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CIA Torture Report Released, Terror Alerts Heightened

Aired December 09, 2014 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Here we go. Top of the hour. Breaking news. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for being with me here.

What we're about to talk about really for the better part of the next two hours, it is graphic, it is disturbing, brutal, near drownings, medically unnecessary, quote, rectal feedings, one man chained naked on a concrete floor for days, eventually believed to have frozen to death. Another detainee, sexually threatened with a broom stick. This is just some of what CIA interrogators did inside of this pitch black and sensory deprived facility known as "the dungeon." All of this in their pursuit of information, round the clock methods of torture designed to break down terrorism suspects. All of this revealed in this report. I have it for you. At least 600 pages of the total 6,000. It took five years for them to compile the more than 6,000 pages. What I just showed you, that is just the summary. Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein saying today that the CIA program was far more brutal than people were ever led to believe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D), SENATE INTELLIGENCE CHAIRWOMAN: Stripped naked, diapered, physically struck and put in various painful stress positions for long periods of time. They were deprived of sleep for days. In one case, up to 180 hours. That's seven and a half days over a week with no sleep, usually standing or in stress positions, at times, with their hands tied together over their heads, chained to the ceiling. In the Cobalt facility I previously mentioned, interrogators and guards used what they called rough takedowns in which a detainee was grabbed from his cell, clothes cut off, hooded, and dragged up and down a dirty hallway while being slapped and punched. The CIA led several detainees to believe they would never be allowed to leave CIA custody alive, suggesting to Abu Zubaydah that he would only leave in a coffin-shaped box.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let me begin with our justice correspondent, Evan Perez.

And, Evan, we heard Chairwoman Feinstein saying the CIA's claims that torture was needed to save American lives were, in a word, inaccurate. You have been poring through, you know, all of these pages. I just want to begin with the methods, the methods used to try to get this information. Can you just run through some of what that entailed?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, you know, one of the things that they mentioned in this report is the one that the senator just described, which is called the hard takedown. And it involved basically opening the doors to a prison cell, the dungeon as has been described in this report, in which the officers, the employees with the CIA, would run in screaming, yelling, asking the detainee to get down, and then they would grab him, cut off his clothes, pull him outside, drag him across the floor. The detainee would have abrasions to his face, legs and hands, according to this report. Things like this are -- you know, it's obviously very ugly to read now.

Even though we've heard so much about what was going on in these black sites, it's still very difficult to read, you know, the new details that are coming out in this report. And I've got to tell you, you know, we - I looked through many parts of this. We have an entire team looking through this. And I was struck with -- by one particular thing.

BALDWIN: What's that?

PEREZ: In 2003 -- in 2003, we have the CIA sending -- asking the White House, you know, because the White House is going out and saying we treat prisoners humanely. And you have in 2003 the CIA general council, Scott Muller, going back to the White House saying, look, you might want to stop, you know, saying that we treat, you know, detainees humanely and basically making sure that they're aware of what's going on in the black sites.

And you see - you know, for a period there the CIA also basically stops sending new orders in for interrogations because they want to make sure the White House still understands that this is what they were doing. The message comes back from the White House, full speed ahead. Continue doing what you're doing. You're doing good work. And so that's the big question right now, Brooke, is, you know, when the dust settles on this report, you know, who is really to blame for these successes, for these mistakes, right?

BALDWIN: Yes. Yes.

PEREZ: Was it the CIA solely or people above them?

BALDWIN: That's the thing. I'm about to have an entire conversation about how president, the White House, Congress, you know, really entirely left in the dark here. And when, as you say, the dust settles, should anyone be punished? Should there be prison time? Evan Perez, we're going to continue this.

PEREZ: Yes.

BALDWIN: This is going to have huge, huge fallout. Evan Perez, our justice correspondent in Washington. Now -- thank you.

The report also says that as the CIA was cruelly trying to extract this information from these detainees, they were consciously keeping, as Evan pointed out, all this information from top government leaders. Let me just play a little bit more from today's hearing. Again, this is senator, the chairwoman of the Senate Intel Committee, Dianne Feinstein.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FEINSTEIN: In another example, the CIA, in coordination with White House officials and staff, initially withheld information of the CIA's interrogation techniques from Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. There are CIA records stating that Colin Powell wasn't told about the program at first because there were concerns that, and I quote, "Powell would blow his stack if he were briefed." Source, e-mail from John Rizzo (ph) dated July 31, 2003.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Fears that Colin Powell would blow his stack. I know, it makes you shake your head. You - you know, you include all these quotes in your piece, Josh Rogin, CNN political analyst, who just reported from "Bloomberg View" on - the headline of your piece, "Bush was kept in the dark." My first question to you was, how long was he in the dark?

JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: What we learned today is that President George W. Bush didn't receive a full detailed briefing on these harsh interrogation techniques until 2006, more than four years after the program had been ongoing. Now, Bush knew some of the details and he had to approve some of the techniques, but according to the CIA, actually, the White House staff intentionally kept him from knowing all of these details and stopped CIA directors George Tenet and Porter Goss (ph) from briefing him directly. Now Bush and Vice President Cheney defended the practices, but now we know they weren't fully in the loop.

BALDWIN: But before we even get to them defending it, because, you know, President Bush was on with Candy Crowley over the week, I want to play that, but in a second, why were they kept in the dark? Was it fears of media leaks? Was it fears of Colin Powell blowing his stack? What's the explanation?

ROGIN: Right. Susan Rice and Dick Cheney, according to the CIA documents, told the CIA that they were afraid of press releases. But the truth is that the CIA believed that they didn't want the president to know. And not only the president, Senate Intelligence leaders weren't briefed until 2006. The full Senate Intelligence Committee wasn't briefed until 2006.

Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld weren't briefed until a year after the program started. There was an intentional, sophisticated plan to keep ambassadors from knowing when black sites were in their country. All sorts of details were kept out of the public eye, but also kept away from top officials. This is part of the committee's argument that the CIA intentionally misled Congress and the administration. Of course, the CIA says that wasn't their call. They are blaming the White House. BALDWIN: So with, you know, definitely this outrage today, you have to

hear from President Bush who, again, sat down, spoke with Candy Crowley over the weekend defending the CIA. Here he was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: We're fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA, serving on our behalf. These are patriots. And whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contributions to our country, it is way off base. And I knew the directors, I knew the deputy directors, you know, I knew a lot of the operators. These are good people. Really good people. And we're lucky as a nation to have them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So he's saying these are good people. I read a quote from Dick Cheney, I believe, I'm roughly quoting, this is a bunch of hooey. You know, both of whom supporting the CIA and the men and women who they see as, you know, those who were trying to protect. This is especially in the incredibly tenuous times right after 9/11.

ROGIN: Sure. I think George W. Bush is saying that now what the CIA documents reveal, as indicated in the report, is that when Bush heard about some of these techniques, he was uncomfortable about them and he actually told the CIA briefers that he thought it was very discomforting that, for example, one of the detainees had been forced to sit in a stress position so long that he soiled himself. So there is a record of Bush objecting to some of these techniques. Cheney, not so much.

The bottom line is that the White House didn't want the president to know, so he didn't know. And now, of course, the CIA says that some mistakes were made. Overall, they corrected those mistakes. But in those first months and years, a lot of these mistakes, which were not previously known, are now being shared with the public. And that is the significance of this report today.

BALDWIN: Josh Rogin, thank you.

ROBIN: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Also, a key voice in all of this, Arizona Senator John McCain, addressing his colleagues from the floor there today on Capitol Hill shortly after the Senate Intelligence Committee's report was released. And while many of his Republican colleagues have very, very strong disagreements with this report, Senator McCain, keep in mind, endured torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, came out strong in support of this report's release. Here he was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I rise in support of the release, the long delayed release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's summarized, unclassified review of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques that were employed by the previous administration to extract information from captured terrorists. It's a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and our allies, but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world. Its use was shameful and unnecessary, and contrary to assertions made by some of its defenders and as the committee's report makes clear, it produced little useful intelligence to help us track down the perpetrators of 9/11 or prevent new attacks and atrocities. I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So, harsh, strong words from one Republican. Here's another Republican. This is Saxby Chambliss, a Republican out of Georgia, with a dissenting view, vehemently disagreeing with the release of the report. Here he is.

SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS (R), GEORGIA: Interrogation shift in which Abu Zubaydah finally yielded the identification of Jose Padilla. So during a five-daytime period, Abu Zubaydah got less than 10 hours of sleep, yet the majority does not acknowledge that this was an enhanced interrogation. In light of these facts, the studies claims that the FBI was exclusively using rapport building techniques is nothing short of being dishonest.

