Title: 20 Years After 9/11 / Inside America with Ghida Fakry
Show: TRT World
Date: 2021-09-12
URL: https://youtu.be/gCNk9IqON4k
Duration: 53.2:00

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[00:00] [Music] a major disaster is occurring in new york city this morning [Applause] the people who knocked these buildings down we'll hear all of us soon [Applause] after a firefight they killed osama bin laden and took custody of his body

[00:32] the world changed on september 11 2001 after the attacks on the united states and now 20 years on we look back at what happened how the u.s responded and the legacy of its so-called war on terror [Music] hello welcome to this special edition of

[01:03] inside america with mirida fahri live in washington now we all remember where we were on that fateful day september 11 2001 a day that would alter the course of history wherever you were the movie-like scenes of planes crashing into the world trade center the collapse of the twin towers have left an indelible mark on those of us who lived it in real time and those too young to remember or those who were not even born and these memories remain vivid to this

[01:35] day now on 9 11 i was a new york based reporter for another international news network like millions of people who lived and worked in manhattan i started my day with the unimaginable unfathomable live shots unfolding on our tv screens the first plane crashed into the north tower at 8 46 am the second into the south tower at 903 am and then within two hours both towers had collapsed in a matter of seconds

[02:05] virtually in free fall i remember i struggled to make my way down to lower manhattan that day it was eerily quiet but for the deafening sound of sirens people were walking uptown in droves stunned in silence new york had become a city under siege bridges and tunnels were closed the phone systems were already stretched beyond capacity and soon crashed the grief the shock the chaos of that day quickly gave way to anger

[02:36] and calls for retribution president george w bush had started his presidency seven months earlier in the evening of september 11 2001 he addressed the nation and vowed to bring to justice those responsible for what he called these evil acts the u.s he said would make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them soon comparisons were made with japan's massive surprise attack on pearl harbor during world war ii but of course this was completely different

[03:07] the air force of another power had not attacked the united states these were acts of terrorism evil as they were this was not war in the afternoon of that day we had already been told that 19 men had hijacked four planes and osama bin laden's al-qaeda organization was named as the culprit bin laden had become america's enemy number one in fact he had been since the bombings of the u.s embassies in kenya and tanzania a few years earlier the speed with which the u.s government

[03:38] named the perpetrators surprised many and begged the question if u.s intelligence was that good why wasn't it able to thwart these attacks richard clark the top u.s official in charge of counterterrorism at the time made some damning claims following the release of the much anticipated report by the bipartisan congressional 911 commission whose mandate was to examine and report on the facts and causes relating to the attacks on september 11 he said quote

[04:09] everybody involved in counterterrorism in the cia knew about it from the director on down there were over 50 people who knew about it 50 and they knew about it for over a year and never once never once during that year did they tell me or the director of the fbi or the assistant director of the fbi in charge of counterterrorism all of those 50 people kept it quiet never told us for over a year there was an intentional policy approved at a high level in cia to deny the information to

[04:40] me and to the fbi so were the 911 attacks a massive intelligence and security failure or is there more to it and did the united states ultimately overreact by invading afghanistan ousting the taliban from power and being bogged down in a two-decade war it did not win i spoke earlier with ambassador paul brenner who was chairman of the national commission on terrorism in the lead up to 9 11 and whose report titled countering the changing threat of international terrorism was delivered to then

[05:12] president bill clinton in 2000 it warned about al qaeda and other quote loosely based terror groups i began by asking him about the ominous signs the growing chatter in the weeks and days leading up to 9 11 about a possible even likely attack on u.s soil and if 20 years later he thinks the u.s government and intelligence agencies failed well yes of course they failed in the sense that they didn't predict the actual time and location of the attack

[05:42] but as you pointed out the national commission on terrorism essentially said that the united states took a vacation from history during the 1990s we congratulated ourselves on defeating the soviet union in 1989 and 1991 and we sort of thought we could ignore what was going on around us but as the national commission pointed out beginning in the late 1980s and then all through the 90s there was increasing intelligence

