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Debating Torture; Interview With Montel Williams

Aired December 10, 2014 - 15:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: And we continue on. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Top of the hour here, this swift response from extremists all around the world vowing revenge for the torture inflicted on their own comrades at the hands of the CIA, even North Korea now calling the brutal torture tactics used on terror suspects a double standard, Iran calling the U.S. a -- quote -- "symbol of tyranny."

Fearing the retaliation, U.S. military bases and diplomatic posts all around the world are on high alert right now and it's all over this one report, the CIA accused of sexually abusing detainees in pitch dark rooms, chaining them up, forcing them to go days and days without sleep. It's graphic, rectal feedings, beatings, near drownings, even a death, all in the name of intelligence gathering.

The goal, according to this Senate report, that was never even achieved, but the CIA tells a different story. They're unapologetic. They claim these -- quote -- "enhanced interrogation techniques" did indeed help stop terror attacks.

Joining me now, Peter Baker, White House correspondent for "The New York Times," the author of "Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House."

Peter, welcome.

PETER BAKER, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Hey. Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: Hey, let's get right to your interview with Vice President Dick Cheney. Let me just read his quote that's really being read all over. Right?

This is what he said -- quote -- "What I keep hearing out there is they portray this as a rogue operation. I think that's all a bunch of hooey. The program was authorized."

Tell me what else he told you.

BAKER: Well, of course, Vice President Cheney remains the strongest champion of this program of interrogation, doesn't accept the idea it was torture, which obviously a lot of other people feel, and believes strongly that it did produce results and doesn't accept the idea that it didn't. He says the Democratic committee was in fact motivated to do this

report to absolve themselves from their own responsibility, that they themselves had some briefings on this, at least some of the leadership did, and that they are now just trying to put the finger back on the administration and the CIA for things that they themselves had some responsibility for.

BALDWIN: One of the biggest headlines though and one of the biggest questions is how far up did this go in terms of who knew what and when? We know the president apparently wasn't entirely briefed until mid-2006, although he mentioned the water-boarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in his memoir.

But Cheney does admit that they authorized torture early on, does he not? Doesn't that contradict what he says or what this report actually found?

BAKER: Yes, it does in a way.

What the report says is that the CIA itself never gave a full briefing to the president until 2006, four years in. And yet if you look at the memoir, if you talk to them in interviews, what they say is, yes, we knew about it, yes, we approved it. They're not trying to say they didn't have any responsibility for it.

It's possible what happens here is that the CIA didn't do a briefing and it may be that President Bush was given a more general understanding of it by his own aides, Condoleezza Rice, for instance, the national security adviser, but didn't get the kind of more granular detail briefing he got eventually in 2006.

BALDWIN: Let's flash back. This was President Bush right around that time. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want to be absolutely clear with our people and that world. The United States does not torture.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So that was September of 2006.

I have been talking to a number of people who say President Bush was absolutely in the dark. I'm just wondering from you, who was more in the dark and how in the dark was President Bush?

BAKER: Well, I think when they say in the dark, they didn't give him the kind of granular briefing that they eventually did. They didn't tell him about some of the very specific cases and so forth.

How much he didn't know though is an open question. He says, look, I was involved in it. I did understand it. In his memoir, he says he was even specifically asked was it OK to use these techniques on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed when they captured him in 2003 and he says he thought about the widow of Daniel Pearl, the "Wall Street Journal" reporter who was killed, he thought about 3,000 victims on 9/11, and his answer to George Tenet was damn right.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: But at the same time, according to this report, he was told about some of the details about torture and his word was that he felt uncomfortable.

BAKER: Yes, he said when it was described for him a detainee being chained to the ceiling and dressed in a diaper and urinating and defecating on himself, that he expressed discomfort about this.

He hasn't said that publicly. But it was only a few months later that he gave that speech that you just showed in September of 2006 in which he actually sort of began to end the program, said that we're going to clean out and end these secret prisons overseas and bring all these prisoners back into the light, in effect, at Guantanamo, where there was an accounting for them and move forward.

But at the same time, he did defend the program. He said we do not torture and he didn't accept that the tactics they had used constituted torture. He said they were necessary in his view to defend the country. That's something the Senate committee is taking issue with.

BALDWIN: Peter Baker, "The New York Times," thank you very much.

