The Interrogator: An Education

by Glenn L. Carle

To his friends and neighbors, Glenn L. Carle was a wholesome, stereotypical New England Yankee, a former athlete struggling against incipient middle age, someone always with his nose in an abstruse book. But for two decades Carle broke laws, stole, and lied on a daily basis about nearly everything. “I was almost never who I said I was, or did what I claimed to be doing.” He was a CIA spy. He thrived in an environment of duplicity and ambiguity, flourishing in the gray areas of policy.   The Interrogator is the story of Carle’s most serious assignment, when he was “surged” to become an interrogator in the U.S. Global War on Terror to interrogate a top level detainee at one of the CIA’s notorious black sites overseas. It tells of his encounter with one of the most senior al-Qa’ida detainees the U.S. captured after 9/11, a “ghost detainee” who, the CIA believed, might hold the key to finding Osama bin Ladin. As Carle’s interrogation sessions progressed though, he began to seriously doubt the operation. Was this man, kidnapped in the Middle East, really the senior al-Qa’ida official the CIA believed he was? Headquarters viewed Carle’s misgivings as naïve troublemaking. Carle found himself isolated, progressively at odds with his institution and his orders. He struggled over how far to push the interrogation, wrestling with whether his actions constituted torture, and with what defined his real duty to his country. Then, in a dramatic twist, headquarters spirited the detainee and Carle to the CIA’s harshest interrogation facility, a place of darkness and fear, which even CIA officers only dared mention in whispers. A haunting tale of sadness, confusion, and determination, The Interrogator is a shocking and intimate look at the world of espionage. It leads the reader through the underworld of the Global War on Terror, asking us to consider the professional and personal challenges faced by an intelligence officer during a time of war, and the unimaginable ways in which war alters our institutions and American society.  

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, American History, Terrorism, Audiobook, Crime

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non-fiction books are primarily about information. The author is teaching the reader something about the world the reader does not already know. The Interrogator may not be breaking a lot of new ground in that. The USA tortures people, despite our government’s protestations to the contrary. Duh-uh. There are several things that differentiate this book from others that address the subject. The author is a CIA veteran. He has a lifetime of experience in the agency to form a background against which to look at the events he depicts here. His sociocultural background is Boston Brahmin, tracing relatives back to the boat, and teasing some of his peers that he might seek restitution for the land those 18th century revolutionaries stole from his Tory ancestors. He is highly educated, having attended the most exclusive educational institutions in America. His education informs his writing, but I will get to that later. Coming from a history of “haves” one would expect a die-hard support for whatever the government might do to keep things the way they are.


Glenn C. Carle - image from his site

Carle’s tale is of a specific detainee. Code-named CAPTUS, a detainee (possibly Haji Pacha Wazir) believed to have been bin Laden's banker, had been the subject of years of scrutiny by agency personnel, and not long after 9/11 he was kidnapped off the street in an unnamed country and transported to the custody of a nation friendly to the US. Carle, a CIA veteran with considerable experience in both the operations and analysis sides of the Agency, then riding a desk in DC, was asked to supervise the interrogation. Over time it became clear to Carle that CAPTUS was extremely small potatoes. Rather than the High Value Target he had been deemed to be, he was more the equivalent of a train conductor who sold a ticket to a terrorist, but was hardly one himself. Nevertheless, the powers that be, for reasons portrayed as venal and butt-covering, continue to treat him as a high-level enemy. Carle is pulled along on this train of events as the detainee is interrogated professionally, then, after he does not produce [most likely because he simply does not possess] the intelligence that the analysts thought he must have, he is subjected to inhumane treatment, both by the host nation personnel, then later, by Americans, at a harder-core facility code named the Hotel California. Carle struggles along the way attempting to deter his organizational superiors from pursuing this pointless exercise.

It is his detailing of how this institutional stupidity is implemented that is one of the strengths of the book. Kafka would be proud.

Once the institution settles on a perspective and a course of action, it interprets other views as proofs of error. Critical thought degenerates into orthodoxy…One risks excommunication to challenge orthodoxy, even if it maintains that the sun revolves around the earth, or that we must sacrifice humans to propitiate the gods, or, well, that men are not quite what we believed.

Carle made some attempts to convince his superiors that CAPTUS was not who the analysts thought he was, but his concerns were dismissed, and sometimes not even forwarded to their intended recipients.

It is his personal journey from initial interrogation to finally being transferred away from the case that Carle documents here. Not only from DC to country A (probably Morocco) to country B (certainly Afghanistan) and home again, but from believing CAPTUS might have critical intel, to believing him to be a minor, if not entirely guiltless sap, from being a good soldier following orders to repeatedly cabling superiors about the mistake they were making with this prisoner. Along this journey he considers the moral implications of the U.S. actions. He talks about the suspect legal mechanism by which the CIA was inflicting torture on its detainees and reflects on where this is leading us as a nation.

Carle offers a look at some of the personal struggles that he and his family were going through during this period. It is amazing anyone could stay sane under so much stress.

