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Retaliation over Torture Report; Ex-Military Interrogator Talks; Bin Laden Exposed; Dow Drops

Aired December 10, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Here we go. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thanks so much for being with me.

We begin right now at U.S. military bases and diplomatic posts all around the world. More than 6,000 Marines and thousands of U.S. personnel are on high alert as jihadist issue this worldwide call for retaliation against America. Retaliation response to one report detailing brutal and incredibly graphic accounts of exactly what the CIA and its contractors did while interrogating some of the 9/11 terror suspects.

Now, this agency, as we told you in detail, is accused of sexually abusing detainees in pitch black rooms, chaining them up, forcing them to go days and days without sleep. It goes on, rectal feedings, beatings, near drowning and even a death all in the name of intelligence gathering and the goal, according to this U.S. intelligence committee here with the U.S. Senate, indicates that that goal was never actually achieved. But when you hear from the CIA side of things, they are unapologetic, claiming the, quote, "enhanced interrogation techniques" did indeed help stop terror attacks and, it goes, even helped lead to the killing of Osama bin Laden. And two former CIA directors say the report itself is inaccurate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL MORELL, FORMER ACTING CIA DIRECTOR: The Democratic report is deeply flawed. The -- many of its main conclusions are simply not correct. What we had here were CIA officers who were acting under the direction of the president of the United States and who were told by the Department of Justice at the time that this was legal, that this was not torture. Now the rug is being pulled out from under them. I don't believe that anybody can honestly tell you, including President Obama, including Senator Feinstein, exactly what they would have done had they been put in President Bush's shoes.

MICHAEL HAYDEN, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: I don't know that the report that was released yesterday is that historically accurate report. It reads like a prosecutorial screen rather than an historical document.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Wow. Joining me now, Chris Frates, with our CNN investigative unit, one of our correspondents. And, Chris Frates, you hear - you hear the criticism, right, coming,

of course, from the CIA. You hear criticism from Republicans. You interviewed one of the reported architects of this entire interrogation, you know, program. What did he tell you?

CHRIS FRATES, CNN INVESTIGATIONS CORRESPONDENT: So, Brooke, I talked to James Mitchell and he couldn't confirm or deny that he's the psychologist mentioned in that report because he has a nondisclosure agreement with the government, but he does have some pretty strong feelings, calling the report, quote, "a partisan pile of bull." Of course he used a more color word when he talked to me.

BALDWIN: I'm going to take your word for it.

FRATES: He also said that when the interrogation program was running, CIA officials were in a battle with al Qaeda. And at that time, remember, it was a group they knew very little about. And they did the best they could given the information they had, Brooke.

BALDWIN: I also heard that you had said he defended a number of those interrogation techniques. How did he defend? What techniques did he defend?

FRATES: So, he seemed to defend interrogation techniques like waterboarding and sleep deprivation. And he told me, quote, "nothing was done to those detainees that aren't done to our service men and women, and our women, by our training programs. I think it's a national discussion. The administration and the people of the United States really have to ask themselves if whether in a situation like immediately after 9/11 they think it's a good idea to let them lawyer up."

And he added that he thought it was despicable to suggest that the men and women who put their lives on the line after 9/11, to suggest that they would somehow lie to the Senate and the president.

BALDWIN: All right, Chris Frates, thank you.

You know, we're hearing from these critics of this report. They're also raising questions about morality, what is the moral tradeoff for intelligence that could save lives. You know, interrogation has always been one of those gray areas of our national security and few know better than my next guest, Charlie Mink. Charlie Mink spent 15 months in Iraq for the U.S. Army as an interrogator and, full disclosure, Charlie Mink is my cousin.

Welcome back to the show, cousin. Charlie, thank you so much.

SGT. CHARLIE MINK, FORMER IRAQ WAR INTERROGATOR: Thank you.

