:00:00. > :00:10.Now, and next, it is time for HARDtalk.
:00:11. > :00:17.Welcome to HARDtalk with me, Zennor Badawi, in Florida, when High Speed
:00:18. > :00:23.two psychologist James Mitchell. He helped draw up and carry out the
:00:24. > :00:32.CIA's enhanced interrogation programme after the September 11
:00:33. > :00:36.attacks. He personally interrogated suspects using techniques like
:00:37. > :00:40.waterboarding. His critics say he is at Porgera. He says he has nothing
:00:41. > :00:47.to apologise for, and what he did was harsh but legal and necessary.
:00:48. > :00:53.So this is your study? Yes. The thing that is useful about a lie
:00:54. > :01:01.relate this is, for example, this is a book of Sharia law from a salafist
:01:02. > :01:04.position. I have a couple of versions of the Koran, because not
:01:05. > :01:09.all translations are the same. What sort of insights based on their
:01:10. > :01:13.knowledge from these books and your training as a psychologist about
:01:14. > :01:16.what motivates the kind of people you have interrogated into carrying
:01:17. > :01:21.out the deeds or wanting to carry out the deeds that we know about?
:01:22. > :01:24.I've heard people say that these terror attacks that we are seeing in
:01:25. > :01:32.Europe, Great Britain, and the United States had nothing to do with
:01:33. > :01:36.Islam. But having spoke to many terrorists such as Abd al-Rahim
:01:37. > :01:43.al-Nashiri, I can tell you in their minds it has everything to do with
:01:44. > :01:52.Islam. There are interrogated and -- there interpretation. Yes, they are
:01:53. > :02:10.salafist interpretation of Islam. -- there. James Mitchell, welcome to
:02:11. > :02:14.HARDtalk Thank you for having me on. So there you are after more than 20
:02:15. > :02:18.years in the US Air Force. You are working as a consultant for the CAA.
:02:19. > :02:23.The September 11 attacks happened and you see to the CAA that you want
:02:24. > :02:27.to be part of the solution. -- CIA. Why? It was an attack on our
:02:28. > :02:31.homeland. The main thing that influenced me to want to volunteer
:02:32. > :02:35.to help out was the death and destruction. The critical thing when
:02:36. > :02:39.they asked me if I would be willing to become involved in the
:02:40. > :02:42.interrogation programme really was the falling man and the people
:02:43. > :02:47.jumping off the building. I thought it was inappropriate and wrong for
:02:48. > :02:51.them to have to choose which way they died as a result of this
:02:52. > :02:56.cowardly attack that was done by these Islamist that would try to
:02:57. > :02:59.destroy our way of life. So, obviously using your experience as a
:03:00. > :03:05.clinical psychologist, working with the American military for many years
:03:06. > :03:07.could help identify, recommend techniques that would work as part
:03:08. > :03:15.of the enhanced interrogation programme. But how would you make
:03:16. > :03:18.the leap from that to actually carrying out, personally, some of
:03:19. > :03:22.those interrogation techniques? By the time they asked if I would do
:03:23. > :03:26.the interrogations myself, I had received more than 90 Intel
:03:27. > :03:30.briefings over the impending catastrophic attacks that were in
:03:31. > :03:35.the works. There was a lot of reliable intelligence to suggest
:03:36. > :03:39.that that second wave of attacks might involve a nuclear weapons.
