The Interrogator

The CIA redacted which language was mentioned.

TDY: temporary duty. This is the ubiquitous CIA, military, and Department of State acronym for any official trip.

In DO usage one generally writes “C/O’s” for the plural, rather than “C/Os,” a senseless legacy, I think, of the days when the DO’s cable and encryption system was transmitted by radio, and perhaps typed in by someone who did not distinguish possessives from plurals.

SPORTINK is a pseudonym. We always used our pseudonym, never our true name, in cable traffic. At work, I was never known as Glenn, always by my pseudonym. Mine was a somewhat strange-sounding name, similar to SPORTINK, which made me sound vaguely ethnic, a little irony for the quintessential WASP. Of course, this led to colleagues calling me from time to time, “Hey, Rinky-Dink!”

I was Acting National Intelligence Officer for transnational threats for four months, then Deputy for the remainder of my tenure on the National Intelligence Council. There was one other deputy with me most of my time there; thus, I was one of the three most senior officers for terrorism analysis in the U.S. government. We had a third deputy with us for the last six months or so of my time there.

CTC—the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center. I had started my career some twenty years before in 005

, CTC’s small predecessor, what I will call the “Counterterrorism Office.”

I will, of course, use euphemisms and occasional distortions to protect sources and methods. The code name used, CAPTUS, is fictitious, but does convey the general way the DO masks the identities of individuals. CAPTUS was, indeed, “very important in the al-Qa’ida network,” but I will not describe his specific functions, nationality, the location in which he was rendered, or other details that would identify him, or CIA operations.

A pseudonym.

Foreign intelligence, the term of art used for “intelligence.”

A pseudonym. Almost all names used are fictitious.

SERE training—Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape—is a long-standing program designed by the U.S. military to train individuals how to survive and resist the enemy in the event of capture. The techniques are largely based on the experiences of past U.S. and allied prisoners of war. A component of the training covers how to prepare for and resist interrogation. The SERE training, through a manual called the KUBARK manual, became the de facto basis of interrogation techniques in the Global War on Terror.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court sits in New York and grants or denies warrants to conduct intelligence operations against U.S. persons, if the requesting agency—usually the FBI, CIA, or NSA—demonstrates to the court’s satisfaction sufficient indications of illegal or espionage activity.

CT—Career Trainee, the officer corps in training at the Agency.

The six redacted lines relate a generic question and response, and use an exclamation point. They do not describe what specifically we sought to learn, who CAPTUS was, what he had been doing before rendition—no “source” or “method” is revealed. Apparently the CIA fears that the redacted passage would either humiliate the organization for incompetence or expose its officers to ridicule; unless the Agency considers obtuse incompetence a secret intelligence method.

The CIA Inspector General’s Special Review also noted (paragraph 264) that “some participants in the Program, particularly field interrogators, judge that CTC assessments to the effect that detainees are withholding information are not always supported by an objective evaluation of available information and the evaluation of the interrogators but are too heavily based, instead, on presumptions of what the individual might or should know.”

The passage above describes how I used CAPTUS’s and my cultural and religious differences to assess his motivations, actions, and truthfulness.

The redacted passages above describe in generic terms how CAPTUS thought, how various levels of the CIA assessed his answers and manner, and how we often disagreed among ourselves. There is no legitimate justification to redact the passages, unless the CIA has decided that saying CAPTUS’s ignorance of current events and that differences of opinion constitute intelligence “methods.” The public, however, already might suspect CIA officers usually are not monolithic blockheads and do have internal debates. As with so many redactions in this text, the Agency has overstepped its bounds and made itself a fool.

Of course, a pseudonym. Almost every name in the book is a pseudonym.

The deleted passage concerns what Big Guy proposed to do with CAPTUS.

The deleted passage concerns my emphatic opposition to what Big Guy had proposed.

I heard nothing more about the incident, or incidents. I learned much later that a detainee had died in Afghanistan, which was the subject of a formal investigation. It appears that the detainee died, unintentionally, from an aggressive interrogation gone hideously wrong. The man froze to death.

The deleted passage concerns my effort to learn about what happened during these absences.

CAPTUS asked an insulting rhetorical question.

“Hotel California” is a pseudonym I have given a CIA detention and interrogation facility where some of the most dangerous and sensitive HVTs were held. I have altered some details about it.

Point Zero Station is a pseudonym I have given for one of our overseas stations, deeply engaged in the Global War on Terror. I have changed some details about it.

The deleted passage concerns my assessment of why Headquarters would persist in its conceptual and operational errors in the CAPTUS case. The passage is acidic. This is the only reason I can see why it would be redacted, for it reveals no source or method—other than contemptible institutional incompetence.

The redacted passages above detail my assessment of how to conduct a successful interrogation. The KUBARK manual notes, in this regard, that “the initial question which a ‘questioner’ asks himself should be, ‘how can I make him want to tell me what he knows?’ rather than ‘how can I trap him into telling me what he knows?’ . . . The assumption of hostility, or the assumption of pressure tactics . . . may make a subject resistant who would have responded to recognition of individuality and an initial assumption of good will.”

The redacted passages above describe how I “raised the stakes,” as I had put it to Little Guy, the last effort I could make before the case would take a dramatic turn for the worse.

The redacted passages describe how I impressed upon CAPTUS how displeased we were, and what was about to happen to him unless he told me everything he knew about al-Qa’ida immediately.

