Show: ALL IN with CHRIS HAYES
Date: February 18, 2015
Guest: Juan Cole, Morris Davis, Nihad Awad, John Kiriakou, Jeannie
McDaniel, Jane Robbins
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST (voice-over): Tonight on ALL IN --
JEB BUSH (R), FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR: I`m my own man.
HAYES: Meet the new Bush, same as the old Bush.
JEB BUSH: ISIS didn`t exist three or four years ago.
HAYES: Jeb Bush lays out his plan to lead America. Is there any
reason to think he wouldn`t be just like his brother?
GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT: You can`t get fooled again.
HAYES: Then, as the drums of war raged on the right, why the State
Department has it exactly right.
MARIE HARF, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON: We cannot kill our way out
of this war.
HAYES: And why O`Reilly has it exactly wrong.
BILL O`REILLY, FOX NEWS: The holy war begins.
HAYES: Plus, Republicans in Oklahoma declare war on history.
And a preview of my exclusive interview with the former CIA agent who
did two years in prison for talking to a reporter about torture.
JAILED CIA AGENT: You lie, you cheat, you steal, you swindle, you
trick people. Problem at the agency often times is that those guys don`t
know when to turn it off.
HAYES: ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes.
Today at a time when Congress is about to debate yet another military
authorization ostensibly against ISIS, that would include but not be
limited to further war in Iraq, the brother of the man who brought us our
last war in Iraq came before a podium to all but officially announce that
he was running for president. Former Governor Jeb Bush declared, "I am my
own man."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEB BUSH: I love my brother, I love my dad. I actually love my
mother as well. Hope that`s OK. And I admire their service to the nation
and the difficult decisions that they had to make.
But I`m my own man and my views are shaped by my own thinking and my
own experiences.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: The problem with the sentence "I am my own man" is that like I
am not a crook, it has a way of refuting itself, which does not help by the
fact that Governor Bush has announced his foreign policy advisors, a who`s
who of people from both his brother and his father`s administrations, with
some Reagan for a good measure.
But as you see there, most of Jeb Bush`s advisors draw from his
brother`s team. Including notables like Paul Wolfowitz and Michael Hayden,
in other words, in large part, a throwback to those who helped bring about
George W. Bush`s Iraq war.
Even Jeb Bush himself was not immune to the pull of history when in a
section of the speech where he meant to be talking about Iran, he said Iraq
instead.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEB BUSH: The problem is perhaps best demonstrated by this
administration`s approach to Iraq. We`ve had 35 years of experience with
Iran`s -- excuse me, Iran 35 years -- experience with Iran`s rulers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Hate it when that happens.
Bush spoke of ISIS as a force grossly underestimated by the current
administration.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEB BUSH: President Obama called is the junior varsity four days
after they took Fallujah, and when they comprised a fighting force of more
than 200,000 battle tested men.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: But 200,000 is itself a gross misrepresentation. As noted by
"The Daily Beast", 200,000 is far greater, in fact, an order of magnitude
greater than the U.S. intelligence community`s estimates. Last week,
National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas Rasmussen pegged the
fighting strength of ISIS at between 20,000 and 31,500. After the speech,
a Bush aide told "The Daily Beast" the governor had misspoken.
But it is a bizarre turn of history that the consequences of our last
war in Iraq have produced a new group of jihadists whose perceived threat
is so large the country could conceivably end up scared enough into
electing the brother of the man who brought us our first war with Iraq.
Joining me now is Juan Cole, professor at Michigan -- University of
Michigan and author of "Engaging the Muslim World."
Professor Cole, your reaction to Jeb Bush`s speech today?
JUAN COLE, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN: Well, it just seemed not ready for
prime time. He didn`t have his figures right. His history was all wrong.
He said that ISIL didn`t exist a few years ago. I mean, it has -- it goes
back to Abu Musab Zarqawi and the al Qaeda in Mesopotamia of the early
zeros and has been styled the Islamic State of Iraq since at least 2006.
So, it doesn`t seem to me that he really as yet has a firm grasp of
the details of this foreign policy.
HAYES: I was struck also by him talking about several consequences of
the Iraq war without talking about the Iraq war as what produced them. For
instance, he talks about Iran`s control over Baghdad, their influence in
Baghdad. He talks about ISIS and the threat it provokes.
And you end up asking yourself, well, how did all that come about?
COLE: Yes. You know, in 2005, the Saudi foreign minister came to New
York and gave a wounded and puzzled speech. He said, why did the Bush
administration deliver Iraq into the hands of Iran? He said, we fought the
Iran-Iraq war for eight years to stop this kind of thing from happening and
now they`ve just undone all of that.
And while, you know, he has a particular point of view, there`s
something to what he said and it is puzzling as to why the Bush
administration did set things up so that Iran gained the lion`s share of
influence in Iraq.
