Former CIA and FBI official Phil Mudd knows a lot of details you probably don't about CIA black sites. He knows, because he was associated with the enhanced interrogation program that took place post 9/11. Now, Mudd has written a new book, Black Site: The CIA in the Post-9/11 World that examines how and why the CIA came to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the dark days after 9/11, what really happened at the detention facilities known as “black sites". He also shares perspective on the process of interrogating the most hardened terrorists in the world. Under/Cover Senior Editor Bill Harlow gets personal with Mudd about the issue of enhanced interrogation, what he wants people to know about it, and whether he thinks it should ever be brought back.
Editor’s note from Bill Harlow: I’ve known Phil Mudd for more than 20 years. We worked together at CIA and share an affinity for the basketball team of our mutual alma mater, Villanova University. I have personally co-authored a couple of books that also look at the subject matter addressed in “Black Site”. I welcome a fresh look at the subject from his unique perspective.
Harlow: Let's start it out with an easy one. Why did you write this book?
Mudd: A couple of reasons. One, I was thinking about everything that I witnessed, and some which I participated in, and all my friends who had been with me back in the early days in 2002 and beyond at CTC (CIA’s Counterterrorism Center). And I thought, this is a slice of history, especially the optic, the personal optics from what CIA did, how they perceived it, why they made the decisions they did. The book isn't really a chapter and verse on the program. It's more and explanation of how the CIA got into and out of the detention interrogation programs.
I thought, for history's sake, it would be interesting to talk to the people involved with the program. Many of them will never speak to anyone else. I tried to write Black Site, not as a defense of the program but as an author who has access to people who will never otherwise share their stories. I thought it was a slice of history that should be told.
Harlow: What do you want readers to take away from the book?
Mudd: I want them to step back in time, whether they like what we did or not. People have widely differing opinions on the program. I want them to be able to say, I sat in the driver's seat, I drove the car at least for a couple hundred pages, and I have some idea of why they did what they did. Some people might walk away angrier than ever, which I think is also fine, but I want to give them the chance to step back. It's not an oral history, but it's not an 800-page doorstop. It’s a chance to look back through an informal history and say, wherever you are on the spectrum, I now understand what it was like for the people who made those decisions.
Harlow: What's the biggest misunderstanding that people who haven't read the book have about black sites from your experience and talking to people around the country?
Mudd: How we dealt with detainees who were lying. People regularly come up to me and say, "You know, people under duress lie." And my first answer is, "People not under duress lie too." But the more substantive answer is trying to explain to them that you can't successfully interrogate a prisoner unless you understand extensive details about his or her background so you know when they're lying and you can start to box them in. And then they start to question what you know, what you don't know, whether they can lie or not.
This idea that we simply didn’t understand that somebody under duress might at first try to tell us whatever they thought we wanted to hear, underestimates us. You cannot go through this process with a prisoner unless you have a great deal of detailed information on them. You can't do this with Joe the courier, whom you don't know, because then you don't know when he's lying from the start.
Harlow: Can you imagine any situation in the future where the CIA would once again engage in some level of enhanced interrogation?
Mudd: For my generation, and maybe the next generation, I cannot. The reason is, if we're in 2060, and there is some catastrophic event, and you're two generations away where people forgot what happened. I suppose you can imagine that someone might say, well that was, you know, 60 years ago, and we can do it better. By the way, I would doubt that. For the generation I grew up with, it's not an issue of whether the people I spoke with regret what we did. It's more a question of knowing that you got to protect your people who conduct interrogation and knowing that eventually, perhaps years later, critics are going to moonwalk on this, including the Congress of the United States.
So the people I spoke with, the many for this book, maybe three dozen or so, are not regretful of their roles, but if they're an indication, the answer is by and large no, they would not see it happening again because they know what the implications would be when their leaders start getting cold feet.
Harlow: You mentioned Congress, and it's a good time, perhaps, to ask your reaction to the Senate Intelligence Committee's majority report in 2014, which essentially said that the program produced no useful intelligence.
