John Kiriakou's Dead Drop - S1E23 Good Company, Bad Company

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

THE BLURB: John wasn't the only CIA officer who refused training in the CIA's new "enhanced interrogation" techniques - despite assurances from the CIA's legal team. This episode's guest, author and former CIA officer Glenn Carle spent two decades in the agency. Like John, Glenn broke with the CIA over the subject of torture. Glenn was part of a team interrogating another high value Al Qaeda target, and, like John, came to appreciate that torture was completely ineffectiv"The Interrogator" heree as a way to procure information from a detainee.SHOW NOTESYou can learn more about Glenn's book "The Interrogator" here and you can purchase it here.For more great podcasts like Dead Drop, please visit https://costardandtouchstone.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This podcast, it's a Costa and Touchstone production. Hi, I'm John Kirooku. 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 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, unquote. In 2011, Glenn wrote The Interrogator, an Education.

While Abbas Zabeda 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? 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 and 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. That's said tongue-in-cheat, but is also true. 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.

But like many officers in the agency, if not most, as terrorism became more significant to the United States, this is even years prior to 9-11. And then certainly after 9-11, I was absorbed and drawn into this whole world. In fact, seven or eight years before 9-11, I started to become. involved in terrorist-related operations. 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? Yeah, it was 1993.

And it's roughly then, it was a little after in my case, that I started to become involved in terrorist things. And then the second half of my career was all terrorism all the time. 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 one body in the one body in the one body in the American body, intelligence community, which has 17 agencies. The one that speaks for all 17 and presents 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 transatlantic

national 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 terrorism, almost literally, about 97%. The narcotics and organized crime are the other two main portfolios. So that's how I ended up in it and being drawn into it. and I worked extensively for years and years on Afghanistan, and then on all Muslim terrorist issues. And that was as one of the most senior, really, analyst in the community, which is unusual for an operation, as a field officer. And because I was a field officer,

I was also drawn into the operational, 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. Enhanced interrogation wasn't good for anyone in the end, was it? I could never even convince my mother to believe what I said. And no one, the average person simply doesn't believe what they feel like believing. And we'll 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 today. 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.

One of my first jobs in the agency, and perhaps the most controversial one, was I was an assistant to the head of what was called the Central American Task Force, and that was the part of the agency in 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 CIA was accused of having trained, what, insurgents in El Salvador to Garot nuns, and for the Contras in Nicaragos in Nicaragos, thing. And that actually is not true. We were trying to stop people from garotting anybody. But that did involve us and associate us with people who were doing terrible things.

And it was a sort of 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, earlier 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 U.S. government, in particular, the CIA, found itself with increasing 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 and 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. But as you pointed out, CIA had no mandate to interrogate. That's right. The FBI does, and they're very good at it. The U.S. military does and at least has formal training procedures, parameters, and protocols, standards, and so on. But the CIA did not. You learn practices and standards and protocols and where the red lines are, especially. You play as you practice. You fight as you train and you interrogate as you're taught

how or if not, then you wing it and all hell can go, Chris. It goes, it happened. 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 found, we, the CIA found itself with detainees. And in fact, George Tenet 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 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. 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.

objective and requirement. How are we going to obtain the intelligence from these people? Okay, that's fine. Well, John or I, we elicit, we talk, we might, we know how to question. I mean, that's all relevant, but that's not an interrogation. Dorff 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 directives of the CIA, quoted these conversations that they had had and the tenant it had to me. They said, 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 hole in the bag and were 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? The Office of the Vice President, Cheney said, absolutely, you're absolutely right. Dadgummit, 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 U. And the other guy's name, close my mind, it 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.

When Cheney's office is looking for guidance, they, I'm assuming they picked the guidance that they went to. So they picked the guide to provide the guidance they wanted. They must have known that John knew what was going to give them exactly the guidance in exactly the words that they want to hear. Absolutely. The OVP, office of vice president, went back to tenant and they said, here's the guidance. And tenants said, this is cleared by the Department of Justice. And they said, absolutely. This is all kosher. legal, blessed, whatever metaphor you want to use or analogy. And the tenant goes, okay.