HAYES: He did acknowledge mistakes in Iraq. But he also had to say
in defending his brother`s record there. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEB BUSH: My brother`s administration through the surge, which was
one of the most heroic acts of courage politically that any president`s
done, because there was no support for this. And it was hugely
successfully and it created a stability that when the new president came in
he could have built onto create fragile but more stable situation that
would have not allowed for the void to be filled.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Do you buy that?
COLE: No, of course not. Well, you know, the idea that by putting
30,000 extra troops into Iraq and doing some counterinsurgency, Bush turned
the entire situation around, you know, that`s a myth.
And one of the reasons that violence subsided in late 2007 into 2008
was that under the nose of the surge soldiers, the U.S. actually disarmed
the Sunni Arabs first and that allowed the Shiite groups to go into these
neighbors and ethnically cleanse the Sunnis. They were chased out of
Baghdad probably in the hundreds of thousands. It is that dislocation and
the advent of a Shiite-dominated Baghdad that turned into the ISIL counter-
reaction.
So, no, no, you can`t rewrite history that way.
HAYES: Juan Cole, thank you very much.
With regard to the current U.S. campaign against ISIS, State
Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf recently said something that would
seem to be -- well, obviously true.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARF: We`re killing a lot of them and we`re going to keep killing
them. So were the Egyptians, so were the Jordanians, they`re in the fight
with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our
way out of this war. We need in the longer term, medium and longer term,
to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Harf went onto discuss those root causes in greater detail.
In fact, when the right first started Harf for those very comments, Harf
pointed to similar statements by then-President George W. Bush.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH: We know this war will not be won by force of arms
alone. We must defeat the terrorist on the battle field and we must also
defeat them in the battle of ideas.
We will challenge the poverty and hopelessness and lack of education
and failed governments that too often allow conditions that terrorists can
seize and try to turn to their advantage.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: And yet here`s just a sampling of the fire storm Harf`s
comment created over at FOX News.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS: Stimulus, shovel-ready jobs program for
terrorists, that will stop it. Maybe we should give people free housing,
terrorist housing, and maybe we should get them Ferraris and Obamacare.
I`ve seen a lot of terrorists on TV that need dental work.
LT. COL. RALPH PETERS: Sean, Marie Harf is exhibit A for the
comprehensive failure of the U.S. educational system. Hey, Marie, war is
about killing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can`t say, hey, you know, if all these guys
had perfect nuclear families, if everything was going great and if they had
a $75,000 a year job that would help or hurt. If you don`t get the
leadership and movement, it is totally without regard to your place in
society and how much money is in your account.
MARC THIESSEN: George W. Bush could say similar thing, but he was
going out there and actually leading the surge to defeat ISIS.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
HAYES: But here`s what the last 14 years have looked like, just so
we`re clear on what the actual record is here. After 9/11, we declared war
on Afghanistan and then Iraq. U.S. military deaths totaled more than 4,400
people.
The Iraq war cost more than $815 billion, according to Congressional
Research Service. U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan totaled more than
2,200 people. And operations in Afghanistan and other counterterror
operations have cost an additional $686 billion, again, according to
Congressional Research Service.
Deaths on the Iraq and Afghanistan side are much harder to calculate
for various reasons, but when civilian deaths are included, number in the
hundreds of thousands for Iraq and near 15,000 at least for Afghanistan.
And, of course, we haven`t stopped there. Including but not limited
to U.S. drone strikes, United States has been involved in Libya, Somalia,
Yemen and Pakistan. The New American Foundation compiling data on killing
covering the Obama and Bush administrations. They estimate that more than
800 people have been killed in U.S. air and drone strikes in Yemen and more
than 2,000 have been killed in drone strikes in Pakistan.
So, it seems like we`ve been doing an awful lot of killing our way out
of this situation for an awfully long time. What does the world look like?
Having spent 14 years spending money, risking our troops lives and killing
lots of people, here`s what it looks like -- Afghanistan is a corrupt
quasi-narco state that many believe will once again fall to the Taliban
sooner or later.
It is only marginally better in Pakistan, where the Pakistani Taliban
remained strong and semi-autonomous in the large swath of the country.
Yemen, the site of our most intense targeted killings after Pakistan
has now become essentially a failed state, one that also happens the
strongest al Qaeda affiliate in the world.
And Iraq -- well, Iraq is home to ISIS, which is now, we are told, the
most monstrous terrorist threat since al Qaeda, or before that, the
Taliban. And ISIS, of course, is now branching out, popping up in new
places and has terrorized Libya with ghastly recent beheadings there.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and
expecting a different result. So, at what point do we say that the U.S.
has been doing for 14 years without cessation is not working?
Joining me, Colonel Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor at Military
Commissions at Guantanamo Bay, now a professor at the Howard University of
School of Law.
