I had just walked through the door of the new black site when a dark-haired man I guessed to be in his midfifties, dressed in black battle dress uniform bottoms and a tight-around-the-middle T-shirt, walked up to me. He had the body of an aging special operator, hard at one time but starting to go soft.
“There is a new sheriff in town” was the first thing he said to me. “I’m calling the shots now. Your services as an interrogator are no longer needed.” He went on to identify himself as the chief interrogator for the newly formed Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation group of the CTC’s special missions department.
What a dick! I thought. Struggling to keep that thought to myself, I stuck out my hand and said, “Hi. My name is Jim.”
He shook it, squeezing a little too hard and standing a little too close. I squeezed back. As we stood there eyeballing each other, the chief interrogator told me he had worked interrogations with anticommunist rebels in Latin America. He said he had participated in interrogations and was familiar with coercive interrogation techniques.
Well, there you have it, I thought. But sensing that I would be better off keeping quiet, I just looked at him, waiting. That was when he picked up a worn paperback, a murder mystery by Michael Connelly, and handed it to me, motioning dismissively with his head toward a long wooden table centered in a large, open dining room. “Take a seat someplace out of the way. And if I want your opinion, I’ll come find you and ask for it.”
It was laughable. I knew he was trying to bully me with this hackneyed and obviously rehearsed tough-guy dismissal. I wondered how much adolescent dick checking I’d have to put up with from this guy. But I was careful not to say that out loud, because I didn’t want to get drawn into a food fight with the CIA’s chief interrogator, somebody who probably had friends back at headquarters who would, if things got ugly, take his word over mine. But I still bristled, and it probably showed, especially in my eyes.
I figured my involvement with CIA interrogations was ending. That was fine by me. The new Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Group had been set up successfully. I hadn’t expected to be a long-term part of the program. After all, my first deployment for the CTC was supposed to be for only two weeks. True, those two weeks turned into several months and my role had shifted dramatically from advisor to interrogator. But standing there, I figured that with the new branch operational and the detainees rendered to the new black site where the interrogators from that branch were situated, the handoff was complete. The only thing left was for me to return home and try to piece together my old life.
“No problem,” I said, tossing the paperback onto a chair. It skittered off the cane seat and tumbled to the tile floor under the table, earning me an annoyed look from the chief interrogator.
I glanced around for the driver who had dropped me off earlier. I wanted to secure my ride back to the airport before he left. I saw the driver standing near the front door chatting with security personnel and caught his attention. To the chief interrogator I said, “I haven’t been home for weeks, it’s almost Christmas, and I have no desire to be here. So I’ll get out of your hair. Just get me back to the plane and I’ll catch a ride back to the States.”
“No,” the chief interrogator said, “you are not leaving. You have to be on-site in order for us to do interrogations. So you are not going anywhere.” Then he said something that didn’t make sense to me, and I never did sort it out. It sounded like he said, “You are the only one on-site certified to use certain pressures.”
“Then I’m not going to sit off to the side. I’m going to participate.”
“No,” he said, his face starting to flush. “You’re going to stay out of my fucking way. Headquarters says you have to be here. Headquarters didn’t say that I have to let you do anything. You can watch, but don’t interfere.”
That was when he noticed I was carrying the pouch, the one containing the computer from the last black site. I handed him the pouch, relieved to be rid of it.
“What’s this?” he asked suspiciously, hefting the weight of the pouch in one hand and then passing it to someone hovering behind him.
“It’s the interrogation database from the last site,” I said. “The COB wanted me to give it to you so you would have the cables and intel reports from the earlier interrogations…just in case your communications gear won’t let you search the agency’s databases yet.”
They opened the bag. “Whose computer?” the chief interrogator said, suspiciously eyeing the new laptop. “Yours?”
“No,” I said. I then explained that it was an agency computer supplied by the chief of security at the black site I’d just left. I further explained that a communications technician from the abandoned site had loaded the database on the laptop’s hard drive specifically so that I could hand-deliver it to them.
I told him I was just the delivery boy.
