[00:04.080 --> 00:11.080]  Okay, so when you display the movies, just make sure you go into full screen and it will look good on the R screen.
[00:11.460 --> 00:12.440]  What else are you showing?
[00:13.820 --> 00:16.600]  I'm going to be showing some stills, probably the same deal.
[00:17.280 --> 00:18.360]  Just like in preview.
[00:19.460 --> 00:21.100]  Are they all open in preview?
[00:21.580 --> 00:21.920]  No.
[00:24.740 --> 00:26.300]  And some audio.
[00:26.840 --> 00:26.980]  Okay.
[00:27.800 --> 00:28.680]  That should be good.
[00:29.300 --> 00:29.420]  Cool.
[00:30.860 --> 00:32.940]  No, let's open up one of the pictures so we can make sure.
[00:42.170 --> 00:43.270]  Is that how you want it to look?
[00:43.450 --> 00:49.410]  I mean, it's got leaked to us, so that's the highest res that Adboy goes, so yeah.
[00:50.050 --> 00:50.310]  Okay.
[00:51.730 --> 00:52.630]  Okay, are you ready to go?
[00:52.850 --> 00:53.510]  Sound ready?
[00:53.930 --> 00:55.830]  Yeah, I just wanted to make the mic a little lower.
[00:58.250 --> 01:00.830]  Do you want me to try to stay as close to the mic as possible like this?
[01:04.350 --> 01:05.230]  We're good, we're good.
[01:05.230 --> 01:08.750]  Do you need to spend about two hours?
[01:16.780 --> 01:18.320]  I'm going to open up today with a song.
[01:23.990 --> 01:25.090]  This is Katy Perry.
[01:54.520 --> 01:55.100]  It's okay.
[01:56.160 --> 01:56.820]  Yeah, it's good.
[02:08.340 --> 02:10.260]  The question is what I do with my notebook.
[02:24.440 --> 02:30.300]  I've got a feeling that tonight's going to be a good night.
[02:30.700 --> 02:33.060]  That tonight's going to be a good night.
[02:38.100 --> 02:39.480]  That's what they told me.
[02:40.120 --> 02:40.380]  Great.
[02:41.240 --> 02:42.220]  All right, we're ready to go.
[02:42.300 --> 02:42.460]  Yep.
[02:42.700 --> 02:42.800]  Awesome.
[02:43.000 --> 02:43.160]  Great.
[02:44.760 --> 02:45.220]  Ready?
[02:47.120 --> 02:47.840]  Good evening.
[02:50.540 --> 02:51.020]  Hello.
[03:01.470 --> 03:02.190]  Good evening.
[03:05.490 --> 03:06.930]  Hey, we're ready to start.
[03:08.290 --> 03:08.810]  Finally.
[03:09.910 --> 03:12.230]  Hey, I've got an interesting story to tell you.
[03:13.710 --> 03:31.850]  John Young of Cryptome, who's a dear member of a community and an incredible archivist who has released some amazing information that people have leaked to him over the years long before Julian Assange and others.
[03:32.550 --> 03:38.490]  And I called John and I said, John, do you have any good talks for HOPE X?
[03:39.790 --> 03:41.070]  He's like, let me tell you, Bernie.
[03:42.130 --> 03:43.410]  I have the guy for you.
[03:44.990 --> 03:51.110]  Ray Nowosielski is going to be a real sleeper talk this year.
[03:51.250 --> 03:55.730]  Not something you had not heard much about, but he lives here in New York.
[03:55.730 --> 04:01.350]  He works as a freelance producer for the Emmy nominated series Vice on HBO.
[04:01.530 --> 04:02.330]  How many of you have seen that?
[04:03.350 --> 04:04.330]  Quite a few hands.
[04:04.810 --> 04:08.530]  It's first class, first class TV.
[04:09.370 --> 04:20.870]  Um, a lot of people came out to support Ray after the CIA threatened him and his colleagues with prosecution under a law called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
[04:21.110 --> 04:21.550]  Why?
[04:21.750 --> 04:36.870]  Well, uh, he's going to explain why, but basically he contacted the agency requesting that, uh, two of their employees respond to some serious allegations, which were later detailed in a 90 minute, uh, investigative podcast that he put together entitled,
[04:37.150 --> 04:38.770]  Who Was Rich Blee?
[04:39.190 --> 05:04.430]  Now, an advocate for government and corporate transparency and accountability, uh, Ray has written for Salon and Truth Out and contributed investigations to, uh, The Daily Beast and Gawker, but he's going to tell you a bone chilling story of how official persecution and pressure was put on him to keep a story under wraps that the CIA did not want told.
[05:04.710 --> 05:07.990]  So, this is, this is, uh, whistle blowing at its finest.
[05:08.990 --> 05:09.610]  Ray Nowosielski.
[05:17.950 --> 05:18.650]  Hey, everybody.
[05:19.170 --> 05:22.950]  Um, this is going to be a little bit of a right turn from the previous subject.
[05:23.350 --> 05:28.770]  Um, when I was told that I had the, uh, I can't see any of you, by the way, it's very bright.
[05:29.130 --> 05:32.690]  Uh, when I was told that I had the 10 p.m.
[05:33.090 --> 05:36.910]  Friday night time slot, I sort of assumed there'd be five people sitting here.
[05:38.730 --> 05:41.790]  Uh, honestly, it's kind of freaking me out.
[05:42.130 --> 05:49.010]  Uh, and, uh, I don't have a lot of history of public speaking, so I'm going to do my best, but, uh, go easy on me.
[05:49.690 --> 05:51.490]  Um, I want to thank, uh, Bernie.
[05:52.010 --> 05:54.810]  I want to thank John Young from Cryptome for suggesting me.
[05:55.130 --> 05:57.490]  Honored to be in the Chelsea Manning room.
[05:57.870 --> 06:03.990]  Um, honored to be here the, you know, day before Ed Snowden's going to be calling in.
[06:04.690 --> 06:09.010]  Um, so, let's see if this works.
[06:09.310 --> 06:13.830]  I'm probably the least techy person to have ever been invited to speak here.
[06:14.010 --> 06:18.890]  Um, as will be evidenced by me playing all this just directly off my laptop.
[06:19.690 --> 06:22.810]  Uh, world meet Alfredo Francis Bukowski.
[06:23.330 --> 06:31.470]  Uh, I apologize that this picture's a little bit low res, but, uh, it was leaked to Cryptome here recently from her high school yearbook.
[06:31.610 --> 06:32.950]  This was her when she was 17.
[06:33.790 --> 06:48.170]  Uh, today, as far as we know, she's still the, uh, head of the CIA's global jihad unit, which basically means that she and the director of the counter-terror center at CIA run the war on terror, um, for the CIA.
[06:48.610 --> 06:54.670]  And, uh, up until recently, she's been credited with running the drones, uh, kill list program.
[06:55.330 --> 06:57.530]  Um, she has a long history.
[06:57.690 --> 07:03.330]  I'm told by a source that she was the person most credited with the successful assassination of Osama bin Laden.
[07:03.990 --> 07:08.570]  Uh, likely one of the bases for the Jessica Chastain character in Zero Dark Thirty.
[07:09.530 --> 07:12.370]  Um, let's see here.
[07:12.390 --> 07:15.090]  I'm just gonna be droning on about CIA for the next hour.
[07:15.350 --> 07:18.350]  So, really, if anybody just wants to head to the bar and get a drink, it's okay.
[07:18.990 --> 07:22.890]  Um, also, let me say that if, uh, um, anybody has any questions?
[07:23.410 --> 07:25.890]  I have a feeling I'm gonna run up right to the end of the hour.
[07:26.210 --> 07:28.690]  So, just yell them out to me.
[07:28.810 --> 07:30.350]  Let's make this really informal, okay?
[07:30.570 --> 07:34.090]  Any point you need clarity or you just want to discuss something a little more, just let me know.
[07:35.650 --> 07:43.470]  Um, so, I'm gonna actually, for the next hour, talk about who this woman is, how we know, and why we should care.