[06:14] of a growth of radical islamic terrorism something we had not seen before and that's what the uh national commission tried to alert the country to uh unfortunately of course we missed many signals as it turned out but should these signals have been missed because as you say in your report you mentioned that priority number one is to prevent terrorist attacks saying that good intelligence is the best weapon against international terrorism

[06:44] could 911 have been prevented there was plenty of intelligence all around there was a lot of intelligence that in retrospect we should have picked up on the other hand i've spent most of my adult life reading intelligence and i know how difficult it is to connect the dots in this case we missed some dots particularly the fact that a couple of these terrorists as it turned out were learning how to fly planes how to take them off but not how to land them which obviously uh meant that they were simply going to crash them somewhere but can you just

[07:15] say we missed some dots and simply move on because the u.s had constant intelligence on bin laden for at least a full year before 9 11. we know that from top u.s officials the us was flying predator drones for surveillance purposes over afghanistan tracking bin laden's every move in real time president clinton famously said a few years later quote i nearly got him and could have killed him but i would have had to destroy a little town called kandahar and killed 300 innocent people why were so many obvious signs missed

[07:47] and so many dots simply not connected well i think the problem is true of most countries intelligence services they are focused but they are very broadly focused and in our case there were misses between various intelligence agencies for example between the domestic intelligence from the fbi and the international intelligence from our national security services this is not unknown it is a tragedy there's no

[08:17] question about it and it has obviously changed the world uh in a way that we had not foreseen until 9 11. but should there have been consequences for these signs being missed because there was the president's daily brief the intelligence report that was handed over to president bush by the cia on august 6 2001 entitled as you know bin laden determined to strike in the u.s there was also the comments that were made by the fbi counterterrorism

[08:49] chief john o'neill who who said that the united states the s the cia knew that two of the suspected hijackers had received proper visas had entered the united states uh richard clard goes even further he was leading counter-terrorism efforts back then he accused the cia top brass of intentionally denying information to him and to the fbi so so was the cia aware of what was going on the problem with picking over the

[09:22] evidence afterwards always is that you can find a document that says x that people ignored what we had to do i think what the american government had to do i was not in the government what the government had to do was react and there i think president bush reacted strongly with support among other things from the cia particularly in the initial phase of the war in afghanistan the initial phase of the war in afghanistan i presume you agree with those who say that

[09:52] launching a war in response was not the right thing to do it was not the most cost effective not to mention not the most efficient way to go after terrorism no i i don't agree with that i think in the circumstances of 3 000 americans being killed the biggest attack on the homeland since pearl harbor the president whoever he had been it could have been al gore or george bush would have uh thought it was a good idea to put some force on the ground to try to get rid of the people

[10:23] al-qaeda who had attacked us that i think was clear and was widely supported you said to put boots on the ground and and go after the people who attacked you you served in afghanistan and iraq with hindsight do you accept that it was a monumental blunder to invade these countries it it's cost the us blood and treasure and prestige and credibility throughout the world not just trillions of dollars spent on these post-9 11 wars but the hundreds of thousands of deaths maybe maybe millions the u.s now handed afghanistan back to the taliban in

[10:54] disgrace iraq isn't a mess it remains unstable and al-qaeda let's face it is not just around it's still alive and well not just in the middle east but in asia and africa isis was born from these wars well of course the current situation which we can discuss is uh is not not good uh i would argue that it would be worse if we had not reacted if we had not in fact gone after bin laden and finally got him a decade later uh it would have been worse if we had not gone into iraq

[11:26] because iran would certainly have gotten its nuclear weapons and probably iraq would have gotten nuclear weapons also hold on should bin laden have been brought have been brought to justice should the united states have captured him rather than rather than take him out and execute him ten years later well as it turned out we couldn't capture him the the the force that went in to find him in a lot of odd uh was attacked and they had to respond with force and in the end he was killed let me ask you this