And, Colonel, you were in the midst of it. I mean, you were in
Guantanamo, you saw the way the sort of initial structure of the war in
terror developed. And it`s amazing to me that after 14 years, the argument
is, we didn`t do enough of it. Does that scam (ph) to you?
COL. MORRIS DAVIS (RET), HOWARD UNIVERSITY: No, it is a sad chapter
in our nation`s history that has gone on far too long. And again you have
the crowd on FOX News that acts on feeling and the fact and this kind of
thing plays well with -- appealing to feeling. But, you know, the facts
are, you know, we wasted $5 million at Guantanamo.
You may have seen today, we`ve only had seven trials, one today was
David Hicks, the appellate court overturned his conviction. So, what the
Bush administration did at Guantanamo is just an absolute failure.
HAYES: Is there a path forward to reduce the level of instability or
threat that does not involve further military involvement in the mission?
DAVIS: Yes, I`m often a critic of Marie Harf, but I think her
statement was entirely accurate. You know, we can`t bomb our way to
success in what is going on in that part of the world. Certainly, I think
some military action is necessary to contain ISIS, but we have to get to
the root cause.
I mean, these groups don`t just sprout up. There is a root that
facilitates their development. And primarily, our allies like Saudi Arabia
and Qatar and others that have been more than happy to facilitate these
proxy wars. And this one has gotten out of control.
So, we`ve got to get our leaders to not facilitate this proxy
movement. We`ve got to contain ISIS. We`ve got to do as Marie said, and
give people an alternative that looks better than putting on a suicide vest
and blowing yourselves up.
HAYES: It`s also remarkable to me how little soul-searching there
seems to be in Washington or the Beltway about Libya. I mean, here was --
you know, an example of coordinated coalition NATO bombing, U.S.
participation in that, essentially regime change, and here we are, it was
hailed at the time as a victory. Here we are with the horrific images of
ethnic cleansing, essentially by ISIS, of these poor Christian killings,
and maybe the dropping of bombs was not as successful as we thought it was.
DAVIS: Yes, there`s certainly been many. Particularly with the drone
program, you have heard the argument made before, that, you know, for every
bad guy we kill we make ten more. The people that were on the side lines
that were not militants, you know, when you kill their brothers and
sisters, and mothers and fathers, many of them decide to join up with the
other side. So again, we`re not going to bomb our way to success into this
venture. I mean, we`re talking about problems that date back many, many
centuries ago. And we`re not going to solve that by killing our way out of
it.
So, again, I think Marie is right. This is a multi-facetted problem
that will take a multi-facetted approach. It includes military and
economic development -- and getting the powers in the region to stop
playing these proxy groups that lead to groups like al Qaeda and ISIS.
HAYES: Colonel Morris Davis, thank you very much.
All right, Bill O`Reilly and the leader of ISIS agree on one thing.
I`ll tell you what that is ahead.
Plus, a preview of my interview with the only person who went to
prison for the CIA torture. Stay tuned for that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: As this country goes to what feels like to me as a
retrenchment into the white knuckle fear reminiscent of the early 2000s, a
story of Massachusetts seems emblematic of our current political mood.
University of Massachusetts Amherst announced today they are reversing
their decision to ban prospective Iranian students from certain graduate
programs, this comes after the university said earlier in the month they
were not going to admit Iranian nationals because of U.S. sanctions, citing
legislation passed in 2012, which states in part, quote, "The secretary of
state will deny a visa to, and security of the homeland security shall
exclude from the United States any alien who is a citizen of Iran the
secretary of state determines to seek to entire the U.S. to participate in
course work and an institutional higher education prepare the alien for a
career in the energy sector of Iran or nuclear science or nuclear
engineering or a related field in Iran."
NBC News reports, quote, "Enforcement of that law has generally rested
with the State Department, which issues visas, and the Department of
Homeland Security, which investigates threats. Generally, universities
have depended on those agencies to weed out potential students seen as
risk."
According to NBC News, UMass said it was having trouble complying with
the sanctions so it was just going to stop letting Iranians in.
There was widespread outcry from those opposed to the decision,
including some students and professors at the university citing
discrimination. One professor tweeting last week, quote, "UMass computer
science will admit and welcome Iranian applicants to our program, signed,
graduate admissions chair, me."
In a statement today, University of Massachusetts said the policy
reversal, quote, "follows consultation of the State Department and outside
counsel."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: The self proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State, Abu Baghdadi,
and FOX News host Bill O`Reilly, these two very different men are in
agreement on one very crucial point, there is a holy war being waged in the
Middle East.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
O`REILLY: The holy war begins. That is the subject of this evening`s
talking points.
This is now so-called holy war between radical jihadists and everybody
else, including peaceful Muslims. The holy war is here, and unfortunately
it seems the president of the United States will be the last one to
acknowledge it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That will probably be after him, if he ever acknowledges it.