:03:40. > :03:47.When they asked me, I was initially reluctant to do it. You know? Why we
:03:48. > :03:51.are reluctant? Because I knew that I was not there to be a psychologist
:03:52. > :03:58.and more. I have no illusions about that. I am not go to practise any
:03:59. > :04:01.more. And I had invested a lot of my time in education into developing
:04:02. > :04:08.those skills. Which were useful for what they did do, but I knew I was
:04:09. > :04:12.not to use them again. And one of the senior people, along with Jose
:04:13. > :04:20.Rodriguez, who is the chief of the counterterrorism centre at the time,
:04:21. > :04:25.lead over and said if I wasn't at help, how could they are somebody
:04:26. > :04:27.else to. I had received those very in-depth Intel briefings about
:04:28. > :04:33.potentially catastrophic attacks. But you knew what was being asked of
:04:34. > :04:36.you, and you are being asked if he is a carryout techniques such as
:04:37. > :04:40.waterboarding, slapping a terror suspect around the face, putting
:04:41. > :04:46.them in a small and confined space, that sort of thing. I had seen those
:04:47. > :04:51.things done for at least 11 years in my military career. I knew that they
:04:52. > :04:55.did not result in permanent harm, mentally or physically, and had been
:04:56. > :05:00.trained to apply the myself. In addition to that, I had experienced
:05:01. > :05:04.all of them. So to me, it did not seem like a big a jump to someone
:05:05. > :05:08.who you just stopped on the street and asked him to do that. Would you
:05:09. > :05:14.grit your teeth when you had to do these techniques? I found them
:05:15. > :05:19.difficult to do morally, but it was always a moral choice between trying
:05:20. > :05:23.to save lives and allowing people who were trying to withhold
:05:24. > :05:28.information that could potentially stop those attacks to continue to do
:05:29. > :05:36.it, especially since they had voluntarily taken up arms against
:05:37. > :05:44.us. Those EITs were used in a short period of time. Abu Zubaydah was of
:05:45. > :05:50.course working with Al Qaeda when he went under these techniques. He was
:05:51. > :05:58.the first person that we had captured. He had given the money for
:05:59. > :06:01.9/11, and he had moved money and people for them, and was running a
:06:02. > :06:07.training camp that they sometimes relied on. Not all the time, but
:06:08. > :06:13.sometimes. So he was a person of interest and 80s were used to him.
:06:14. > :06:19.-- advanced interrogation techniques. Waterboarding was
:06:20. > :06:24.another technique you recommended. Just described to us what it is
:06:25. > :06:30.like. CHEERING I was water boarded myself. In fact, I water boarded as
:06:31. > :06:37.many attorneys as I have terrorists. In the run-up to deciding if it was
:06:38. > :06:43.legal and did not violate any US laws or the Constitutional Treaty. I
:06:44. > :06:48.actually water boarded an assistant attorney general. It sucks. It is
:06:49. > :06:54.uncomfortable. It feels like you could potentially suffocate. You
:06:55. > :06:59.know you are not going to, but it is hard to keep out of your mind. So it
:07:00. > :07:04.is not painful in the sense that you do not experience a loss of pain,
:07:05. > :07:10.but it is frightening. Because it makes the person think that they are
:07:11. > :07:15.suffocating or drowning. You feel as though you could, you do not feel as
:07:16. > :07:20.if you are. What you actually express yourself as the person who
:07:21. > :07:24.is carrying out the waterboarding? We would prefer that people just
:07:25. > :07:29.volunteer the information. And in fact, it is one of the deceptive
:07:30. > :07:39.things. Abbottabad up who we spoke about was in custody for 1623 days.
:07:40. > :07:46.He received 14 days of EITs. -- Abu Zubaydah. 1609 days he cooperated
:07:47. > :07:53.with us. And did not receive any mistreatment. Or any physical
:07:54. > :07:57.coercion or anything like that. So what we wanted to do was to take
:07:58. > :08:01.these people who were withholding information and put them in a
:08:02. > :08:05.situation where they would try to find some solution. And as soon as
:08:06. > :08:09.they try to find a solution, then we can swish to social influence stuff,
:08:10. > :08:17.the kinds of things he would know as a psychologist and interrogator or
:08:18. > :08:25.any other kind of investigator. -- switch. So you can do passes. But
:08:26. > :08:29.especially a loser but they are -- a man like Abu Zubaydah, they are used
:08:30. > :08:34.to getting of information. We are not about the run of the mill
:08:35. > :08:38.Islamist on the battlefield, we are talking about the top tier of
:08:39. > :08:48.people. That had you feel? Jie Xu Makassar later was made duty. -- I
:08:49. > :08:52.felt that it was my duty. In fact, we started that way. Anyone who is
:08:53. > :08:58.familiar with the way it was done knows that we would, in every time,
:08:59. > :09:02.start with a neutral assessment of whether or not the person was going
:09:03. > :09:07.to tell. And in those places where you use the 80s, as soon as we use
:09:08. > :09:11.them, we told them what will go to asked them about the next time, and
:09:12. > :09:14.then the next time we started with a neutral assessment. So soon as the
:09:15. > :09:22.person began to co-operate, we. EITs. EITs, I should say of course,
:09:23. > :09:30.are advanced interrogation techniques. Abu Zubaydah was another
:09:31. > :09:33.person you interrogator. You also water boarded him. But he had a
:09:34. > :09:39.technique to resist waterboarding. It looked like magic to me. I don't
:09:40. > :09:49.know what was going on with his sinuses, but he swallowed some of
:09:50. > :09:53.the water, so the situation was we had to switch to sailing so he would
:09:54. > :09:57.not suffer water intoxication. And he would pass it is nose and out of
:09:58. > :10:00.his mouth. So waterboarding, although it into dreaded, was not
:10:01. > :10:05.really as effective on him as it was on the others. Because with Abu
:10:06. > :10:11.Zubaydah, in one session you describe that he actually vomited.