More important, the actionable intelligence gleaned from the enhanced interrogation of Abu Zubaydah that started in April of 2002 served as the foundation for the capture of additional terrorists and the disruption of the plots those captured terrorists were planning. His information was also used to gather additional actionable intelligence from these newly captured terrorists, which in turn led to a series of successful capture operations and plot disruptions.

By the study's own count, the numerous interrogations of Abu Zubaydah resulted in 766 sole source disseminated intelligence reports. Now, that's an awful lot of actionable intelligence collected under the CIA program that this study tries to quietly sweep under the carpet in an effort to support its false headline that the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques was not effective.

The study also overlooked several crucial intelligent successes that prevented terror attacks against the United States and our allies around the world. Al Qaeda affiliated extremists, subjected to the program's enhanced interrogation techniques, made admissions that led to the identification of the man responsible for plotting the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or KSM. The program also helped stopped terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland and against our military forces overseas.

Al Qaeda affiliate Abu Zubaydah's statements to interrogators led to the identification of Jose Padilla, an al Qaeda operative tasked with conducting a terrorist attack inside the United States. The interrogation of KSM and Galid Hassan Ahmed (ph) disrupted al Qaeda's plotting against Camp Lamonnier in Djibouti, a critical base of operations in the war on terror in Africa. And at that time, home to some 1,600 U.S. military personnel. There's no telling how many lives this program saved in those particular interrogations alone. Intelligence gathered under --

BALDWIN: All right, Republican Saxby Chambliss there of Georgia with his dissenting voice. You know, this was all Democrats from the senate intelligence committee who released this, what we can see, the 600- page executive summary of some 6,000 pages from the CIA torture report. And a lot of Republicans are furious that this was even released. We're going to explore both sides here just ahead. Will anyone be punished for these actions? Will anyone be prosecuted? We'll explore the legalities of this whole thing coming out today.

Plus, with the world so vulnerable and the U.S. engaged in war, currently against ISIS terrorists, how will America's adversaries react to this CIA torture report? We'll discuss this. Stay with me. You're watching CNN's special live coverage.

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BALDWIN: You're watching CNN breaking news here as we're talking about this U.S. Senate CIA torture report today. To sum it up in a word, this Senate report on torture reveals actions undertaken by the CIA that whether justified or not are downright creepy. Detainee number one, Abu Zubaydah, purported aide to Osama bin Laden. According to this report, his interrogation was so brutal, it drove the agents who saw it, quote, "to the point of tears and choking up."

And, remember, these are CIA agents we're talking about here. They tortured this man. They tortured Zubaydah for 17 consecutive days, 24/7. That is 400 hours of nonstop torture. When you look at this report, it indicates Zubaydah was told the only way he would leave was in a coffin-shaped box. And the CIA even made plans to cremate his body should he have died in custody. That is one prisoner. One of 119, all of whom who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques.

Karen Greenberg is here with me now. She's perhaps the tiptop authority on the CIA's treatment of detainees. She's the director of the Center of National Security at Fordham University Law School here in New York.

Karen, thank you so much for spending some time with me.

KAREN GREENBERG, FORDHAM UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL: Thank you.

BALDWIN: We may keep you beyond this segment here just to use your brain and your knowledge. I want to just begin with the notion -- it's hard for me to wrap my head around 400 hours of nonstop torture. When you hear that number in all these details that are coming out, does it surprise you what you're learning?

GREENBERG: Actually not.

BALDWIN: No?

GREENBERG: There are many of us who, reading through the report of Amnesty International and a number of other organizations, and even hearing what we've heard from people in Congress who have thought that very draconian, harmful, cruel, death-provoking measures were taken. And there are a number of people in the country who have been trying to say this for a long time. And the report finally just gives more detail and a little more legitimacy to these accusations.

What is surprising about the report is the degree to which the CIA tried to cover it up. And I think --

BALDWIN: Congress, White House, cabinet level officials.

GREENBERG: Absolutely. And that is surprising. We sort of thought - people said they didn't know. But to actually see the interoffice exchanges and to see who was intentionally kept out of the loop and to compare what happened on paper and the documents, which was told to the Congress is rather, actually, shocking. Even for many of us who have been cynics about what's been told us about torture.

BALDWIN: I mean is rogue the right word for -- to describe the CIA?

GREENBERG: Yes.