[07:44.690 --> 07:54.730]  And I thought I'd begin with my conclusions, state them right up front, and then you can kind of tell me if, uh, at the end, if, if I came to the right ones.
[07:55.670 --> 08:05.230]  So, number one, the unprecedented rise in government secrecy over the last decade and a half, uh, does not actually protect national security.
[08:05.890 --> 08:07.930]  Um, it actually endangers it.
[08:08.010 --> 08:09.890]  And I think that's a really important point.
[08:10.470 --> 08:17.110]  Often, when we talk about transparency, or we talk about this growth in secrecy, people make the point that it undermines democracy.
[08:17.430 --> 08:19.050]  And that's absolutely true.
[08:19.410 --> 08:28.290]  But I think another strong argument, as will be sort of shown by the story of this woman, uh, is that it really makes us less safe.
[08:28.430 --> 08:29.850]  It puts our lives in danger.
[08:30.750 --> 08:41.410]  Um, number two, secrecy has allowed individuals in the CIA, and probably throughout the intelligence and military communities, to basically go rogue.
[08:41.830 --> 08:56.910]  And that sounds a little extreme, but basically what I mean is that they are able to take actions that have great negative effects without being known about, uh, and without having to fear accountability in any way.
[08:57.110 --> 09:05.870]  Um, number three, our intelligence agencies' systems for checks and balances for oversight and accountability, uh, have become broken.
[09:06.750 --> 09:13.330]  Um, people in those agencies, I think, understand that reality, and they feel little fear about any consequences.
[09:13.890 --> 09:27.170]  And so, from their bosses at the CIA, or their bosses in the White House, um, to Congress's oversight committees, to the inspector general, or outside prosecutors, the system of justice has been thoroughly compromised.
[09:27.850 --> 09:37.230]  Um, when people argue that Edward Snowden should have stayed within the system to air his grievances, they don't understand how impossible that has become.
[09:38.890 --> 09:46.150]  Number four, the rise in whistleblowers and leakers that we're seeing, to some may seem extreme.
[09:46.730 --> 09:55.950]  Um, but it is a reaction to the extreme secrecy that has, uh, overtaken our country over the last decade and a half.
[09:56.690 --> 10:07.250]  Um, and so I think as we go through this, there's, I'm gonna talk about a number of whistleblowers regarding this story, um, and we can kind of understand where they might be coming from.
[10:07.450 --> 10:11.250]  I believe they're trying to tip the scales back to just some sort of sanity.
[10:12.870 --> 10:20.530]  Lastly, early in Bukowski's career, uh, I think the lines were a lot clearer between what is illegal and what is not illegal.
[10:21.070 --> 10:36.070]  Um, and particularly as a result of her actions, and partially due in general to the air in Washington, I would argue that the, the rule of law has become compromised to the point where it's largely been replaced by the sort of idea of rule of man.
[10:36.070 --> 10:43.850]  rule of law being there's a set of rules and all of us sort of must, are beholden to them.
[10:44.190 --> 10:54.490]  Rule of man being that basically, on a case by case basis, the law will be decided, let's say, by the president, who essentially has become judge and jury.
[10:55.350 --> 11:02.790]  Um, and this has resulted in a two-tiered system of justice, one for us and one for the people working in areas of power.
[11:03.170 --> 11:05.330]  Which goes without saying, it's a little dangerous.
[11:05.750 --> 11:07.890]  Sorry to do this, but I gotta plug my laptop in.
[11:16.960 --> 11:18.220]  Anybody seen any good movies lately?
[11:46.620 --> 11:52.660]  Okay, so I thought I'd jump real fast to the whole, you know, who the hell am I and why am I talking about the CIA thing?
[11:53.180 --> 11:55.860]  Um, so I, I'm, was raised in the Midwest.
[11:55.880 --> 11:58.520]  I went to, uh, Columbia College in Chicago.
[11:58.660 --> 12:06.710]  I started school hoping to be the next Alfred Hitchcock and by the end I kind of wanted to be a little bit of a slightly libertarian Michael Moore.
[12:07.060 --> 12:11.900]  Uh, within a few years of graduating, I just wanted to get paid to do some work.
[12:12.780 --> 12:17.820]  Um, I want to kind of address this one right off the bat.
[12:17.960 --> 12:20.080]  I'm going to be mentioning 9-11 a good little bit.
[12:20.360 --> 12:22.230]  So I want to clear this up straight off.
[12:22.420 --> 12:23.360]  I'm not a truther.
[12:23.920 --> 12:26.300]  I'm passionate about transparency and accountability.
[12:26.780 --> 12:35.320]  And frankly, 9-11 opened a whole can of worms in terms of failure across the board within government and practically launched an accountability movement on its own.
[12:35.900 --> 12:37.820]  And that's kind of where I came in.
[12:38.020 --> 12:47.230]  Um, back in 2006, we, uh, my, um, colleague, uh, Rory O'Connor, colleague John Duffy and I completed a documentary called Press for Truth.
[12:47.840 --> 12:59.280]  Uh, it told the story of four women who were, uh, housewives and mothers in New Jersey, had been largely apolitical, uh, prior to 9-11 and lost their husbands in the twin towers.
[12:59.860 --> 13:14.600]  Um, they felt that there were some, some holes that, that needed filled within the system, some people that needed accountability, problems that needed gotten to the bottom of, uh, and they thought it would be fairly easy to get a 9-11 commission called.
[13:14.800 --> 13:25.620]  Um, but they ended up struggling for several years to get, uh, to lobby politicians, to teach themselves how to, um, you know, work the media and so forth.
[13:25.730 --> 13:29.820]  And so we, uh, they eventually got the 9-11 commission called and we, we told their story.
[13:30.200 --> 13:38.560]  Uh, by the time we got to the end of that, I didn't want to think about 9-11 ever again, or at least not for a long time.
[13:39.180 --> 13:47.700]  Um, and coincidentally, the same month that our movie came out, one of the widows, uh, Kristen Breitweiser, released a book called Wake Up Call.
[13:48.100 --> 13:55.340]  And it was mostly a memoir of her, her journey, but she chose to devote an entire chapter to something she calls, uh, footnote 44.
[13:56.320 --> 14:02.840]  And reading that chapter, we started on a new journey that eventually brought us to Alfredo Bukowski.
[14:03.260 --> 14:12.840]  So I'm gonna go ahead and let Tom Kane, former New Jersey governor and the chairman of the 9-11 commission, read that footnote from his book to you.
[14:14.640 --> 14:16.340]  Hopefully the audio is good.
[14:17.780 --> 14:20.600]  ...of the six of the report.
[14:21.640 --> 14:22.860]  ...footpoint for you.
[14:23.600 --> 14:23.940]  Okay.
[14:26.320 --> 14:28.460]  Uh, footnote 44.
[14:30.160 --> 14:31.780]  The CIA cable.
[14:32.760 --> 14:33.940]  That's the right one?
[14:34.380 --> 14:35.230]  Yes, yes.
[14:36.560 --> 14:41.700]  Activities of bin Laden associate, uh, Khalid, revealed January 4th, 2000.
[14:41.940 --> 14:48.230]  His Saudi passport, which contained a visa for travel to the United States, was photocopied and forwarded to CIA headquarters.
[14:48.730 --> 14:53.640]  This information was not shared with FBI headquarters until August 2001.
[14:54.380 --> 15:01.100]  An FBI agent, in detail to the bin Laden unit at CIA, attempted to share this information with colleagues at FBI headquarters.
[15:01.100 --> 15:06.140]  A CIA desk officer instructed him not to cable with FBI.
[15:06.990 --> 15:16.940]  Several hours later, the same desk officer drafted a cable distributed solely within CIA, alleging that they had been shared with FBI.
[15:17.600 --> 15:23.960]  She admitted she did not personally share the information and cannot identify who told us that they had been shared.
[15:24.680 --> 15:28.060]  We were unable to locate anyone who claimed to have shared this information.
[15:28.940 --> 15:32.060]  Contemporaneous documents contradict the claim that they were shared.
[15:35.490 --> 15:36.910]  Oh, it wasn't careless oversight.