:10:12. > :10:16.That was the very service to per session. Balague for the position
:10:17. > :10:21.said you needed to give him of hours or 14 hours. -- that was the very
:10:22. > :10:28.first session. You were not sure that he was breeding. You are
:10:29. > :10:32.concerned. -- breathing. He did tell at one point, but he vomited up is
:10:33. > :10:36.heard. I had to say, of course, as you outlined in your book, Enhanced
:10:37. > :10:39.Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists
:10:40. > :10:41.Trying to Destroy America, waterboarding was something that was
:10:42. > :10:44.authorised by the Bush administration from the very top,
:10:45. > :10:51.from the Department of defence and the Department of Justice, they had
:10:52. > :10:54.said that this was unauthorised. And vice president Dick Cheney said it
:10:55. > :10:59.was fine and did not constitute torture. So want to make that clear.
:11:00. > :11:03.But there is alternative point of view that says waterboarding does
:11:04. > :11:08.constitute torture. We know, for example, Barack Obama said it did
:11:09. > :11:14.constitute torture. So by extension, your critics would say, that you are
:11:15. > :11:24.a perpetrator of torture, or to put it another way, you are a torture at
:11:25. > :11:28.yourself. What is your that? What matters is what the legal counsel
:11:29. > :11:34.says. They are the highest authority terms of making these decisions.
:11:35. > :11:37.Torture has a legal definition. The total weight that we use the word
:11:38. > :11:42.torture, Agassi what people think that. And that is the way Barack
:11:43. > :11:45.Obama used to. I personally think that late term abortions are
:11:46. > :11:54.torture. But it does not matter what Jim Mitchell thinks ought to make is
:11:55. > :12:00.or is not -- thinks is or is not torture. There was a several
:12:01. > :12:02.year-long investigation into whether anyone involved in the enhanced
:12:03. > :12:06.interrogation programme had tortured anyone. And in the end, a career
:12:07. > :12:12.prosecutor came back and said there is no case to be made. So what do
:12:13. > :12:16.you say when people say to you James Mitchell, you are torture, because
:12:17. > :12:23.you carried out waterboarding. She is Rakhine State you are entitled to
:12:24. > :12:27.your opinion. But it is not mine. -- ISA that you are entitled to your
:12:28. > :12:38.opinion. But it is mine. We stopped that second wave of attacks. -- I
:12:39. > :12:47.said. I don't feel that the Tenbury discomfort of a person like Abhishek
:12:48. > :12:54.Muhamed does not shake the requirement to save lives. --
:12:55. > :12:59.temporarily discomfort. They voluntarily decided to attack us and
:13:00. > :13:03.then the second time, and he is not a US citizen. He was not captured
:13:04. > :13:07.inside the United States. He is not really someone who should be given
:13:08. > :13:14.the constitutional rights of an American citizen. And so I owe my
:13:15. > :13:17.fellow countrymen more than I owe Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, given that
:13:18. > :13:23.at any point he could have simply said I will tell you and stop the
:13:24. > :13:27.attack. One of the criticisms is that there has not been a SafeWork.
