December 10, 2014 — Sarah Koenig
EPISODE NUMBER: 11035 (December 10, 2014)
GUESTS: Sarah Koenig | Tom Blanton
SEGMENTS: CIA Torture Report | CIA Torture Report - Pundits Defend America | CIA Torture Report - Tom Blanton | Sarah Koenig | Sign Off - Headphones
SUIT REPORT: Navy Suit | Pale Blue Striped Shirt | Purple and Light Blue Striped Tie
VIDEOS: Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Listening to the roar of the Nation: “That’s what this country needs more of. That is the sound of freedom. That is the sound of America.”
Tonight, Stephen delved into the political mess that is the recently released torture report, and his treatment of the subject did not disappoint. However, you will not get warm and fuzzy feelings by watching this episode, either, with guest Tom Blanton giving a chillingly scathing review of the report and its implications on the Bush administration. Finally, guest Sarah Koenig became Stephen’s “favorite” after noting the power of The Colbert Bump.
We are counting down, Hubsters. I hope you are enjoying these final episodes as much as I am. How I will miss seeing Stephen Colbert every day!
Let us know what you think of the episode in the comments. More quotes and ‘caps to come.
CIA Torture Report
- Tonight, I am beside myself with Anger and he’s mad, too. Because yesterday, Senate Democrats dropped a turd of information into the national punch bowl of bliss.
News Report: Explosive report, the Senate reveals C.I.A. secrets about torturing terror suspects. The report, written by Senate Democrats says the C.I.A. overstated the program’s successes while hiding its horrors. It is a damning indictment. It is damning, indeed.
- Yes, a damning report about enhanced interrogation. The program was started under President Bush if you recall, and if you don’t recall, the C.I.A. has ways to make you.
- It’s all detailed in this 500-page travesty, which spills sensitive torture secrets and reads like “50 Shades of Legal Grey Areas. Spicy stuff, oh, yeah. There’s a little bondage.
News Report: American interrogators punched, shackled, dragged and nearly drowned Al Qaeda operatives. The sexual humiliation of prisoners, and even torturing detainees after the C.I.A. determined there was no more information to be gained. Detainees were kept in total darkness and given buckets for human waste.
“♪ I just gotta hake, shake,shake. ♪ shake it off, shake it off. Whoo-hooo♪♪ Sorry, you should probably get a pair of these tragedy-cancelling headphones. Really makes it better.:
CIA Torture Report - Pundits Defend America
- Now, folks I gotta ask, what is the point of telling us all this rough stuff? No one still thinks that it’s ever okay to do something like this.
Eric Bolling: For the record, I still think it’s okay to do something like this, as long as it’s done in a fair way. I think the torture- I’m sorry, the enhanced interrogation technique……serves a purpose.
- So Eric is in favor of torture-I’m sorry, torture- If- this is very important- if it’s done in a fair way. You know, as long as they bring enough human waste buckets for everyone in the secret prison.
- I am with Fox’s Andrea Tantaros who is stoked for America come whatevs.
Andrea Tantaros: The United States of America is awesome. We are awesome. But we’ve had this discussion. We’ve closed the book on it, and we stopped doing it. And the reason they want to have this discussion is not to show how awesome we are.
“Yeah, that’s what they want. But we are awesome, and we have to be awesome, because the people we’re fighting are totally radical. And that’s why we had to resort to extreeeme measures. Seriously, seriously, things got pretty gnarly. We- we shocked a brau.”
- Come on. Still, there are some bright spots in this thing and not just the sparks off the jumper cables because America’s former President, and my Heart’s Forever President, George W. Bush, comes off looking great in this thing.
- For example, on page 98 it says,”The President of the United States had directed he not be informed of the locations of the C.I.A. Detention facilities to ensure he would not accidentally disclose the information.”
- That’s right, no, that’s right,that’s good. Because it would have been all too easy for the President to accidentally disclose this kind of intel. I mean, it’s a simple slip-up anybody could make. What you mean to say is congratulations to the world championship San Antonio Spurs but what comes out is we’re sticking dental tools up somebody’s pee hole under a Bulgarian disco.
