so I want to start by saying that I’d
like to talk to you about ethics and
intelligence operations or even the the
lack of ethics and intelligence
operations I was very fortunate to have
spent 15 years at the CIA and the second
half of my career was in
counterterrorism operations very tough
but fun the most fun I ever had in my
life
went to 65 countries really felt like I
was making an impact for that for the
United States September 11th changed all
that it became deadly serious on
September 11th and was frankly a lot
less fun but like everybody else in the
building on September 11th I volunteered
repeatedly to go to Afghanistan to fight
or do whatever was required of me and
finally I was sent to Pakistan as the
chief of CIA counterterrorism operations
there about six weeks after I arrived we
got word from CIA headquarters that Abu
Zubaydah was somewhere in Pakistan and
we had to catch him we thought at the
time that Abu Zubaydah was the number
three in al-qaeda he was a very big fish
well Pakistan is the size of Texas and
it has almost 200 million people in it
so to say he’s somewhere in Pakistan go
catch him it’s total non-starter I came
up with a couple of really bad ideas
they resulted in nothing it was a waste
of time and finally I told CIA
headquarters
I needed a targeting analyst a targeting
analyst is someone who pours through
vast amounts of data and is able to
pinpoint the location of a target and so
a targeting analyst came worked for
another two weeks and finally told me
that he just simply could not pinpoint
Abu Zubaydah’s location to fewer than 14
sites we had never hit more than two
sites in one night before and so I asked
headquarters to send a large team we
ended up flying in three dozen people
half CIA half FBI we paired them with
Pakistani military officers and on the
night of March 22nd 2002 we broke down
the doors of 14 safe houses silent
I’m not allowed to say how many people
we caught that night but I can tell you
it was many dozens of al-qaeda fighters
he was shot three times while trying to
escape a pakistani policeman shot him in
the thigh the groin in the stomach and
we rushed him to a hospital
in Faisalabad to try to save him but
word had gotten around the al-qaeda
community that we had gotten him and so
al-qaeda fighters began driving by the
hospital and just opening fire on the
hospital I said to my pakistani
colleague if they realized that were
unarmed we’re dead can you get a
helicopter in here 20 minutes later a
helicopter landed we loaded him onto the
helicopter we flew to a Pakistani
military base he was unconscious for
another 24 hours but my instructions
that came directly from the director of
the CIA George Tenet were 24/7 CIA eyes
on I was not to leave his bedside and so
I tore up a sheet and I tied him to the
bed because I was afraid frankly that
that was gonna fall asleep and he was
gonna escape he was really in no
condition to escape he was tied like
this and he had an oxygen mask on and
finally he woke up after 24 hours and he
motioned for me to come over to his
bedside and I moved his oxygen mask and
I said to him in Arabic what is your
name
show us MEC and he shook his head and I
repeated it show us MEC and he said to
me in English I will not speak to you in
God’s language I said that’s okay Abu
Zubaydah we know who you are
he said please brother kill me take the
pillow and kill me and I said nobody’s
gonna kill you we’ve been looking for
you for a long time I said you’re gonna
get the best medical care that the
American government can provide but I’m
going to give you a piece of advice
I am the nicest guy that you’re gonna
meet in this experience my colleagues
they’re not as nice as I am so if
there’s one thing that you do it’s that
you have to cooperate and he said you
seem like a nice man but you’re the
enemy and I’ll never cooperate
I said suit yourself another 24 hours
later a private jet flew in three FBI
agents and I loaded
onto the plane we strapped his gurney
down on the luggage rack in the back and
I whispered to him remember you have to
cooperate and the plane took off I never
saw him again two months later I was
back at CIA headquarters I was in the
cafeteria getting lunch and a senior
officer in the counterterrorism center
approached me and said hey I’m glad I
ran into you do you want to be certified
in the use of enhanced interrogation
techniques I had never heard that that
term before and so I asked him what he
meant and he explained what these ten
different techniques were and I said man
that sounds like a torture program are
you crazy
and he said well it’s not torture
because we had it approved by the White
House I said I’m not interested what’s
the matter with you people I said it’s
illegal it’s immoral it’s unethical
count me out I’m sorry to tell you that
of the 14 people that they were
approached that I was the only one who
said no and that’s a very sad thing when
you think about it so that was in May of
2002 on the first of August 2002 Abu
Zubaydah was tortured waterboarding was
supposed to be the ultimate punishment
as part of this torture program in fact
the CIA started by waterboarding him and
he water he was waterboarded 83 times
and never gave any actionable
intelligence that saved American lives
the waterboarding was a complete failure
well I left the CIA two years later and
I kept my mouth shut
I kept it shut until December of 2007
and finally I decided because President
Bush kept saying over and over again
there is no torture there is no torture
there’s no torture I knew that was a lie
and so I went on ABC News and I said
three things I said the CIA is torturing
its prisoners I said that torture is
official US government policy it is not
the result of a rogue as the president
had been saying and finally I said that
the torture program had been personally
approved by the President himself
as you can imagine the FBI began
investigating me like five seconds later
investigated me for a year from December
of 2007 until December of 2008 and in
December of 2008 they determined that I
had not committed a crime what I didn’t
know was that three weeks later when
Barack Obama was inaugurated the CIA
asked him to secretly reopen the case
