Valuetainment - July 16, 2025


＂Keep Them In Guantanamo Bay FOREVER!＂ - Dick Cheney’s Torture Motives REVEALED By CIA Insider


Episode Stats


Length

14 minutes

Words per minute

177.17822

Word count

2,548

Sentence count

236

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Waterboarding is a controversial interrogation technique used against terror suspects by the CIA. It is widely believed to have been developed in response to the 9/11 attacks on the United States by al-Qaeda. CIA interrogations of terror suspects involved harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding and torture.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Who was the original person that proposed the waterboarding idea and said this works?
00:00:04.900 And how did that person even find out how it works?
00:00:06.760 Was it accidental?
00:00:07.560 You know, the actual person is still unclear.
00:00:13.020 So, listen, I've read all of these guys' memoirs.
00:00:16.900 And I was there amongst them.
00:00:19.160 And I didn't know.
00:00:21.060 So, as it turned out, about a month after 9-11, somebody went up to George Tenet at a cocktail party and said,
00:00:31.320 there are these two psychologists who work for the Air Force.
00:00:36.280 And they've reverse engineered the SEER training, the survival, evasion.
00:00:41.200 It's a very intense training.
00:00:42.640 Very intense.
00:00:43.760 And a lot of guys don't make it through.
00:00:45.740 I was supposed to go to SEER training.
00:00:47.160 I never ended up going.
00:00:48.000 I got out of the Army.
00:00:48.800 It's hideous.
00:00:49.400 It's hideous.
00:00:50.340 Yeah.
00:00:50.580 Yes.
00:00:51.100 So, they've reverse engineered it.
00:00:52.000 They broke small bones.
00:00:53.660 You know, you go through some.
00:00:54.660 The POW type of training, they gas you to make sure you're not going to leak information.
00:00:59.640 It's very intense.
00:01:00.500 Yeah.
00:01:01.500 And for $108 million, they can contract with us and implement it.
00:01:10.960 And we're going to call it enhanced interrogation techniques.
00:01:13.680 And whoever it was, it was somebody either in the CIA's counterterrorism center or somebody with proximity to the leadership of the counterterrorism center.
00:01:25.340 And so, contracts were signed.
00:01:29.800 Now, I was in Pakistan at the time as the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations.
00:01:34.940 I had no idea, none of us did, that these conversations were taking place at headquarters.
00:01:40.260 And so, starting in January of 2002, we began hitting safe houses, Al-Qaeda safe houses.
00:01:51.860 And I still remember the first one I did.
00:01:53.460 My first day in Pakistan, I went to introduce myself to the station chief.
00:01:58.540 And he said, here's what I want you to do.
00:02:00.380 I want you to come up with a standard operating procedure for taking down an Al-Qaeda safe house.
00:02:05.100 I said, okay.
00:02:05.900 I went back to my office with a legal pad.
00:02:09.080 And I wrote, all right.
00:02:10.320 I said to myself, what do I need to do to take down a safe house?
00:02:13.820 And I had taken all the classes, advanced counterterrorist operations, all that stuff.
00:02:17.900 I wrote at the top of the paper, 0200.
00:02:20.420 Because I thought I would want it to be dark.
00:02:22.240 I would want everybody to be asleep, and I want the element of surprise.
00:02:25.840 Two in the morning.
00:02:26.380 Yeah.
00:02:27.020 Two in the morning.
00:02:28.440 I need battering rams.
00:02:31.460 I need weapons and ammunition.
00:02:33.340 I need encrypted walkie-talkies, secure comms back to headquarters.
00:02:37.620 You know, we need all this stuff.
00:02:39.240 I just went online, galls.com, to this police, what do you call it, supply house in Kentucky.
00:02:48.840 I bought all this crap.
00:02:50.520 Put it on my CIA credit card.
00:02:52.040 They shipped it out in the diplomatic pouch.
00:02:55.020 And so the first night that we tried this, we got a tip.
00:02:59.180 We went to the house, broke down the door.
00:03:01.160 We catch two kids, 18 years old.
00:03:03.020 They both burst into tears.
00:03:05.080 One of them asks if he can call his mom.
00:03:08.380 I'm like, no, you can't call your mom.
00:03:10.780 So we cuff him, turn him over to the Pakistanis. 1.00
00:03:13.420 They put him in the Rawalpindi jail.
00:03:16.120 Rawalpindi being the, you know, enormous city that's connected to Islamabad.
