I use the word torture at some point, but no one ever, because we don't torture. We, we interrogate.
- [19:58]
Alan Katz
But were you clear on the 800 pound gorilla in the room?
- [20:03]
Glenn Carl
It was instantaneously clear to me what we were talking about. And I thought in that millisecond, I realized quite consciously this is not ex post facto justification, rationalization, recreated recollection. This is exactly what I thought at the time, in real time, what I just said to you. And my thought was, this is the greatest, the most significant moment, the decisive moment in my career, my career, I think, in the history of the Agency and one of the significant moments in American history. I was explicitly conscious of that at that moment. No question about it, I was. Colleagues of mine were not. And not that they were being duplicitous, but they were either less experienced or didn't have the same background I had, or some others were not, but some other colleagues were as aware as I.
- [21:02]
Alan Katz
Did you see it coming?
- [21:04]
Glenn Carl
Oh, no, it came completely out of the blue. We've, we've detained someone we believe to Be a member of Al Qaeda. And we want to find out information. This is. Sure, this is exciting. This is great. This is important. That's what you wanted. You want to be one of the people doing significant things, well, that's fine. But then you will do whatever it takes. That was physically, actually and literally. It was stunning to me then. It remains stunning. Our colleagues sincerely believe this. But the conversation went on. I said, well, Jesus, we need at least to find it. He says, well, we have it. This is literally what I thought. I don't give a shit if the President orders this. The President doesn't get to order this. Oh. But then I thought at the same time, okay, I'm the equivalent of a Lieutenant Colonel. I've been briefed for two minutes and I have been informed, appropriately, properly, that the President, the Vice President, the Director of the CIA, the Attorney General, the Office of the General Counsel of the CIA, all have deliberated, decided that this is legal, appropriate, necessary, and still ordered it. So who the hell am I? A two minute briefed Lieutenant Colonel to challenge the. The weight of the entire process of institutions of the United States government, which I had known and taken in most cases accurately to believed upheld the law. The law embodied principles and on the whole was a. Not just a technically legal, but a seeking to embody a corpus of principles. In my whole life, down to my level and up to the President, instantaneously, I'm going to say, no, this is all wrong now. I mean, the burden on any individual is almost unbearable to anyone. And this, which is why you're talking to two of the, probably, I don't know, five officers, whoever said, what the fuck? You must disobey an illegal order. You must. Otherwise you are breaking the law. The overwhelming majority of my colleagues are honorable, principled men and women. There's no question. But circumstances can be impossible. And even if you can see clearly, it takes a Charles de Gaulle, and there's only one de Gaulle per century, you know, and per country, to be able to challenge the weight of those moments. And even if you want to, you know, John and I weren't quite the. This is not quite a perfect analogy, but imagine you're a German soldier and you're assigned to some camp and you're told, anyone who comes out, you shoot. Anyone who goes in, you shoot. And if you don't do that, we shoot you. That's the order. Okay? And you're standing at the death camp. What are you going to do? You think this is hideous? I can't allow this to happen. Well, your choice is either you will die or you become complicit. So it continues to get worse. The spiral continues downward. So I said, and this is all in the first briefing. I haven't gotten on a plane or done anything yet, right? We're two minutes into my involvement, but I was quite explicitly conscious of all this. So I said to my. I thought, I don't care if the President orders this. The President doesn't get to order this. He can't do that. But I thought, okay, you know, I can't challenge the entire jump up and down this instant and challenge the, you know, at this second. So I said, well, suppose something happens that I consider unacceptable. And he looks at me with disdain. Then he says, well, if something happens you don't like, you step out of the room. And if you step out of the room, you didn't see anything happen. And so nothing happened, right? And I thought, Jesus Christ, this is just insane. This is, this is becoming, this is Kafka. This is, this is insane here. And so then I said something that case officers don't normally say. And I think John will probably smile with this because at this point I had been informed the lawyers had been involved in this, you know, and, and when something gets to the. An operations officer, it's all theoretically in, in most cases, almost always it's been staffed out and the whole sort of thing. Then I raised the question that case officers don't normally think about. I said, well, what about the Geneva Convention?
- [25:51]
Interviewer (possibly Alan Katz or another host)
Oh, my God, how many times did I say that in 2002?