against me and so for the next three
years I had no idea that my emails were
being intercepted my phone calls were
being intercepted and that there were
three different FBI surveillance teams
following me all the time and in January
of 2012 I was finally charged with five
felonies including three counts of
espionage now espionage is a death
penalty case and I hadn’t committed
espionage you know talking to ABC News
of the New York Times is not espionage
especially when you’re exposing a crime
but I was charged with these crimes and
was facing 45 years in prison
to make a long story short it becomes an
economic decision I had five kids at
home I had a 1.1 million dollar legal
bill and the government came back and
said take 30 months and the whole thing
goes away like I said it’s an economic
decision so I took the 30 months and I
went to prison by the time I got home
the Senate torture report had been
released and it proved that everything I
said was true and then in the summer of
2015 when Congress passed the McCain
fine stein amendment which formally and
permanently banned torture Senator John
McCain said that my revelations were the
inspiration for that law so 23 months in
prison it was worth it because torture
is finally illegal in this country now
that’s a thank you
I never thought because we already had
the the federal torture Act of 1946 and
we had the United Nations Convention
Against Torture which was ratified by
the Senate and has the force of law and
I asked rhetorically why in 1946
did we execute Japanese soldiers who had
waterboarded American prisoners of war
it was a death-penalty offense to
waterboard someone in 1946 in January of
1968 The Washington Post ran a front
page photograph of an American soldier
waterboarding a North Vietnamese
prisoner on the day that that photo was
published the Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara ordered an investigation
that soldier was arrested he was charged
with torture he was convicted and
sentenced to 20 years in a military
prison
so why was torture illegal in 1946 and
illegal in 1968 but somehow magically
legal in 2002 the law never changed we
changed so what can we do to make sure
that this doesn’t happen again I can
stand here and tell you we need to write
and blog and speak and protest and blah
blah blah no that works it makes us feel
better but it doesn’t work what we have
to do is two things we have to write our
elected officials to make sure that they
do what we tell them to do and if they
don’t we vote them out of office and we
have to be staunch about it the second
thing the second thing is I’m a realist
I know that the CIA is not going away
it’s not gonna be broken up and
scattered to the wind like John Kennedy
wanted to do it’s here to stay so what
happens young people like you join the
CIA change it from the inside once
you’ve been in there ten years you’re
gonna be surprised because you’re going
to be in a position of authority and you
can change it and then it’ll stay
changed so thanks for listening to me
best of luck
[Music] [Applause]
like to talk to you about ethics and
intelligence operations or even the the
lack of ethics and intelligence
operations I was very fortunate to have
spent 15 years at the CIA and the second
half of my career was in
counterterrorism operations very tough
but fun the most fun I ever had in my
life
went to 65 countries really felt like I
was making an impact for that for the
United States September 11th changed all
that it became deadly serious on
September 11th and was frankly a lot
less fun but like everybody else in the
building on September 11th I volunteered
repeatedly to go to Afghanistan to fight
or do whatever was required of me and
finally I was sent to Pakistan as the
chief of CIA counterterrorism operations
there about six weeks after I arrived we
got word from CIA headquarters that Abu
Zubaydah was somewhere in Pakistan and
we had to catch him we thought at the
time that Abu Zubaydah was the number
three in al-qaeda he was a very big fish
well Pakistan is the size of Texas and
it has almost 200 million people in it
so to say he’s somewhere in Pakistan go
catch him it’s total non-starter I came
up with a couple of really bad ideas
they resulted in nothing it was a waste
of time and finally I told CIA
headquarters
I needed a targeting analyst a targeting
analyst is someone who pours through
vast amounts of data and is able to
pinpoint the location of a target and so
a targeting analyst came worked for
another two weeks and finally told me
that he just simply could not pinpoint
Abu Zubaydah’s location to fewer than 14
sites we had never hit more than two
sites in one night before and so I asked
headquarters to send a large team we
ended up flying in three dozen people
half CIA half FBI we paired them with
Pakistani military officers and on the
night of March 22nd 2002 we broke down
the doors of 14 safe houses silent
I’m not allowed to say how many people
we caught that night but I can tell you
it was many dozens of al-qaeda fighters
he was shot three times while trying to
escape a pakistani policeman shot him in
the thigh the groin in the stomach and
we rushed him to a hospital
in Faisalabad to try to save him but
word had gotten around the al-qaeda
community that we had gotten him and so
al-qaeda fighters began driving by the
hospital and just opening fire on the
hospital I said to my pakistani
colleague if they realized that were
unarmed we’re dead can you get a
helicopter in here 20 minutes later a
helicopter landed we loaded him onto the
helicopter we flew to a Pakistani
military base he was unconscious for
another 24 hours but my instructions
that came directly from the director of
the CIA George Tenet were 24/7 CIA eyes
on I was not to leave his bedside and so
I tore up a sheet and I tied him to the
bed because I was afraid frankly that
that was gonna fall asleep and he was
gonna escape he was really in no
condition to escape he was tied like
this and he had an oxygen mask on and
finally he woke up after 24 hours and he
motioned for me to come over to his
bedside and I moved his oxygen mask and
I said to him in Arabic what is your
name