For months, FOX News personalities have been attacking the president
for not attributing the horrors committed by ISIS to, quote, "radical
Islam", fixating on that phrase, and for not using the phrase "Islamic
terrorism", as you see in this tweet from FOX host Eric Bolling.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
HANNITY: Why do you think he steadfastly refuses to acknowledge
radical Islam?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even the United Arab Emirates called ISIS Islamic
extremism, and ISIS itself calls it the Islamic State. They proudly
proclaim this and Obama denies it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At this point, it is beyond burlesque. It`s
pathological. It`s clinical, their inability and unwillingness to
accurately describe things.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have an administration that will not even admit
there is a religious basis underlying what is going on.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
HAYES: If the president`s refusal to cast the enemy as fundamentally
Islamic got the folks at FOX mad, his obviously true statement that during
the crusades, people did bad things in the name of Christianity, that made
them positively apoplectic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He said ISIS is bad, but you know, Christians were
just as bad a couple of centuries ago.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He is making excuses it seems for ISIS behavior,
essentially saying we started it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Then the next step was anger at the president because in the
statement, the White House referred to the 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians
murdered by ISIS as Egyptian citizens, instead of explicitly calling them
Christians, though he did do that today in his op-ed.
Here`s FOX radio host Todd Starnes who regularly appears on the cable
network.
(BEGIN VIJDEO CLIP)
TODD STARNES, FOX RADIO HOST: The president could not even summon the
moral courage to speak the truth. They`re called Christians, sir, and
their heads were savagely turned from their necks by monstrous Islamic
jihadists.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: And now, we have reached the next and final logical step, we
are now according to one of the most influential figures on the American
right, in a holy war, the holy war is here, it begins.
And that sort of rhetoric is of course exactly what ISIS wants, for if
it is a holy war, they were not some murderous cult or some fringe Sunni
militia -- no, if it is a holy war, they`re the representatives of Islam,
which is why the president at today`s summit on countering violent
extremism was careful not to cast the fight in those terms.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: We must never accept the premise that they put forward,
because it is a lie. Nor should we grant these terrorists the religious
legitimacy that they seek. They are not religious leaders. They`re
terrorists.
And we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have
perverted Islam.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: But ISIS has had success in framing the fight on their terms
not just on FOX News, but also to some extent on the battlefield. Western
volunteers are now joining a Christian militia in Iraq fighting ISIS,
including a 20-year-old veteran, U.S. army fatigues, who sports a tattoo of
Jesus and a crown of thorns. Another American veteran Jordan Matz (ph) of
Wisconsin who fights the Kurdish militia against ISIS, reportedly wears a
vest emblazoned with the words, Christ is lord.
Can you imagine anything ISIS wants more than a Christian identified
army lining up from Christendom against them? It only feeds their claim
that they represent Islam in a holy war against he rest, a narrative that
recruitment and radicalization and gives oxygen to the very fire we are
trying to snuff out.
Joining me now, Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council
on American Islamic Relations.
Mr. Awad, does that make sense to you?
NIHAD AWAD, COUNCIL ON AMERICAN ISLAMIC RELATIONS: No, it does not.
And thanks for having me, first.
Holy war is a Christian concept. It does not apply to Islam. Holy
war has been used in the 18th century, and I think Orientalists and those
who do not know Islam very well, they lack access to Islamic terminology
and they borrow from the Christian terminology to apply it to Islam. There
is no such thing as holy war in Islam, because if you translate it back to
the Arabic language through which the Koran was revealed, it says (SPEAKIGN
FOREIGN LANGUAGE) and I`ve never seen this in the Koran, which Muslims
consider the revealed text from god.
HAYES: Right.
AWAD: Or the tradition of the prophet.
So holy war is just a Christian or Muslim label that is being imposed
on what some Muslims do.
HAYES: Right, but let`s just be clear here. The idea of fighting a
war in the name of God, whether that is Allah, or Yahweh, or Jesus, that
has been something that Muslims have done. That in different points, Jews
have done, and Christians have done, throughout history. I mean, whether
it is called holy war, clearly ISIS thinks they are fighting a holy war.
AWAD: Again, ISIS claims that they`re fighting jihad, or the
legitimate concept within Islam. And it is very dangerous. If we allow
journalists and some media outlets or commentators or some politicians to
give legitimacy that ISIS is seeking from all of us, if we call them
jihadists or what they do is jihad, because jihad in Islam is a legitimate
concept in Islam, which is self-defense, it`s like, you know, if a foreign
army invades the U.S., we all defend our army and have a standing army.