:13:28. > :13:34.But in fact, there is a SafeWork. Angie Seth word is, a lens that
:13:35. > :13:39.question. -- safe word. -- and the SafeWord. Donald Trump city wanted
:13:40. > :13:47.to bring back waterboarding. He said he would take a position that he
:13:48. > :13:52.would do more than that. Would you like to see waterboarding brought
:13:53. > :13:53.back, because of course Barack Obama stopped the enhanced interrogation
:13:54. > :14:10.techniques in 2009. Some form of legal corps version is
:14:11. > :14:14.necessary. At the very top, people like Abu Zubaydah, they are not
:14:15. > :14:19.going to freely give up that information. General matters said,
:14:20. > :14:23.and I have a lot of respect for the man, but he said gimme some beer and
:14:24. > :14:30.a pack of cigarettes and I could get more -- General Mattis. That is the
:14:31. > :14:36.rapport approach. But you have to ask yourself, would he give up
:14:37. > :14:44.information that would allow America to be attacked in an instant? He
:14:45. > :14:48.would not do that. The only thing standing between another
:14:49. > :14:52.catastrophic attack on some senior person is whether or not that person
:14:53. > :14:58.is willing to voluntarily give that information. You feel that because
:14:59. > :15:03.America no longer uses EITs that it is a less safe place? We used
:15:04. > :15:11.law-enforcement techniques. The local maul cop has more choices for
:15:12. > :15:16.interrogation techniques. America is less safe as a result in your view?
:15:17. > :15:21.Yes. Not just this, but many of the things that happened in the last
:15:22. > :15:26.eight years. Republican Senator John McCain, a Vietnam War veteran. He
:15:27. > :15:30.wrote in the Washington Post in 2011, I know from personal
:15:31. > :15:33.experience that abusing prisoners sometimes gives good intelligence
:15:34. > :15:40.but sometimes bad intelligence, because under torture, someone will
:15:41. > :15:43.say anything he believes his captors want to hear. That is a response to
:15:44. > :15:49.your points. Sometimes coercion does not yield the right response. That
:15:50. > :15:56.is true in some ways. If you ask leading questions and you, umm, tell
:15:57. > :16:00.the person or lead the person to believe that the only way to stop
:16:01. > :16:07.that is to, umm, to tell you what you want to hear, then you do get
:16:08. > :16:11.that kind of information, you do get misinformation to be that is not out
:16:12. > :16:17.it is done. Let me be clear with the. What happens is that we would
:16:18. > :16:22.say to the person we want information to stop operations. We
:16:23. > :16:27.know you do not have all of that, but we have some of that. That is
:16:28. > :16:34.what we want to talk about. And so the point would not be to tell them
:16:35. > :16:37.where we wanted them to go. There was the Senate Intelligence
:16:38. > :16:44.Committee report, of course, into the practices of... Yes. I want to
:16:45. > :16:50.pick up on that, chaired by the Democratic Senator, die-in a fine
:16:51. > :17:00.-- Dianne. She said this is a stain on our values. Do you not have
:17:01. > :17:05.sympathy with that? What you said was authorised and approved, but
:17:06. > :17:11.nevertheless it was a stain. I have sympathy for it. But I reject the
:17:12. > :17:24.idea that it is a stain. You have to understand... We are talking about a
:17:25. > :17:29.matter of days with the use of EITs. One of the ways I think about this
:17:30. > :17:34.is that we do, as do other countries, drone strikes. When we do
:17:35. > :17:39.a drone strike, we send a cruise missile or a hellfire missile into a
:17:40. > :17:42.family and kill the grandmother, we kill the kids, we kill the
:17:43. > :17:49.neighbours, whoever happens to be around this place. That is not a
:17:50. > :17:54.stain? In my mind, questioning someone, even with some temporary
:17:55. > :17:57.discomfort, where you do not harm them, and then you go out and
:17:58. > :18:04.capture these are the people, it does a lot than these other things.
:18:05. > :18:11.-- other. She also said in the foreword to the report that it
:18:12. > :18:17.amounts to cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment. That was the
:18:18. > :18:22.violation of US law. What you did, arguably, waterboarding, the other
:18:23. > :18:28.techniques, it did amount to cruel and inhumane or degrading treatment.