And this I don't know first time. 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 of interrogation with this fellow. I was told to see 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 and this, this sort of thing. We're standing in the CTC. So 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 hooks 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.

He said, well, we do now. And I thought, holy shit. And I said, well, I said, well, we'd 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, in order of the president of the United States, signed by him. I was familiar with findings from my career, but no finding had direct. come to me 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 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 of minutes ago. He's pushing torture.

You're resisting. Are you aware at the time as you're having this conversation what he's pushing? Oh, never in any conversation I had was the word torture used, ever. Understood. It's a dirty, dirty word. I use the word torture at some point, but no one ever, because we don't torture. We interrogate. But were you clear on the 800-pound gorilla in the room? 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. A 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. Did you see it coming? Oh, no, it came completely out of the blue. We've detained someone we believe to be a member of Al Qaeda, and we want to find out information. 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 remained 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 so ordered it. So who the hell am I, a two-minute briefed Lieutenant Colonel to challenge the weight of the entire process of an institution 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, which is why you're talking to two of the probably, I don't know, five officers who ever 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 Gaul. And there's only one de Gaul 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? There were 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 thing, jump up and down this instant and challenge, 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. This is just insane.

This is becoming, this is Kafka. This is insane here. And so then I said something that case officers don't normally say. I think John will probably smile at this. Because at this point, I had been informed that the lawyers had been involved in this. And when something gets to an operations officer, it's all theoretically, 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 it.

I said, well, what about the Geneva Convention? Oh, my God. How many times did I say that in 2002? And the guy looked at me, and this 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, but it was clear that the conversation was not going any further, so I went fine. The conversation ends. The first thing I did, highly unusual for me, because normally this circle, well,

normally. The 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 Near East divisions, because I was involved with them, a lawyer, the Office of General Counsel for the office, and whom I knew, 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 closed the door. Highland usual in the agency. It closed their 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 was derived from John Hughes, Torture Miranda. And he said, if a measure of used in interrogation does not cause vital organ failure and or death.

And I distinctly remember the phrase and or. What's ridiculousness is this? You know, 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 on 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.

And he goes, that's correct. Is it 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 for you to question where their guidance came from. Well, I had asked, you know, and had been told that it had 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 absolutely without question. The great moment of my career when I have to decide when do you say no? What do you do? What is one to do? And I thought, okay, what am I going to do? And I talked to the lawyer. found an officer who had been involved in interrogations and I spoke with her. She was very good officer. And I just thought, well, holy smoke, you know, we, 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 do? What will I do? And then I flew off to do it. when you expressed reticence, Glenn, did you end up with any career back? 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 15th. 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. 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 agency and to handle this operation as I wanted. And that's always the case.

There are always 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 came

they wanted to get me because I was creating headaches for them on the operation and that's that 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 12 years of work that 17 different offices 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. 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 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 on 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

and 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. 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 inconsistencies and then larger wins.

And I concluded that we had detained the man we wanted to detain. And he was, which was not always the case. Sometimes, you know, they wanted to render, to kidnap Glenn Carl. And 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. named Glenn Carl. And that poor guy was, you know, put a bag

over his head and taken away because he is 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 assessments. Just for clarity sake, what did you think he was? before you realized he wasn't? Well, 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. What was he instead? That's where the big arguments and the murkiness comes from. I'm pretty confident that he was in the circumstance similar to, the owner of a corner variety store

who receives a visit 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. You know, 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 everything will be fine. And if you say no, your stores burned down. And if you say yes, you're a part of this network now. And 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, 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. can't detain two million of them. So 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.

That is not an uncommon theme. You know, it was the same with Abu Zabeda, where we didn't have any idea until 2007 that he had a first cousin also named Abu Zabeda. 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 were bad guys, sure, but they weren't the terrorist supermen that we thought they were. If you're enjoying Dead Drop and, of course, we hope you are, then

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Now, back to Dead Drop. You eventually got yourself away from the enhanced interrogation operation? Well, two things happened. I mean, because it was a surge assignment, it was not a permanent duty assignment. I was not, you know, I was assigned in France for four and nine. have years. For this, I was drafted because we needed people to do urgent tasks and someone had to fill them. 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'd 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 from 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. And 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 leave.