BALDWIN: Going totally above or around the White House and Congress?

GREENBERG: What's really interesting about it is it is rogue, and yet, there was an attempt to get legal cover for it from the Department of Justice. And they did get it to some extent. And what this report seems to say is that even with those legal parameters, they went beyond those. So, yes, it is -- it is rogue.

BALDWIN: Back to some of the details, and I don't know how many people at home have just begun to sort of sit and read all of this and I'm sure we're putting some of this for you on cnn.com. But let me begin with these black sites, right. So we're learning about these black sites scattered around the world where detainees were secretly tort tortured. That's what they refer to them as.

So according to the report there was this site called Cobalt where detainees were held in complete darkness and shackled in isolated cells. Constant loud noise at Cobalt, loud music and only a bucket to use for human waste. Detainees were dressed in diapers, they were subjected to what the report calls rectal rehydration for no medical purpose.

They were dragged from their cells, clothes cut off, hooded and dragged up and down this long corridor while being slapped and punched. And so this was done, from what we understand, this was done by these contractors. Who were the contractors? And were they thinking, OK, I'm doing this, you know, in the name of Americans?

GREENBERG: Yes. Eventually what the CIA did, and what this report talks about, is they outsourced the tortured to contractors, and in particular to two specific contractors, (INAUDIBLE) and Mitchell (ph). This has all been documented in the past by journalists. And they -- and these contractors got in excess of $80 million to do this eventually.

BALDWIN: $80 million?

GREENBERG: We're promised -- were promised more, but the program ended before they delivered on everything they'd been contracted to do. And they were neither interrogators in the past, nor people that were used to extracting this kind of information or anything like that. And they were charged with figuring out what techniques would work and how to use them. And so we knew that the CIA had contracted out many of its torture-related activities. And we knew it was to these gentlemen and their company, but we didn't see the details of it until now. So it is surprising.

BALDWIN: Karen Greenberg, I don't want to let you go. Can you spare me a few more minutes here?

GRENNBERG: Yes. Yes.

BALDWIN: I want to keep you on the other side of the break here because you bring up -- we talk about rogue, the CIA sort of going rogue here. The question -- next question once the dust sort of settles, will anyone be prosecuted? We'll talk to several guests who say these are no doubt crimes, that it's a pretty simple case. He'll explain. Karen will rejoin me. You're watching CNN's special live coverage. Stay right here.

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BALDWIN: The details about the CIA report are out. Now for the follow- up. Will anyone be charged? With me now, Professor Jonathan Turley from George Washington University, and back with me, Karen Greenberg, director of the Center of National Security at Fordham University Law School.

So, professor, let me just begin with you here. I mean, when we talk about, we were just discussing with Karen, the whole notion of, you know, misleading Congress, misleading the White House. What is the punishment for doing that?

JONATHAN TURLEY, PROFESSOR, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIV. LAW SCHOOL: Well, what's fascinating about this report is that it runs the entire range of criminal acts. From torture, which is a crime not just under international law, but under U.S. law, but it also includes clear references to criminal acts from obstruction, to destruction of evidence, to lying to Congress, lying to federal investigators. It really covers the entire section of 18 USC (ph) in terms of criminal acts.

There's never been that much of a debate among experts as to whether crimes were committed under this program. What was under debate is the commitment to do anything about it. You know, President Obama was heavily criticized at the beginning of his first term when he went to the CIA and assured them that people would not be prosecuted, even though we are obligated under treaty to do exactly that. And yet he and others said this was, in fact, torture. And what this report describes is the first official U.S. torture program. That's what we're talking about. It's not enhanced interrogation, it is well documented, not much really there to -- left to the imagination. It was torture.

BALDWIN: One part of this report today it says the legal justifications for the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques relied on the CIA's claim that the techniques were necessary to save lives. And according to the report, it didn't, so it was thus unfounded, right?

TURLEY: Well, that's - you know, it's interesting you should bring that up because it's very troubling to see, even today, the CIA claiming that the use of these torture methods was, quote, "effective." Under the international law, under the treaty that we helped write, it does not matter whether you got something out of torture. It doesn't matter whether it was effective or not. It's not just a crime, it's a war crime. And that treaty protects our people, not just other people, it protects people of our forces that are captured on a field of battle. That's why Senator McCain's comments were so poignant, standing there as a victim of torture. It was a real profile of courage.