I thought the laptop issue was resolved: computer delivered, purpose explained. But weeks later, the chief interrogator told CTC security that I had put the highly classified database on my personal laptop and smuggled it to the new black site. By the time I heard about it, the hallway talk was that I had been caught trying to smuggle that laptop home.
That was, of course, nonsense. But this nonsense, I’d find out later, was part of his effort to discredit me and the genesis for an evolving series of allegations. Some asserted that I had copied Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation videos; others, that I had stolen the black site’s database and squirreled it away on a hidden hard drive that I successfully smuggled home. These false rumors took on a life of their own, and over the years I often had to address them in one form or another during official investigations involving other matters. Sometimes the bogus stories even showed up in media reports and were treated as true.
“We don’t need this,” the chief interrogator said, gesturing toward the computer. He made it clear that he was less concerned with what the detainees “did say” and more interested in what they “will say.”
That was when the chief interrogator told me he intended to restart enhanced interrogations of both Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri. To “start all over from square one” he said, using an approach he had employed while working in Latin America.
I objected, especially when it came to Abu Zubaydah. I stressed that the chief interrogator should check with headquarters first. I told him that Abu Zubaydah was providing information that targeters and analysts judged valuable. I argued that he should not restart harsh interrogations because they were in my opinion no longer necessary to service the intelligence requirements headquarters was sending in regard to Abu Zubaydah. I was also concerned that if physical coercion was used on Abu Zubaydah without his provoking it, he would view the rough treatment as a betrayal and stop answering questions.
I also objected to restarting enhanced interrogations for al-Nashiri, but not as vigorously. Although he was being somewhat helpful at that point, he was not fully cooperative. (I later learned that the chief interrogator told headquarters that I recommended restarting EITs for al-Nashiri, but that is simply not true. I think this was part of a larger effort on his part to cover his ass, as I will discuss below.)
I didn’t think additional EITs were necessarily required for al-Nashiri because the last few times I had questioned him, he had provided physical descriptions of operatives listed in the phone book that was captured with him. He explained what the cash amounts written next to the names were for and revealed plans for his still-at-large operatives to use truck bombs to attack the Diplomatic Quarter where Western diplomats and their families lived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia—all without the use of harsh measures. But it was slow going. Interacting with al-Nashiri was like dealing with a stubborn, pouting, petulant, entitled child; you had to work at it. But when confronted with information gathered by technical means or gleaned from materials captured with him, he eventually would give up information analysts judged useful, though not complete, without the use of EITs.
At the previous black site, we had used enhanced measures to create an opening for the use of noncoercive social influence techniques and were using that opening to shape gradually how fully and completely al-Nashiri answered questions.
Headquarters was still on the fence about whether enhanced measures should be restarted with al-Nashiri. The reason was that his answers were often so vague, it was clear he was holding back.
For example, although al-Nashiri would talk about his plans to attack the Diplomatic Quarter in Riyadh, he insisted he could not provide specifics. He insisted that he couldn’t remember the location of the safe house where he stayed in Riyadh, not even the neighborhood, although he had been there for weeks. He also insisted that he could not recall which mosque he attended for Friday prayers, although he said several times that he went to the same mosque with the same people. Al-Nashiri maintained that none of this information was relevant. He said that because his men knew he had been captured, they would change safe houses and delay attacks in Riyadh. Al-Nashiri claimed that his men would determine the timetable for attacks and the specific targets on the basis of the way things unfolded on the ground in Riyadh and that he had no way of knowing those things. For these reasons, the analysts and targeters thought, as did we, that al-Nashiri was still withholding actionable information that could be used to disrupt attacks or capture his men. Some at headquarters thought that if he didn’t quickly become more forthcoming, we should restart enhanced interrogations.
I had all this in the back of my mind while the chief interrogator and I were debating the wisdom of restarting enhanced interrogations on both detainees. I told him I could see an argument for restarting EITs on al-Nashiri but thought we had been making some progress at the last black site without them.
At some point, the chief interrogator became exasperated with me. He said that he was the CIA officer in charge of interrogations and I was “a fucking contractor with no real say in what happened at this black site or anywhere else in the world as far as CIA activities were concerned.”