00:03:21.260 We did it again a week later.
00:03:22.540 And we got a tip from a friendly Arab intelligence service and broke down the door.
00:03:29.500 And this time we got some important people.
00:03:31.140 We got a guy from Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
00:03:33.400 And you may recall they were the ones that killed President Sadat.
00:03:36.560 And then in, I think it was 95, they merged with Al-Qaeda.
00:03:39.980 And I thought, okay, this is going pretty well.
00:03:43.860 So we started doing this more and more and more.
00:03:46.220 We're catching so many people that one day the Pakistanis come to me and say, look, the jail's full. 1.00
00:03:52.440 Like it's literally full.
00:03:53.780 We can't squeeze one more person into it.
00:03:55.700 You got to do something with these guys.
00:03:57.100 I sent a cable to headquarters and I said, the jail's full.
00:04:03.620 The PACs want them out.
00:04:04.740 What do I do?
00:04:06.380 They call me and they said, we want you to put them on a C-12 cargo plane and send them to Guantanamo.
00:04:12.320 And I said, Guantanamo, Cuba?
00:04:15.060 Why would we send them to Cuba?
00:04:17.500 And they said, well, we came up with this idea.
00:04:19.360 We're going to keep them in Cuba for two or three weeks until we can decide which federal court to try them in. 0.95
00:04:28.900 So it was, you know, the eastern and southern districts of New York, the eastern district of Massachusetts, the western district of Pennsylvania, and the eastern district of Virginia.
00:04:38.520 I said, that's a great idea.
00:04:40.400 So we start sending everybody to Guantanamo.
00:04:43.360 But then Dick Cheney says, or somebody close to Dick Cheney, another one of those things that's never been really revealed, they don't have any rights in Cuba.
00:04:53.220 Why don't we just keep them there forever?
00:04:56.000 Okay, so that's what started happening.
00:04:58.960 In the meantime, we capture Abu Zubaydah in late March of 2002.
00:05:06.240 Now, we were told at the time Abu Zubaydah was the number three in Al-Qaeda.
00:05:10.360 That turned out to be incorrect.
00:05:11.600 He had actually never even been a member of Al-Qaeda.
00:05:15.120 He was a bad guy.
00:05:17.100 He was a facilitator for Al-Qaeda. 0.98
00:05:19.640 He founded what they called the House of Martyrs, the Al-Qaeda safe house in Peshawar.
00:05:25.020 He had created and staffed Al-Qaeda's two training camps in Kandahar and Helmand provinces in Afghanistan.
00:05:32.340 So if you wanted to make jihad, he would get you in to Afghanistan. 0.87
00:05:37.320 If you were tired of the fight and you wanted to go home, he would get you out, get you a passport, send you back to your home country.
00:05:44.620 So bad guy.
00:05:46.580 And then we captured him.
00:05:47.820 I had no idea that at headquarters at the time, there was this debate about what to do when we eventually capture a leader.
00:05:57.820 Now, we had already killed Muhammad Atif, who had been what they called the director of military affairs for Al-Qaeda.
00:06:04.020 We killed him in Tora Bora in October of 2001.
00:06:07.300 So what do we do with this guy, Al-Qaeda?
00:06:09.760 I mean, I'm sorry, Abu Zubaydah. 0.99
00:06:12.540 I had no idea that these enhanced interrogation techniques had been in the works from that cocktail party in October until March of 2002.
00:06:23.160 In May of 2002, I get back home to headquarters.
00:06:27.720 And I'm just standing in the sandwich line at the cafeteria.
00:06:31.480 And a senior officer comes up to me, very casually, and he says, hey, I'm glad I ran into you.
00:06:37.640 I meant to ask you, do you want to be certified in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques?
00:06:43.320 I had never heard that term before.
00:06:45.660 Certified in enhanced interrogation techniques.
00:06:48.100 I said, well, what does that mean?
00:06:50.200 And he says, we're going to start getting rough with these guys.
00:06:53.460 Like that.
00:06:54.220 I said, well, what does that mean?
00:06:55.680 He's saying he's in a cafeteria.
00:06:56.980 In full view of everybody in there.
00:06:59.880 Now, everybody's cleared, but they're not cleared for that information.
00:07:03.620 It was so highly compartmentalized.
00:07:06.240 So he described these techniques to me.
00:07:10.940 And I said, buddy, that sounds like a torture program.
00:07:13.980 And he said, it's not a torture program.
00:07:16.000 The president signed it and the Justice Department approved it.