- [25:55]
Glenn Carl
And, and the guy looked at me and this is the. Became the title of the first chapter of my book. And he says with disdain, he goes, well, which flag do you serve? My thought was, well, up yours, buddy. But it was clear that the conversation was not going any further. So I went, fine. The conversation ends. And the first thing I did, highly unusual for me, because normally this, well, normally this circumstance had never occurred to me. I immediately from that conversation went to find the. I don't remember if it was the counterterrorism centers or the Mideast near east divisions, because I was involved with them. Lawyer, the Office of General Counsel for the office. And I. And whom I knew. And, And I walk in, usually you want to avoid lawyers because their job is to say no all the time, you know. And so I, I closed the door. Highline usual in the agency, closed door conversation. He's very sensitive. And I said, listen, what is the definition of torture? And then he gave me the thumbnail operative definition which served for case officers in the field, which is derived from John Hughes torture memorandum. And he said, if a measure used in interrogation does not cause vital organ failure and. Or death. And I distinctly remember the phrase and. Or I thought, what ridiculous. This is this. So if a measure does not cause vital organ failure and or death, it is not torture. And I was, I couldn't believe my ears. And I said, okay, so if I whack you in the head with a baseball bat and you come to, that's not torture? And he goes, no. And I said, if I break your arm, it will heal. So that's not torture either. He goes, that's correct. And he said, vital organ failure and or death. And I thought, that is just the stupidest, most insane thing I've ever heard. But those were the instructions that that was the guidance and it was not
- [27:58]
Alan Katz
for you to question where their guidance came from.
- [28:03]
Glenn Carl
Well, I had asked, you know, and had been told that it came. Come from the President. And I thought, holy smoke. That's how I was first brought into the operation. And then I thought very clearly, did I think at that moment I thought, well, this is, this is absolutely without question the great moment of my career. When, when I have to decide, when, when do you say no, what do you do? What, what is one to do? And I thought, when? Okay, what am I going to do? And, and I talked to the lawyer and then I found an officer who had been involved in interrogations. And I spoke with her. She was very good officer. And I, and I just, I thought, well, holy smoke, you know, we, I, we have someone really important. It is important we find out information from this guy. But how can I do this honorably? And what will I. What will I do? And then, then I flew off to do it.
- [29:10]
Interviewer (possibly Alan Katz or another host)
When you expressed reticence, Glenn, did you end up with any career pushback? And the reason I ask is because when I was first approached, I've never gone public with who I went to see, but I went up to the seventh floor and spoke with somebody and he told me, run screaming from the room, this is a terrible idea. It's going to wreck everybody. When I said that I didn't want to be involved, the leadership of the Counterterrorism center decided that that was worthy of punishment. Here I had just come back as Chief of Ops in Islamabad, led this capture and was passed over for promotion. And when I went into Deputy Chief CTC's office for my feedback, my panel feedback, because I was absolutely stunned that I had been Passed over for my 15. He said that the consensus was, and these were his words, I had demonstrated a shocking lack of commitment to counterterrorism. But I wonder if this was also a drag on your career. You didn't jump right into this with both feet like they wanted everybody to do.
- [30:19]
Glenn Carl
I think the answer is no. But that's because I had other problems. There are other things happening in my career and personal life which were really, really dramatic. But it is also clear I've only been able to piece together after I left the agency in real time. I was. There were forces at play upon me and my operation and the larger issues that I was not completely aware of. I had enemies on substance and on personal level, overlapping but not identical sets that affected my success or lack of success in working the, the agency and to handle this operation as I wanted. And that's always the case. There are always, you know, various power centers and conflicts, personal and office based. But there were forces that were quite hostile to my approach, various approaches. And they were sincerely opposed. And they were not just out to get me, but because I opposed them. Then they wanted to get me because I was creating headaches for them on the operation. And in the really brief nutshell is I came quickly. I was the only person who had ever met with this person. I was meeting with him for 17 hours a day, every effing day. And I came to conclude that pretty much everything that we had assessed about him was wrong. Holy smoke. And you don't just sort of show up and say, okay, you guys, you know, the, the 12 years of work that 17 different officers have done and the three rooms of files on this and the