James Mitchell - Interrogator for the CIA, 2002-2009 HARDtalk

Now, and next, it is time for HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk with me, Zennor Badawi, in Florida, when High Speed

two psychologist James Mitchell. He helped draw up and carry out the

CIA's enhanced interrogation programme after the September 11

attacks. He personally interrogated suspects using techniques like

waterboarding. His critics say he is at Porgera. He says he has nothing

to apologise for, and what he did was harsh but legal and necessary.

So this is your study? Yes. The thing that is useful about a lie

relate this is, for example, this is a book of Sharia law from a salafist

position. I have a couple of versions of the Koran, because not

all translations are the same. What sort of insights based on their

knowledge from these books and your training as a psychologist about

what motivates the kind of people you have interrogated into carrying

out the deeds or wanting to carry out the deeds that we know about?

I've heard people say that these terror attacks that we are seeing in

Europe, Great Britain, and the United States had nothing to do with

Islam. But having spoke to many terrorists such as Abd al-Rahim

al-Nashiri, I can tell you in their minds it has everything to do with

Islam. There are interrogated and -- there interpretation. Yes, they are

salafist interpretation of Islam. -- there. James Mitchell, welcome to

HARDtalk Thank you for having me on. So there you are after more than 20

years in the US Air Force. You are working as a consultant for the CAA.

The September 11 attacks happened and you see to the CAA that you want

to be part of the solution. -- CIA. Why? It was an attack on our

homeland. The main thing that influenced me to want to volunteer

to help out was the death and destruction. The critical thing when

they asked me if I would be willing to become involved in the

interrogation programme really was the falling man and the people

jumping off the building. I thought it was inappropriate and wrong for

them to have to choose which way they died as a result of this

cowardly attack that was done by these Islamist that would try to

destroy our way of life. So, obviously using your experience as a

clinical psychologist, working with the American military for many years

could help identify, recommend techniques that would work as part

of the enhanced interrogation programme. But how would you make

the leap from that to actually carrying out, personally, some of

those interrogation techniques? By the time they asked if I would do

the interrogations myself, I had received more than 90 Intel

briefings over the impending catastrophic attacks that were in

the works. There was a lot of reliable intelligence to suggest

that that second wave of attacks might involve a nuclear weapons.

When they asked me, I was initially reluctant to do it. You know? Why we

are reluctant? Because I knew that I was not there to be a psychologist

and more. I have no illusions about that. I am not go to practise any

more. And I had invested a lot of my time in education into developing

those skills. Which were useful for what they did do, but I knew I was

not to use them again. And one of the senior people, along with Jose

Rodriguez, who is the chief of the counterterrorism centre at the time,

lead over and said if I wasn't at help, how could they are somebody

else to. I had received those very in-depth Intel briefings about

potentially catastrophic attacks. But you knew what was being asked of

you, and you are being asked if he is a carryout techniques such as

waterboarding, slapping a terror suspect around the face, putting

them in a small and confined space, that sort of thing. I had seen those

things done for at least 11 years in my military career. I knew that they

did not result in permanent harm, mentally or physically, and had been

trained to apply the myself. In addition to that, I had experienced

all of them. So to me, it did not seem like a big a jump to someone

who you just stopped on the street and asked him to do that. Would you

grit your teeth when you had to do these techniques? I found them

difficult to do morally, but it was always a moral choice between trying

to save lives and allowing people who were trying to withhold

information that could potentially stop those attacks to continue to do

it, especially since they had voluntarily taken up arms against

us. Those EITs were used in a short period of time. Abu Zubaydah was of

course working with Al Qaeda when he went under these techniques. He was

the first person that we had captured. He had given the money for

9/11, and he had moved money and people for them, and was running a

training camp that they sometimes relied on. Not all the time, but

sometimes. So he was a person of interest and 80s were used to him.

-- advanced interrogation techniques. Waterboarding was

another technique you recommended. Just described to us what it is

like. CHEERING I was water boarded myself. In fact, I water boarded as

many attorneys as I have terrorists. In the run-up to deciding if it was

legal and did not violate any US laws or the Constitutional Treaty. I

actually water boarded an assistant attorney general. It sucks. It is

uncomfortable. It feels like you could potentially suffocate. You

know you are not going to, but it is hard to keep out of your mind. So it

is not painful in the sense that you do not experience a loss of pain,

but it is frightening. Because it makes the person think that they are

suffocating or drowning. You feel as though you could, you do not feel as

if you are. What you actually express yourself as the person who

is carrying out the waterboarding? We would prefer that people just

volunteer the information. And in fact, it is one of the deceptive

things. Abbottabad up who we spoke about was in custody for 1623 days.