“Understood,” I said. “I have been told that many times. Even signed documents acknowledging that.”
I then reiterated that I felt compelled to be clear with him that I thought that it would be a mistake to restart enhanced interrogations on Abu Zubaydah and that if he did and Abu Zubaydah subsequently shut down, I would report my objections to headquarters, specifically to the chief of the CTC, Jose Rodriguez.
“It won’t matter,” he said. “No one at headquarters cares about your opinion.”
“Then why am I here?” I asked.
Shortly after that encounter, I watched the chief interrogator’s first interrogation of al-Nashiri. Before it started, the chief interrogator introduced me to three men. All were newly minted interrogators who had just graduated from the CIA’s first interrogation course. Until then I wasn’t even aware there had been an interrogation course. He said he had handpicked all of them and had taught portions of the course himself. They were at the black site, he said, to obtain “practical experience” using enhanced interrogation methods on al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah.
“What if EITs aren’t needed?” I asked.
“Oh, we’re going to need them,” he assured me.
The chief interrogator told me I wasn’t allowed in the interrogation room, and so I watched this first interrogation through a small glass window in the door.
In the room where interrogations were to be held, a cheap white plastic table had been set up like a desk facing the center of the room. Three flimsy lawn chairs were positioned behind it. The chief interrogator and two of his recent graduates were sitting in the chairs, with the chief in the middle and the other two flanking him. A fourth interrogator moved around the room, ready to pitch in when the chief interrogator gave directions. There was no chair for the detainee.
Al-Nashiri, hooded and shackled, was brought into the room by one of the guards and positioned, standing like an errant schoolboy, across the table from the chief interrogator. The chief interrogator leaned over the table, removed al-Nashiri’s hood, and introduced himself as “the man in charge.” He instructed al-Nashiri to always address him as “sir.” He then asked al-Nashiri if he understood. Al-Nashiri nodded, said “Yes,” and shrugged, separating his hands, palms out, as far as his shackles allowed, but didn’t speak further. That was typical of the way al-Nashiri sometimes responded to questions.
The chief interrogator screamed that al-Nashiri needed to answer when he was spoken to and say “sir” when addressing the chief interrogator. When al-Nashiri didn’t respond immediately, the chief interrogator suddenly threw the table aside and grabbed al-Nashiri in an attention grasp. When he released him, two of the other interrogators put al-Nashiri in a stress position. They made him put his forehead against the wall and walk his feet back so that he was leaning at a forward angle, back straight and forehead against the wall in front of him. When his neck and shoulders looked like they were beginning to tire and he started to wobble, two of the interrogators held his arms out to his sides and leaned into him, pressing his forehead against the wall. Once he started to squeal, the interrogators pulled him away from the wall, forced him to his knees, and bent him over backward until his upper back and shoulders were touching the floor behind him, all the while screaming at him to answer the questions and address them as “sir.” When it became apparent that al-Nashiri was limber enough to sit easily in a kneeling position with his back on the floor, the interrogators put a broomstick behind his knees. This time when they pushed him backward, al-Nashiri started to scream.
I was shocked, but not by their general approach: I recognized that. I surmised that much like many old-school military training instructors might, they were trying to condition compliance by focusing on absolute obedience to small demands. I had never asked al-Nashiri to address me as “sir.” But it was a conditioning approach that sometimes was used to establish dominance right away. You see it used a lot, often poorly, in military and paramilitary settings.
It was the specific physically coercive techniques they were using that distressed and concerned me. I did not believe those techniques had been approved by the Justice Department. I was also concerned that the way the techniques were being applied placed undue strain on al-Nashiri’s knees, back, and neck muscles. I was expecting medical personnel on-site to stop the interrogation. But that didn’t happen.
I was sorting through my recollection of how the original authorization concerning stress positions had been worded to figure out if it was possible that these techniques were covered by it, when the chief interrogator stood al-Nashiri up and cinched his elbows together behind his back with a leather strap until they touched. Then the chief interrogator and one of the newly minted interrogators started lifting al-Nashiri’s arms behind him, toward the ceiling. Al-Nashiri bent over and screamed.