[15:37.070 --> 15:37.750]  It was purposeful.
[15:38.170 --> 15:39.950]  No question about that in my mind.
[15:40.050 --> 15:47.390]  It was purposeful, but it was purposeful because we believe these agencies had been brought up to hold everything tight.
[15:48.030 --> 15:52.590]  In the DNA of these organizations was secrecy.
[15:53.370 --> 15:56.690]  And secrecy to the point of you don't share it with anybody.
[15:57.610 --> 15:59.550]  You don't share it with your fellow agencies.
[15:59.810 --> 16:01.390]  You don't share it with other government officials.
[16:01.670 --> 16:02.950]  You keep everything right there.
[16:05.230 --> 16:07.090]  And that's what they did in this case.
[16:07.090 --> 16:10.490]  You know, it's one of the most troubling aspects of our entire report.
[16:10.770 --> 16:12.130]  That particular thing.
[16:17.940 --> 16:20.680]  So what he's talking about is going to become clearer as we go.
[16:21.000 --> 16:35.470]  But basically, we became aware of this incident that, you know, Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek have called one of the greatest intelligence failures in U.S.
[16:35.580 --> 16:35.900]  history.
[16:35.900 --> 16:40.580]  And come to find out, Alfreda Bukowski was at the center of that.
[16:40.760 --> 16:43.280]  Basically, launched her career that way.
[16:44.700 --> 16:51.590]  And so, we collected a number of interviews trying to put together a documentary that we never quite got funded.
[16:51.760 --> 16:54.800]  And eventually, that interview you just saw was part of that.
[16:55.180 --> 16:56.060]  Eventually, we gave up.
[16:57.160 --> 17:02.500]  And then what happened was, late 2010, Cablegate happened.
[17:02.500 --> 17:15.100]  And, you know, the bravery of Chelsea Manning, the bravery of Julian Assange, whatever you want to say about him, we found it inspiring.
[17:15.400 --> 17:22.460]  And we decided that we were just going to sort of continue doing interviews up to the 9-11 10th anniversary the following year.
[17:22.600 --> 17:24.560]  Just do them by phone, do them on the cheap.
[17:24.760 --> 17:29.660]  Put this all together into what we called an investigative podcast, which is basically a made-up thing.
[17:30.120 --> 17:32.580]  But, you know, it was like a 90-minute audio documentary.
[17:32.920 --> 17:39.140]  The idea was, we'll exercise this from our souls, put this out in the world, and people can take the info and do whatever they want with it.
[17:45.090 --> 18:06.570]  And, as at the same time, this woman who had won the Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2002, Colleen Rowley, she had been an FBI whistleblower that had sort of complained about problems she had had pre-9-11 with people at FBI headquarters kind of stymieing her investigations and so forth.
[18:07.150 --> 18:12.590]  She wrote an article called, you know, WikiLeaks and 9-11 What If?
[18:12.890 --> 18:29.870]  And she made this really interesting argument, which was that, you know, essentially, had there been something available like WikiLeaks when she was having her problems, perhaps they could have gone around FBI headquarters and they could have, you know,
[18:30.310 --> 18:36.330]  gotten this information to the public and caused some kind of a sea change that could have perhaps prevented 9-11.
[18:36.690 --> 18:48.010]  And that reminded us of something that we had been... that Kristen Brightweiser, one of the 9-11 widows, had said on Hardball, similar case.
[18:48.010 --> 18:49.090]  So let me play this.
[19:09.680 --> 19:10.240]  Come on.
[19:19.990 --> 19:21.310]  I don't get that joke.
[19:22.450 --> 19:23.270]  That's not a joke.
[19:27.650 --> 19:28.050]  Okay.
[19:31.160 --> 19:31.560]  Hmm.
[19:33.560 --> 19:34.200]  Here we go.
[19:38.030 --> 19:39.270]  Everything is not the CA.
[19:46.600 --> 19:47.040]  All right.
[19:47.120 --> 19:47.940]  Well, that's not working out.
[19:48.120 --> 19:48.760]  So I'll keep going.
[19:49.020 --> 19:49.260]  Oh, wait.
[19:56.070 --> 19:57.290]  So let me skip ahead a little.
[19:58.490 --> 20:06.150]  We had interviewed Richard Clark, who was the top man for counter-terror in the White House.
[20:06.250 --> 20:08.570]  He had been the White House counter-terror czar.
[20:08.750 --> 20:12.610]  So basically you couldn't go... oh, here's the clip I wanted to play.
[20:12.790 --> 20:17.110]  Basically you couldn't go any higher up in the totem pole as far as counter-terror goes.
[20:17.670 --> 20:23.590]  And he had accused George Tenet of some pretty serious stuff.
[20:23.750 --> 20:25.030]  George Tenet was the head of the CIA.
[20:25.030 --> 20:28.330]  So we went ahead and sent George Tenet an email.
[20:29.230 --> 20:35.090]  And we were surprised when we got an immediate response with a letter from Tenet.
[20:35.610 --> 20:40.130]  And so we felt like we were kind of onto something here.
[20:40.330 --> 20:50.310]  Because for the first time, Tenet, along with this guy named Rich Blee and Cofer Black, felt the need to address the pre-9-11 mistakes in an actual letter.
[20:50.470 --> 20:52.330]  It was the first time they had done anything like that publicly.
[20:54.310 --> 20:59.190]  Our podcast was going to be focused on this guy, Rich Blee, because we saw him as sort of a symbol.
[20:59.430 --> 21:04.070]  For ten years following 9-11, his name had never appeared in the mainstream media.
[21:04.070 --> 21:07.250]  Yet he was the head of the CIA's Bin Laden station.
[21:07.850 --> 21:10.170]  And so we just thought there was something wrong with that.
[21:10.310 --> 21:19.930]  Because if there had been a massive intelligence failure, then it seems like the buck would stop at the head of the CIA's Bin Laden station.
[21:21.350 --> 21:36.070]  And so over the course of investigating this, we came to figure out that there was a woman who was sort of at the heart of all of this story with the pre-9-11 shenanigans who had been working under Rich Blee.
[21:38.070 --> 21:50.750]  But she is sort of referenced here and there, always sort of alluded to in these various books and documents over the last ten years, but had never been named and you really wouldn't know it was the same person.
[21:52.310 --> 21:58.210]  Until this article came out early 2011, it was an Associated Press article.
[21:59.050 --> 22:08.090]  And it was all about how the grave mistakes had been made by this person named Francis, middle name Francis.
[22:08.490 --> 22:11.730]  And the article revealed that she had an awkward first name.
[22:13.090 --> 22:17.350]  So our team, we basically started just Googling.
[22:17.770 --> 22:22.730]  And we went to the State Department nominations.
[22:22.730 --> 22:23.970]  They post those.
[22:24.150 --> 22:26.250]  And a lot of times they are fronts for CIA covers.
[22:26.470 --> 22:30.010]  So we just started searching Francis year by year in State Department postings.
[22:30.170 --> 22:35.350]  And I think it was the 2008 or 2009 one, we found an Alfreda Francis Bukowski.
[22:36.090 --> 22:38.830]  Kind of an unusual first name, middle name Francis.
[22:39.190 --> 22:40.250]  It seemed right.
[22:40.250 --> 22:54.470]  So during interviews with various people in preparation for this documentary, we started just kind of pulling one of these where we would say, you know, would that order have come from Rich Blee or would it have been more likely to have come from Alfreda Bukowski?
[22:54.970 --> 22:58.010]  And when people would kind of go, oh, it could have been either of them.
[22:58.550 --> 23:03.210]  When that happened a number of times, we started to get a lot more confident that this was the name.
[23:03.930 --> 23:09.150]  So at a certain point, we emailed the CIA.
[23:17.780 --> 23:19.340]  And that email said,
[23:27.310 --> 23:35.750]  we wish to make you aware that we plan to release an investigative podcast and written piece, which will name two of your employees, Alfreda Francis Bukowski and Michael Ann Casey.