However, what ISIS is doing is a violation of Islamic norms, Islamic
theology and Islamic rules of engagement. And that is called criminal and
it is called terrorism. So if we say that terrorism that ISIS is doing is
jihad, or they are jihadists, then we work for ISIS, and that is really
shooting ourselves in the foot.
HAYES: I understand that, we had Graeme Wood I believe last night
talking about the piece he wrote for "The Atlantic" about what ISIS wants,
that sort of talks about their own kind of theological conception, a
religious group with carefully considered beliefs. He calls it at one
point.
I mean, this to me seems an important point here, which is not to say
that ISIS represents anything like a mainstream variation of Islam, but it
also seems to me strange to I mean, people the faith is sort of constituted
by what people say they`re doing, right? I mean, ISIS does claim they`re
waging jihad. I don`t feel like I`m in a position to say what they`re
doing or not. What they`re going is ghastly.
AWAD: You know, they`re the popular saying, right, saying so doesn`t
make it so. So, if ISIS claims to be jihadists and we know that they are
criminals and terrorists, then we shouldn`t give them the legitimacy, it is
like the Westboro Baptist Church, they think they have the only view and
interpretation of Christianity. Well, most Christians would disagree with
them. The same way we disagree with ISIS.
And therefore, we should not call them Islamic, because they`re not
Islamic. And the problem I have with the piece of Mr. Wood in "The
Atlantic", he said ISIS is very Islamic. I believe that is giving them
legitimacy and doing the recruitment for ISIS which they don`t deserve.
HAYES: Nihad Awad, thank you very much.
AWAD: Thank you.
HAYES: All right, gridlock on the West Coast.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In the 40 years I`ve been doing this, it is the
most unusual and devastating problem we have had with export shipping.
REPORTER: This is peak period, yet Lobo`s (ph) citrus packing house
is sending about half as much fruit as normal overseas.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: What modern day labor union power looks like, next.
Plus, Oklahoma wants to ban advanced placement U.S. history. You
won`t believe what they want to replace it with, ahead. That story is
ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just want to show you this. This ship right
here left China last month. It has been sitting here since February 9, it
cannot even get into the port. The one back there behind it left China
also last month. It has been sitting there since February 12.
Look at all the cargo sitting on their ship.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Dozens of cargo ships are in limbo off the west coast tonight.
Food is rotting. Imports and exports are stuck in containers, and billions
of dollars are at risk, because of a contract
dispute between the dock worker`s union and the port operators.
The negotiations had already jammed up 29 west coast ports for months
with the union citing safety concerns and operators accusing the union of
slow-down tactics.
Then, this President`s Day weekend, all unloading and loading of ships
came to a complete halt, workers were reportedly locked out, the port
operators unwilling to pay overtime.
Work resumed yesterday, but the backlog will take weeks to clear. And
with the union still without a contract, they`ve been without one since the
last contract expired in July, and apparently deadlocked with port
operators, there are very real fears of a total shutdown at the ports,
which, according to the National
Association of Manufacturers, can end up costing the U.S. economy about $2
billion a day.
And that`s because thousands of American businesses move products
through those west coast ports. On any given day just in Los Angeles and
Long Beach, up to a dozen ships handle more than $1 billion worth of goods.
And trucks haul off 40 percent of the nation`s incoming container cargo
each year.
The rise of globalization helped make the west coast ports incredibly
important. They are now the choke points for U.S. trade with Asia, which
makes the union that works at those ports, the International Longshore and
Warehouse Union, one of the last great bastions of organized labor power.
And Even though the union is relatively small, about 20,000 people, it
wields
tremendous power, power it has leveraged to create good wages and benefits
for its
members and to improve safety conditions in the very complex and dangerous
place in which its workers work.
That`s enough power to bring the secretary to labor himself to
California this week on behalf of the president to meet with the union and
the port operators
and to stress that it is imperative the parties come to an immediate
agreement.
Because you see, all labor power ultimately flows from workers`
ability to strike, to withhold their labor, to bring the means of
production to a halt. And the dock workers in L.A. are a stark reminder of
what that looks like. And in an America where powerful unions are indeed
an endangered species, what we`ve lost.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: This morning, I had a chance to interview John Kiriakou. He`s
a former CIA officer who is to date the only official who served time in
connection with the agency`s torture program. He just got out of prison 23
months into a 30 month sentence after pleading guilty to giving the name of
a covert officer to a
reporter, making him the first former CIA officer ever to be convicted for
leaking
to the press.
When he was at the CIA, Kriacu was part of the team in Pakistan that
captured Abu Zubaydah, then believed to be a high-ranking member of al
Qaeda, a man who has the dubious distinction of being the first person
tortured by the CIA.
Kiriakou wasn`t present when it happened. But in a 2007 interview
with ABC, two years after he left the agency, he became the first CIA
official to publicly confirm that Zubaydah had been waterboarded during
interrogations.