I knew this had not been approved. I had seen less intense versions of the first two stress positions before—minus the broomstick behind the knees—during SERE training. I had even experienced them. Maybe I was wrong and more SERE techniques had been approved that I didn’t know about, but the last technique and the use of a broomstick, no way.
The higher the chief interrogator lifted al-Nashiri’s arms, the more al-Nashiri squealed and struggled. I became fearful that he would dislocate al-Nashiri’s shoulders, and so I stuck my head into the room to stop the interrogation. It was headquarters policy that anyone could immediately stop interrogations at any time for any reason. Because of that policy, I fully expected them to stop. That is what we would have done at the black site I had just left.
“Get out!” the chief interrogator shouted at me. He sent the guard over to escort me out of the room.
“The things the interrogators are doing have not been approved by the Justice Department, and they should stop,” I whispered to the guard when he was close enough to hear me. “I think they are going to dislocate al-Nashiri’s shoulders. Headquarters policy is to stop interrogations when someone raises a concern about safety.”
I had no idea what the guard thought. He was completely clothed in black, with his eyes hidden by mirrored goggles. I saw a tiny version of myself, angry and pointing at the chief interrogator, reflected back at me in the lenses. The guard nodded, walked to where the chief interrogator was standing glaring at me, and whispered something in his ear.
I mouthed “What?” and gestured, opening my hands, palms up. The chief interrogator pointed to the door, hissed for me to get out, and instructed the guard to escort me completely out of the interrogation room.
The interrogation was being observed by medical personnel and several others on closed circuit TV. I was surprised medical personnel had not intervened and said so. I expressed my concerns to them and the guards. I got a “so what can you do?” look from the medic. The guards said they were worried, but their hands were tied because they had been told the chief interrogator called all the shots. No one made any move to stop what was happening. It was clear that everyone there except me thought that what the chief interrogator was doing was authorized, believed they did not have the authority to stop him, or simply didn’t want him angry with them.
In spite of my protests, during the remainder of that interrogation session and several sessions to follow, I watched the chief interrogator use a variety of physically coercive measures on al-Nashiri that I believed were not on the list of approved techniques. They included the two stress positions discussed earlier: dousing al-Nashiri with cold water while using a stiff-bristled brush to scrub his ass and balls and then his mouth and blowing cigar smoke in his face until he became nauseous. In place of waterboarding, one of the navy SERE schools used the exact same cigar-smoke-in-the-face technique I observed the chief interrogator and his newly minted apprentices use.
The chief interrogator was very angry at me when he came out of al-Nashiri’s first interrogation. He got right up in my face and started hollering, “What the fuck is your malfunction?”
“You are doing things that are not approved,” I said, talking over him. “I’m trying to look out for you as much as al-Nashiri.”
“You are not allowed to interrupt interrogations,” he said. “If you do it again, I will have the guards restrain you.”
It got even uglier after that, but I was confident that if I could talk to someone running the program back at headquarters, this rogue disregard for what was and wasn’t authorized would stop. I told him I wanted to call back to headquarters and talk to the chief of the CTC, Jose Rodriguez; he said I couldn’t. I told him I wanted to talk to the CTC lawyers who had worked out the approvals for the techniques with the Justice Department; he told me I wasn’t allowed to call anyone, “especially the fucking lawyers.” I told him I wanted to send an e-mail back to my contract manager; he told me I couldn’t. I told him I wanted to leave the black site. I would pay my own way home. He said I couldn’t do that either.
I wished Bruce was with me as a witness to what was going on, but I assumed he was back home by then. I felt like I had fallen down a rabbit hole. The flagrant disregard for both Justice Department approvals and headquarters guidance was out of character for the carefully controlled program I knew Jose Rodriguez and the leadership at CIA had in place. I knew they wouldn’t tolerate it if I could just let them know what was happening.