BALDWIN: And, of course, thanks for all of your time serving our country. I honor you for that. But let's talk about when you were in Iraq. You know, you speak Arabic. You looked a lot of these detainees in the eyes. Just tell me, as an interrogator, what were you assigned to do? MINK: Well, I was on a shift with General McChrystal's Task Force 16

and our job was to dismantle the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq at the time, which became the Islamic State of Iraq, the ISI, in June 2006. So I spent most of my time, in fact, with detainees and not with my fellow soldiers. And I did get to know them often pretty personally and spent hours with them in what we call the interrogation booth.

BALDWIN: Well, let's talk about those hours because i know, as a sergeant in the army, you had the army field manual to go by, right, that prohibited any coercive torture techniques. But tell me what you did that worked.

MINK: Sure. Yes. And we did have the Army FM, and it is a solid -- it's the bedrock of our interrogation principle in the armed forces. And I've heard a lot recently in the last couple of days criticism of Senator Feinstein, that she doesn't offer a solution, well how should we interrogate if we shouldn't be torturing. Well, that's exactly the problem, we shouldn't be asking Senator Feinstein how to interrogate, we should be asking the interrogators. We should have --

BALDWIN: Why we have you on, sir.

MINK: In the first place. Thank you. So the FM is good because it defines your left and right limit. What is legal and what isn't. And torture is, of course, well out of bounds. Secondly, it gives you a tool kit to use, and there's a rapport based approaches and evidence based approaches that are actually really good. I found that my detainees were best when they were really well rested and relatively comfortable. I needed my detainees to remember minute and fleeting details that I could only get when they were really well rested. And these are rapport based approaches that come from the FM.

BALDWIN: That's interesting. So then the other layer to this, obviously, is this entire U.S. - this Senate report that came out yesterday. I know you signed a letter back in February urging Chairwoman Feinstein to release this report. Why did you want it out?

MINK: Well, I want it out - it is - it's not an information leak. This is an unclassified executive summary and what I really want is -- and my colleagues in the human rights field want, is to change the narrative, to change what average Americans think about torture and whether or not it was effective. Now, torture is really good at getting a detainee's willingness to talk, but in doing so it fundamentally erodes their ability to provide you accurate information. It's simply not effective. And that's really what we wanted to do was to change the narrative en route to some kind of legislation.

BALDWIN: Yes, I mean when you - when you read through some of this report, one of the cruxes of the report is that it wasn't effective, you know, and that this report was based upon documents and e-mails. Then you hear the CIA side of things, they say it was effective, they say they did get intel. I read an article from General Hayden at the time, you know, at the top, quick to point out that even in this report interrogators weren't spoken to, to get the clearer, more full picture, his side. Do you think those who torture detainees should have been spoken to?

MINK: Sure. And he -- General Hayden raises a good point. And they - and your previous guest alluded to this fact, that the torture - it's the CIA operatives who did the torturing -- are afraid of being prosecuted. They're afraid of being thrown under the bus. And that's a very understandable position. I'm actually against the idea of prosecuting the agents who did the torturing.

BALDWIN: Why?

MINK: And my - and my friends in the human rights field are going to be upset at me for saying that, for equivocating. But the first reason is that it's going to erode the intelligence community's confidence in its civilian leadership one more time. And that goes back to Stanley McChrystal's article in "Rolling Stone" 2010 or so.

BALDWIN: Right.

MINK: He -- it's important for the agency, in particular, to have faith in their civilian leadership. Secondly, I'm afraid that it would lead to a show trial and we'd have these guys acquitted and then how bad do we look for acquitting torture. Let's be straight, I like the agency. I think they do great work and our country wouldn't be as safe as it is without them. But this was a flawed program and we need to admit that.

BALDWIN: You know, listen, you're family. I said off the top, you're my own cousin. And I know this in my heart, you are unquestionably patriotic. I know as you're saying, you know, you respect the agency. You don't want the report to be an indictment on the agency for those who give their lives to the agency. But your worry is that whoever the next president is, that he or she could decide to bring back these enhanced interrogation techniques without legislation.

