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Torture Report Released; American Terror Suspect Arrested in Israel

Aired December 09, 2014 - 15:00   ET

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


ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BALDWIN: You are watching CNN breaking news here this hour. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for being with me.

We're beginning with this, this Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. This is actually the executive summary, right? So this is the 600-page -- we'll call it the crib notes of the 6,000 pages of this massive, massive report from the U.S. Senate. Hear some of the most brutal accounts of torture you may ever hear. Detainees stripped, diapered, strung up, beaten, rectal force-feedings. One freezing to death while shackled to a concrete floor. Another detainee sexually threatened with a broom stick. And then there was the waterboarding, a series of near drownings for hours and hours on end. Now, this is exactly what some of the CIA interrogators did, some of whom were contracted out by CIA in their attempt to break down terrorism suspects.

Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein says the CIA misled the president, the CIA misled the Congress about what extent of what they were doing inside this pitch-black, sensory deprived facility known as "The Dungeon."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D), CALIFORNIA: 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 dated July 31, 2003.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's begin this hour in Washington with our chief Washington correspondent, host of "THE LEAD," Jake Tapper.

And, Jake, I don't even know where to begin. If you want to begin with the wallings, the near drownings, this ice water bath, the techniques, or do we begin with the fact that the CIA according to this report totally misled Congress and the president of the United States? You choose.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's a lot to chew on this report.

Basically, there are 20 conclusions from Senator Feinstein, the Democrats on the Intelligence Committee, and Republican Susan Collins. They basically say torture happened and they go into detail about it. They say it was not effective. They make the case that it did not lead to actionable intelligence. Very disputed case, but they do make that case.

They say that not only the public was misled, and not only Congress, but the Bush administration itself was misled, with President Bush not finding out about the details until 2006. And then they go into the descriptions of some of these -- quote, unquote -- "enhanced interrogation techniques."

And it really is hard to conclude that they are anything other than, at least in the vernacular, torture, the rectal feedings, the way that prisoners were treated, the detainees. Many of these detainees, of course, Brooke, were some of the more evil terrorists that walked this earth. But the report makes clear and the CIA even said today that it fell short in the values this country stands for.

BALDWIN: So you have the Dems from the Senate Intelligence Committee putting this together, and then you have even Republican Senator John McCain very forceful on the floor today, saying the practice has stained our national honor.

But on the flip side -- we even took him live -- Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, joining a chorus of many of his Republican colleagues saying this is absolutely -- furious -- absolutely wrong that this report is out there, even President George W. Bush, you know, defending the CIA.

TAPPER: And the CIA defending the CIA. That's right. The report is -- there is a minority report that was also issued today from the Senate Republicans with the one exception of Susan Collins.

And it's not just their conclusion that releasing this report puts at harm Americans abroad, U.S. troops and CIA officers and others. They also take issue with the content of the report. Let me just read one quote here. They say, basically, overall Senate Democrats' biases "led to faulty analysis, serious inaccuracies and misrepresentations of fact in the study."

There are people who work under the Obama administration for the CIA who also dispute much of what is in this report. And we should point out that the CIA itself has issued statements today. They're basically taking issue with, first of all, the claim that torture or enhanced interrogation techniques, let's call it what it is, torture, they say it did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists and save lives.

They say the torture -- quote -- "was critical to our understanding of al Qaeda and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day." And, of course, they disagree with the accusation that the CIA systematically and intentionally misled on the effectiveness of the program Congress, various entities of the executive branch and the public.

So there is a lot of pushback to this report, in addition to the voluminous report itself, which details some horrific things done by the CIA to detainees.

BALDWIN: So there was the pushback. There was also the potential prosecution. We will wait for all of this as the dust begins to settle.

Jake Tapper, we will look for you at the top of the hour to chew on a heck of a lot on "THE LEAD." Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

TAPPER: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Now, this Senate report on torture reveals actions undertaken by the CIA that, whether justified or not, are downright creepy.