He received 14 days of EITs. -- Abu Zubaydah. 1609 days he cooperated

with us. And did not receive any mistreatment. Or any physical

coercion or anything like that. So what we wanted to do was to take

these people who were withholding information and put them in a

situation where they would try to find some solution. And as soon as

they try to find a solution, then we can swish to social influence stuff,

the kinds of things he would know as a psychologist and interrogator or

any other kind of investigator. -- switch. So you can do passes. But

especially a loser but they are -- a man like Abu Zubaydah, they are used

to getting of information. We are not about the run of the mill

Islamist on the battlefield, we are talking about the top tier of

people. That had you feel? Jie Xu Makassar later was made duty. -- I

felt that it was my duty. In fact, we started that way. Anyone who is

familiar with the way it was done knows that we would, in every time,

start with a neutral assessment of whether or not the person was going

to tell. And in those places where you use the 80s, as soon as we use

them, we told them what will go to asked them about the next time, and

then the next time we started with a neutral assessment. So soon as the

person began to co-operate, we. EITs. EITs, I should say of course,

are advanced interrogation techniques. Abu Zubaydah was another

person you interrogator. You also water boarded him. But he had a

technique to resist waterboarding. It looked like magic to me. I don't

know what was going on with his sinuses, but he swallowed some of

the water, so the situation was we had to switch to sailing so he would

not suffer water intoxication. And he would pass it is nose and out of

his mouth. So waterboarding, although it into dreaded, was not

really as effective on him as it was on the others. Because with Abu

Zubaydah, in one session you describe that he actually vomited.

That was the very service to per session. Balague for the position

said you needed to give him of hours or 14 hours. -- that was the very

first session. You were not sure that he was breeding. You are

concerned. -- breathing. He did tell at one point, but he vomited up is

heard. I had to say, of course, as you outlined in your book, Enhanced

Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists

Trying to Destroy America, waterboarding was something that was

authorised by the Bush administration from the very top,

from the Department of defence and the Department of Justice, they had

said that this was unauthorised. And vice president Dick Cheney said it

was fine and did not constitute torture. So want to make that clear.

But there is alternative point of view that says waterboarding does

constitute torture. We know, for example, Barack Obama said it did

constitute torture. So by extension, your critics would say, that you are

a perpetrator of torture, or to put it another way, you are a torture at

yourself. What is your that? What matters is what the legal counsel

says. They are the highest authority terms of making these decisions.

Torture has a legal definition. The total weight that we use the word

torture, Agassi what people think that. And that is the way Barack

Obama used to. I personally think that late term abortions are

torture. But it does not matter what Jim Mitchell thinks ought to make is

or is not -- thinks is or is not torture. There was a several

year-long investigation into whether anyone involved in the enhanced

interrogation programme had tortured anyone. And in the end, a career

prosecutor came back and said there is no case to be made. So what do

you say when people say to you James Mitchell, you are torture, because

you carried out waterboarding. She is Rakhine State you are entitled to

your opinion. But it is not mine. -- ISA that you are entitled to your

opinion. But it is mine. We stopped that second wave of attacks. -- I

said. I don't feel that the Tenbury discomfort of a person like Abhishek

Muhamed does not shake the requirement to save lives. --

temporarily discomfort. They voluntarily decided to attack us and

then the second time, and he is not a US citizen. He was not captured

inside the United States. He is not really someone who should be given

the constitutional rights of an American citizen. And so I owe my

fellow countrymen more than I owe Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, given that

at any point he could have simply said I will tell you and stop the

attack. One of the criticisms is that there has not been a SafeWork.

But in fact, there is a SafeWork. Angie Seth word is, a lens that

question. -- safe word. -- and the SafeWord. Donald Trump city wanted

to bring back waterboarding. He said he would take a position that he

would do more than that. Would you like to see waterboarding brought

back, because of course Barack Obama stopped the enhanced interrogation

techniques in 2009. Some form of legal corps version is

necessary. At the very top, people like Abu Zubaydah, they are not

going to freely give up that information. General matters said,

and I have a lot of respect for the man, but he said gimme some beer and

a pack of cigarettes and I could get more -- General Mattis. That is the

rapport approach. But you have to ask yourself, would he give up

information that would allow America to be attacked in an instant? He

would not do that. The only thing standing between another

catastrophic attack on some senior person is whether or not that person

is willing to voluntarily give that information. You feel that because

America no longer uses EITs that it is a less safe place? We used

law-enforcement techniques. The local maul cop has more choices for

interrogation techniques. America is less safe as a result in your view?