assessment of the sub office of the ctc and CTC is general and NE also concurring. All of you guys are wrong. I'm the only guy who's right. And so you have to change everything you've done. I mean, you can't really do that. You know, one of the things that an officer has to learn is how to work the director of operations and the agency. And so you, you know, at first you say, well, you know, the date recorded for a certain meeting was not June 16, it was June 23. And you get them to accept that. And then you say, well, you know, his middle name is actually Abdul instead of Muhammad or whatever the hell it is. And you get them to accept that. And then they start saying, well, hey, you know, Carl actually he's, you know, he's on the ball in this. And you start to get credibility. And then you get an ally who's not directly in the chain of command who says, you know, our assessment concurs with Glenn and, you know, case officer Carl. And so then you can change maybe how a certain report is disseminated or recorded or questions that you will ask. And then you start to own the operation and to shift perceptions, reality. But you can't just go in and say, you guys are all totally messed up. In my case, the assessment was that he was one of the top guys in Al Qaeda, and I accept that. I mean, there was a room full of reporting that had led to this assessment. And I knew my colleagues to be diligent, knowledgeable, honorable, and to challenge our assumptions as a part of our routine. That's. So I had faith in our assessment, and I went out and I started to talk to the guy and, you know, on and on, and I started to find little consistencies and then larger ones, and. And I concluded that, you know, we. We had detained the man we wanted to detain, and he was. Which was not always the case. Sometimes, you know, they wanted to. To render. To kidnap Glenn Carl, and they. They did. But there's some other person named Glenn Carl who's actually. There actually is an astrophysicist in California someplace named Glenn Carl. And that poor guy was, you know, put a bag over his head and taken away because he had the same name that I do. That was not the case in my operation. The person we wanted was the person we got, but he was not the person we thought he was. And I am convinced, you know, I'm confident that my assessment is correct. But you do get into some subjective
- [34:50]
Alan Katz
assessments, just for clarity's sake. What did you think he was before you realized he wasn't?
- [34:56]
Glenn Carl
Well, what the. What the agency had assessed him to be, which is one of the very, very most senior officers of Al Qaeda, one of the top, top. Several people, which he was not. No, no.
- [35:14]
Alan Katz
What was he instead?
- [35:15]
Glenn Carl
That's where the big argument and the murkiness comes from. I'm pretty confident that he was in the circumstance similar to the owner of corner variety store who receives a visitor who says, you know, hey, you know, you have great displays here. I like the donuts. And, you know, I'll have a hot dog, too. It would be terrible if anything happened. I really want you to be able to serve the community going forward. Oh, well, thank you very much. You say, yeah, I need to. I have to protect you. So, you know, if you just give me a little retainer of, you know, $500 a month, then. Then everything will be fine. And if you say no, you know your store's burned down. And if you say yes, you're part of this network. Now, in some ways, that was the circumstance of the fellow I had met, but it's also true. He was not Little Miss Muffet. He was not an innocent, and he did know who he was dealing with. And he wasn't a member of the. Of Al Qaeda, and he was not a jihadist or a terrorist. But he wasn't only coerced. Even when he was coerced, he and his culture, the world he lived in, shared many of the views of and acted in ways supportive of jihadists. What do you do with that? That's like saying, you know, all Palestine are all Palestinians members of Hamas because they hate Jews. Well, you know, no, but it's not good that they hate Jews. But we can't. We can't detain 2 million of them. So it's. It's murky in multiple. At multiple levels. But he was not a member of. He was not one of the top members of Al Qaeda. He was not a member of Al Qaeda. He was not a jihadist. And he was a victim of where he lived while being a participant in the values of where he lived, which are antithetical to, inimical to, and a threat to much of what gives meaning to all of our lives.
- [37:24]
Interviewer (possibly Alan Katz or another host)
That is not an uncommon theme. You know, it was the same with Abu Zubaydah, where we didn't have any idea until 2007 that he had a first cousin also named Abu Zubaydah. And so if you look at these files, this looks like a terrorist Superman. He's in Jordan, he's in Afghanistan. He's in Montana. He's talking to the FBI. The day later, he's. He's in Kuwait. We couldn't keep track of him, and that's why we made these assumptions that turned out to be universally false. He was not a member of Al Qaeda. He was not even a senior facilitator for Al Qaeda. He facilitated, certainly, as Glenn just noted, this other prisoner, you know, these. These were bad guys, sure, but they weren't the terrorist supermen that we thought they were.