Josh mentioned the nationality of our hosts.

Several public documents are relevant: The KUBARK manual, which I found to be so much a foundational document for rendition, detention, and interrogation practices, instructs: “Subject is given a thorough medical examination, including all body cavities, by the facility doctor.” The Council of Europe’s Investigation into the CIA’s rendition practices, issued summer 2009, asserts that “some accounts speak of a foreign object being forcibly inserted into the man’s anus; some accounts speak more specifically of a tranquiliser or suppository being administered per rectum.” Also, according to the “Background Paper on CIA’s Combined Use of Interrogation Techniques,” dated December 30, 2004, which sketches rendition and interrogation techniques for HVT al-Qa’ida detainees, and released to the ACLU under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, “a predictable set of events occur. . . . An HVD is flown to a black site [now acknowledged publicly to have included sites in Afghanistan]. . . . A medical examination is conducted prior to the flight. . . . Upon arrival at the destination airfield the HVD is moved to the Black Site . . . using appropriate security procedures. . . . The HVD is subjected to administrative procedures and medical assessment . . . the procedures are . . . precise, quiet, and almost clinical. . . . Procedures include: a. the HVD’s head and face are shaved. b. A series of photographs are taken of the HVD while nude to document the physical condition of the HVD upon arrival. c. A Medical Officer interviews the HVD and a medical evaluation is conducted to assess the physical condition of the HVD. The medical officer also determines if there are any contraindications to the use of interrogation techniques.”

According to the Background Paper on CIA’s Combined Use of Interrogation Techniques: “during the flight, the detainee is securely shackled and is deprived of sight and sound through the use of blindfolds, earmuffs, and hoods. There is no interaction with the HVD during this rendition. . . . The procedures he is subjected to are precise, quiet, and almost clinical.”

The deleted passage describes what were to me alarming surroundings.

I note that I have no personal knowledge of Franks’s qualities.

This passage describes security measures.

This passage describes my security concerns at that moment.

This passage describes the sinister inside of Hotel California and making my way through it.

This passage describes what I told CAPTUS and what my plans were for him.

This passage describes a specific exchange when I lost my temper because CAPTUS’s behavior made it impossible to move forward, to address questions, or possibly to help him.

The deleted passages discuss the relation of standard “largely thoughtless procedures” for interrogation with the specifics of the CAPTUS case, and my strong conviction that such procedures were wrong, were counterproductive, and perpetuated critical errors in judgment.

The “torture memos” were written by John Yoo, a political appointee in the Justice Department, to provide legal cover for the administration to authorize the CIA to use enhanced interrogation techniques. It was the central one of these memos that Wilmington cited to me as authorization for my interrogation of CAPTUS.

The redacted clause describes the evolution of the CAPTUS case.

Delusion: a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence.

For example, operational reports from the field that a terrorist individual or group was planning to do something.

The Bush administration, from January 2001 until September 11, 2001, had three foreign policy priorities: confront the rise of China, taken to be hostile to U.S. preeminence; build a ballistic missile defense system; destroy Saddam Hussein. The Clinton administration’s grave concerns and deep focus on the threat of terrorism were taken as a small-bore issue, unworthy of a superpower, and diverting U.S. attention from its true strategic interests.

See in particular Richards J. Heuer Jr., Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, 3rd ed. (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 2003), especially Chapter 12, p. 149; but also the work of Dr. John Ioannidis, who has found disturbing cognitive bias and distortion among medical researchers, and the hard-to-resist pressures to conform to dominant paradigms of thought. See David H. Freeman, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science,” Atlantic Monthly, November 2010.

The concept of “streams” of reporting is a malign consequence of the Bush administration’s and the Intelligence Community’s responses to the 9/11 attacks. The term was, to my knowledge, not used before 9/11. At least it was not in vogue inside the Intelligence Community. It implies to the layman that there are numerous, concordant sources of information, providing regular reports on a given threat or subject. But the term is largely meaningless. There are intelligence sources and reports. Some are reliable; some not, some unreliable but accurate, others reliable but wrong. There are rarely “streams,” and no experienced intelligence professional whom I know found the term to mean anything. Were there a “stream” of intelligence, the information in the “stream” most likely then would have been substantial enough to act upon, rather than merely allude to in public. The concept and expression endowed the confusing, sporadic, contradictory, and on occasion critically revelatory process of collecting, disseminating, and acting upon clandestine information with an aura of competence and awareness that policy makers were only too happy to weave into the narrative of threat they presented to a public that had to trust its leaders in time of danger. In fact, the stream of intelligence exaggeration has sometimes misled senior intelligence officials (I have observed it happen), scared many citizens for years, and provided officials a way to appear to substantiate their assessments and policies, and to sound like dynamic, courageous leaders. Worse, those using the term were often sincere, duped by the illusion of professional assessment implied in the term “streams of intelligence,” and confirmed in their preconceptions. There is nothing so dangerous as a sincere ideologue, whatever the object of his devotions.

The other signal responses to 9/11, of course, are the Patriot Act of 2004, which addressed the legal framework of counterterrorism work, and the creation of the position I filled briefly as head of and then as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats (responsible for terrorism analysis).

In addition, one must acknowledge, though never accept, that sometimes our opponents simply succeed through no fault of our institutions or men and women.