Later that night I was summoned to the first of several acrimonious meetings with the chief interrogator and the COS of the country we were in. The COS chewed me out. They readdressed the subject of restarting EITs on Abu Zubaydah, and again I threatened to share my objections with headquarters and make it clear that I had recommended against it. I was told again that it wasn’t my decision to make and that I had no say.
As I was being dressed down, I realized for the first time that in their view I was at the site to function as a psychologist monitoring interrogations, not as an interrogator, as I had earlier assumed. No one had told me about this change in roles. If they had, I would have objected.
I knew this new role would raise ethical questions. I was being told that I was there to provide psychological monitoring for interrogations involving detainees I had interrogated myself: a less than ideal situation. How could I objectively monitor interrogations when I had interrogated the same people earlier? To make matters worse, I was being told that I had to do that monitoring without speaking to the detainees or letting them know I was there.
I thought briefly about refusing, but that would not have stopped the interrogations. Since no other psychologist was on-site, it would just mean that there would be no psychological monitoring. From what I had seen earlier, someone needed to monitor what the interrogators were doing, at least until I could get back to headquarters and report what I was seeing.
Thus, I found myself in an ethically troubling situation in which I had to choose the least bad among several bad choices. I had to put aside my pride about being shabbily treated and accept the role of psychologist until I could get back to the States and resolve the issue.
Retreating to the corner where the chief interrogator wanted me, closing my eyes, and sticking my fingers in my ears wasn’t going to help. It was me or no one, and so I resolved to be cognizant of the difficult ethical issues raised by my shifting roles and accept the challenge.
The ugly meetings with the chief of station and the chief interrogator only got worse. They told me that the “gloves were off,” a phrase I had heard many times, and accused me of being a coward and a “bleeding heart who felt sorry for terrorists trying to kill us.”
Not so, I told them. I said that I didn’t think the techniques they were using had been approved by the Justice Department and they needed to seek clarification from CTC attorneys. I was told they were going to “keep the lawyers out of it.”
“The lawyers will know anyway because the site has to document the techniques interrogators use in their reports to headquarters,” I said.
“Headquarters is interested in results, not what we do to get them. Headquarters is there to support our activities. We don’t have to ask permission for what we do.”
“I don’t think that’s true when it comes to interrogations,” I said. “I need to hear that from the lawyers.”
“Not going to happen,” one of them said. Then I was ordered not to have any communication with headquarters while I was at the black site and told I wouldn’t be allowed to leave until they decided I could. I couldn’t sneak around and contact headquarters behind their back, because all communications gear was locked in a secure room under twenty-four-hour guard.
“I am a U.S. citizen,” I said angrily, “and as of right now you’re holding me against my will in a foreign country. I will eventually get back home, and when I do, I will report you.”
They said nobody at headquarters would believe me, because I was a contractor and the agency would take the word of a “blue badger” (i.e., an agency employee) over the word of a troublemaker with a green badge every time. The implication was that since they controlled what was communicated back to headquarters, they could make it appear in e-mails and cable traffic that I was a vindictive troublemaker, something I discovered later that they did with some success.
“Our story is the communications aren’t good enough for you to contact headquarters. And there’s no way we can get you out of here until the next time we rotate personnel. They will believe us, not you. So stop interfering and stay out of the way.” They then said that as soon as I left the black site, they would see that I would “never work for the CIA again.” That was the only thing they said that pleased me.
The meeting ended with them telling me to get out because they had to discuss the next day’s interrogations and my input wasn’t needed. This contrasted significantly with interrogation planning at the first black site where I had done interrogations. At that site, the planning sessions always included the medics, the psychologists, security personnel, the linguist, the COB, analysts, and subject matter experts. I don’t know who else attended the planning sessions at this black site, but I know the person tasked with monitoring the psychological aspects of the interrogations—me—wasn’t in attendance.
At this new black site, with the role of psychologist thrust on me, I had no idea what sort of guidance the site was receiving from headquarters or what the site was communicating back to them. I wasn’t allowed to read incoming or outgoing cable traffic or e-mails and was excluded from all calls. I wasn’t allowed to send back any reports or make any inquiries. Normally the psychologist added a paragraph or two to the daily update, but I wasn’t allowed to do that either. When I asked about writing a final trip report, the chief interrogator said it would “serve no purpose.”