Abu Zubaydah, a purported aide to Osama bin Laden, according to this report, his interrogation was so brutal, it drove the agents who saw it to -- quoting the report -- to the point of tears and choking up. Abu Zubaydah was tortured for 17 consecutive days. We're talking 24/7, do the math, that is 400 hours of nonstop torture.

He was told the only way he would be leaving 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 here, one of some 119, all of whom were subjected to enhanced interrogation.

Bob Baer joins me by phone by Colorado from Telluride, Colorado. He is a former CIA operative. And from Washington, Adam Goldman of "The Washington Post."

Gentlemen, welcome to both of you here.

And Bob Baer on the phone with me, let me just begin with you, former CIA. You know, when you hear that former agents or intelligence officers were nearly brought to tears by what was done to this one high-level terrorist, what does that say to you?

BOB BAER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I think the whole program's clearly mismanaged.

The fact that there's even a report tells me it was mismanaged. But the people that set this program up at the beginning, I know them all. And they had their misgivings at the time. They knew, for instance, that the CIA had never engaged in torture, that our officers knew nothing, how to do it, the consequences.

They went out to contractors, which was just complete idiocy. So the contractors didn't know what they were doing. So this was all ad hoc. And at the time, people said this is going to explode one day and the CIA's going to get the blame. And they're absolutely right. It was a horribly managed program.

I don't care whether the CIA defends it or the Republicans. And it was done all at the last minute. And no one knew what they were doing and this is what we get.

BALDWIN: So, hang on, Bob. Let me stay with you. If, you know, you know all these people, all these players here, and you say they had misgivings, why continue this?

BAER: They did it -- I said -- I asked them that very question. They said they were driven by the vice president's office, Dick Cheney. He said, look, you guys have no intelligence on al Qaeda. And don't tell me you're just going to put more resources on it. I want some intelligence. We don't want to get attacked again.

And someone else was, well, we can do hostile interrogations, as we know them. And he said do it. This was politically driven from the top.

BALDWIN: Adam Goldman, I want to just hear your voice about driven from the top, yet, you know, according to this report, the president of the United States, commander in chief, he wasn't even aware until mid-2006.

ADAM GOLDMAN, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Yes, that fact itself is extraordinary,that the president of the United States didn't know exactly what was going on in these black sites.

Presumably, this was being done under his direction and the vice president and the White House, but yet he didn't have any real knowledge of what these men were doing in our country's name. You know, there's a lot in this report. There's a lot in this report.

And a lot of it had -- there were big chunks of it that had come out. But I think, as we look at it, there are a couple of things to focus on. One is the totality of what was done to these detainees. There wasn't an escalation, right, in the use of EITs. They just threw the house at these detainees.

BALDWIN: EIT, what's that?

(CROSSTALK)

GOLDMAN: The EIT is the enhanced interrogation techniques.

BALDWIN: Ah.

GOLDMAN: There was supposed to be a slow escalation, but they sleep- deprived these guys, they put them on liquid diets, they put them in confinement boxes, you know, they water-boarded three of them.

So these guys endured a lot. And it didn't necessarily follow the guidelines that were set up. The other thing is, too, one of the other extraordinary things is, look, we knew that a guy had been chained outside and died of hypothermia. His name was Gul Rahman. He died November 2002. That's not news. What's news is what happened at that particular black site. In the

report, it's called Cobalt. But the CIA knew it as Salt Pit. And it was in Afghanistan. And it was clearly mismanaged, this facility. They didn't even know a lot about the detainees who had been put there. And people were using techniques that weren't authorized. And yet, nobody, nobody was punished.

BALDWIN: You know, we just heard from Bob talking about, I think, his word was idiots, but some of these contractors who were the ones carrying this out. We heard from Senator Feinstein today saying the program was run by this very small group of people, you know, maybe 40, maybe 50 people.

Does it stretch believability, Adam, that such a small number of people could essentially hijack U.S. policy?

GOLDMAN: No, not necessarily, not within the agency itself.