[11:57] ambassador in 2000 your report recommended naming afghanistan under the taliban as a state sponsor of terrorism and applying all of the sanctions to to that country on 9 11 less than four hours i believe after the attacks you said this you said bin laden certainly has to be the prime suspect but there are others in the middle east and there are at least two states iran and iraq which should at least remain on the list of potential suspects now of course that was also the narrative of the neoconservatives in washington

[12:27] dick cheney donald rumsfeld paul wolfowitz and so many others who constantly tried to link 911 to these two countries to justify military action against them is it any coincidence that these same people who are now in the white house supported the so-called project for the new american century which in open letters to president clinton and congressional leaders called for the removal of saddam hussein including through the use of force if necessary and in a report just before the 2000 election

[12:58] that so-called new american century project advocated that it would be useful to provoke that shift through a catastrophic event a catalyzing event like a new pearl harbor that event was 9 11 some would argue the people advocating this were now in the white house around bush they had their moment their justification to invade these foreign lands didn't they well they certainly had a reason to you can call it a justification i would uh they certainly had a reason uh particularly given the fact that we know that uh al qaeda

[13:30] uh conducted this attack and you know this this was not something that was a fantasy made up by neocons if you go back and read the as you have the report of the national commission on terrorism we pointed out that there had already been an attack on the world trade center in 1993. in which the the men who we caught the fbi caught said their intention had been to kill 200 000 americans by collapsing the two buildings on each other so the intelligence was there this was

[14:02] it was not something that was made up by neocons that was paul bremer speaking with me earlier you can watch more of that interview on next week's insight america as we discuss the legacy of the united states wars in afghanistan and iraq now in late 2002 the united states government set up the national commission on terrorist attacks upon the united states also known as the 911 commission an independent bipartisan body that was directed to prepare full

[14:32] and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the september 11th attacks including the preparedness for and the immediate response by u.s agencies on july 22 2004 the commission released its report and among its key findings were that communication at senior levels was poor the chain of command did not function well congress responded slowly and gave little guidance to executive branch agencies on terrorism the us has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9

[15:04] 11 attacks according to the commission it also found no evidence that the saudi government as an institution or senior saudi officials individually funded al-qaeda the commission also made 41 recommendations including reforms of u.s security and intelligence agencies now for more on what we learned from the 911 commission and the questions that remain unanswered to this day i'm joined by one of its members richard benveniste richard benveniste it's been now what 17

[15:34] years since the commission issued those findings of course more has come to light in the intervening years including fbi investigation into some of the the activities of the suspected hijackers does the report that was authored in 2004 still stand today if you knew back then what you know you know today and all the questions that do remain unanswered would you sort of put your name to it oh yes uh i think the report stands up

[16:05] very well frankly i agree with much of your analysis in the portion of the brenner interview that i just saw re-televised i think your analysis is quite cogent however if you look at the information that has uh been revealed it is merely supplemental to what we already found anyone doing investigations

[16:37] that have a conclusion would be foolish to suggest that there is no further information to be found that would be arrogant and incorrect but in terms of the basic information that we found yes we had a lot of information had it been utilized and shared and uniformly distributed

[17:07] to a central authority that would act upon it yes it is entirely possible that the plot could have been interrupted but do you believe that there were gaping holes that the commission could have looked into as you know families of the victims to this day are angry they believe they haven't been told the complete truth do you believe that the american public was given the full truth

[17:39] about 9 11 given the fact that there were several questions that were unanswered just as an example world trade center building number seven collapsing that afternoon the commission didn't look into it we know that some media outlets including the bbc reported on the collapse before it even took place i mean these are gaping holes aren't they do you feel that more should have been done to get to the heart of some of these key questions uh you are now plumbing into the uh

[18:12] the realm of conspiratorialists um there is no substantial evidence that there was anything uh other than um the airplanes and the force of their crashing into the buildings that was result in building seven there are no gaping holes and i'm sorry to tell you that you are