And so I left and I was replaced by a good guy. That was not unusual. I wasn't removed. I didn't remove myself for, you know, in principle. It was sort of an organic process that happened. with temporary duty officers. When enhanced interrogation came under the microscope, finally, were you dragged in to testify?

I never testified before a public panel. I was interviewed by any number of the investigating committees. There's Congress, there's the counterintelligence staff, there's the Inspector General's office, and all of them were trying to make sense. sense of things and a number of them spoke to me at different times. Sure. 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. No, I don't think I ever felt conflicted, which

possibly sounds like a contradiction from what I 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 drew lines and where I compromised and how I try to get things right. I think that I handled it as well as one can. One could very fairly say, you should resign a principle,

and that's the end of that. I didn't, and I don't think that I think that 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. It was 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 described in positive terms, John's and my colleagues, and I mean that sincerely, but 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 that the paradigm had been defined 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 yours 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 had 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 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 still buy into this whole different paradigm. It is Kafka. I don't know if you've ever read the Good Soldier Schweik. I highly recommend it. It's a classic. It was written by a guy in Hushik in World War I.

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, Armand in Nevada, and Catch 22. And yet that's the crazy world.

We're sincere people do nut job stuff. What we didn't bring out clearly enough. It's relevant for the Zabeda case, and John can speak more directly from first-hand experience more than I. I was involved in Zabeda 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, quote, intelligence from this guy. Everything is compromised. It's all wrong. Much as this is made up. And it's all sullied. And then, well, no, no, no, you can't do that. It's really good.

And then we had these huge fights between the pro, you know, he's a real batty and the people who were horrified that everything was screwed up the sides. 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? 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, you know, it was given sort of marquee status. And then the decision was, well, we cannot use any information that has been

illicitly obtained and therefore is very doubtful. One is unusable in an illegal way. And also, some of it will be disinformation. And a lot of it is, it's not. intelligence, its extracted statements kind of thing. And so everything was retroactively, and this is a really nuclear act in the intelligence community, was all expunged. There were a 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. This is after it was decided that it was

illegal or while it was being considered maybe illegal? 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 is 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. 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, even if it's legal, if it's bad information were 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 just said, 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. 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 how far into his enhanced

interrogation was it decided the good stuff was being outweighed by bullshit There was always controversy about that from the get-go, but the decision was when I was, there would have been 2004 or five is when I became aware of it. I think that's when the decision was taken. So, and that was because the people making assessments of the utility of and the acceptability of the information,

of the reporting of the operation became aware of waterboarding and hes interrogation and so on and they said, holy shit, we can't know, we have to stop. And then it was shut down. 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.

It took four more years to declassify it. 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 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 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 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 blah and stop recall take out and that was that totally shut down all this stuff, hugely controversial because the people who were the proponents of it started to jump up and down with heroin fires, saying that we were all compromising national security

by being Marcus of Queensbury. 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 Director of Operations that inform how one perceives and one expresses events and reactions that it is a throwback

but pleasant to see with 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, in the Western civilization, global, and that the jihadists are all part of this vast, coherent,

coordinated network so that Jemah Islamia in Malaysia and Lashgaritiba 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 slip my throat and rape my wife, and we obviously have to stop them

but a member of the Islamic the group Islamiqqq the Moroccan Islamic combatant group I forget the what we could call it in English is jihadists they are murderous they are but they are not al-Qaeda they share

theology but they are different it's not one point 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 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. 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 Kiriaku. Dead Drop is written by John Kiriaku and Alan Katz. Costard and Touchstone Productions produces the podcast, and John Kiriaku, Alan Katz, and Nick Mechanic are its executive producers.

It's a Costaton Touchstone production.