When I talked to Kiriakou, he told me what happened after he went
public, how he ended up in prison and his reaction to the senate torture
report.
We`re going to bring those to you and other parts of our wide-ranging
interview over the next two nights, but first tonight, Kiriakou`s behind
the scenes perspective on the culture of the CIA starting with the agency`s
reaction to the attacks on September 11, 2001.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KIRIAKOU, FRM. CIA OFFICER: 9/11 really resulted in a terrible
collective guilt.
You know, I remember policymakers at the time saying we shouldn`t be
pointing fingers, the Democrats shouldn`t blame the Republicans and the
Republicans shouldn`t blame the Democrats.
Well, the truth is this was a massive intelligence failure. the next
two nights. And so, we inside the CIA felt that it was -- it was our
fault. You know, we should have been able to find these guys overseas, we
should have been able to disrupt the attack, at the very least we should
have worked with the FBI, which we famously didn`t.
So there was this feeling of collective guilt.
HAYES: How palpable was that? I mean, if I`m walking around Langley
a week after 9/11, two weeks after 9/11, I mean, is it...
KIRIAKOU: Most people who were there in the building on 9/11 didn`t
leave
for the first couple of weeks. I slept under my desk for three days before
somebody told me you really need to go home and take a shower.
We even -- on the moving into the night of 9/11, you know, toward
September 12, we actually got bolt cutters and cut the lock off of the
cafeteria door and stole all the food. It was a Marriott contract. Stole
all the food and cooked it ourselves and just placed it on these big tables
in the hall so people could eat and not stop working and that went on for
days. We ended up having to write a check for something like $15,000 to
the Marriott for stealing all their food.
But most people didn`t leave, or if they left, it was only to take a
shower and change clothes and come back, because we felt like we had to
make up for this terrible mistake that we had made and show that we could
make some kind of progress against al Qaeda.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: I had to Kiriakou, given his past as an undercover agent for
the CIA, if he is a reliable narrator of history.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: Before we go further, I`ve got to ask you this, I`ve had some
experience talking to spooks in my reporting career. And two things have
struck me. One is, a lot of them seem a little crazy, and the other thing
is you guys
are trained paid liars.
KIRIAKOU: Yes.
HAYES: So, it`s like why should I believe anything you`re saying to
me now? You literally professionally lied for decades.
KIRIAKOU: Yeah, you`re trained to lie. You lie all the time. You
lie, you cheat, you steal, you swindle, you trick people, that`s the nature
of the job. Yes.
The problem at the agency oftentimes is that those guys don`t know
when to turn it off...
HAYES: do you know when to turn it off?
KIRIAKOU: I hope that I do. I think that I do. But one of the side
effects of that kind of a culture is that the agency has what is probably
the highest divorce rate in all of the federal government. And it`s
because you have officers who lie all day long and then go home and lie to
their wives about their girlfriends or about what they`re doing and things
fall apart.
One senior officer who had retired and then come back as a trainer
told me one time, you can lie all day, but never lie to your boss and never
lie to your wife.
And getting back to your original point about people being kooky, a
CIA psychiatrist once told me that when the CIA is looking to hire people,
they`re looking for people with what he called sociopathic tendencies, not
sociopaths, but people with sociopathic tendencies, that is people who are
comfortable working in
moral gray areas and who are comfortable lying and doing it with a smile.
With that said, oftentimes, sociopaths will slip through the cracks
because
sociopaths can very easily pass a polygraph exam. They have no conscience
after
all.
And so sometimes you get people who really probably shouldn`t be
working there.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HAYES: Kiriakou also had some very interesting things to say about
how the
agency manages its relationship with the executive branch, including with
President Obama.
We should note, he was no longer at the CIA when President Obama took
office.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KIRIAKOU: Historically, Democrats have entered the presidency, viewed
as unfriendly to the CIA -- toward the CIA or as just not really caring one
way or the other.
And the CIA as an organization, as a culture, has sought to bring
those presidents into the fold. And we sought it with Bill Clinton when I
was there and we saw it in spades with Barack Obama.
Obama was seen as a potential enemy. And virtually as soon as he took
the oath of office, the agency brought him in, taught him the secrets,
showed them what they could do and he became their biggest cheerleader.
HAYES: I mean, you say recruiting, it`s so funny, it`s like the way
you
would recruit a spy.
KIRIAKOU: Sure. Sure.
You know, the traditional way that you recruit a spy is to spot him,
assess his vulnerabilities, develop him in terms of a relationship and then
make the recruitment.
So, what you do with a president is you convince the president that
not only are you his best friend in government, but you`re going to help
make his presidency and make his legacy and it`s going to benefit him to
have a close relationship
with the CIA starting with his morning intelligence briefing, and going all
the way through whatever covert programs happen to pop up.
HAYES: I mean, talk about an advantage over everyone else in
government. You get the president every morning.