[18:42] misinformed if you think there are gaping holes what there is is information that could yet be pursued we know that the two individuals who were in california were assisted by individuals of saudi connection when they came to the united states but as that's in our report as we said uh

[19:13] the uh level of assistance provided by saudi individuals was it was it was it investigated but mr benveniste for interrupting you but but let me just ask you though let me ask you though about uh the accusations the accusations made towards the commission that it did not that it didn't give the whole story that it did not relay all of the warning signs that existed before 9 11. we know

[19:44] from the chair and the co-chair of the commission in a book that they wrote a few years later that the commission was in their words set up to fail that the pentagon officials from the pentagon and senior officials from the aviation federation administration did not give forthright answers to the extent that they even considered a separate investigation into obstruction of justice so today would you say you are satisfied with everything that you put

[20:15] out you are getting information that we have provided we provided the information about the lapses in intelligence it's all in our report we provided the information that you've just referred to about the uh failure to track the planes and the mis statements that were made we made all of that available to the public in open hearings we were transparent

[20:46] and we were as complete as we could be there was no motive on the individuals who served on the commission to do anything other than provide a full and uh realistic appraisal of the facts and from those facts make recommendations to congress to make us safer as a country and we did that now what you are referring to

[21:28] mr ben i am running out of time but just a quick yes or no if i if if you may uh do you agree with the comments that were made by tom keane just a few days ago he was the chairman of the 911 commission he said if the fbi and the ca and other 14 intelligence agencies had been talking to each other most of us feel that the attack would have been prevented do you agree with him yesterday i just said that i was just with him yesterday i just met with the victims families and we had a uh a

[21:59] discussion for well over an hour that was publicized televised um you are you are creating dissension where there is no dissension we are in violent agreement that there was information which if it had been shared could have resulted in the disruption of the 9 11 attacks unfortunately that didn't happen

[22:33] and the question of whether we over reacted as a country the invasion of iraq was somehow tied to 9 11 is one which we have studied we have looked at and you have made some legitimate points in that regard but don't say that there were gaping holes in the commission's report because you are misinformed if you believe that

[23:04] well that's what many people would say but for now though thank you so much richard benveniste member of the 911 commission really good to have you on the program thank you for your time now in the aftermath of 9 11 several major changes to surveillance laws in the u.s were enacted in the name of national security the first change came with the usa patriot act which was passed by congress just 45 days after the 9 11 attacks the new law allowed u.s law enforcement officials to monitor the phone and email

[23:35] communications bank and credit records as well as online activity of americans it also expanded the list of activities that qualify for terrorism charges and authorized the indefinite detention without trial of immigrants and non-us citizens now several legal challenges have been brought against the patriot act because of government overreach and abuse and federal courts have ruled that a number of its provisions are unconstitutional now after parts of the patriot act expired back in june of 2015

[24:07] and following much outcry from the public and civil rights groups here in the u.s the usa freedom act was enacted into law it placed limits on the collection of communication data on u.s citizens but also re-enacted some of the patriot acts expired sections through to 2019. now for more on the impact of these post-9 11 laws on freedoms and civil liberties here in the united states i'm joined by imran siddiqui the executive director in washington state of care the council on american islamic

[24:38] relations imran siddiqui in the immediate aftermath of 9 11 of course the american muslim community not just in new york but across the united states were subjected to greater surveillance and racial profiling through the patriot act there was also the backlash that they faced as muslims living in this country the the suspicions that surrounded them and which were reinforced by these new laws there's the demonization the anger the rise in death threats the hate

[25:08] crimes how challenging was it for muslim americans in those days it was definitely challenging uh just in the aftermath of of this horrific attack we're all mourning as a country i had friends and family members who were impacted who were in new york city at the time so we as a community really didn't even get a chance to mourn what was happening because this level of suspicion really was turned on to us uh immediately and you found yourself