I want to stay on this and talk about more of the details that are coming out here. One of the sites where this torture took place, it was a place called the dungeon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D), CALIFORNIA: CIA detainees at one facility described as a dungeon were kept in complete darkness, constantly shackled in isolated cells with loud noise or music and only a bucket to use for human waste.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons personnel went to that location in November 2002, and according to a contemporaneous internal CIA e-mail, told CIA officers they had -- quote -- "never been in a facility where individuals are so sensory-deprived" -- end quote.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: When you look at this report, it says prisoners were deprived of food and heat. At least one died of hypothermia. After his death, the CIA officer in charge of his interrogation was given a $2,500 bonus.

Senior congressional correspondent Tim Mak of The Daily Beast is here.

Tim, thank you for joining me from Capitol Hill.

And I have to say, the way you point out some of these details in your piece, that is why we wanted to have you on. You open the piece saying, "At the CIA's' detention site Cobalt, the lights were never turned on and the site was black out at all times, curtains and painted exterior windows."

Tell me about the torture that happened there.

TIM MAK, THE DAILY BEAST: Well, this is a site where an individual, a detainee was slapped and punched, dragged across a dirt floor. He was later stripped, chained to the floor of his cell and found dead the next morning.

This is the site where no one would ever turn the lights on, where prison guards would only go in with headlamps, where there was very little heat even in the Afghan winter. This is a site where many of the worst abuses that are outlined in the CIA report released by the Senate Intel Committee yesterday are outlined.

BALDWIN: You go on just getting into the specifics, you talk about this one detainee, first to be held at Cobalt. He said he had been left hanging by handcuffs and not allowed to lower his arms for 22 hours each day for two consecutive days.

He was kept in total darkness, kept cold, had music blasted at him and was shackled and hooded. And so this apparently later became the model for the treatment of some of these detainees, yet CIA leadership, attorneys according to you and this report had very little knowledge as far as what was happening there.

MAK: Yes, there wasn't a lot of accountability for a long time. The person who was actually running it in the first years at this detention site Cobalt was a junior officer with no experience whatsoever in interrogation or detention.

CIA officials who came in and looked at this described prisoners reacting like they were dogs in a kennel, that they would cower when doors were opened. Federal prison officials that visited this site said they were wowed by how deprived of light and sound these prisoners were. These were some pretty brutal conditions.

BALDWIN: Tim Mak, Daily Beast, thank you.

Next, more of this. Montel Williams joins me live here on set. The former Marine has some strong words about America's use of torture. Find out who he says is to blame.

Plus, one study suggests torture scenes in Hollywood skyrocketed after 9/11, which led to Americans approving more and more of it. We will discuss that.

And athletes sporting these I can't breathe T-shirts ahead of games joining protests across America. Hear now the NBA commissioner, Adam Silver, is reacting coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Raise your hands, folks. Raise your hands if you awoke September 11, 2001 (sic), and after the previous day's death and mayhem, you said to yourself, whoever did this, let's find them, let's find them no matter what it takes, no matter what it takes.

A lot of people said that, including many who probably surprised themselves by doing so because the fact is a lot of Americans got behind something that some now seem to regret. Think about that.

Montel Williams is here with me now. You know him as an actor, TV host, also a former Marine, grad of U.S. Naval Academy, 22 years in the service.

We appreciate that.

MONTEL WILLIAMS, TALK SHOW HOST: Thank you so much.

BALDWIN: And, in fact, he minored in international security studies.

So, great to have you here.

WILLIAMS: Great to be here. No, thank you.

BALDWIN: You know what? In reading all of this when we were talking first -- I'm keeping you over two -- over a break. I have got a lot to ask you about.

WILLIAMS: Sure. Sure.

BALDWIN: A lot of outrage and frustration over this torture report that came out. But again I always try to remember in those hours and days after 9/11 the fear, the climate at the time.

WILLIAMS: Yes. Yes.

We did what we had to do. But now we should do what we as a nation should do and admit our fault. Admit we made a mistake. This is not who we are. There are people who put on uniforms, put their lives on the line all over the world. They are ready to die for us. They are ready to die for what is the image of America, the Constitution. And we support the laws that we put in place. We support the treaties that we sign onto.

We have signed onto treaties that prohibit us from doing what we did. We did what we had to do to make sure we stopped a terrorist activity from continuing. But now that we did it, we should tell the world the truth. We made a mistake. Stand up. Show the world that we are better than those that we challenge.

BALDWIN: What falls under the category of a mistake? Does torture fall under the category of mistake?