To this day I have no idea what, if anything, was communicated back to headquarters regarding my concerns about the interrogation techniques the chief interrogator was using.
In contrast to the expected role of the psychologist on-site during interrogations, I no longer was allowed to speak to or have any contact with either Abu Zubaydah or al-Nashiri, but I watched as many interrogations as I could and observed them in their cells on closed circuit TV.
I was relieved to see that although the interrogators were cold and brutish toward Abu Zubaydah, they did not use coercive physical pressure on him. They did shave his head and beard again and take away all the amenities he had earned at the last site, including the diary we had let him start keeping. The loss of the diary was a big deal to him. I felt bad about it. Several times over the years various players would take away Abu Zubaydah’s diary. He was told early on that as long as he was cooperative, he could keep a diary. I thought we needed to live up to that agreement. Therefore, as often as we could, as long as he was cooperating, Bruce and I would advocate for getting it returned or allowing him to start a new one. But that wasn’t always easy, and it wasn’t going to be easy this time, because the chief interrogator told me “hell would freeze over” before he would let Abu Zubaydah do something that brought him enjoyment and comfort. We eventually got Abu Zubaydah’s diary returned, but it took several months.
The chief interrogator and his new recruits started Abu Zubaydah’s interrogations the same way they had al-Nashiri’s, by demanding that he call them “sir” every time he spoke to them and answer every question. Abu Zubaydah quickly caught on to the routine and seemed to be adjusting, if somewhat begrudgingly, to his change in circumstances.
In contrast, as the days passed, al-Nashiri looked more and more unhappy and acted more petulant and sulky. In my opinion, he wasn’t developing a mental health disorder, but he was miserable and it was affecting him in ways I thought might be counterproductive for gathering intelligence. I reported my observations to the chief interrogator and recommended that they back off the intensity of what they were doing. By the time I left the black site, al-Nashiri seemed to have almost stopped directly answering questions and was simply enduring the interrogation sessions. He was talking, but not much. He squealed and struggled when they used the techniques. Because I was not allowed to read outgoing interrogation cables, I didn’t know if they were getting anything useful from him.
I did not want to be there. I continued to raise concerns and as a result continued to have run-ins with the chief interrogator, his newly minted interrogators, the COB, and the COS. Finally, after one of al-Nashiri’s interrogations, the chief interrogator had me escorted away from the interrogation room and restricted to monitoring, huddled around a closed circuit TV with the remaining security guards and medical personnel.
This run-in happened after I saw the interrogators use the stiff brush I mentioned earlier to scrub al-Nashiri. Agency security personnel were not involved. The chief interrogator enlisted the help of a giant man from Ground Branch, the CIA’s paramilitary force, to hold al-Nashiri while the chief interrogator scrubbed him, alternating between his ass and balls and then his mouth and face for a while, and then scrubbing his whole body. Months later, the chief interrogator would tell his bosses and the CIA inspector general that he was using the brush to clean al-Nashiri because he stank and needed a bath. But that was a smoke screen. It’s true al-Nashiri smelled; however, I never heard that scrubbing detainees with stiff brushes during interrogations was part of their personal hygiene plan.
I was kept at the black site a little more than a week before I was allowed to leave and return to the States. I might have been kept there longer, but the chief interrogator and I were at each other so often that I’m sure it was producing morale problems even though we were trying to keep it out of sight of those around us.
I realized during those squabbles that the chief interrogator and I had very different ideas about how EITs, if employed, should be used to acquire actionable intelligence. To me, his position seemed to be: apply EITs until the detainee tells you what you want to know, then apply them a little longer to see if he changes his story. If the story remains the same, what the detainee was saying was probably true. Over time, I’ve come to realize that some agency personnel, many members of our government, the press, and the general public share this assumption. Hurt them and don’t stop until they tell you what you want to know. And then continue hurting them, because if they are lying, they will change their story.