- [38:20]
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- [40:00]
John Kiriakou
If you're enjoying Dead Drop, and of course we hope you are, then while you're waiting for new episodes, I'd like to suggest another great grand granular story podcast from the Costard and Touchstone family. Just the Photographer with David Swanson does for photojournalism what Dead Drop does for spies. Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist David Swanson tells you stories his amazing news photos just can't what it felt like being in all those dangerous places like war zones and natural disasters, doing his job, taking pictures. Having been to a few war war zones myself, I can tell you this Just the photographer will put you right there on the ground right next to David inside his head. In fact, it's a hell of a podcast and you can find it wherever you find your favorite podcasts or at costard and touchstone.com There's a link in this episode's show Notes. In fact, you'll find lots of great story podcasts at Costard and Touchstone like the Donor, A DNA DNA Horror Story, the Hall Closet, Sage Wellness within and the how not to Make a Movie podcast. Who knows, your next favorite podcast might be just a click away. Now back to Dead drop.
- [41:13]
Alan Katz
You eventually got yourself away from the enhanced interrogation operation.
- [41:20]
Glenn Carl
Well, two things happened. I mean, because it was a. A surge assignment. It was not a permanent duty assignment. I was not, you know, I was for. I was assigned in France for four and a half years for. For this. I was drafted because we needed people to do urgent tasks and someone had to fill them. So. And it was also, you know, I was told I had to leave within 24 hours of being notified of the operation. I would be gone for a minimum of 30 days, possibly 90 days or longer. I couldn't tell my family where I was going or have any communication with them at all. So all very exciting. But this is not an easy life for most people in my personal circumstances. I had a. My wife at the time had nearly died. She just come out of a coma. I had been told just a couple weeks before one night in the hospital. We will know in the morning if your wife has survived. She survived, but she had real. All sorts of challenges. And because we had, at that time, seven and five year olds and I was essentially a single parent because I either had a hospitalized or a largely incapacitated spouse to leave for four months, someplace with little kids who my wife in all ways couldn't really take care of. This is a. These are, you know, everyone has their challenges. And so the agency is as compassionate as an institution can be, and it won't send you away forever. And so you're rotated out after, you know, a number of months. So that was one certain one thing. The other was these people I've alluded to who I clashed with on any number of professional issues on this operation, wanted to get rid of me and have someone who was more amenable to their perspective. I also thought it was time to make a move that way myself. So everyone sort of agreed that it was time for me to. To leave. And so I left and I was replaced by, you know, by a good guy. That was not unusual. You know, I wasn't removed. I didn't remove myself for, you know, in principle, it was sort of an organic process that happens with temporary duty
- [43:58]
Alan Katz
officers when enhanced interrogation came under the microscope. Finally, were you dragged in to testify?
- [44:06]
Glenn Carl
I never testified before public panel. I was interviewed by any number of investigating committees. You know, there's Congress, there's the counterintelligence staff, there's the Inspector General's office, and all of them are trying to make sense of things. And a number of them spoke to me at different times. Sure, yeah.
- [44:30]
Alan Katz
What was going through your mind as Suddenly, because you had had your doubts, you had been dragged along to a degree that must have felt really incredibly conflicted in any number of ways.
- [44:43]
Glenn Carl
No, I don't think I ever felt conflicted, which possibly sounds like a contradiction from what I've said, but I didn't. I have always felt, pardon the self praise here. I've always been very proud of how I handled the operation, what I did, where I, where I drew lines and where I compromised and how I try to get things right. And I, I think that I handled it as well as one can. One, one could very fairly say you should resign in principle, and that's the end of that. I didn't. And I don't think that I think I did the right thing by trying to get it right. So I never felt conflicted about it. I didn't feel, you know, I was worried that everyone, myself included, involved in this program would go to jail for having been involved in torture because this clearly was illegal. There's just no doubt to me whatever, you know, people I admire have said in public that, oh, this is all legal and we didn't torture, you know, well, that's because no one wants to be convicted as a war criminal. That's the only sensible explanation. But there is one other explanation that's not correct. That's one of the other one, is that. And it's been a fascinating psychological experience to observe. I saw I, I described in, in positive terms Johnson, my colleagues and I, and I mean that sincerely. But I, I was at the time stunned to find that as soon as we were informed that the President and the Department of Justice had decided that X is legal and we never engage in torture instantaneously and in complete sincerity, at least half of my colleagues went like this and said, oh, good, everything's fine now. And they were totally sincere about it. And I thought, oh my God. What, What? How can you do that? It's a fascinating psychological phenomenon that they sincerely accepted the paradigm had been def. From in a way that they thought was appropriate or the acceptable way that life should be perceived and conducted because the agency's good, the US Are good guys, and we don't break the law, and that was it. And these are bright people, but they sincerely believe it. It's a very similar phenomenon, I have found, concluded, to what we are all experiencing in the threat to our democracy with the Trump phenomenon. There are dozens of millions of fine people who are, in most ways rational people. These are normal people. They aren't nut jobs who vote for Donald Trump, who clearly is a fascist. I was, I think, the first person this is my great claim to fame in my life. I think I was the first person in public to say that he was approached by, manipulated by, and probably working with Russian intelligence and, and yet, you know, people I admire sincerely think that I'm a communist now because I oppose the guy. And it's the same thing in the Agency with Johns and my colleagues who, who still buy into, into this whole different paradigm. It's, it is Kafka. I don't know if you've ever read the Good Soldier Shweik. I highly recommend it. It's a classic. It was written by a guy named Hashik in World War I. It was he was in the Austrian army. He was killed during the war before he finished his book. But he it's it's Graham Green, Our man in Havana and catch 22 and and yet that's the crazy world where sincere people do nut job stuff.