And I do believe there was a small number of people running this and making the decisions. I think that might have been part of the problem, that enough people weren't engaged and clearly not enough people with experience, because, as Bob has said, the CIA wasn't in the interrogation and detention business.

It didn't know how to do that. And, in fact, when the bureau -- the CIA had the Bureau of Prisons come and visit Salt Pit. And they were -- these guys from the Bureau of Prisons, they were astonished at what they found. So, you know, that doesn't surprise me.

BALDWIN: Bob Baer, do you think anyone here should be prosecuted?

BAER: Well, yes, I think somebody should.

Laws were violated. I think destroying tapes of these interrogations when a federal court said don't destroy them, we need them and they went ahead, you just can't destroy evidence meant for a trial and against a judge's orders. You know, can the Department of Justice investigate itself on this? And probably...

(CROSSTALK)

BAER: Go ahead.

BALDWIN: Go ahead, Alex.

GOLDMAN: Bob, let me weigh in here a second. OK.

These particular instances that were referred by the CIA to the Justice Department, there were three separate investigations, OK, done by the Eastern District of Virginia twice and then John Durham, another prosecutor that Holder asked to take a look at this.

So, there have been three separate federal criminal investigations into what happened at these black sites. The Justice Department came close to bringing charges in two of the cases, one involving Gul Rahman, but decided not to prosecute. These things have been thoroughly examined. I think we should all take a deep breath and probably understand that nobody's going to be charged.

(CROSSTALK)

BAER: Yes, nobody's going to be charged. Yes.

BALDWIN: You don't think anyone will be charged? There was a whole piece in "The Times" today about maybe pardoning them.

(CROSSTALK)

BAER: Maybe we should pardon them. But we do need to get all the stuff out.

And I think, you know, the Department of Justice set this whole program up, justified it, and it's no surprise to me that they're not going to bring any indictments.

BALDWIN: We will see. Bob Baer, Adam Goldman, thank you both very much. I appreciate both of you coming on.

And we will stay in touch with both of you as that develops, whether there are indictments, whether there is prosecution or not at all.

Just ahead, any moment, President Barack Obama expected to speak in Nashville. He's supposed to be there talking about immigration. We're keeping a close eye on him as he is possibly addressing this Senate torture report. We will watch for that.

Also, Senator John McCain who, of course, survived torture himself, prisoner of war, Vietnam, gave an emotional speech with some incredibly harsh words here moments after the report was released. You will hear it. But many of his colleagues, many of his Republican colleagues disagreeing with his take on this report. We will share that with you.

And I'm getting word that Israel says it's disrupted a terror plot allegedly by an American.

This is CNN's special live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Breaking news here on CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

In the wake of the Senate's report, 6,000-page report on the CIA's brutal torture techniques, a United Nations official is calling on the U.S. government to prosecute those responsible for the crimes.

Let me bring in our global affairs correspondent, Elise Labott. She is following this for us.

And we have been talking so much about possible prosecution. And now we're hearing from the U.N. they believe those responsible must be brought to justice.

ELISE LABOTT, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Brooke. Well, we're talking about Ben Emmerson. He's the U.S. special rapporteur on torture and human rights.

And what he's saying here is that the program, the CIA program of enhanced interrogation techniques was -- quote -- "a clear policy orchestrated at a high level within the Bush administration which allowed to commit systematic crimes and gross violations of international rights law." He said the U.S. has an obligation, as a matter of international law is legally obligated to bring those responsible to justice.

Brooke, he says following orders is not a defense.

BALDWIN: What does justice look like?

LABOTT: Well, certainly, if this were to become, you know, members of the International Criminal Court, of which the U.S. is not a signatory, I might add, you know, could feasibly bring the U.S. before the International Criminal Court.

I seriously doubt that that would happen. It would have to be a member state that would get other member states to vote to bring the U.S. before the International Criminal Court, which I seriously doubt would happen. You had Attorney General Eric Holder look into this. He said these were not prosecutorial crimes.

