Is there anything a CIA spy won’t do? For Glenn Carle, the answer is yes, and the off-limits activity is “enhanced interrogation.” In the fall of 2002, Carle was sent to the Middle East for three months to squeeze information out of a man he was told was a high-level Al Qaeda operative. Carle’s bosses told him to use any means necessary to get the detainee to talk. But, Carle refused to use extreme techniques and came to believe that the detainee was in fact not a jihadist. Carle tells the story of rebelling against his superiors, and a political culture that seemed ready to subvert established human rights guidelines, in the new book, The Interrogator: An Education.
Before Carle could publish the book, he had to clear it with the CIA. Cue the black marker. The book retains the redactions, and Carle uses a pseudonym for the detainee and the facility where the interrogation took place, but Harper’s magazine has published the true identities of both. Click here to read the story.