Mudd: In 2002, when we did not have a good understanding of Al-Qaeda, to have information from somebody who was on the inside, like Abu Zubaydah or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was really valuable. We didn't know that much, so listening to them talk was really valuable.
But the more significant issue that really frustrates me is, we had a template of how to investigate a controversial subject, the template was the 9/11 Report. It was painful for the CIA. That's not to suggest that people like me didn't feel like it was in some ways, inaccurate. But it was bipartisan. It included conversations with members of Congress. It included recommendations. I just didn't understand why two sides of the aisle couldn't sit down and undertake a serious effort - like what we saw with the 9/11 Report - instead of conducting partisan reports that I didn't think were very helpful.
Harlow: Did the Senate Intelligence Committee staff interview you for their report?
Mudd: They did not, no. I was a private citizen at the time. They could have asked me, but they didn’t. And they did not talk to any of the dozens of people I interviewed for my book, the people who actually were most knowledgeable about the program.
Harlow: And you were not under criminal investigation at the time, were you?
Mudd: Not as far as I know. And I would point out that from 2005 to 2010, I was at the FBI. So, if I had been under investigation, I think the FBI might've said, thanks for your service here, it's time for you to go back to CIA.
Harlow: The reason I ask is because the staffers have said, well, they couldn't interview people who were knowledgeable about the program, because they were under investigation.
Mudd: Had they asked, late in the process, I might have declined an interview, because it would have been clear that the interview was partisan. If this were a 9/11 Commission for the interrogation program, and this was a combination of Republicans and Democrats saying, seriously, can you call all the formers, like Mr. Mudd, and say this is serious. I think I would have said yes. So I want to be clear. I don't want to hide and say I would have answered the call. I probably would've said no. But that's because it was not a serious effort from the outset. The 9/11 commission was.
Harlow: You had to withdraw your candidacy for a senior DHS position that President Obama had nominated you for because of your association with this program, as I recall. So I wonder whether, in light of that, you think it was a good idea for you to write this book, because what you're doing is reminding people that you were associated with a highly-controversial program, and maybe there there's an additional price that you'll have to pay as a result.
Mudd: You're not the first person to ask that question. I assume there will be a price. You have to be cognizant of your security in this world. I have a relationship with my local police department for example, to ensure they can help me if I have issues at home.
But this is going to sound Pollyanna-ish. I understand there's going to be a price, but I don't think it's a bad thing to say that's okay, and that people should look at this through our eyes and draw their own conclusions. Otherwise nobody's going to write it. And in 70 years maybe somebody will say, I wish there was a little bit of a more of a sliver of what they thought when they did those things.
Harlow: You were an English major and have both and undergraduate and a graduate degree. How did you end up being a terrorism analyst?
Mudd: There are two accidents in my career that led me to become a terrorism analyst. The first was my father calling me one day in 1984, when I couldn't find a good job – shockingly - with a graduate degree in English literature. My master's thesis was on comparing 14th century sermons and morality plays. It turns out there wasn't a significant market for that. So, my dad said, in the pre-Internet days, that he had seen an ad in the Wall Street Journal for the CIA. It didn’t occur to me to go to the library and find the last week's Wall Street Journal. I was living in DC, so I just drove up to the front gate at Langley – not something I’d recommend today. That was the first accident. Despite that, I was hired nine months later.
The second accident was that I took a leave without pay. I was sort of tired of work at the age of 29 or 30, so I took a break and when I returned, I had shoulder-length hair. They were trying to decide what to do with me and one place that needed people was the Counterterrorism Center. Back then, it was seen as a backwater for analysts. So when you walk back in the office after a year of leave without pay, and they need to fill a slot that nobody wants to go to, and you show up with shoulder-length hair, they're going to say, "Why don't you go to the CTC?” That turned out to be life changing for me in 1991, almost 30 years ago.
Phil Mudd is the author of Black Site: The CIA in the Post-9/11 World and is currently a consultant, public speaker, and analyst on CNN.
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