[25:39] um you know having to defend yourself for things that you were not responsible for and so uh slowly you started seeing this push for you know different wars and things of that nature you start seeing um this push for mass surveillance that took place on both a local state and federal level and that impacted our communities nationwide additionally you started seeing um informants being placed in in mosques across the united states and so this level of of distrust and criminalization

[26:12] was fomented within our community so it was definitely challenging the government said that many of these laws actually helped them to disrupt potential terrorist plots to strengthen security to what extent did it undermine the civil liberties especially of the muslim community and i remember when i lived in new york during the period in the lead up and in the aftermath of 9 11 it wasn't just muslims

[26:43] who were living fearfully but it was also people who who could be misrepresented taken for muslims i remember cab drivers staying away from their work uh not just uh cab drivers who were muslim but even those who were hindu that their turbans were mistaken for for the the gear that that muslims might wear to what extent was there unwarranted suspicion and how did it impact the way muslims lived not just back then but how they relate today to

[27:15] to america and their role within within american society that's a great point um the first person who was who was killed in the aftermath of 9 11 in a retribution attack was a sikh american in mesa arizona named belbir singh sodhi and this was a sikh american who wore a turban just because of the perception that this person is foreign or uh because terrorists wear turbans or have beards the sikh american community was very much the victim of a

[27:47] massive uptick in hate crimes and you see this taking place to this very day and so islamophobia not only impacted muslim americans it impacted folks who were perceived as being muslim as well and to the point of mass surveillance and these types of programs what you see in places like new york city where you lived where they had a demographics unit where they uh they basically spied on 33 ancestries of interest all of which were of muslim descent where

[28:17] they placed spies in cafes and mosques and around the city and not even around the city but throughout the entire northeast following student conferences and and muslim conferences throughout throughout the region no actionable intelligence was actually gathered through these spying programs and so around the 2011 time frame new york city had to dismantle the spying program after backlash by organizers and the muslim community locally within within new york

[28:49] city so this type of mass surveillance has never proven to actually stop terrorism um i think this was an overreaction by both city state and federal uh levels and it was deployed across different cities throughout the us and it it has a chilling effect amongst muslims because we were otherwise this is a repeat of the type of tactics that were used during the 1960s and 70s during the cointelpro era against black american organizations and other organizations where you're treated as criminals first

[29:20] and then citizens second all right and interesting that in 2000 the fbi registered 28 incidents of hate crimes against american muslims in 2001 after the attacks that number went up to 481 imran siddiqui thank you so much for joining us now less than a month after the september 11th attacks on october 7th of 2001 the first day of the war in afghanistan

[29:50] the u.s used a drone for the first time to conduct a lethal strike in combat it killed two unidentified men this was just the beginning of a new paradigm of warfare remote killings by drones by the united states and others with no accountability with complete impunity this new weapon of choice meant no risk of u.s casualties and an ability to to perpetrate acts of war largely hidden from the american public also hidden over the past two decades

[30:21] where the tens of thousands of civilian casualties killed in far away countries that are not at war with the united states now according to the uk-based non-profit air wars since 9 11 over 48 000 civilians are estimated to have been directly killed by u.s airstrikes in seven conflict zones in countries including afghanistan pakistan yemen and somalia the u.s has declared over 91 000 drone strikes since 9 11 a report from the costs of war project estimates that post

[30:52] 9 11 wars and counterterrorism operations have killed more than 900 000 people but of course the true figure of the number of civilians killed may never be fully known now the lack of transparency around this form of extraditional killing has undermined of course the moral standing of the united states which has been accused by human rights organizations violating international norms and law philip

[31:23] alston exports the legal justification of killings quote far from the battle zone during his time as united nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial summary or arbitrary executions he is now director of new york university school of laws center for human rights and global justice he joins us now live now philip alston i know that in your report back in 2010 you were already highly critical of u.s drone attacks saying that its growing use was undermining global constraints on the use of military force at the time

[31:55] i know you estimated that around 40 states already had drone technology today it's about 100 states how do you contain their use how do you uphold international law well drones of course are now an established part of the military arsenal as well as civilian arsenal of of a huge number of states um i'm not sure where your figure of a hundred comes from but uh i suspect they

[32:25] are even more widely used the challenge of course is to restrict the ways and the extent to which they are used to carry out killings that's what makes the difference between drones that are used simply for surveillance and those that are used to carry out lethal attacks there are in place but they were in place before 2001.