- He didn’t want to know what was going on either because he was torturing people, too. Don’t believe me? Just ask amateur historian and brown-haired-guy-who’s-not-Steve-Doocy or an historian, Brian Kilmeade.
Brian Kilmeade: When someone or some group is trying to destroy you and your way of life, you need to do whatever it takes to stop them. George Washington did, and that’s a fact. So for those of you who say that’s not what we’re built on, We don’t beat the British without doing it.
“And, you know, what courage that willful ignorance takes. And it dates back to our founding fathers. Remember, it was George Washington who first said- and I quote-“
- Yeah, Washington tortured the British so hard, they’re still talking funny. Now, we looked it up, and in actuality, Washington didn’t torture them. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t.
- Because while the C.I.A. was conducting an All-You-Can-Pump Rectal-Hydration Festival, here’s what George Bush said:
George W. Bush: The United States does not torture.
- And he should know, because he specifically asked not to be told.
Wolf Blitzer: Was it worth it to release this report today if in fact American lives, diplomats, military personnel, civilians are going to be in danger?
Diane Feinstein: Look, there is no perfect time to release this report. There have been beheadings. There have been attacks without this report coming out.
Blitzer: But if Americans are killed as a result of this report and they tell you that, I assume you would feel guilty about that.
Feinstein: I would feel very badly, of course. I mean what do you think, Wolf Blitzer?
“Yes. What do you think, Wolf Isaac Blitzer. And don’t you roll your eyes at me, young man. Now go clean your Situation Room or your father and I will take away your beard trimmer.”
- I gotta tell you, I’m with Wolf Blitzer on this one. As journalists it is our sacred duty to face those in authority and ask, “should we really know this?”
CIA Torture Report - Tom Blanton
Stephen: Welcome back, everybody. Nation, in the “A” block of the show I told you why releasing the torture report was a bad idea. But I’m a positive guy. I would rather see the glass as half full of water that can be forced up a prisoner’s nose. To help me do that right now, please welcome the Director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, Tom Blanton. Thank you so much for beingback. Good to see you again All right, Tom, first of all, great university you got down there. I was down there on Monday. Lovely place.
Tom Blanton: Yeah, you shut down the whole campus.
Stephen: You’re welcome. Okay, first of all, this document here, this is just a Partisan “blame Bush” document, right?
Tom: It’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s the executive summary of a huge stud-
Stephen: What are you talking about? It’s 528 pages. How much more is there? What’s the big one? Six million pages of evidence is what they’re citing in here, six million pages.
Stephen: Wait a second,wait a second. Isn’t there something smaller for me to read, like maybe a pop-up book, though I don’t necessarily want to know what would be popping up. Alright, you read this thing. What is in here that surprised you?
Tom: I’m a document fetishist, and there’s quote after quote after-
Stephen: So this is “50 Shades of Gray ” for you.
Tom: You got it. From the C.I.A. Itself showing the torture was wrong and they knew it. Constant people from these black sites saying, “Wait a second. This goes too far. This is wrong, we can’t do this. I gotta leave. This is a train wreck. I don’t want to be here when it goes off the cliff.” That’s C.I.A. comment.
Stephen: Remember, we heard about this. We heard about the stuff years ago. It was three guys. They were waterboarded, some people were roughed up and that’s it.
Tom: It turns out it’s more like 128 guys. Turns out about 30 Of them were put in coffins, solitary confinement, doused in cold water. One of them died. It’s bigger than they let on, and even worse.
Stephen: ♪ shake it off, shake it offoooh-ooo♪♪ I’m sorry, I just need to dipback in there every so often.
Tom: I understand and I don’t blame you.
Stephen: But what is the value of doing this? Now North Korea and China have said America is a hypocrite.
Tom: That’s the funny thing, these techniques were taken from the Chinese communists. They did it to our P.O.W.S, they waterboarded them to make them make false confessions for propaganda purposes. Then our military started training our guys to resist captivity, it’s a couple of these survival shrinks, the psychologists who ran the air force survival training program —
Stephen: The guys trying to help our soldiers resist torture - they sold it to the c.I.A. [..]They got how much money to do this?