:18:29. > :18:32.Do you accept that criticism? I accept there are people that think
:18:33. > :18:38.that way, I will not try to argue about their position. Here is the
:18:39. > :18:42.thing to remember. It is that in those circumstances where there are
:18:43. > :18:46.catastrophic attacks coming, and there were catastrophic attacks
:18:47. > :18:51.coming, and people are withholding information, we were under no
:18:52. > :18:57.obligation to allow them to withhold that information and kill thousands
:18:58. > :19:01.of Americans. We just are not. And the way the current set-up is that
:19:02. > :19:07.we are dependent entirely on voluntary statements. You see it was
:19:08. > :19:11.entirely justifiable? I am not saying the entire CIA programme was
:19:12. > :19:19.justifiable. You warned yourself of the risk of techniques, and some
:19:20. > :19:23.people were interrogating with a handgun, a power drill. They did
:19:24. > :19:32.things that were completely not authorised, like keeping people's
:19:33. > :19:40.elbows together and taking them to their head and taping them up. In my
:19:41. > :19:49.view that violates the law because it does not go along with the
:19:50. > :19:56.Justice Department. And then the detainees, Iraqi detainees, being
:19:57. > :20:03.leashed up in one day and people being detained without legal process
:20:04. > :20:09.and so on. -- Guantanamo Bay. Obviously you are not part of that.
:20:10. > :20:12.But nevertheless you could be seen as part of this whole programme
:20:13. > :20:17.which, in some people's minds, really does denote... I can
:20:18. > :20:21.understand people thinking that way. And I accept there are people that
:20:22. > :20:26.think that way. You know? I don't know how to respond to it beyond
:20:27. > :20:32.that. I believe there are people who think that way. A lot of it comes
:20:33. > :20:37.from ignorance. Some of it is based on the mistaken notion that we can
:20:38. > :20:43.somehow make the Islamists who are attacking us like us. That if we
:20:44. > :20:47.just spent more time with the Islamists, trying to convince them
:20:48. > :20:54.that... I mean, I spent years with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other
:20:55. > :20:58.high-level, the 14 other terrorist that were captured, and it was clear
:20:59. > :21:03.talking to them that there was nothing we were going to do that
:21:04. > :21:09.would allow them to accept Western democracy. In fact, they said
:21:10. > :21:16.Western democracy and true Shariah cannot coexist. This man said of his
:21:17. > :21:29.time in Iraq, when you become the torturer, something happens. It has
:21:30. > :21:33.a corrosive effect over time. It chases you and changes you. The
:21:34. > :21:37.reason waterboarding was not done more than it was was because the
:21:38. > :21:41.interrogators did not want to do it. We agreed to do it to these people
:21:42. > :21:48.to stop catastrophic attacks. Once we had enough information that we
:21:49. > :21:51.did not need to use it, we were not interested in it any more.
:21:52. > :21:59.Waterboarding is not the first or best choice. We went out of our way
:22:00. > :22:23.to avoid doing that. And so I think if you... You know? It is one thing
:22:24. > :22:27.to put people in cages and nail people to trees and crucify children
:22:28. > :22:31.and bury people and throw rocks at them. It is difficult to come back
:22:32. > :22:35.from that. Was to four-year? I rely on legality. I am convinced that we
:22:36. > :22:38.did things in a way that did not produce permanent harm, mentally or
:22:39. > :22:44.physically. That is my obligation when I do get. I don't have any
:22:45. > :22:50.control over how people do it. You said you wondered about whether you
:22:51. > :22:55.should actually carry out these things that it would change your
:22:56. > :23:03.life as you knew it. Do you regret going down that path? Well, the only
:23:04. > :23:08.thing that I actually regret is that in doing that, you know, I am not
:23:09. > :23:13.likely to be a college professor, you know, I am not still doing
:23:14. > :23:20.consultation for some of the things I was involved in, I would, to the
:23:21. > :23:23.extent that having done those things sort of blackballed me from doing
:23:24. > :23:28.other stuff, I had regrets about that. But no regrets about doing it.
:23:29. > :23:32.Because I do not think you need to be ashamed of trying to save
:23:33. > :23:37.American lives. I travel quite a bit in the US. And I have not personally
:23:38. > :23:43.run into one single person who was critical of me. I have run into
:23:44. > :23:47.people who disagree about the use of EITs, saying I prefer it did not
:23:48. > :23:52.happen, but I can understand that you did it to stop these attacks. By
:23:53. > :23:56.the vast majority of people I run into are grateful that somebody was
:23:57. > :24:00.willing to do what needs to be done to protect them. -- but. James
:24:01. > :24:14.Mitchell, thank you very much for coming in HARDtalk and thank you.
:24:15. > :24:23.Thank you. Mixed weather fortunes
:24:24. > :24:26.for today's weather picture.