show us MEC and he shook his head and I
repeated it show us MEC and he said to
me in English I will not speak to you in
God’s language I said that’s okay Abu
Zubaydah we know who you are
he said please brother kill me take the
pillow and kill me and I said nobody’s
gonna kill you we’ve been looking for
you for a long time I said you’re gonna
get the best medical care that the
American government can provide but I’m
going to give you a piece of advice
I am the nicest guy that you’re gonna
meet in this experience my colleagues
they’re not as nice as I am so if
there’s one thing that you do it’s that
you have to cooperate and he said you
seem like a nice man but you’re the
enemy and I’ll never cooperate
I said suit yourself another 24 hours
later a private jet flew in three FBI
agents and I loaded
onto the plane we strapped his gurney
down on the luggage rack in the back and
I whispered to him remember you have to
cooperate and the plane took off I never
saw him again two months later I was
back at CIA headquarters I was in the
cafeteria getting lunch and a senior
officer in the counterterrorism center
approached me and said hey I’m glad I
ran into you do you want to be certified
in the use of enhanced interrogation
techniques I had never heard that that
term before and so I asked him what he
meant and he explained what these ten
different techniques were and I said man
that sounds like a torture program are
you crazy
and he said well it’s not torture
because we had it approved by the White
House I said I’m not interested what’s
the matter with you people I said it’s
illegal it’s immoral it’s unethical
count me out I’m sorry to tell you that
of the 14 people that they were
approached that I was the only one who
said no and that’s a very sad thing when
you think about it so that was in May of
2002 on the first of August 2002 Abu
Zubaydah was tortured waterboarding was
supposed to be the ultimate punishment
as part of this torture program in fact
the CIA started by waterboarding him and
he water he was waterboarded 83 times
and never gave any actionable
intelligence that saved American lives
the waterboarding was a complete failure
well I left the CIA two years later and
I kept my mouth shut
I kept it shut until December of 2007
and finally I decided because President
Bush kept saying over and over again
there is no torture there is no torture
there’s no torture I knew that was a lie
and so I went on ABC News and I said
three things I said the CIA is torturing
its prisoners I said that torture is
official US government policy it is not
the result of a rogue as the president
had been saying and finally I said that
the torture program had been personally
approved by the President himself
as you can imagine the FBI began
investigating me like five seconds later
investigated me for a year from December
of 2007 until December of 2008 and in
December of 2008 they determined that I
had not committed a crime what I didn’t
know was that three weeks later when
Barack Obama was inaugurated the CIA
asked him to secretly reopen the case
against me and so for the next three
years I had no idea that my emails were
being intercepted my phone calls were
being intercepted and that there were
three different FBI surveillance teams
following me all the time and in January
of 2012 I was finally charged with five
felonies including three counts of
espionage now espionage is a death
penalty case and I hadn’t committed
espionage you know talking to ABC News
of the New York Times is not espionage
especially when you’re exposing a crime
but I was charged with these crimes and
was facing 45 years in prison
to make a long story short it becomes an
economic decision I had five kids at
home I had a 1.1 million dollar legal
bill and the government came back and
said take 30 months and the whole thing
goes away like I said it’s an economic
decision so I took the 30 months and I
went to prison by the time I got home
the Senate torture report had been
released and it proved that everything I
said was true and then in the summer of
2015 when Congress passed the McCain
fine stein amendment which formally and
permanently banned torture Senator John
McCain said that my revelations were the
inspiration for that law so 23 months in
prison it was worth it because torture
is finally illegal in this country now
that’s a thank you
I never thought because we already had
the the federal torture Act of 1946 and
we had the United Nations Convention
Against Torture which was ratified by
the Senate and has the force of law and
I asked rhetorically why in 1946
did we execute Japanese soldiers who had
waterboarded American prisoners of war
it was a death-penalty offense to
waterboard someone in 1946 in January of
1968 The Washington Post ran a front
page photograph of an American soldier
waterboarding a North Vietnamese
prisoner on the day that that photo was
published the Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara ordered an investigation
that soldier was arrested he was charged
with torture he was convicted and
sentenced to 20 years in a military
prison
so why was torture illegal in 1946 and
illegal in 1968 but somehow magically
legal in 2002 the law never changed we
changed so what can we do to make sure
that this doesn’t happen again I can
stand here and tell you we need to write
and blog and speak and protest and blah
blah blah no that works it makes us feel
better but it doesn’t work what we have
to do is two things we have to write our
elected officials to make sure that they
do what we tell them to do and if they
don’t we vote them out of office and we
have to be staunch about it the second
thing the second thing is I’m a realist
I know that the CIA is not going away
it’s not gonna be broken up and
scattered to the wind like John Kennedy
wanted to do it’s here to stay so what
happens young people like you join the
CIA change it from the inside once
you’ve been in there ten years you’re
gonna be surprised because you’re going
to be in a position of authority and you
can change it and then it’ll stay
changed so thanks for listening to me
best of luck
[Music] [Applause]
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