- [48:45]
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- [49:43]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
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- [50:22]
Glenn Carl
What we didn't bring out clearly enough. It's relevant for the Zubaida case. And John can speak more directly from firsthand experience more than I. I was involved in Zubayda when I was on the National Intelligence Council receiving his stuff and was then involved when the decision was, well, holy smoke, this is all screwed up. We have to stop. We have to stop taking intelligence, quote, intelligence from this guy. Everything is compromised. It's all wrong, much as it's made up and it's all sullied and. And then, well, no, no, no, you can't do that. It's really good. And then we had these huge fights between the. The pro, you know, he's a real baddie, and the people who are horrified that everything is screwed up besides.
- [51:02]
Alan Katz
But there was information that came in before he was enhanced and information that came in after the interrogations got enhanced. Was there a difference in the quality of the information that came in?
- [51:15]
Glenn Carl
Not that I'm aware of. Not that I'm aware of. What I was aware of was that at first it was this stuff is great. And it was given sort of marquee status. And then the decision was, well, we cannot use any information that has been illicitly obtained and. And therefore is very doubtful. Not one is unusable in a legal way. And also it's. Some of it will be disinformation. And a lot of it is. It's not intelligence. It's extracted statements kind of thing. And so everything was retroactively. And this is a really a nuclear act in the intelligence community was all expunged. There are burn notice that everything has to be removed that was that any utterance from this man's lips has to be removed from every file in the universe.
- [52:15]
Alan Katz
This is after it was decided that it was illegal or while it was being considered maybe illegal.
- [52:22]
Glenn Carl
The legality, I think, was certainly relevant, but I think was secondary to the intelligence issue, which is that you can't use compromise information and that much of it has been shown to be untrustworthy. And so therefore what we verified as untrustworthy leads us to be alarmed about things that we can't substantiate or disprove. And so therefore nothing can be taken that was related to, but separate from the legal question.
- [52:53]
Alan Katz
But if the information was procured legally, and you all thought it was being procured legally, then why is that an issue? If the president says it's an issue.
- [53:01]
Glenn Carl
I mean, even if it's legal, if it's bad information or obtained in a way that raises doubts about it, you still can't use it. You just. It's not only unprofessional, I think it's probably illegal for us to. We intelligence officers. And so it was all retracted. That was the proper step taken. But that also became controversial because then it became involved in the polemic between the faction that said, well, you guys are all pussies and this is the real deal. And the others who say, well, he's a nut job, he makes stuff up a lot has been disproved and we can't use it anyway, given how we obtained it. I finally, at that point, I don't know that we ever. We, the community, the CIA, ever went to that trough again. I don't think so. I don't think so. He was, you know, removed, eliminated from any further questioning.
- [54:04]
Alan Katz
How far into his enhanced interrogation was it decided the good stuff was being outweighed by.
- [54:15]
Glenn Carl
There was always controversy about that from the get go. But the decision was when I was. It would have been 2004 or 5 is when I became aware of it. I think that's when the decision was taken. And that was because the people making assessments of the utility of and the acceptability of the information or the reporting of the operation became aware of waterboarding and his interrogation, so on. And they said, holy shit, we can't know. We have to stop. And then it was shut down.