But at the same time, in the eyes of the international community -- and this is really where the U.S. is more concerned than having to deal with the International Criminal Court -- you know, the U.S. tries to, you know, preach to the rest of the international community about upholding international law and then for a report like this to come out showing that the U.S. might have contravened international law, certainly, that's a problem.

BALDWIN: Yes, agreed. Elise Labott, thank you.

Coming up next, as we mentioned, we're watching and waiting for the president of the United States to speak on immigration in Nashville, Tennessee, may be making some comments on this U.S. Senate report on torture.

We are getting word, breaking news into CNN here that an American has been arrested in Israel accused of trying to carry out a terror plot. We will take you live to Jerusalem for that one. You're watching CNN's special live coverage. Stay right here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Breaking news here on CNN.

And that is the arrest of an American suspected of terrorism. His name, according to authorities, is Adam Livix. His alleged target, not landmarks right here in the United States, rather, sites in Israel considered holy to Muslims.

Let me bring in our senior international correspondent, Ben Wedeman, in Jerusalem. And so, Ben, Israeli police say this suspect pretended to be a Navy

SEAL?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, that's the only one of the very bizarre points in this story.

We have heard from the Shin Bet, which is the Israeli equivalent of the FBI, and the Israeli police saying this man, a 30-year-old from Texas, who they identify as a Christian, came to Israel early last year. He first stayed in some cities in the Palestinian territories where they say he was approached by a Palestinian man who wanted to give him a sniper rifle to assassinate President Barack Obama during a visit here.

Afterwards, he moved to Israel proper. He moved in with a soldier from the Israeli army, and he asked that soldier and actually paid him to obtain explosives. He told his roommate, the soldier and others that he had very negative feelings toward Israel's Arab population and that he wanted to use those explosives to cause some sort of damage, harm, a terrorist attack, perhaps, on Muslim holy sites.

Now, the Israeli police got wind of this and they went to investigate at his apartment. When they got to the apartment, he didn't let them in. He jumped from the balcony on the seventh floor, fell to the sixth floor, but was then apprehended. Now, he's been interrogated and apparently they have received some cooperation from the FBI and other American authorities.

He was arrested last month, but they have been holding him. And the whole case has been under a gag order, but definitely a very bizarre case with an American far from home -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Incredibly bizarre. And I realize you are far from his home. But I'm sure we will be hearing from his family here in the wake of all of this in the coming days. Ben Wedeman, thank you in Jerusalem.

I want to take you back to our special coverage of this release of this explosive report on the CIA's use of torture, enhanced interrogation techniques, really torture.

We're getting some new information on that.

Let's go to our justice correspondent, Pamela Brown.

Pamela, what are you hearing?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, we're just learning that the FBI and DHS sent out a joint bulletin to law enforcement agencies across the country surrounding the release of this torture memo.

And in this warning sent to law enforcement, it basically says that the concern is that it could incite violence, that this could incite some sort of activity from homegrown violent extremists. It tells law enforcement to watch out for any sort of online activity, any sort of online reaction that this may cause.

And it talks about the concern of terrorists overseas using this, exploiting this as a recruiting tool, as propaganda. And Director of the FBI James Comey echoed the sentiment today during a briefing he held with reporters. He said the FBI is focused on whether it generates any activity overseas or from homegrown violent extremists.

We have been hearing about that concern leading up to the release of the torture memo today. And now an official warning going out to law enforcement agencies across the country as a precaution, Brooke.

I do want to say, though, I want to know that at this point, we're not hearing that there's any intelligence indicating there's something specific, any specific plotting in regards to the torture memo, Brooke.

BALDWIN: All right. Pamela Brown, thank you very much.

One of the more eloquent responses to the torture report coming from Republican Senator John McCain.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners who will produce more bad than good intelligence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: McCain survived torture himself in Vietnam as a prisoner of war -- what he said there on the floor in Capitol Hill coming up. Plus, some lawmakers are livid the report has even been made public.

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