[23:36.130 --> 23:49.390]  The evidence we have uncovered demonstrates that each failed to follow standard operating procedure on multiple instances, with regard to an operation that surveilled two future 9-11 hijackers, one that many we interviewed feel was the single best opportunity to stop the attacks.
[23:49.910 --> 23:56.350]  Regarding Ms. Bukowski specifically, we have learned that she may have misinformed the congressional investigation on certain details.
[23:56.790 --> 24:05.730]  We have also confirmed that she is the CIA employee reprimanded for making herself involved in the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed without officially being assigned to do so.
[24:06.190 --> 24:09.910]  And another source says she was named for accountability into the Camp Chapman attack.
[24:11.990 --> 24:16.890]  So, I was told ahead of time that when we sent that email, we should be ready for a phone call pretty fast.
[24:16.890 --> 24:17.510]  And that happened.
[24:19.170 --> 24:26.070]  And a guy named Preston Golson, who was the CIA's media spokesperson, said, you know, hey, Ray, I got your email.
[24:26.250 --> 24:27.630]  This is Preston from CIA.
[24:27.790 --> 24:30.890]  And I immediately said, hold on, I'm going to record this.
[24:31.550 --> 24:32.690]  And I started to.
[24:32.930 --> 24:34.890]  And he said, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, man.
[24:36.810 --> 24:38.670]  Let's just have a little informal talk here.
[24:48.100 --> 24:48.980]  So we did.
[24:49.060 --> 24:54.180]  And I sent him the transcript of the podcast.
[24:54.880 --> 24:58.680]  So I basically gave him everything I had and said, this is what we've uncovered.
[24:58.880 --> 24:59.940]  This is who told us what.
[25:00.140 --> 25:01.440]  We would like to interview her.
[25:01.560 --> 25:05.900]  If we've gotten anything wrong, we would love for her to tell us her side of the story.
[25:07.160 --> 25:09.420]  The response that I received...
[25:26.210 --> 25:28.070]  So, this is off the record, guys.
[25:32.810 --> 25:41.670]  We strongly believe it's a potential violation of federal criminal law to print the names of two reported undercover CIA officers whom you claim have been involved in the hunt against Al Qaeda.
[25:43.010 --> 25:45.290]  Later, I asked him to cite the law.
[25:45.490 --> 25:48.610]  He specifically said the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
[25:49.830 --> 25:51.970]  Now, maybe he was just trying to scare us.
[25:52.110 --> 25:53.490]  But I have... and it works.
[25:53.750 --> 25:58.750]  I have never gotten a message from CIA telling me I might be criminally liable for something.
[25:59.110 --> 26:00.970]  And so, we took it seriously.
[26:01.270 --> 26:10.630]  And we basically announced online that we were going to pause on the release of the documentary for the 9-11 10th anniversary.
[26:10.630 --> 26:13.130]  And we were going to investigate our options.
[26:13.650 --> 26:16.590]  And so, I called up Ben Wizner.
[26:16.730 --> 26:19.010]  He's the head of the ACLU's National Security Project.
[26:19.410 --> 26:23.790]  And to be honest with you, his advice was not comforting.
[26:25.230 --> 26:29.890]  What he said was that, you know... and I'm paraphrasing, but...
[26:29.890 --> 26:33.410]  Yes, this law has never been used to prosecute journalists in the past.
[26:33.930 --> 26:40.190]  That being said, it's clear that the administration is looking to extend precedent in that area.
[26:40.750 --> 26:43.750]  And when they do it, it's not going to be Bob Woodward they go after.
[26:43.910 --> 26:46.450]  It's going to be a couple of knuckleheads like yourselves.
[26:48.250 --> 26:49.610]  So, tread lightly.
[26:55.110 --> 26:59.010]  So, we made a decision that I'm not terribly proud of, but let me go ahead and defend it ahead of time.
[26:59.670 --> 27:00.950]  We censored the podcast.
[27:01.790 --> 27:08.270]  We put little alias names with a mechanical voice every time the people were mentioned so that it would stand out.
[27:08.270 --> 27:16.930]  And we had the intention of sort of making a bigger stink about this whole thing by sort of launching a campaign that would be like, why won't the CIA let you know who these people are?
[27:17.110 --> 27:19.010]  And then we could regroup at a later time.
[27:20.610 --> 27:26.230]  But, although we tried to wimp out in that regard, the universe had other ideas.
[27:26.230 --> 27:48.070]  And our webmaster, on the day that we released the censored podcast, our webmaster, JR, basically, accidentally, I swear, he was supposed to post all sorts of email exchanges between us and CIA, and he posted the unredacted one on an obscure section of our website.
[27:49.370 --> 27:57.570]  And I found this out because I was basically just Googling some stuff that evening and saw it come up on Cryptome.
[27:57.990 --> 28:00.290]  Alfreda Bukowski, this is her name.
[28:01.890 --> 28:03.990]  And I quickly realized what had happened.
[28:04.150 --> 28:07.950]  I asked JR to take it on down.
[28:08.650 --> 28:14.410]  But by that point it was too late, and by the next morning I was getting a call from John Cook at Gawker.
[28:15.550 --> 28:20.770]  At the time, I was kind of just trying to lay low and see if this whole thing would blow over.
[28:23.390 --> 28:34.170]  I had a journalist friend who's well-connected who, I don't know who his source is, but he claimed that his source had told him that there was at least an investigation opened at the Justice Department.
[28:34.810 --> 28:40.930]  And I, you know, we had spent three months sort of unpaid just finishing this podcast.
[28:40.930 --> 28:42.910]  And so, I mean, we were running on fumes.
[28:43.050 --> 28:50.170]  I was starting a new job that was requiring me to go into an office, do long hours, concentrate on that.
[28:50.390 --> 28:55.990]  And, you know, all I could think about is whether there were going to be federal agents looking to question me when I got home.
[28:59.870 --> 29:01.070]  So, let's see here.
[29:02.470 --> 29:05.630]  I knew this speech was going to run longer than I wanted it to.
[29:05.630 --> 29:07.170]  So, let me just jump ahead.
[29:07.730 --> 29:28.690]  I want to tell you, basically, prior to her naming, there are subtle references to her in the Congressional 9-11 Report, in the 9-11 Commission Report, in the Department of Justice 9-11 Commission Report, and in Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize winning book,
[29:28.790 --> 29:29.410]  The Looming Tower.
[29:29.410 --> 29:33.830]  Those came out in 03, 04, and 2006, respectively.
[29:35.430 --> 29:37.510]  But, they didn't even give her an alias.
[29:37.790 --> 29:42.530]  There wasn't, you know, they would, if some guy was named Mark, they'd call him Marty.
[29:42.850 --> 29:45.570]  So that you could at least sort of track and follow the story.
[29:45.750 --> 29:47.490]  But she never had an alias in any of those.
[29:47.710 --> 29:49.850]  So, you wouldn't even know she existed.
[29:51.810 --> 29:59.390]  Finally, in March of 2007, Ken Silverstein wrote an article for Harper's, where he referenced a woman.
[29:59.630 --> 30:07.550]  She was described as a person who inspires little confidence and who is highly adept at working her way through the bureaucracy, but has no leadership ability.
[30:10.310 --> 30:17.490]  And she had been nominated and then, after that article, denominated for the role of Baghdad Station Chief.
[30:18.410 --> 30:22.570]  And then, in 2008, Jane Mayer came out with an excellent book called The Dark Side.
[30:22.710 --> 30:24.570]  If you haven't read it, go, you know, please do.
[30:25.530 --> 30:34.870]  She references a tall, pale-skinned, spiky-haired red head who wore bright red lipstick and was controversial among her male colleagues for her ferociousness.
[30:35.450 --> 30:44.850]  Who took, who got so excited when the 9-11 mastermind was captured that she took a trip to Poland on her own dime, unassigned, to participate in his waterboarding.
[30:45.870 --> 30:49.650]  And was later scolded and told it's not supposed to be entertainment.
[30:54.010 --> 30:56.370]  And then there's a few obscure references here and there.
[30:56.530 --> 31:00.690]  And we get to the Matt, Goldman, or the Adam Goldman-Matt Apuzzo story and the Associated Press.