Tom: $81 million. That’s one of the facts you can find out in here.
Stephen: $81 million to design this thing. I’m going to be out of a job soon. Is there any way I can get some of that money?
Tom: You need to be a friend of theirs. They hired all their friends. They didn’t know what they were doing. Mitchell and Jesson had never had a single interrogation in their whole careers — never done it themselves. They came in with these techniques they got from the Chinese communists who were torturing our P.O.W.S and said, “this is how we can take care of those terrorists.”
Stephen: don’t get me wrong. I believe in the rule of law. This is a country of laws, but our enemies are brutal, and don’t we have to be brutal in return?
Tom: If we mirror image the bad guys, then we’re going to lose everything that we’re fighting for.
Stephen: We’re fighting for our lives another this is- I mean, yes, this is something that we shouldn’t do, but shouldn’t it be like the atomic bomb- that we, obviously, will never use it, but, obviously, it’s got to be an option that’s on the table at all times because we’re in an existential fight for our lives?
Tom: The most damning thing in this report is not the hydration. The most damning thing in the report is it uses the C.I.A.’s own documents to go through all 20 cases where the C.I.A., President Bush, everybody said this torture prevented terror. And this report shows every one of those 20 claims are false. The key information that led us to Bin Laden did not come from torture. The key information that broke up the dirty bomb blot plot did not come from torture. These shrinks, psychologists, were the ones who got to evaluate their own program. You better believe they did not give each other a failing grade.
Stephen: So they got to evaluate whether their program was working?
Tom: You got it.
Stephen: They were their own oversight committee?
Tom: You got it.
Stephen: Of course, if I were them I would give me a good grade because I know what I would do to me if I crossed me.
Interview — Sarah Koenig
My guest is a Peabody award-winning journalist and host of the true crime podcast “Serial.” I can’t believe Cap’n Crunch murdered a guy. Please welcome Sarah Koenig.
Stephen: Ok it’s go time. How does it feel as a journalist, did you always want to do true crime reporting that people listen to on a treadmill? What first inspired you to do spin-off podcast? What first drew you to doing this medium, first of all?
Sarah: I think- you know, I’d been working at the radio show for a long time and a fellow producer, Julie Snyder, and I sort of were thinking what else do we want to do? We could try this little thing and I could be in my basement With a microphone-
Stephen: But why murder? You’re coming from “This American Life.” It seems like the first spin-off podcast would be siblings who thought their brothers and sisters were imaginary friends. Or 24 hours in a chiropractic waiting room. Why murder?
Sarah: It wasn’t specifically that we wanted to do a show about murder. We wanted to be a serialized documentary. And this happened to be a story that I was already interested in, that I was already- had just started working on when we got the idea to do “Serial”.” I said I’ve got a story. Let’s do this one. It seemed to have a lot going on and seemed enough to sustain it over time.
Stephen: “Serial” got five million iTunes downloads, faster than any other podcast in history. What does it mean to have the most popular podcast in history? Do you get paid in iTunes gift cards. I’m trying to follow the money here. What benefits you doing this?
Sarah: Well, I’m here.
Stephen: That’s all you needed to say. You’re my favorite guest of all time now. Thank you.
Sarah: You’re welcome.
Stephen: Why reopen this case? You guys week to week go into a different aspect of the case, why go back into his story? This happened in 1999. Do you really think that a guy named Adnad Syad could get a fairer trial after 9/11? Is there a goal? Are you an advocate journalist? Are you trying to advocate for this guy?
Sarah: I am not advocating for this guy. What grabbed me about this story is a friend of his family came to me and said, “I believe this guy is innocent. The trial was crazy. The investigation has holes in it. I believe this guy’s innocent. Can you take a look? So I started looking into it, and I just became so confused so quickly. So I just kept going from there.
Stephen: That’s one of the things that bothers me about This is that from week to week you might change your opinion about who you think did this or what the truth might be of the situation. I’ve been doing this show for nine years, and I have never once changed my opinion about anything, okay? That’s commitment. That’s commitment to my ideals, okay?
Sarah: I know. It’s true. When you investigate a story for a year and a half, it’s true. I lack commitment.