MINK: Correct. And that's - second day in office, President Obama did make an executive order making the FM, the Army FM the standard for interrogation. But that was an executive order. It wasn't legislation. So I'm afraid that if we go back to war and we do capture detainees and we have to interrogate, that torture is always going to be an option until we legislate against it. And that's really my biggest fear.

BALDWIN: That is something I have yet to hear. Charlie Mink, thank you.

MINK: Thank you. Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: All right, coming up next, did any of these interrogations help find Osama bin Laden? You ask the CIA, they say absolutely. But another expert says, hell no. Hear both sides. You decide for yourself.

Plus, will anyone be prosecuted for this? We were just talking about this. Should they be? How would that work? What if there would be an acquittal? We'll answer all of those questions.

And the heartbreaking words from mothers who've lost their sons to police brutality.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My son trip and fell and he was yelling, "I didn't do anything! I didn't do anything."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

The argument is raging still. Did information gleaned through torture expose Osama bin Laden? The Senate report says no. The CIA still says yes. Cliff notes version, there you go. Intelligence from the U.S. uncovered bin Laden's hideout by identifying his courier, Ahmed al- Kuwaiti, and putting a tail on him.

So, what got them then to this Kuwaiti who ratted out the courier? According to this report, the initial intelligence obtained, as well as the information the CIA identified as the most crucial or the most valuable on al-Kuwaiti was not, let me repeat, was not related to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques.

This is the CIA's side of this. Their response is, "it is impossible to know in hindsight whether we could have obtained the same information that helped us find bin Laden without using enhanced interrogation techniques, aka torture. Karen Greenberg is back with me today. Perhaps the top authority on the CIA's treatment of detainees. She is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University Law School.

Karen, welcome back.

KAREN GREENBERG, FORDHAM UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL: Nice to be here.

BALDWIN: With everything you know, who's right? Is it the Senate report or is it the CIA?

GREENBERG: You know, the Senate report is very comprehensive and gives us the most detailed report we've had yet on what happened in the lead-up to the capture of bin Laden. And it is very incremental and convincing. And basically what the report says is that this al Kuwaiti was identified much earlier than the narrative had been, as early as 2002, that the information that was given about him, the most information about who he was in al Qaeda, how close he was to bin Laden, and many other details came in 2004 from somebody who was not in U.S. custody, who was not being interrogated by coercive methods by U.S. personnel, but who gave up tons of information about just who al Kuwaiti was. And that, from there, many other things happened.

And what has happened in the CIA narrative it seems is that they've reversed the chronology, among other things, because this individual did give up information under coercive interrogation after he gave up all this important information. And so the CIA is sort of saying, no, this person, we coercively interrogated and he gave us information that led us to al Kuwaiti.

BALDWIN: Got it. Got it.

GREENBERG: And so who knows exactly. It may be that some information came from people in detainee custody.

BALDWIN: But it sounds like the most key information did not come from -

GREENBERG: The earliest. What you can say is the earliest.

BALDWIN: OK.

GREENBERG: And that's very important in these kinds of narratives.

BALDWIN: It's so important. I'm sitting in the morning and I'm reading, reading, reading both -- all sides just to try to get a fuller picture and all the while I'm trying to read thinking, you know, this is an agency, the CIA, as I'm reading their side of things, should we all be mindful that they misled Congress, DOJ, the White House and us all the while?

GREENBERG: You know, that's an actually interesting piece of this, because there were other players in the government besides the Central Intelligence Agency that did know about this. There were individuals in the Department of Justice who were not misled but were part of this. And I think that's the next layer. What's happened in sort of running away from the torture issue in the U.S. government is that it's all falling on the CIA, which does bear a tremendous amount of the responsibility.

BALDWIN: And your point is others share some of the blame.

GREENBERG: My point is there are also others. And my other point is being mindful is two things. Is it possible to oversee the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agency when so much of what they do is secret? And if it isn't possible, then we really have to think about that and what that means going forward.