[31:01.270 --> 31:04.710]  Now, people might ask, why do you need to name names?
[31:05.410 --> 31:15.630]  Why not just report about a CIA officer that made mistakes and sort of let it kind of, you know, if it becomes a public thing, if Congress looks into it, whatever, people will get to the bottom of it.
[31:15.790 --> 31:18.910]  And to that, I would say, eleven years, ten months.
[31:19.970 --> 31:31.450]  Eleven years, ten months between the first alleged act of criminality that I can point to in Alfredo Bukowski's career to the date when we, the public, could begin to put the pieces together and understand what was going on.
[31:31.450 --> 31:45.030]  Six of America's finest journalists, four government investigation reports, and it took Cryptome to let the public finally know what was really going on.
[31:47.310 --> 31:54.070]  So, that is why I would argue we need extremist transparency orgs like Cryptome and WikiLeaks.
[31:55.750 --> 31:57.250]  Any questions up to this point?
[31:57.450 --> 32:04.150]  I know I'm just sort of, I think I'm halfway through my time and I'm just about to get into the meat of this, but...
[32:07.560 --> 32:10.000]  Yeah, alright, that's a very good question.
[32:10.260 --> 32:11.620]  So, I mean, statement.
[32:12.900 --> 32:17.160]  I don't know if all of them knew her name, but presumably they did.
[32:17.380 --> 32:19.100]  Presumably they could have at least asked.
[32:19.180 --> 32:22.920]  If they had a source that was telling them information, they could have gotten some sort of a pseudonym.
[32:22.920 --> 32:31.720]  I know in the case of Jane Mayer, she was told, I mean, basically the CIA lies to these journalists.
[32:32.240 --> 32:41.460]  And because they are mainstream journalists, they do kind of defer to, well, they told us this, so we can't harm, you know, put someone in harm's way.
[32:41.620 --> 32:50.020]  What they said to Jane Mayer, as I understand it, is that, you know, Alfredo Bukowski was on an overseas mission and was undercover.
[32:50.020 --> 32:54.200]  So you could see why you wouldn't... To my understanding, that has never happened.
[32:54.480 --> 32:59.170]  She has always been a manager analyst working safely from CIA headquarters.
[33:00.300 --> 33:05.860]  And she is known to dine at this one Washington eatery on a regular basis and so forth.
[33:06.060 --> 33:09.660]  So, there was no... there was really... that was a bold-faced lie.
[33:09.900 --> 33:16.520]  And then in the case of the Associated Press, I'm told they were going to release her name right off.
[33:16.520 --> 33:21.120]  And they got convinced, I think by Preston Golson, to just, well, what's the harm?
[33:21.240 --> 33:22.480]  And why don't you just go with the middle name?
[33:22.620 --> 33:24.200]  That will give people a way to identify her.
[33:24.340 --> 33:25.420]  And it sure did.
[33:29.280 --> 33:31.140]  A little background on her real fast.
[33:31.340 --> 33:33.340]  She's from Garland, Texas.
[33:33.620 --> 33:35.740]  She went to Garland South High School.
[33:35.920 --> 33:40.920]  Then she went to University of Pennsylvania and on to the Fletcher School up in Massachusetts.
[33:41.580 --> 33:44.200]  She arrived at CIA in the early 90s.
[33:44.300 --> 33:46.140]  I believe it was January 1991.
[33:47.600 --> 33:58.720]  And she sort of immediately connected with this group of women who were sort of all newbies to the agency, all kind of trying to stick together in this very... in this man's world of the agency.
[33:59.880 --> 34:08.040]  And one of those people who kind of becomes important throughout the rest of this is a woman named Jennifer Matthews, who kind of became her best friend.
[34:09.440 --> 34:12.920]  There was the CIA gentleman named Mike Scheuer.
[34:13.500 --> 34:22.280]  And he had founded in 1995 something called Alec Station, which was basically the Al Qaeda office.
[34:22.680 --> 34:25.900]  It had... really it started out with like 25 people.
[34:26.040 --> 34:28.200]  By the time 9-11 happened, it had 50 people.
[34:28.300 --> 34:33.660]  Very small office, working in open cubicles, everybody sort of over each other's shoulders, everybody knowing what each other is doing.
[34:34.480 --> 34:42.740]  And he sort of raised eyebrows because he filled the entire... the entire staff almost with... with analysts.
[34:43.180 --> 34:46.220]  These young female analysts who had just arrived a few years before.
[34:46.520 --> 34:49.340]  The fact that they were female... doesn't matter.
[34:49.580 --> 34:53.780]  But the... the fact is that as analysts, they had no operational experience.
[34:54.060 --> 34:58.640]  They were basically a bunch of bookworms and they were all, you know, in their late 20s for the most part.
[34:58.640 --> 35:07.720]  And so they developed this reputation within CIA for being almost cult-like in their... in their sort of...
[35:07.720 --> 35:12.480]  walking in lockstep together and... and their sort of what was considered extreme views at the time.
[35:13.040 --> 35:22.520]  That's significant because after 9-11, you know, basically there was this hunger for people who... who knew anything about Al Qaeda.
[35:22.520 --> 35:29.640]  And so they all instantly got promoted and their office kind of became, you know, the powerhouse office of the CIA.
[35:29.940 --> 35:35.300]  And so this group that got referred to by other people at CIA as the Manson family...
[35:36.800 --> 35:39.280]  came to run the CIA essentially.
[35:40.100 --> 35:45.620]  And eventually sort of their philosophies became general United States government philosophy.
[35:47.200 --> 35:50.780]  Let me go ahead and bring this one up if it will cooperate with me.
[35:51.040 --> 35:55.860]  This is a few... few folks... yeah.
[35:59.510 --> 36:03.290]  Open with... I really hate that you can all see what I'm doing here, but...
[36:05.410 --> 36:06.110]  What's up?
[36:06.890 --> 36:07.530]  Help me.
[36:10.820 --> 36:11.260]  Okay.
[36:11.980 --> 36:12.380]  Oh, good.
[36:13.110 --> 36:16.350]  Now you can see.
[36:16.450 --> 36:17.210]  Now you can see.
[36:22.500 --> 36:23.100]  Okay.
[36:23.740 --> 36:28.740]  So, I mentioned Michael Scheuer, founder of, uh, Alex Station.
[36:29.360 --> 36:37.060]  Um, he got let go basically, um, in 99 and replaced with this guy, Rich Blee.
[36:37.600 --> 36:39.040]  Right up at the top.
[36:39.180 --> 36:40.560]  Also the only known photo of him.
[36:41.300 --> 36:46.340]  Uh, Blee was basically the son of, like, CIA royalty from the old Cold War days.
[36:46.340 --> 36:48.040]  And he had grown up in the agency.
[36:48.500 --> 36:52.820]  And, uh, arrived at Alex Station to try to take a more proactive approach to Al Qaeda.
[36:53.180 --> 36:55.220]  His deputy chief was Thomas Wilshire.
[36:55.520 --> 36:58.680]  And Alfredo Bukowski basically became, like, the lead analyst.
[36:58.680 --> 37:04.600]  The manager that was overseeing the other, let's say, 47, uh, Alex Station employees.
[37:04.600 --> 37:09.120]  Which included her good friend Jennifer Matthews and Michael Ann Casey.
[37:13.160 --> 37:20.940]  Um, so, in January of 2000, uh, this is when we get into sort of the meat of the 9-11 intelligence failure.
[37:21.800 --> 37:28.200]  Uh, a, uh, the NSA, uh, had been monitoring, uh, an Al Qaeda communications hub in Yemen.
[37:28.540 --> 37:35.240]  And I want to be clear, the NSA was not monitoring every house in Yemen and came across this hub.
[37:35.240 --> 37:41.060]  Uh, the FBI had actually gotten it, uh, doing an interrogation of a terrorist suspect.
[37:41.380 --> 37:42.240]  And got the phone number.
[37:42.400 --> 37:43.860]  And they got a court order.
[37:44.020 --> 37:46.580]  And they actually started monitoring this house.