00:07:20.200 And I said, let me think about it for an hour.
00:07:23.000 So I got out of the sandwich line.
00:07:25.380 I went up to the seventh floor of the CIA, which is the executive floor.
00:07:29.280 There was a very, very senior CIA officer up there for whom I had worked in the Middle East 10 years earlier.
00:07:35.500 And we loved each other.
00:07:37.760 So I knocked on his door and I said, I need some advice.
00:07:40.320 I was just approached about these enhanced interrogation techniques.
00:07:44.300 And he said, first of all, let's call a spade a spade here.
00:07:49.180 This is a torture program.
00:07:51.000 And you know how these guys are.
00:07:52.720 He said, they're cowboys. 0.75
00:07:54.100 And somebody's going to kill a prisoner.
00:07:55.620 And when that happens, there's going to be a congressional investigation.
00:07:59.160 Then there's going to be a Justice Department investigation.
00:08:03.280 And somebody's going to go to prison.
00:08:04.540 Do you want to go to prison?
00:08:06.020 I said, no, I don't want to go to prison.
00:08:07.980 And as it turned out, I was the only person who went to prison.
00:08:10.800 But I said, no, I don't want to go to prison.
00:08:12.600 I went back downstairs.
00:08:13.640 I said, this is a torture program.
00:08:15.060 I want no part.
00:08:15.840 So you never learned.
00:08:16.640 You never went through it.
00:08:17.560 I was the only one.
00:08:18.280 And they approached 14 people.
00:08:20.540 And I'm sorry to tell you that I was the only one who said no.
00:08:23.340 And the crazy thing is, I knew these guys.
00:08:25.820 I was friends with these guys.
00:08:27.280 Our wives were friends. 0.67
00:08:28.960 Our kids played together.
00:08:31.400 I had no idea that they had the ability to become monsters, murderers.
00:08:37.340 You know?
00:08:38.000 But the two psychologists who originally came up with that, where did they take that from?
00:08:41.400 And how did they come up with the testing?
00:08:42.980 Yes.
00:08:43.260 Because you either are taught how to do this, or it accidentally happens to you.
00:08:48.620 That's right.
00:08:49.800 So they were actually instructors in the Air Force's SEER training program.
00:08:56.460 And they said, hey, this turns these guys into babbling, weeping little girls.
00:09:03.620 We should be doing this on prison.
00:09:04.860 How did they learn, though?
00:09:06.200 They were taught.
00:09:07.340 By who?
00:09:07.900 The Air Force.
00:09:08.640 They had both been Air Forces.
00:09:09.640 How did the Air Force learn?
00:09:10.680 Oh, it's a longstanding program.
00:09:13.260 Because the idea is, let's say you're an Air Force pilot, and you get shot down over Iran.
00:09:18.420 They want to teach you what, presumably, the Iranians would do to you, and then how you can try to withstand it. 1.00
00:09:27.860 And these were what?
00:09:28.840 James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen?
00:09:30.060 And Bruce Jessen.
00:09:30.660 That's correct.
00:09:31.300 So those are the guys that came up with the waterboarding program.
00:09:34.100 That's it.
00:09:34.820 And then you...
00:09:35.680 And they got rich.
00:09:37.040 And so how did they get rich, by the way?
00:09:39.280 How do you make money if you come up with that?
00:09:41.340 They charged the CIA, the reports are, between $47 million and $108 million for their services.
00:09:49.200 What?
00:09:49.820 Yeah.
00:09:50.260 To teach people how to do waterboarding?
00:09:52.580 They taught them...
00:09:53.540 Yeah.
00:09:54.180 And then to make matters worse, these two guys go out to the secret prison, and they actually carry out the torture.
00:10:01.640 At the CIA, we were never trained in this kind of thing.
00:10:04.000 We were never trained in interrogation.
00:10:05.560 When I started interrogating prisoners, I cabled headquarters.
00:10:08.380 I said, look, we have these prisoners.
00:10:09.600 I have to interrogate them.
00:10:10.980 Or somebody has to interrogate them.
00:10:12.420 What should I do?
00:10:13.040 Should I turn them over to the FBI?
00:10:14.440 They said, no, interrogate them.
00:10:16.020 I said, yeah, but I've never had an interrogation class.
00:10:18.840 Oh, just wing it.
00:10:19.920 You can figure it out.
00:10:21.320 Wow.
00:10:21.960 Yeah.
00:10:22.200 Even right now, it says the 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA reported, I torture,
00:10:27.240 identified that they got paid over $80 million for their work.