KIRIAKOU: Every single morning you have a private meeting with the
president. Most members of the cabinet can`t say that.
(END VIDOETAPE)
HAYES: We asked the CIA for a response. They declined to comment.
We`ll bring you more of my interview with John Kiriakou tomorrow might. It
is must see TV. Don`t miss it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: I appeared on Last Call with Carson Daly this week where I
said something to me that is all but self-evident.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: The single most important thing we face globally is the fact
that we are heating the planet to a level that has never before been tried
while also trying to have human civilization. That`s a real big experiment
to run with human beings live in real-time.
It is the kind of challenge that a hundred years from now, people will
look back and be like how did they talk about anything else ever? Like,
didn`t they understand they were sitting tied to train tracks with a train
coming.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Now, as a somewhat hilarious testament to the yawning gap of
polarization in American politics today, a number of the people on the
right picked up that clip and pointed to it almost without comment as self-
evidently ridiculous. It even turned up on the Drudge Report.
And any time you get a Drudge link like that, you can expect a barrage
of just lovely people contacting you with very strongly held views.
Sadly, our own friend Chris Hayes, local reporter for the Fox
affiliate in St. Louis, who I met in person when we were in St. Louis last
summer, and who has the unfortunate Twitter handle @ChrisHayesTV, was on
the receiving end of a lot of those communications which were meant for me.
Polite as ever, he tweeted back at some of these detractors, quote,
"you might find people who will agree with you, but I`m the Fox 2 St. Louis
Hayes." And later, quote, "this might be a record today on the number of
times I`ve been mistakenly called a hygiene product."
Turns out there are some people on the internet whose strong beliefs
aren`t matched by equally strong Googling skills. Luckily you do not even
need to Google to find my segment from Carson Daly`s show, because it is on
our Facebook page Facebook.com/allinwithchris. And while you`re there, go
ahead and like us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: The state of Oklahoma took a step toward banning AP U.S.
history this week.
By a vote of 11 to 4 along partisan lines, the state house`s education
committee voted Monday to approve a ten-page bill authored by state
representative Dan Fisher who wants to put an end to advanced placement
U.S. history courses in the state by cutting funding for them.
In lieu of the AP, Fisher lists in his bill what he refers to as
foundational and historical documents that should, quote, "form the base
level of academic content for all U.S. history courses offered in schools
in the state."
Peruse the dozens of foundational documents listed and among them
you`ll
find the ten commandments, three speeches by Ronald Reagan, including his
first inaugural address and George W. Bush`s speech to the nation on 9/11.
Ever since the college board, the organization that developments the
Advanced Placement course revised the framework for the U.S. AP history
test, a change that took effect last year. Conservatives have been
marching in lockstep in their outrage.
Back in August, the Republican National Committee denounced the newly
designed test as, quote, consistently negative view of American history.
Then a few weeks ago, a Georgia state senator introduced legislation
that calls for a return to the old test. Echoing the language in the RNC
resolution, the Georgia legislation calls the new framework, quote, a
radically revisionist view of American history that emphasizes negative
aspects.
Which brings us back to Oklahoma State Rep Dan Fisher and some of the
issues he has with the test.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ST. REP. DAN FISHER, (R) OKLAHOMA: American free enterprise is a
positive force. It`s pretty much omitted and the oppression of the poor
and the strong oppressing the weak is pretty much what it`s about.
In essence, what we are having here is a new emphasis on what is bad
about
America.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: A spokesperson for the college board views things different,
telling All In in a statement tonight quote, "the redesigned AP U.S.
history course framework includes many inspiring examples of American
exceptionalism. Educations attest the new framework encourages a balanced,
thoughtful and patriotic course that will qualify a student for college
credits at Oklahoma`s colleges and universities."
Fisher`s bill is now eligible to go to the full house floor for
consideration where Republicans have a huge majority. They also have a
majority in the senate the governor is a Republican.
In other words, if Oklahoma lawmakers continue to vote along party
lines on this bill on this bill to ban AP U.S. history, they could
literally rewrite history for thousands and thousands of students.
We`ll talk with people on both sides of the AP history culture war
next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: Joining me now, Democratic Oklahoma State Representative
Jeannie McDaniel and Jean Robins, a senior fellow with the American
Principles Project.
Representative McDaniel, my understanding is you voted against this
bill as it came out of committee. What`s your objection to it?
ST. REP. JEANNIE MCDANIEL, (R) OKLAHOMA: Well, I support the College
Board and I support the AP classes. And so I was somewhat appalled that
the vote came down the way it did. To think 11 people supported it caught
me by surprise, many of them were principals and teachers themselves. And
I was actually surprised that we had so many votes against.
HAYES: Is there some sort of grass roots or widespread objection to
the test from teachers and principals, the folks who are actually working
in the classroom with this material to the new AP history test?