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: If we look back, look, we can all be armchair quarterbacks. I hate the fact that all -- every issue in America today is all about how we can divide us into two camps and fight. Stop the fighting. Remember, the rest of the world right now is

watching us put troops on the ground to make them want to be like us. What we can be like to tell them, when we make a mistake, we admit it. But we want to tell you, we did what we had to do at the time. Yes, we some tortured people. We did it. I'm sorry. Maybe some of the people in our government didn't do it the way we normally do things.

BALDWIN: But according to this report, it didn't get us any significant intelligence.

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: OK. We may a mistake. We still may a mistake.

Brooke, I will tell you something. I can look back now in our past and look at all the mistakes that America has made in different things and we can all sit here and write books and reports about it and complain, or we can just get on and say we're never going to do it again.

So, I think that's the most important thing. Look at John McCain. John McCain is one of our POWs.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: I'm so glad you brought him up, yes.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: He knows torture.

WILLIAMS: And he understands it. He understands that if we don't step up and tell the world we don't like what did you and we don't like what you do, the next time a female soldier or soldier of ours gets captured, I pity what we see on the news.

BALDWIN: That's interesting. He stood there on the floor yesterday amidst all of his colleagues and admits the dissenting opinion from the Republicans. And he stood there as a POW, as a former POW, and said this, being the torture, put a stain on our national honor.

I'm wondering, I'm wondering from you if given everything we have now learned about this, is America better off or worse off from it?

WILLIAMS: We will be better in how we behave with this information. We show the rest of the world that we will take the leadership position and admit our fault, say we made a mistake.

BALDWIN: How many nations would do that?

WILLIAMS: None.

And say to them, we promise you the reason why the American populace is all weighing in on this is because this is how democracy works.

BALDWIN: Why should they believe us, when so many people apparently were kept in the dark?

WILLIAMS: They should believe us now because, again, it's a mea culpa. And I'm sorry. That's how we do it. You make a mistake, you step up and say, I did it. Sorry.

And I'm not trying to make light. We made a mistake. America should admit this. Both sides of the camp that are claiming right now that it wasn't torture, it was torture, stop arguing the particular. The rest of the world is looking at us and right this minute, if I'm not mistaken, two weeks ago, did not the president put another 1,500 troops on the ground in someone else's country trying to convince them to buy in to this democracy?

You only buy in to something that you believe the other people believe in. When this country steps up to the plate and says we hold our leaders accountable, we hold all those people accountable who made a mistake, let's never make it again, I think that makes us a better people. That's the country I put a uniform on and was willing to die for.

BALDWIN: And we're grateful you did.

Stay with me. I have more for you.

WILLIAMS: Sure.

BALDWIN: Because I want to talk about all these protests across America. I walked with hundreds of people eight miles here in New York last Thursday night, all of this over police violence, police brutality. Is race at the heart of this? Marinate on that for me over the commercial break. We will have an honest discussion next.

WILLIAMS: Sure.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. Thank you for being with me.

Montel Williams back with me.

WILLIAMS: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Thank you, sir.

WILLIAMS: Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: I want to get your reaction to an interview that sort of exploded last week with Charles Barkley. Right? I sat down with Charles Barkley. We were trying to get a lot of different perspectives on what happened both in the wake of the nonindictment in Ferguson and New York and just this general sense from all these different young people.

So many of them, I talked to when we were all marching and I was covering them last week. This is Charles Barkley who is backing police, he has a lot of law enforcement friends, over the outrage here. The protests, they are still going strong. Take a listen to what Charles told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLES BARKLEY, FORMER NBA PLAYER: All these race baiters, white and black, race baiters, white and black, are muddying the water.

And like I say, I want to make clear the notion that cops are out there killing black men, I just think that's ridiculous. And let me tell you something. I'm not worried about what people think about me. I have always known as a black man any time you disagree with black people, you're an Uncle Tom or a sellout. Every black man knows that.

BALDWIN: People have called you an Uncle Tom because of those comments you made on the radio in Philadelphia.

BARKLEY: Brooke, I have known that for 51 years. Any time you disagree with black people, you're an Uncle Tom or a sellout. That's the way it works.

That's why I have always said, we will never be successful as a people because we don't respect each other. They can't just disagree with me. They got to call me names.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Montel Williams?

WILLIAMS: Let me tell you something very funny. Charles and I are friends.

About three weeks ago, I'm in L.A. staying at a hotel and my daughter and I are walking down the hallway and Charles was coming in the restaurant. My daughter freaked out. She said, "I thought you were cool, but I didn't know you knew somebody like Charles. Are you kidding me?"

She went nuts, got a picture with me. It tweeted, went out all over the place. It was great.