[32:56] [Music] international legal rules that limit the circumstances under which those sorts of targeted lethal killings can take place but the united states has managed to either ignore or to try to create legal justifications to get around those restrictions

[33:26] but outside outside of declared wars in countries like somalia like yemen like pakistan other countries that are not at war with the united states does the use of drones to kill quote-unquote suspects amount to extrajudicial killings in my view they in principle do obviously one has to look at the circumstances of any particular use but it is legitimate to use um

[33:58] drones to carry out killings in the context of areas of active hostilities in other words where there's an armed conflict going on but what the united nati united states has done is to extend that notion talking about a global war on terror talking about uh hostilities that are linked to the original conflict in afghanistan or iraq or syria and thus carry out killings in a range

[34:28] of other countries and in my view virtually all of those killings violate the appropriate international legal framework and of course the united states as you know and as you've pointed out argues that it's post 9 11 laws enables it to legally use these drones to to to kill those it suspects of being terrorists but but when we talk about international

[34:58] law uh because any any country could otherwise just you know enact a set of laws overnight to justify these killings when you look at international law can you imagine what might happen if any country from the south and you know choose your pick would kill buy drones suspects in countries like the us france or australia or any other country wouldn't it be deemed immediately illegal wouldn't the united nations security council take immediate measure the question is isn't there a

[35:29] clear double standard and what kind of of paramed parameters should the united nations set for the use of these drones i don't think there's a double standard on the part of the united nations i think the un has spoken out pretty clearly and condemned the ways in which the united states has conducted these killings i first challenged the united states back in 2004 in response to a killing that had taken

[36:01] place earlier in yemen where there was no armed conflict going on and that was quite a prolonged and extended discussion with the united states which led me to conclude that the killing was not possibly justified under international law but your point about the double standard more in political terms is absolutely right if you were to go to

[36:32] china today and the chinese were to say we believe following us precedents that we have a right to [Music] conduct lethal drone strikes against individuals who we believe are a threat to china's security and some of those individuals seem to reside in the united states or in my own country australia

[37:03] there would of course be absolute outrage but that's the message that i and others were trying to send to the united states long ago to say look you can make up these rules to suit yourself but sooner or later you'll be setting precedence and those precedents are absolutely unacceptable that in turn means that your own behavior is not acceptable and so i think the double standard is very powerful and very strong but it's

[37:34] on the part of the united states and not on the part of the united nations but of course i mean the question remains philip alston but we are running out of time the question remains how you uphold the rule of law if so-called suspected terrorists and the term is often lose used quite loosely at world with no proof presented we saw it again in kabul not long ago the whole family wiped out when they're killed in these

[38:05] drone strikes and not brought to justice how do you end this impunity uh for the killings one might see even assassinations of of so many civilians um we'll have to leave it for now though philip alston always great to have you thank you very much now detainees wearing orange jumpsuits surrounded by razor wire and guard posts the detention center at guantanamo bay the u.s naval base on cuban soil became a symbol of injustice during the

[38:35] so-called war on terror created as a place to interrogate and hold individuals the u.s didn't want to bring to trial before u.s courts now over time reports of brutal treatment and indefinite detention were revealed and guantanamo became a source of international outrage and condemnation today the facility is still in operation since the george w bush administration established gitmo in 2002 780 men have been detained in cells on the island

[39:06] although president obama signed an executive order in 2009 to close the detention camp and president biden has supported its closure 39 detainees remain most of them 17 are being held without charges and are not recommended for transfer to another country another 10 are being held in detention but are recommended for transfer if security conditions are met 10 face charges for war crimes but only two of those 39 detainees have been convicted of a war crime