MCDANIEL: No.
This was actually a response from Representative Fisher. And we had
two AP teachers who had sort of led the charge. But I think, Chris, behind
the scenes it`s the bigger picture of what`s crossing the nation in some
other states doing this piece of legislation to stop this particular AP
history test. But in the state itself, we`ve had overwhelming support from
the teachers, the staff, and today kids began tweeting and e-mailing their
support for AP history asking us to please allow them to continue to take
this.
HAYES: Jane, you are associated with a group that has been leading
the charge against this new test. I saw just Saturday, Oklahoma in the
latest Education Week rankings, Oklahoma came in 48 among 50 states. Do
you think this will help that if you take away U.S. AP history in Oklahoma?
JANE ROBBINS, AMERICAN PRINCIPLES PROJECT: Well...
MCDANIEL: No, absolutely not.
HAYES: Sorry. Let Jane answer that.
ROBBINS: So, I think it`s misleading to say that the bill, as I
understand it, abolishes AP history. I think what Oklahoma is wanting to
do, which is what some other states are wanting as well, is to look for an
alternative. The College Board is an unelected, unaccountable group and
they have essentially decided to transform the teaching of American history
and in effect usurping state history standards, most of which are much
better than this framework. So I think Oklahoma wants to look for some
alternatives and there are alternatives that may be developed down the
line.
HAYES: Well, there`s alternatives in the bill, actually. There`s
actually Fisher actually gets into what has to be included.
My understanding, though, is there`s objections to things like for
instance the use of the term white supremacy to describe the views of the
founders. Is that correct?
MCDANIELS: I think what you`re finding here is they`re objecting to
the
AP class itself, the way that -- the syllabus and what`s in the course.
This is a critical thinking course, it`s not teaching U.S. history.
By the time kids get to take this course, they`re preparing for college.
It`s college preparatory. It`s actually a college-level course.
So this is a critical thinking course using the benchmarks they`ve
already learned about history throughout their 12 years in school, or 11
years in school.
So, this isn`t to learn about how history occurred, this is to learn -
- it teaches kids to think about what they think brought these events
about.
The other thing I might add here is the College Board has been
existence since 1900. They have a known reputation for developing these
courses. What we would do if we went back and developed these by Oklahoma
standards, which remove from the kids in our state the opportunity to take
the tests that other kids they may see in college in other states have
taken that class and gotten credit for.
HAYES: Jane, this is more than a process complaint with the existence
of the College Board and the way they go about this, this is actually grew
out of a substantive complaint of what the actual principles in American
history, or principle moments, or approach to the body of facts is.
ROBBINS: Yes.
MCDANIEL: Absolutely.
HAYES: Sorry, Jane, please.
ROBBINS: This would not have become an issue if the College Board had
kept the AP course the way it has been for the last several decades, which
is a small five page topical outline in which the teachers put in the
content based on their state standards.
What has happened now is that the AP -- the College Board`s AP course
has been radically revised so that now the essential content will be
written out in the framework. And that is what the teachers are supposed
to teach through the lenses, the very leftist lenses, the concepts and
themes of this outline. So that`s the problem.
HAYES: Is it a leftist lens to say that the founders believed in
white supremacy? Is that a leftist lens?
ROBBINS: I would say that the way the framework phrases that is
definitely a leftist lens. And I encourage people to go read the
framework. It`s online.
HAYES: That`s a matter of fact, right. I mean, most of the founders
believed in white supremacy.
ROBBINS: Well, what the framework suggests is that the country was
essentially founded on white supremacy and that that was the theme that
began and then was followed through for hundreds of years in the country.
That is what we object to because the country was founded on so much more
than that. There were problems in the country, and no one has ever
suggested sanitizing American history so that we don`t talk about the
problems, but we think that the country was
founded on a set of principles that was really revolutionary, radically
revolutionary in the history of humanity.
HAYES: Was the Ten Commandments part of that?
ROBBINS: And that is what the framework doesn`t go into.
HAYES: Do you think the Ten Commandments were part of what it was
founded on?
ROBBINS: Well, the Ten Commandments I -- the framework doesn`t
discuss the Ten Commandments, and that`s up to state standards whether...
HAYES: No, but Dan Fisher wants the Ten Commandments included.
ROBBINS: Well, the problem is -- this brings us back to the problem.
The College Board wants to dictate what...
HAYES: All right, sorry, we`re -- State Representative Jeannie
McDaniel and Jane Robbins, thank you both for joining us tonight.
Sorry, we ran out of time.
All right, that is All In for this evening. The Rachel Maddow Show
starts now. Good evening, Rachel.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY
BE UPDATED.
END
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All In With Chris Hayes, Wednesday, February 18th, 2015
Read the transcript from the Wednesday show