Yes. Not just this, but many of the things that happened in the last

eight years. Republican Senator John McCain, a Vietnam War veteran. He

wrote in the Washington Post in 2011, I know from personal

experience that abusing prisoners sometimes gives good intelligence

but sometimes bad intelligence, because under torture, someone will

say anything he believes his captors want to hear. That is a response to

your points. Sometimes coercion does not yield the right response. That

is true in some ways. If you ask leading questions and you, umm, tell

the person or lead the person to believe that the only way to stop

that is to, umm, to tell you what you want to hear, then you do get

that kind of information, you do get misinformation to be that is not out

it is done. Let me be clear with the. What happens is that we would

say to the person we want information to stop operations. We

know you do not have all of that, but we have some of that. That is

what we want to talk about. And so the point would not be to tell them

where we wanted them to go. There was the Senate Intelligence

Committee report, of course, into the practices of... Yes. I want to

pick up on that, chaired by the Democratic Senator, die-in a fine

-- Dianne. She said this is a stain on our values. Do you not have

sympathy with that? What you said was authorised and approved, but

nevertheless it was a stain. I have sympathy for it. But I reject the

idea that it is a stain. You have to understand... We are talking about a

matter of days with the use of EITs. One of the ways I think about this

is that we do, as do other countries, drone strikes. When we do

a drone strike, we send a cruise missile or a hellfire missile into a

family and kill the grandmother, we kill the kids, we kill the

neighbours, whoever happens to be around this place. That is not a

stain? In my mind, questioning someone, even with some temporary

discomfort, where you do not harm them, and then you go out and

capture these are the people, it does a lot than these other things.

-- other. She also said in the foreword to the report that it

amounts to cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment. That was the

violation of US law. What you did, arguably, waterboarding, the other

techniques, it did amount to cruel and inhumane or degrading treatment.

Do you accept that criticism? I accept there are people that think

that way, I will not try to argue about their position. Here is the

thing to remember. It is that in those circumstances where there are

catastrophic attacks coming, and there were catastrophic attacks

coming, and people are withholding information, we were under no

obligation to allow them to withhold that information and kill thousands

of Americans. We just are not. And the way the current set-up is that

we are dependent entirely on voluntary statements. You see it was

entirely justifiable? I am not saying the entire CIA programme was

justifiable. You warned yourself of the risk of techniques, and some

people were interrogating with a handgun, a power drill. They did

things that were completely not authorised, like keeping people's

elbows together and taking them to their head and taping them up. In my

view that violates the law because it does not go along with the

Justice Department. And then the detainees, Iraqi detainees, being

leashed up in one day and people being detained without legal process

and so on. -- Guantanamo Bay. Obviously you are not part of that.

But nevertheless you could be seen as part of this whole programme

which, in some people's minds, really does denote... I can

understand people thinking that way. And I accept there are people that

think that way. You know? I don't know how to respond to it beyond

that. I believe there are people who think that way. A lot of it comes

from ignorance. Some of it is based on the mistaken notion that we can

somehow make the Islamists who are attacking us like us. That if we

just spent more time with the Islamists, trying to convince them

that... I mean, I spent years with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other

high-level, the 14 other terrorist that were captured, and it was clear

talking to them that there was nothing we were going to do that

would allow them to accept Western democracy. In fact, they said

Western democracy and true Shariah cannot coexist. This man said of his

time in Iraq, when you become the torturer, something happens. It has

a corrosive effect over time. It chases you and changes you. The

reason waterboarding was not done more than it was was because the

interrogators did not want to do it. We agreed to do it to these people

to stop catastrophic attacks. Once we had enough information that we

did not need to use it, we were not interested in it any more.

Waterboarding is not the first or best choice. We went out of our way

to avoid doing that. And so I think if you... You know? It is one thing

to put people in cages and nail people to trees and crucify children

and bury people and throw rocks at them. It is difficult to come back

from that. Was to four-year? I rely on legality. I am convinced that we

did things in a way that did not produce permanent harm, mentally or

physically. That is my obligation when I do get. I don't have any

control over how people do it. You said you wondered about whether you

should actually carry out these things that it would change your

life as you knew it. Do you regret going down that path? Well, the only

thing that I actually regret is that in doing that, you know, I am not

likely to be a college professor, you know, I am not still doing

consultation for some of the things I was involved in, I would, to the

extent that having done those things sort of blackballed me from doing

other stuff, I had regrets about that. But no regrets about doing it.

Because I do not think you need to be ashamed of trying to save

American lives. I travel quite a bit in the US. And I have not personally

run into one single person who was critical of me. I have run into

people who disagree about the use of EITs, saying I prefer it did not

happen, but I can understand that you did it to stop these attacks. By

the vast majority of people I run into are grateful that somebody was

willing to do what needs to be done to protect them. -- but. James

Mitchell, thank you very much for coming in HARDtalk and thank you.

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