BALDWIN: OK. Beyond the hunt for bin Laden here, another justification for the torture is the whole notion of the ticking time bomb. Get in there, you know, as fast as possible. Really sort of put the screws to someone ASAP. I want you to listen to this. This is the top former official of the CIA.

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JOHN RIZZO, FORMER CIA GENERAL COUNSEL: I can't say that these - that during the seven years of this program there was so-called ticking time bomb scenario described and uncovered. That's just not the way this program worked or what the threats were. There were specific terrorist plans, intentions, that were uncovered through a maze of intelligence, but including intelligence derived by this program.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So no ticking time bomb came out of the enhanced interrogation techniques, torture.

GREENBERG: Yes, that seems to be the consensus all around. And unless you consider a ticking time bomb, the fact that there could be an attack at any time, which was what initially inspired so much of this behavior. But, no, there was no evidence of it then and it seems there's no evidence of it now.

BALDWIN: OK. Karen Greenberg, thank you for coming back. I appreciate it.

GREENBERG: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Just ahead, one Democratic senator demanding the head of the CIA resign and says President Obama is breaking one of his promises. You will hear it. And a tough topic, mothers unite today against police brutality.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My son would be burying me, but yet I ended up having to bury my son.

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BALDWIN: For this next story, the names you may not know, but what happened to them will sound disturbingly familiar. Mothers Against Police Brutality held a unique news conference today, gathering together eight mothers who say their children were killed wrongfully at the hands of police. That includes Ramarley Graham, who was shot to death in 2012 by an NYPD officer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONSTANCE MALCOLM, SON, RAMARLEY GRAHAM, KILLED IN 2012: It's been two and a half years since my son was murdered. It's two and a half years, but it seems like yesterday. The pain of it never goes away. Every time you see another killing on the news, the wound gets bigger. It doesn't get any smaller. It doesn't get any easier.

Ramarley was 18 years old. In his home, where he was supposed to be safe, a sanctuary that people once respected, these are the people that we tell our kids to run to if they get into a situation and they will help them. In my case, they didn't help my son. They murdered him in front of my six year old. What can I tell my six year old now about a police officer that's going to make him think they are good people?

JERALYNN BLUEFORD, SON, ALAN BLUEFORD, KILLED IN 2012: He ran away. He was not under arrest. He had every right to leave whenever he wanted and that officer chased him down like an animal. Like he was the casualty of war. And after shooting himself in the foot, my son tripped and fell and he was yelling, "I didn't do anything! I didn't do anything!" And when he fell, the officer stood over him and shot him center mass. In his last words he said, "why did you shoot me?" Today I'm here to talk to you and demand justice for my Alan and demand justice for us all. There is to be no more Alan Bluefords. There is to be no more Eric Garners. There is to be no more Mike Browns. There is to be no more of my sisters that stand here as we shed our tears.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Those mothers made a call for required nationwide reporting of officer involved shootings, random drug testing of police and independent prosecutors overseeing police shooting investigations. They spoke today in Washington before reporters and elected officials.

I want to also let you know, we are keeping an eye on the Dow at this hour. The Dow dropping down more than 200 points. We're live from the New York Stock Exchange. That's coming up. And will there be any prosecutions following this very dark torture report against the CIA? We'll talk about that coming up.

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BALDWIN: Got a little breaking news there on Wall Street. You see the red. The Dow is down triple digits with about an hour and a half of trading to go here on this Wednesday. Alison Kosik is there with me live. And, Alison, it feels like just a second ago we were talking about the possibility of it hitting 18,000 and now what?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Now that's a distant memory. Not only are stocks getting crushed today, Brooke, oil continues to get crushed, being dragged down by higher supply, lower demand. We're seeing energy stocks really getting hit. Exxon Mobil down more than 3 percent. Chevron down almost 3 percent.

You know, for the first time, we're seeing oil prices crack the $61 a barrel mark for the first time since 2009. Now, a couple of reports that came out have sparked this sell-off in oil, which in turn is causing this sell-off in stock. So the latest weekly status report from the government is showing that there was a surprise increase in U.S. crude stockpiles.