I do want to say this. Charles, I listened to that interview. I listened to a lot of it. I would say probably in about 90 percent of that or 85 to 90 percent of that, he and I would sit down and come to some reasons why we can agree or at least understand each other.

One of the things that Charles pointed out that's very, very critical here is that not only is it among black people, but I'm going to tell you something. It's among white people. It's among us all right now. This country will not and has not even attempted to have a serious conversation on race and really have the serious conversation.

We always come to the table pointing at an issue or an incident and trying to justify why we feel the way we do based on an incident.

BALDWIN: That's exactly what he was saying. Over something bad that happens, we sit around and talk about race. Why can't we just sit and have a beer and talk about race when nothing horrible has happened? WILLIAMS: Correct. Correct.

And why can't we actually admit to the fact that -- and this is what is really crazy. I have been doing a lot of shows over the last couple days. I was on another show, and everybody wants to try to change now the dialogue. It has nothing to do with race. It only has to do with social economics.

That's a bunch of crap. Excuse me. The truth of the matter is, we have a race issue. And Charles was correct. It flows both ways. It's not just white to black. It's also black to white. Knowing that and understanding that, there has never also been a group of people in the society legislated against as much as blacks have been.

So we have a systematic system that taught people for a couple hundred years how to separate from black people differently than separating from others. You remember back in the '40s and '50s, soldiers could come back from the Far East married to whoever they wanted and America accepted that.

We didn't start accepting biracial marriages, black and white, until about 10 years ago. And now there's more biracial marriages in the country than we have ever seen. We should just stop for a second and say, look, we have an issue. I have a mother who is half white.

We have had an issue of race in my family since day one. OK? I have two biracial -- four biracial children. I have an issue in my family for the rest of my life because everywhere they go, people look. OK? So why don't we just stop for a second and say America didn't get to here without everyone involved and we're not getting to the next place without everyone involved? Let's have a conversation.

BALDWIN: It's been so interesting talking to Charles, talking then to all these young people that really have -- there's this huge movement. As I was on, I don't know, hour seven of walking with these people, these young people last week, it felt like for the first time -- I'm just being really honest. It felt like something was happening. It felt like people were in the middle of something.

But the question is, what are they getting to? There are folks who are saying, they are stopping traffic, I don't understand what their message is. Where are they trying to get?

WILLIAMS: This is so much bigger than anybody in this country will stop and even have a conversation about, Brooke.

All over America, ever race, every socioeconomic background and every demographic from age is out in the streets together. I saw in Berkeley old women being pushed by police. This isn't about Ferguson. It's not about what happened in New York now.

This is a movement of people in this country who have said enough is enough with the way we felt and thought about issues like race and other things.

BALDWIN: Do you have law enforcement friends? WILLIAMS: I have plenty of them.

BALDWIN: What do they say?

WILLIAMS: Oh, and it's across the gamut.

I'll tell you, one of the most poignant comments that I heard from a law enforcement person in the last three weeks was one that said, look, this whole argument about militarization of our communities, and he's a police officer, is absolutely true.

The difference between police and our military is when we give them these weapons, we give them rules of engagement. We're selling weapons to civilians, and not giving them any rules of engagement. The pictures that you showed of the police officers pulling up in Ferguson and locking and loading on demonstrators with a weapon, that soldier, had he been a soldier in Afghanistan, would have been court- martialed and lost his career, because they have something called rules of engagement.

We have got to start paying attention to the whole overall rules of engagement and start having conversations.

BALDWIN: It was a totally different picture here in New York.

WILLIAMS: What's that?

BALDWIN: There was NYPD following all these different protesters along, but they gave them their space. It's totally different.

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: It's a wonderful thing.

Oh, this happened -- let's go back about a couple hundred years. That's the reason why a party called the Tea Party is around. Remember, we did social justice way back then trying to...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: That tea party.

WILLIAMS: That tea party.

The real one, the first one, first one that started, they dumped some tea, but they walked up and down the streets and took tea out of stores. It's called protests. It's OK to do that in a country. And I have no problem with the protests. It's annoying, yes. But I fought to give people the right to lay down in the street and protest because they weren't happy.

I'm never going to deny a person that right.

BALDWIN: Thank you.

WILLIAMS: Thank you. BALDWIN: Come back.

WILLIAMS: I want to be back. Thank you.

BALDWIN: He will come back, Montel Williams.

Coming up, did you see the movie "Zero Dark Thirty"? How about the TV series "24"? Yes. If so, a new study says you might now actually be more supportive of torture. We will talk to this woman behind this fascinating study. She will join me to explain. That is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)