00:10:31.020 That is pretty...
00:10:32.540 So did you ever see anybody waterboard anybody?
00:10:35.860 Well, we waterboarded each other in training, but in terms of prisoners being waterboarded,
00:10:40.320 no.
00:10:40.580 Okay.
00:10:40.800 But I should add, after I turned it down, as crazy as this sounds, I got passed over for
00:10:49.140 promotion.
00:10:50.620 And I went into the deputy director of the Counterterrorism Center's office.
00:10:54.540 He was an old friend of mine.
00:10:55.440 And I said, damn it, what do I have to do to get promoted around here?
00:10:58.980 I just caught the number three of Al-Qaeda with these two hands, and I get passed over
00:11:03.880 for promotion?
00:11:04.900 What, do I have to catch bin Laden to get promoted around here?
00:11:08.240 And that senior officer that I had spoken to, that I'd gotten the advice from, he promoted
00:11:12.860 me out of cycle.
00:11:14.060 He said, this is a travesty.
00:11:15.400 But a friend of mine who was in my promotion panel said that the chief of counterterrorism
00:11:20.220 said that I had, his words, displayed a shocking lack of commitment to counterterrorism.
00:11:27.120 Shocking lack of commitment.
00:11:28.980 Man, this thing was so patently illegal.
00:11:32.460 I thought, certainly I can't be the only person that sees the illegality in this program.
00:11:37.520 But then what happened was, when I got promoted, I also became the executive assistant to the
00:11:42.420 CIA's deputy director for operations.
00:11:45.040 And in that position, I got to see everything that the CIA was doing around the world.
00:11:50.860 And then the cables started coming back from the secret site, saying, we're waterboarding
00:11:56.740 him, and this is what's happening.
00:11:58.780 And you're seeing this communication.
00:12:00.400 Every single day.
00:12:01.540 But let me ask you this.
00:12:03.080 Isn't there a, don't they expect you to get in, and then there comes a moment where they
00:12:08.400 talk to you, where it's the wink-wink conversation.
00:12:10.700 Nothing email, nothing text, nothing on WhatsApp signal.
00:12:13.240 Where it's like, what do you think we do here, bro?
00:12:16.800 Like, you think we follow the law?
00:12:19.520 But that was okay for me, for the most part.
00:12:22.420 I'll give you an example.
00:12:23.320 Yeah.
00:12:23.440 So I sat next to this guy who was a friend of mine, and we would have lunch together.
00:12:29.940 We traveled together a couple of times.
00:12:31.640 And then there was another guy who sat 20 feet away in one of the very few private offices.
00:12:39.000 And this third guy would come in every day.
00:12:41.520 Hey, guys.
00:12:42.100 We'd say, hey, man, how you doing?
00:12:43.860 Hey, guys, how was your weekend?
00:12:45.440 Hey, it was great.
00:12:46.020 How are you?
00:12:46.560 How was your weekend?
00:12:47.900 Hey, how are the kids?
00:12:48.720 Good.
00:12:49.000 You know, Merry Christmas, whatever.
00:12:50.400 Finally, I said to my buddy, you know, he is the nicest guy.
00:12:53.140 And I don't have any idea what he does here.
00:12:56.460 And my friend says, dude, he's the head of the special activities division.
00:13:03.860 And I said, okay, that was cool to me because there are very bad people out there who present
00:13:13.020 a clear and imminent danger to the United States and to American citizens and American facilities.
00:13:19.460 And sometimes you have to do some ugly things.
00:13:23.280 But the torture program was a crime of choice.
00:13:28.080 We didn't have to do that.
00:13:29.720 In fact, we were so deeply at odds with the FBI over this that the FBI actually removed
00:13:38.880 all FBI personnel from the country where the secret prison was located.
00:13:45.080 They didn't even want to be in the same country while the torture was going on.
00:13:51.140 Hi, everybody.
00:13:51.980 I'm John Kiriakou, former CIA officer.
00:13:54.940 Please find me on Manect.
00:13:56.220 We have a lot to talk about.
00:13:57.920 CIA, FBI, DOD, torture, secret prisons, international renditions.
00:14:03.940 Maybe you or your child want to apply for a job at the CIA and are looking for some tips.
00:14:08.880 Let me know.
00:14:09.700 There's a lot we can talk about.
00:14:11.780 You pick the subject.
00:14:12.700 We'll make it happen.
00:14:13.920 Again, it's on Manect.
00:14:15.480 Thanks, and I'll see you soon.
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