- [54:57]
Interviewer (possibly Alan Katz or another host)
That's when the Inspector General became aware of it as well. It was in 2004. And then the IG report was published internally in 2005. Took four more years to declassify it. But. But Glenn's recollection of the chronology is correct. It took several years. And then they just said, we can't use this, we shouldn't use it.
- [55:19]
Glenn Carl
Yeah, that's when I. I was involved in the receiving end of the product. I was not involved at all in the decision. You know, I had been involved in my own cases and knew what was going on that way. And this stuff was still funneling into the system. I think it was. The New York Times broke the story. Many people in the community didn't know any of this. And everyone remotely involved said, what? Stop. We have to stop everything. Not only do you stop doing that kind of, quote, interrogation, but anything, any product from anything touching upon any of these operations is unusable. It raises legal questions, substantive questions, blah, blah, blah, and stop recall, take out. And that was that totally Shut down all the stuff. Hugely controversial because the people who were the proponents of it started to jump up and down with hair fires and that we were all compromising national security by being Marcus of Queensberry. It's interesting with, you know, there aren't a lot of people who have done been involved in this stuff. There are so many aspects of the culture of the Director of Operations of the Counterterrorism center, of the Enhanced Interrogation Program of the Directorate of Operations that inform how one perceives and one expresses events and reactions. That it is a throwback but, but pleasant to see. Would have John on the screen because there aren't a lot of people who have lived in this strange universe. It's, it's sort of, it's. I don't know, rewarding is not the word. It's nice to find somebody who knows what I'm talking about. You know. There have always been simplifying a bit two schools of thought that I've touched upon. Those who think that enhanced interrogation isn't torture, it makes sense and we need it. And it's an overlapping set, if not identical set. Those who believe that the terrorist threat is existential for the United States and the Western civilization global and that jihadists are all part of this vast coherent, coordinated network. So that Jemaah Islamia in Malaysia and Lashkari Taiba in Kashmir and Al Qaeda in Sudan and then in Afghanistan and then in Iraq are all part of the same issue. So to stop means that you're surrendering and we will all be destroyed. There are those who will continue to think that and then opposing them. And I at first was agnostic because I hadn't done as my thing terrorism. And I came to be one of the strong advocates because of my function in the National Intelligence Council of those who said, well yeah, there are people trying to slit my throat and rape my wife and we obviously have to stop them. But a member of the Islamic Logicum is the group Islamique, the Moroccan Islamic combatant group. I forget the. What we call in English is jihadist. They are murderous, they are, but they are not Al Qaeda. They share a theology, but they are different. It's not one problem. And so therefore you have to look at a much more organic and textured approach to counterterrorism. And that fight I thought would be, you know, I'm, I'm absolutely certain that my party is correct. But even after Obama served his years in the Agency, the dominant framework remained the first of those two, which is a really simple minded and ultimately self destructive approach.
- [59:50]
John Kiriakou
Thanks again, Glenn, for sitting in today. It's important to remind ourselves and the audience that in the end, decency won out. Though plenty of otherwise good people went along with something that was downright evil, there were, and there still are people with real moral character out there fighting the good fight. And more than ever, that fight is necessary. In the next episode, we'll pick up our story again. What makes this spy tick? We're getting close to the moment of truth. Please don't forget to like, review, comment on and share the podcast. We thank you in advance for doing it. Until next time, I'm John Kiriakou. Dead Drop is written by John Kiriakou and Alan Katz. Costart and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast and John Kiriakou, Alan Katz and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers.
- [60:46]
James Richardson
Foreign.
- [60:54]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
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- [61:16]
Glenn Carl
ACAST powers the World's Best Podcasts Here's a show that we recommend.
- [61:26]
James Richardson
Hello there, I'm James Richardson and I host the Tony Football Show. Now this summer, the biggest sporting event in the world, the Football Men's World cup, is heading to Canada, Mexico and especially the United States, which to be there too. We are packing up and heading to Los Angeles for the duration, which means that every day straight after the last match has concluded, you can catch some hot takes, instant reaction and insightful analysis from ourselves sat around the pool in la. Sounds like we're going to have a lot of fun doing it. I hope you're going to be joining us too. It's from June 10th all the way up to July 19th, the day of the final. Just search for the channel Tony Football show wherever you get your podcast.
- [62:16]
Glenn Carl
ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com
- [62:26]
Alan Katz
touchdown production.