[37:47.080 --> 37:48.620]  Because it was being used by Al Qaeda.
[37:48.760 --> 37:50.960]  And they found out there was going to be a big meeting in Malaysia.
[37:51.820 --> 37:57.220]  And so, Jennifer Matthews, who was, uh, basically held the ticket.
[37:57.380 --> 38:00.460]  Or was sort of, like, in charge of the case regarding anything with Yemen.
[38:01.660 --> 38:05.680]  Got alerted to the whole thing because they were going to be traveling from Yemen to Malaysia.
[38:06.120 --> 38:09.840]  And Michael Ann Casey basically got the ticket on the op itself.
[38:10.120 --> 38:18.320]  So, she coordinated, uh, I think it was something like ten different CIA field offices, seven foreign intelligence organizations.
[38:18.320 --> 38:23.160]  And they managed to at least monitor the outside of this meeting and see who was meeting there.
[38:23.160 --> 38:24.000]  And they took photos.
[38:24.260 --> 38:28.920]  And it was, it was a who's who of Al Qaeda leaders.
[38:29.460 --> 38:39.680]  Um, here is Jack Cloonan, a former FBI counter-terror agent, talking about how big a deal this particular meeting is.
[38:51.620 --> 38:55.660]  Like, I believe Hanbali, uh, Ramzi Bin El-Shiv was there.
[38:55.880 --> 38:56.340]  Nishiri.
[38:56.900 --> 38:57.360]  Nishiri.
[38:57.700 --> 38:57.880]  Nishiri.
[38:57.880 --> 38:58.660]  I mean...
[38:58.660 --> 39:01.640]  It's like, it's like, you know, it's like the who's who.
[39:01.920 --> 39:07.740]  I mean, to put all these players in one location at one point, it's just, it's just hard to believe.
[39:08.120 --> 39:09.050]  I mean, how fortuitous.
[39:09.680 --> 39:11.540]  Well, that's what you were always looking for.
[39:11.740 --> 39:14.740]  I mean, that's what everything was, was promulgated on.
[39:14.740 --> 39:20.040]  I mean, you were always looking for, you know, the threat to the United States and were there people coming in.
[39:20.140 --> 39:31.460]  We knew, from talking to other cooperatives, what a price and a value that Bin Laden and Zawahiri put on getting people in Al Qaeda with a U.S.
[39:31.540 --> 39:34.220]  passport or the ability to travel to the United States.
[39:37.420 --> 39:51.100]  So, inside Alec Station, we have a little bit of a spy of our own because the FBI sent over its own guy, Mark Rossini, to basically be attached to the Bin Laden station at the time.
[39:51.380 --> 39:56.820]  And so, he can kind of give us a window into what was happening in January of 2000.
[39:58.780 --> 40:00.340]  Well, the cable came in.
[40:00.340 --> 40:17.700]  They had gone back to the consulate in Jeddah, pulled his visa papers and, of course, attached to the cable where all the information about him and that he had implied that he wished to go to the United States.
[40:17.700 --> 40:34.900]  And then, my colleague, Doug Miller, then took it upon himself to write what they call the CIR, the Central Intelligence Report, to inform the FBI about this meeting in Malaysia.
[40:34.920 --> 40:43.720]  In particular, and because of the fact that one of the people there, a suspected terrorist, had intentions to travel to the U.S.
[40:44.300 --> 40:53.580]  So, the way it works over there is, you write a communication, and then it goes into an electronic queue to get approved along the line to be released.
[40:54.680 --> 40:58.200]  Obviously, me being the more senior agent, Doug comes to me.
[40:58.480 --> 41:09.080]  It was like the next day or the day after, I just came up to my little cubicle area and said, hey, you know, I don't know what the f*ck is going on, or a word stat effect, or, hey, can you help me out here?
[41:09.100 --> 41:10.500]  I don't know why this thing isn't moving.
[41:11.280 --> 41:15.080]  So, I said, sure, let me go up and let me go talk to Michelle, see what's going on.
[41:15.520 --> 41:18.320]  And I said, hey, you know, Doug's cable, what's going on?
[41:18.400 --> 41:19.320]  It's not going out the door.
[41:19.480 --> 41:20.600]  You know, we've got to send it to the bureau.
[41:21.280 --> 41:22.020]  It's not moving.
[41:22.100 --> 41:22.480]  What's happening?
[41:23.340 --> 41:24.580]  She got a little heated.
[41:25.360 --> 41:26.380]  She got a little heated.
[41:26.780 --> 41:31.040]  And that's when she said, listen, it's not an FBI case.
[41:31.180 --> 41:32.200]  It's not an FBI matter.
[41:32.380 --> 41:32.660]  I went, what?
[41:32.760 --> 41:33.940]  The FBI is going to let them know.
[41:33.980 --> 41:35.160]  You're not going to say anything.
[41:35.160 --> 41:41.660]  And I was like, okay, if that's your posture, that's your position, well, all right.
[41:41.840 --> 41:47.200]  I don't agree with it because some has, you know, the guy's got a visa to come to the U.S.
[41:49.800 --> 41:52.140]  But that was really the end of it.
[41:55.020 --> 42:00.960]  So basically what began there, nobody really knows what the motivation was.
[42:01.200 --> 42:08.400]  A lot of people think they hated John O'Neill, who was the head of the New York office of the FBI, and they didn't want him to get another big catch.
[42:08.760 --> 42:09.600]  Who knows?
[42:09.820 --> 42:11.160]  Who knows what they were working on?
[42:11.240 --> 42:13.860]  The point is that they did not share the information.
[42:13.860 --> 42:24.380]  And that was maybe no big deal, just a breach of protocol, until late November of 2000 when the USS Cole was bombed.
[42:24.780 --> 42:32.900]  It turns out the meeting that they had surveilled was both an initial planning meeting for 9-11, the one in Malaysia, as well as the planning meeting for the Cole.
[42:33.100 --> 42:37.040]  And some of the people who were plotters for each were all at the same meeting.
[42:37.940 --> 42:44.620]  So John O'Neill's crack FBI team goes out to Yemen, headed by this investigator named Ali Soufan.
[42:45.500 --> 43:04.480]  And as Soufan's investigating not using torture, using age-old techniques, like following old detective trails and doing sort of old-school interrogations, he begins to figure out that the people who masterminded the Cole had all been together in Malaysia in January of 2000.
[43:04.800 --> 43:08.580]  So he submits an official request to CIA.
[43:08.580 --> 43:13.840]  Says, do you know anything about any kind of a meeting in Malaysia in January of 2000?
[43:14.300 --> 43:16.160]  Have any more info for us?
[43:16.880 --> 43:18.480]  Put yourself in their shoes.
[43:19.400 --> 43:30.040]  What was simply a breach of protocol in January of 2000, by November of 2000, has now become their asses are on the line for culpability for the USS Cole attack.
[43:30.040 --> 43:41.500]  If they come clean at that point, they've got to admit that they knew information about guys who eventually attacked the Cole and didn't provide it to anyone.
[43:41.740 --> 43:42.620]  So what do they do?
[43:42.800 --> 43:43.680]  They double down.
[43:44.300 --> 43:47.820]  And I'll spare you the details, although they're out there.
[43:47.820 --> 43:50.920]  And if you want to listen to our podcast, Who is Rich Blee?
[43:51.040 --> 43:52.580]  Google it and you'll get all the details.
[43:52.800 --> 44:00.560]  But basically, the long and short of it is, for the next several months leading up to 9-11, they run a series of little games on the FBI team.
[44:01.700 --> 44:08.000]  They respond three different times that they do not have any more information on the Cole bombing.
[44:08.880 --> 44:14.020]  Something Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize winner, calls obstruction of justice in the death of 17 U.S.
[44:14.340 --> 44:18.420]  sailors, because it was an ongoing FBI investigation.
[44:21.300 --> 44:38.920]  And in the end, ironically, on 9-11, the FBI men who had been sort of kept in the dark, during that whole period, the Cole investigators, they lost their mentor and leader, John O'Neill, who was in the World Trade Center, and died that day.