[39:38] i'm now joined by mansoor adafi he is a former detainee at guantanamo who was held for over 14 years without charge mansur adaifi when you look back at your time in guantanamo how do you look back on the 14 years that you spent largely in isolation in solitary confinement in communicado and the fact that you were never charged with any crime

[40:08] uh uh first of all as you said that guantanamo is a simple now of injustice torture abuse of power lawlessness and uh indefinite detention also a death sentence for the people who still there when i look back at my life at guantanamo we we spent years and years tried to figure out even until i left why i was there i never achieved the charge with the crime we couldn't understand why why they brought us to

[40:40] that place so guantanamo uh changed every time that the first time it was said to be interrogation and gather uh again actionable intelligence that would save america and american lives but then when general jeep lee uh jeffrey miller arrived in 2000 by the end of 2002 the guantanamo detention uh changed to be experimenting lab what they call it america's battle lab do you know jeffrey miller is the first

[41:11] one who started uh developing enhanced interrogation technique or enhanced torture technique and interestingly i know that um well you were captured when you were just 18 and you've also recounted recounted in your memoir don't forget us here how you came of age in guantanamo you wrote that's the thing about the americans

[41:42] they believed anything but the truth how did your experience there shape your view of america and when you call on the u.s administration i know you you wrote an open letter to president biden with five or six other former detainees asking him to close down the facility asking the us government to apologize to acknowledge what happened and to compensate the victims how likely is any of this to happen realistically of course like as you know i was sold to

[42:13] the cia at the age of 18 shipped to guantanamo at the age of 19. some some people ask me how do you live your twenties i had i i answered i don't know what i don't know what what twenties me in my life because i spent all almost have my life behind the uh at guantanamo so uh we were told we wrote a letter to president biden to close the detention because it is as as you all know uh

[42:46] people have been held for the last 20 years with our charge without any kind of any right because guantanamo is outside the law and the message the united states government tried to send to the world that they cannot cross any line they they won't abide by any laws this the purpose of guantanamo is going to know about it's not about safety or security so for me 15 around 15 years at guantanamo it's like a huge gap in my uh

[43:16] life and and we hope that biden can close the uh play uh place one uh once for all mansur adaifi thank you very much for sharing this painful story with us i know that other guantanamo detainees like mazenberg have spoken about the dehumanization they were subjected to saying they learned how to stop thinking of themselves as humans as as husbands and

[43:48] fathers but rather as numbers the detainee numbers they were given at guantanamo now for years the u.s used torture against detainees at guantanamo and other u.s detention facilities around the world john kiriyaku a former cia analyst and case officer who was involved in counter-terrorism missions with the central intelligence agency following 911 was the first former cia officer to blow the whistle and confirm in 2007 that the cia was using

[44:20] waterboarding he joins me now and john kiriakou you also revealed that this practice this form of torture was not carried out by just a few rogue elements of heroic agents within the cia but was official u.s policy that was approved at the highest level of government and for that you not not those who carried out the orders or signed off on that practice went to jail the us government called it enhanced interrogation techniques how widespread how abusive were these

[44:52] these measures quote unquote these techniques to use the government's euphemism well these measures were supposed to be very uh closely held and used only on a very small number of detainees at least that's what we were told inside the cia but the truth was that they were actually very widely used used not only by the cia but also by the us military and so where inside the cia we were led to believe that it was only

[45:23] four or five maybe six detainees who were being subject to these torture techniques it was actually many dozens of people and of course the government officials at the time during the bush administration and republican lawmakers claimed repeatedly that torture worked and that it actually led to actionable intelligence the cia said that as well for years however immoral illegal it might have been did they work

[45:55] absolutely not absolutely not there is ample proof ample evidence it's been well documented in a number of different places that these torture techniques never worked a victim of torture will tell you anything that he thinks you want to hear just to get you to stop torturing him he'll make up names addresses events just to get you to stop and then you have to commit a team of analysts to vet the information by the time that