I did not then and do not now see it that way. My belief is that using physical coercion in that manner increases the risk of detainees fabricating information to stop the discomfort, as several detainees did when questioned by foreign governments before the CIA established its own interrogation program.
When I got back to the States, I went to CIA headquarters to report my concerns and complain about being held incommunicado. I was still new to the agency and, because of the program’s highly restricted nature, not sure with whom I could discuss my concerns. I reported what happened to a senior CTC attorney who had worked on the authorization for EITs, and then worked my way to the offices of the Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Group and eventually was interviewed by the CIA’s inspector general.
The RDI Group chief seemed to know who I was and ushered me to a small conference room, where the two of us sat down alone with the door shut. I started describing what the chief interrogator and his interrogators had done and voicing my concerns about use of unauthorized techniques. I was angry, agitated, and a little loud. The deputy branch chief, whose office was next door to the conference room, overheard, came in, and sat down next to me. He looked about my age, thin, pale, and sickly.
I continued. When I started describing how the chief interrogator used a broomstick behind al-Nashiri’s knees, blew cigar smoke in his face to restrict his breathing, scrubbed him with a stiff brush, and strapped his elbows behind his back and lifted his arms toward the ceiling, the RDI branch chief’s face flushed bright red. At the time, I couldn’t tell if he was mad at me for reporting this or mad at the New Sheriff, his chief interrogator, for doing it.
I was about to ask, but before I could, the deputy chief spoke up. He told me the chief interrogator was a hero and mentioned a couple of impressive operations he had been an important part of in the past. The deputy chief called me a “pussy” and said that it was a mistake from the start to involve me because I was a psychologist and a bleeding-heart liberal who cared more about the feelings of a “fucking terrorist” than about the safety of the American people. I had no business being involved as far as he was concerned because I wasn’t part of the agency. “The gloves are off,” he said.
This was not the first time such comments had been directed at me, but I was still taken aback by the force with which he said it and the anger in his eyes. I told him I didn’t have a problem with the rough treatment of terrorists; I had waterboarded Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri. But I did have a problem with interrogators using techniques that weren’t authorized by the Justice Department. I had a problem with being cussed out by the COS and having my legitimate concerns ignored. And I had a problem with being held against my will and not allowed to communicate with headquarters or home.
The deputy chief told me that he too was a psychologist who had left the profession and become an operations officer and that he knew all too well what people like me thought. He then launched into a litany of criticisms of psychologists and other mental health providers, criticisms that ironically sounded very much like my own list of things I don’t like about liberal psychologists and their ilk regarding national security concerns. Oddly, I found myself agreeing with most of what he had to say; it was just that I didn’t think those criticisms applied to me. I wasn’t trying to stop their program; I was trying to keep everyone out of trouble. I didn’t want to stand by while detainees were being abused, and I didn’t want any detainees hurt. And I knew it wasn’t what the chief of the CTC, Jose Rodriguez, wanted.
I was about to protest and tick off my reasons for rejecting his criticism when the chief of RDI held his hands up, interrupting his deputy, who was getting increasingly loud and increasingly angry. I was starting to get hot too.
“Listen,” the chief of RDI said to me, red-faced but in a calm, controlled voice. “I’m glad you came to me. I’ll look into it. If there are problems, we will correct them.”
He then asked his deputy to give us a minute. After the deputy left, the RDI chief told me his deputy was dying of cancer and it was his last week at the agency. The chief said that because of 9/11 his deputy had wanted to work right up to the end, but now he was too sick to continue and had only a short time left to live. He asked me to take into account how ill his deputy was and overlook some of the insulting things he had said to me.
I left that meeting feeling good about the chief of RDI’s intentions to follow up on my concerns, and I left my meeting with the CTC attorney confident that he would monitor the situation and take action appropriate to his position in the agency. Later I found out that they had taken the appropriate action: they reported my concerns to higher-ups who initiated an internal investigation of the chief interrogator’s behavior. I also left those meetings thinking that the last thing I would ever want to do would be to get involved in the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program again.