[44:39.960 --> 44:51.640]  And so, the next day, Ali Soufan's in Yemen, and he's getting ready to go to the airport and fly back to New York to begin the 9-11 investigation, and he gets pulled aside and he gets handed a file folder.
[44:51.840 --> 45:01.240]  Now, this is all according to a book that he came out with the same time as Alfredo Bukowski's name came out called The Black Banners, also highly recommended reading.
[45:01.520 --> 45:11.160]  But he gets handed a file, and it contains the photos of all the people who were meeting in Malaysia in January 2000, the one he'd made three requests for.
[45:12.100 --> 45:14.220]  And as he writes, my hands started shaking.
[45:14.360 --> 45:15.300]  I didn't know what to think.
[45:16.120 --> 45:18.880]  He ran to the bathroom and threw up.
[45:19.540 --> 45:22.340]  He sat on the floor for the next few minutes, but it felt like hours.
[45:22.340 --> 45:24.760]  What I'd just seen went through my mind again and again.
[45:24.760 --> 45:26.200]  The same thought kept looping back.
[45:26.380 --> 45:30.320]  If they had all this information since January 2000, why the hell didn't they pass it on?
[45:35.360 --> 45:37.720]  So, September 15, 2001.
[45:39.080 --> 45:45.400]  The CIA presents a plan of action to President Bush at Camp David, and reportedly wows him.
[45:45.960 --> 45:49.660]  They provide what is basically their wildest dreams wish list.
[45:51.780 --> 45:54.420]  And afterwards, George Tenet comes up to Bush.
[45:54.700 --> 46:05.280]  We don't know exactly what got said, but what's been reported is that he came up and shook his hand and said, listen, the men and women of the CIA need to know that you've got their back, that there's not going to be any kind of witch hunt.
[46:05.520 --> 46:08.920]  And true to Bush's character, he kind of just went, that sounds good.
[46:09.140 --> 46:11.060]  You know, shook his hand, and that was going to be that.
[46:11.060 --> 46:20.720]  Two days later, signs an executive order that greenlights the Black Sight program, the Targeted Kill program, gives them...
[46:20.720 --> 46:26.860]  I think it almost doubled their budget, and lets them, for the first time in U.S.
[46:26.880 --> 46:30.060]  history, lead a military campaign, essentially, into Afghanistan.
[46:30.700 --> 46:32.840]  So, it's like Christmas there.
[46:32.840 --> 46:38.520]  And let me pull up my second CIA sheet here.
[46:42.610 --> 46:44.210]  Basically, everybody gets promoted.
[46:48.250 --> 46:51.630]  So, by about mid-2002, this is how things look.
[46:52.350 --> 46:55.710]  Mike Scheuer, who'd been let go, gets brought back as a special advisor.
[46:56.490 --> 46:59.230]  Alfredo Bukowski is now chief of Alex Station.
[47:00.030 --> 47:03.930]  At the Counter Terror Center, a new guy named Jose Rodriguez has appeared.
[47:04.710 --> 47:11.790]  Thanks to Cryptome, we now know that his deputy was a guy named Michael D'Andre, who is now, himself, the head of Counter Terror Center.
[47:13.130 --> 47:22.850]  Jennifer Matthews gets her own high-value target unit to run, with a bunch of, basically, young, next-generation, young targeters that are coming in.
[47:22.990 --> 47:26.130]  If you've seen Zero Dark Thirty, they're kind of like that.
[47:28.410 --> 47:33.130]  And so, everything's coming up, George Tenet and CIA, until November.
[47:34.850 --> 47:38.270]  When he gets briefed by the CIA historian.
[47:39.250 --> 47:43.110]  And the historian basically tells him, Look, I got a little bad news.
[47:43.270 --> 47:54.050]  It turns out that some of your guys down at Alex Station knew about two 9-11 hijackers a year and a half prior, and sort of did not provide that information to anyone.
[47:55.070 --> 47:56.650]  And Tenet kind of flips out.
[47:57.350 --> 48:02.430]  And we don't know what happened after that, but we can presume that he had some sort of a come-to-Jesus meeting with them.
[48:02.430 --> 48:07.350]  And it seems that the decision was made to not come clean about that.
[48:07.590 --> 48:20.610]  Because the email that you heard Mark Rossini describe, that Doug Miller attempted to send to FBI, the one that he was categorically told that he couldn't send, that was in the electronic database of CIA.
[48:21.270 --> 48:23.690]  But it sort of...
[48:23.690 --> 48:28.110]  Four investigations into 9-11 happened that looked through those databases.
[48:28.990 --> 48:37.190]  And from November 2001 until it turned back up at the start of 2004, it was sort of nowhere to be found.
[48:38.410 --> 48:43.910]  I'm on my last ten minutes, so I'm going to jump ahead to the torture program.
[48:44.990 --> 48:56.910]  Because the failure to sort of hold them to account the first time around, line them up to be part of a whole second set of problems here.
[49:01.170 --> 49:02.210]  One second.
[49:09.630 --> 49:17.610]  So, you might not be a fan of the FBI, but in the case of sort of John O'Neill's FBI, I would look at it as, you know...
[49:18.150 --> 49:22.690]  Basically, he insisted... they knew that they would need to try people in open court.
[49:22.690 --> 49:25.510]  And so, they followed the rules.
[49:26.090 --> 49:32.410]  The basic rules of human dignity, human rights rules, reading Miranda rights, et cetera, et cetera.
[49:33.650 --> 49:42.670]  And so, I sort of see them... John O'Neill's people in the FBI as representing the legal approach, the rule of law.
[49:42.990 --> 49:48.410]  And the CIA folks is kind of a anything-that-gets-it-done extra-legal approach.
[49:51.250 --> 49:54.950]  And so, I don't know how familiar everybody is with the details of the CIA black sites.
[49:55.110 --> 49:58.850]  It's a pretty weird thing to be an aficionado about, I'll be the first to admit.
[50:01.050 --> 50:05.070]  But, you know, basically, I mentioned the Bush executive order.
[50:05.190 --> 50:07.650]  September 17, 2001, greenlit them.
[50:07.790 --> 50:16.650]  But for the first few months after 9-11, right up until about March of 2002, they weren't really sure if they were going to go forward with the torture program.
[50:16.650 --> 50:21.570]  A couple of military psychologists had been contracted to develop it.
[50:22.050 --> 50:25.430]  And they were pushing for torture as the answer.
[50:26.730 --> 50:39.970]  But it wasn't until they captured a guy named Abu Zubaydah in March of 2002, that we had basically our first test case for torture.
[50:40.490 --> 50:52.490]  And what happened was, at the beginning, the CIA, although they had him, they kind of threw together their first black site in Thailand, they didn't really believe that it was him.
[50:52.710 --> 50:55.390]  So, they didn't actually send any of their key team members.
[50:57.190 --> 51:04.070]  And so, Ali Sufan, who I mentioned from the FBI, he gets called in, a crack interrogator, and he starts working on him.
[51:04.270 --> 51:07.330]  And he gets him to admit a number of things.
[51:07.550 --> 51:15.610]  For the first time, he tells Sufan that the mastermind of 9-11 was this guy, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which was huge.
[51:16.650 --> 51:20.190]  They didn't know until then who had plotted it.
[51:20.610 --> 51:23.830]  And knowing that, obviously, it's kind of a big piece of the puzzle.
[51:23.830 --> 51:28.830]  He also revealed the Jose Padilla Chicago dirty bomb plot.
[51:30.210 --> 51:36.110]  Not long after, sort of, Jennifer Matthews arrives.
[51:36.650 --> 51:46.230]  She has the file on this particular terrorist, Zubaydah, and she comes in along with one of those military psychologists.
[51:46.610 --> 51:54.090]  And they basically tell Ali Sufan, Washington wants to try something a little different, and they begin trying out these various torture techniques.
[51:54.830 --> 52:05.750]  Well, when they aren't effective, Washington gets cold feet, and they bring Ali Sufan sort of back in, and he puts his clothes back on, turns the temperature back up, and starts to try to form a rapport with him.
