John Kiriakou
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
May of 2002, I was in the sandwich line in the CIA cafeteria, and one of the senior officers from the Counterterrorism Center came up to me very casually and said, oh, hey, I'm so glad I ran into you.
I meant to ask you, do you want to be certified in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques?
I had never heard that term before.
And I said, enhanced interrogation?
I said, what does that mean?
And he said, we're gonna start getting rough with these guys.
I said, well, what does that mean?
And then he described these 10 techniques.
Everything from a smack across the face to waterboarding and sleep deprivation and freezing.
Freezing.
They called it the cold cell.
I can describe it in a moment.
I said, that sounds like a torture program.
He said, it's not torture.
The president approved it and the Justice Department said we can do it.
I said, give me an hour.
I need to think about this.
I walked out of the cafeteria.
I went up to the seventh floor of the CIA.
That's the executive floor.