[46:26] happens by the time that's completed even if there was an attack plan the attack probably has taken place otherwise you've wasted hundreds perhaps thousands of man hours trying to vet unreliable information it never works yeah back in 2002 you led the cia team that captured al-qaeda member abu zubaydah in pakistan when you consider that bin laden was not

[46:57] captured alive and brought to justice that he was eventually found and killed in pakistan in 2011 and when president obama famously said that justice was then served was it really obama bin laden was not just someone that the cia had recruited many years before to fight the soviets but he was also possibly just a symbol wasn't he when really the real strategist the chief ideologue of al-qaeda might have been someone else might have been al-zawahiri

[47:28] it's hard to believe that he couldn't have been captured alive why wasn't he i don't think they ever intended to capture bin laden alive i think that uh that they had made a policy determination that osama bin laden would never really talk if he were to be captured that even if he did talk the information that he would have provided wouldn't have been anything that we didn't already know from other detainees and i think that that the feeling of of the necessity of vengeance was so strong

[48:00] inside the u.s government and especially at the white house and the cia that the plan from the very beginning was to kill him if we had the opportunity to kill him remember we had already captured abu zubaydah we had already captured mohammed abdul rahima nashori ramsey beneship we had a lot of high al-qaeda detainees that we already had who were already talking they had been debriefed by the or interrogated by the fbi they didn't really need bin laden's information but they certainly wanted

[48:31] him dead it wouldn't have been wouldn't it have been crucial to to capture him and to have him a stand trial essentially to present the evidence that still might be missing to to this day at the end of the day bin laden it's interesting and surprising i guess at the same time wasn't wanted by the fbi for 911 specifically but rather he was wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of the two u.s embassies in india

[49:02] and nairobi would it have been far better when you look back at the way the united states and the cia prosecuted this war on terror to have captured someone like him and what has happened to azawahiri and the other leaders of this movement i think that's one of the most important questions that that somebody can ask and the answer is a resounding yes if the united states is serious about projecting an image to the rest of the world of

[49:33] being a country run by the rule of law and by justice then the only alternative is to capture him and to put him on trial and and that way we can show the rest of the world that we're serious about justice we're serious about winning justice for those 3 000 victims of 9 11. but the policy was so short-sighted that vengeance was chosen over justice but you're absolutely right it's it's always

[50:04] better to capture than to kill because there's a there's a chance that somebody will talk and give you actionable intelligence and then you can prosecute them and show the world that you're serious about your own system uh that just never happened our john cariacco former cia agent and whistleblower thank you very much really appreciate having you on the program and and speaking of short-sightedness

[50:36] the problem with the us approach is perhaps that it purports to target terrorists not terrorism it doesn't address the phenomenon of terrorism which is not new nor does it address its underlying causes today there is no compulsion to bomb people with complete impunity because these people happen to be living in faraway lands they happen to be brown people they happen to be muslims now what can be concluded 20 years after

[51:06] the fateful events of 9 11 that shocked the world and humanity the immediate effect of that day was instantaneous the united states were united the entire world friends and foes alike also united with america but that brief moment of unison of humanity was squandered when america invaded and occupied afghanistan in vengeance and then iraq and prosecuted with its allies its

[51:38] never-ending war on terror and even though biden has pulled us troops out of afghanistan these hidden wars will continue a war that benefited few and alienated many wars the destroyed nations wars that tarnished the moral standing of the united remember states torture black sites targeted killings and the list goes on

[52:09] the us may not have lost a single battle that's true but it lost the war and its standing with it even among its own allies and 20 years on hundreds of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars later the war it unleashed on a rag-tag elusive enemy it helped create in the first place continues america and american democracy is slowly coming to the conclusion that the greater enemy may not be the enemy without but the enemy within

[52:41] it's hard to believe that it's been 20 years since that fateful day september 11 2001. and that is all for this special edition of inside america with mirita here in washington for me and the entire team thanks for watching [Music]

[53:12] you