[52:06.250 --> 52:11.170]  And this goes on for a period of a couple weeks there, from sort of late March into mid-April.
[52:11.330 --> 52:16.510]  It's basically a straight-up A-B test of torture versus the old-school stuff.
[52:17.690 --> 52:19.470]  And torture yielded nothing.
[52:22.550 --> 52:26.170]  But Sufan is not in charge of the reporting that's coming back.
[52:26.830 --> 52:29.710]  It's the CIA case, so the CIA is in charge of that.
[52:31.350 --> 52:40.110]  And what happens is that we don't know who the guilty parties are, but we know that the person who would have been reporting back to headquarters was Jennifer Matthews.
[52:40.650 --> 52:48.290]  And we know that the person who was sort of the go-to person for all reports that kind of went upstairs at CIA was Alfredo Bukowski.
[52:48.890 --> 52:58.230]  And they reported what Sufan had gotten through legal interrogation techniques as being the result of waterboarding.
[52:58.850 --> 53:03.750]  I actually, I'm not positive, but I think they misled their own higher-ups.
[53:04.550 --> 53:10.090]  And as evidence of that, years after the fact, you may know a guy named John Kiriakou.
[53:11.370 --> 53:14.810]  He's now in prison for the torture program.
[53:15.070 --> 53:17.710]  Not for participating in torture, but for revealing it.
[53:17.710 --> 53:20.210]  I think he's got another three years.
[53:21.870 --> 53:22.830]  Where's my quick time?
[53:23.110 --> 53:23.290]  All right.
[53:23.890 --> 53:29.630]  But when he went on ABC News and first revealed definitively that the U.S.
[53:29.790 --> 53:30.930]  was engaging in torture,
[53:34.830 --> 53:52.590]  he still believed, if I pull up this damn clip, he still believed at that time that despite the fact that he was against torture, he had to at least give it props because he said that Zubaida had broken down after one application of waterboarding and basically just started singing.
[53:52.990 --> 53:59.770]  And I think that was probably something that went around CIA and it also went around the White House.
[54:00.830 --> 54:13.790]  And it's probably, you know, it had to have come from Alfredo Bukowski or from Jennifer Matthews somewhere involving the people who were inside the black sites at the time.
[54:14.310 --> 54:22.630]  And only thanks to Ali Soufan finally coming out with his book ten years after the fact, did we get a little of the truth there.
[54:22.910 --> 54:23.950]  Let me play this.
[54:26.270 --> 54:26.690]  Al-Dr.
[54:27.350 --> 54:33.010]  Kiriak says he knows Zubaida was one of only two Al-Qaeda leaders subjected to waterboarding.
[54:33.270 --> 54:34.490]  And was it successful?
[54:34.650 --> 54:35.150]  It was.
[54:35.330 --> 54:36.710]  What happened as a result of that?
[54:36.710 --> 54:37.910]  He resisted.
[54:38.150 --> 54:41.390]  He was able to withstand the waterboarding for quite some time.
[54:41.570 --> 54:43.990]  And by that I mean probably 35 seconds.
[54:44.230 --> 54:44.970]  That's quite some time.
[54:45.050 --> 54:45.910]  Which was quite some time.
[54:46.190 --> 54:54.730]  A short time afterwards, in the next day or so, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate because his...
[54:59.160 --> 55:01.860]  Alright, that may be the last thing I try to play on this piece of crap.
[55:05.000 --> 55:07.760]  So look, this is kind of important...
[55:07.760 --> 55:11.060]  Cooperation would make it easier on the other brothers who had been captured.
[55:11.540 --> 55:12.700]  And from that day on...
[55:12.700 --> 55:13.380]  I'll let Kiriakou...
[55:13.380 --> 55:16.120]  He answered every question just like I'm sitting here speaking to you.
[55:16.400 --> 55:19.140]  So in your view, the waterboarding broke him?
[55:19.300 --> 55:20.540]  I think it did, yes.
[55:20.860 --> 55:22.600]  And did it make a difference in terms of...
[55:22.600 --> 55:23.000]  It did.
[55:23.280 --> 55:27.920]  The threat information that he provided disrupted a number of attacks.
[55:28.120 --> 55:29.320]  Maybe dozens of attacks.
[55:31.220 --> 55:37.020]  So, that was bullshit, but I think it was bullshit that he believed because it had been widely circulated within CIA.
[55:37.460 --> 55:41.940]  Here is an important point as I need to wrap up now.
[55:42.660 --> 55:54.760]  It's sort of been understood that the torture program was, however much we might hate it, given legal cover by the Justice Department when J.
[55:54.980 --> 55:59.140]  Bybee wrote his memo, what they call the Golden Shield memo.
[55:59.420 --> 56:04.240]  But that legal memo has the following statement.
[56:05.460 --> 56:08.660]  It was written at the time of the Abu Zubaydah interrogation.
[56:09.360 --> 56:13.460]  And it says, Our advice is based upon the following facts which you have provided us.
[56:13.520 --> 56:19.100]  We also understand that you do not have any facts in your possession contrary to the facts outlined here.
[56:19.100 --> 56:21.520]  And this opinion is limited to these facts.
[56:21.780 --> 56:25.820]  If these facts were to change, this advice would not necessarily apply.
[56:27.480 --> 56:43.760]  So, given that the program was greenlit largely on the reporting coming out of the Abu Zubaydah interrogation, and by the end of that year, the military was clamoring to use the same techniques they had heard were so effective.
[56:44.000 --> 56:47.840]  And so, by early 2003, you had Abu Ghraib, etc.
[56:49.500 --> 57:00.140]  You know, they were operating under the idea that they had legal protection based on the reporting coming out of that Thailand black site, which turned out to be inaccurate.
[57:01.920 --> 57:03.580]  Unfortunately, I've got to kind of wrap it up.
[57:03.740 --> 57:20.620]  But if you're seeing a theme here, you know, these people being able to operate without oversight within a very secretive environment are able to use that secrecy to sort of manipulate, you know, not just foreign governments like they're trained to do,
[57:20.620 --> 57:24.340]  but it seems like, in some cases, our own officials.
[57:25.980 --> 57:31.400]  I guess I would jump ahead to Dianne Feinstein.
[57:31.640 --> 57:47.080]  I don't know if you caught this, but recently, she caught the CIA investigating her investigators into the CIA torture program and actually removing documents from her investigators' computers.
[57:47.700 --> 57:53.420]  And so, she got up and gave this very dramatic one-hour speech on the floor of the Senate.
[57:54.080 --> 57:56.900]  And I'm going to go ahead and just play this last portion here.
[57:59.200 --> 58:04.700]  Because this sort of... to people who aren't following these issues, it may have seemed out of left field.
[58:04.920 --> 58:10.840]  But if you sort of follow this particular story, this sounds like it makes a lot of... part of a pattern.
[58:11.180 --> 58:24.400]  If the Senate can find this report, we will be able to ensure that an un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted.
[58:24.980 --> 58:35.080]  But, Mr. President, the recent actions that I have just laid out make this a defining moment for the oversight of our Intelligence Committee.
[58:35.600 --> 58:48.320]  How Congress and how this will be resolved will show whether the Intelligence Committee can be effective in monitoring and investigating our nation's intelligence activities.
[58:52.420 --> 58:54.400]  So, I'm going to do questions in the back.
[58:54.620 --> 58:59.260]  I just want to say in summation, this speech was called Unmasking a CIA Criminal.
[58:59.600 --> 59:06.240]  But I think it could have been subtitled, How many crimes does a CIA employee have to commit before he or she is no longer allowed to be a CIA employee?
[59:09.000 --> 59:13.220]  You know, is the United States better off if the government can keep people like Bukowski a secret?
[59:13.240 --> 59:16.340]  I would say that depends on what we mean by the United States.
[59:18.720 --> 59:23.540]  Is it the protection of the government that we are looking for or the protection of the people?
[59:23.860 --> 59:25.440]  So, thanks for listening to me.
[59:25.440 --> 59:25.880]  Thank you.
[59:26.080 --> 59:26.140]  Thank you.