There were several elements here that stood out for me. First is that his story was detailed and compelling. That it is not particularly news to many of us does not detract from the skill of its telling. I found one section a bit discomfiting, however. In Nigeria, local Muslims murdered non-believers after a reporter made a careless, but what she thought was an inoffensive, comment about the prophet Muhammed. Carle spoke about the incident with a Muslim woman who was working at the desk at the Middle Eastern hotel where he was staying. He expected that she would share his horror at the actions of these violent sorts, but was shocked at her reaction, which was basically supportive of the extremists. Carle extrapolates from this incident:

Condemning individual acts is easy and avoids the explosive—perhaps insoluble—social dilemmas that come from rational analysis and open discourse about any faith. Condemming jihadists avoids passing judgment about beliefs. But tolerance, which is fundamental for a diverse society that prizes inquiry, can have the by-product of intellectual and moral relativism, which dulls thought and creates its own taboos against critical analysis of the implications of any belief.

The very concept of a civil society is incompatible with a totalitarian religion. But if jihadists represented a distilled version of broadly shared beliefs, if men burned blasphemers alive, if bearded bombers were the champions of a prim matron’s faith, then one was confronted with the awkward, the perilous, obligation to acknowledge that some religious or philosophical views were incompatible and irreconcilable with the fundamental liberal values of Western civilization.

There is certainly cause for concern from his exchange with the Muslim desk clerk, but his conclusion that Islam is incompatible with Western society takes it too far.

Carle’s style is mostly a straight ahead telling of his story. But he has an education and wants to use it. There are sections of this book that are almost lyrical. In one instance he tells of an interaction with two young hookers who worked the bar at his hotel. He contemplates how they have to compromise themselves in order to survive, and sees in their compromise his own moral compromise. After his upsetting conversation with the hotel clerk, noted above, he drives out of the city, as he did frequently while on this assignment, and describes a frightening storm that stands in for and magnifies his concerns. Very novelistic. The book is also peppered with classical references, which remind one that this is an educated, thoughtful guy, not some thug or sadist. But I could not keep myself from wondering, given that Carle tells us that one of the first things one does in conducting an interrogation is to establish a rapport with the detainee, is whether he is working his reader as well. One clear lesson here, reinforced, is that working from the inside does not seem to be a terribly effective way to effect change in the absence of external pressure sufficient to influence policy.


==============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to Carle’s personal, LinkedIn, Wikipedia and FB pages

It so happened that one of the days I was reading this book, I returned home and switched on the BBC, finding none other than Glenn Carle being interviewed on Hard Talk. Here is an excerpt.

See a few other books on this subject:
----- The Dark Side , by Jane Mayer
----- Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier's Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo by Erik Saar, Viveca Novak
-----None of Us Were Like This Before: American Soldiers and Torture by Joshua E.S. Phillips
-----Tortured: When Good Soldiers Do Bad Things By Justine Sharrock

The National Security Archive links to the 1963 and 1983 contents of the KUBARK manual.

This book includes a fair number of acronyms. Having read a fair bit about some of the subjects at issue here, I did not have to look them all up, but I did keep a list to help me as I read. No there is not a list at the back of the book. The one here should suffice

ADCI – Assistant Director of Central Intelligence

COS – Chief of Station

CT – Career Trainee – a newby

CTS – Counter Terrorism Center – the office within the CIA that focuses on this

DCI - Director of Central Intelligence - (before there was a DNI

DCOS – Deputy Chief of Station

DDO – Deputy Director for Operations – senior operations officer in the CIA

DO – Directorate of Operations – a division of the CIA – operatives and their assets

DI – Directorate of Intelligence – a division – Non-field-work officers – they analyze incoming intel

DNI – Director of National Intelligence – top intelligence officer – coordinates some, but not all U.S. intel agencies

EIT – Enhanced Interrogation techniques

GWOT – Global War on Terror

HALO – High Altitude, Low Opening – has to do with jumping from very high and landing inside a very limited area

HVT – High Value Target

HVD – High Value Detainee

IC – Intelligence Community

INR – the State Department’s Office of Intelligence and Research

KUBARK – a CIA interrogation manual – there are two versions, one from 1963 and one from 1983

NCTC – National Counter-Terrorism Center

NE – Near East

OTA – Office of Terrorism Analysis

PCS – Permanently Stationed Officers (127)

SAD – Special Activities Division – black ops spooks

SERE – Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape – anti-torture training to harden operatives against what we expect foreign forces might do to them – this is the basis now for what we do to our captives

TDY – temporary duty – what most assignments are

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book about the experiences of a CIA interrogator as he navigates the maze of bureaucracy, where everybody mostly just want to advance their career, instead of actually nabbing terrorists.

Answers why the War of Terror went the way it did.

[Kali · Rating 5 out of 5]

from kalireads.com:

With Claire Danes regularly losing her marbles as a CIA agent on Homeland, and Jessica Chastain doing whatever it takes to get Bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty, it seemed an appropriate time to read The Interrogator: An Education and glimpse what really happens in CIA interrogations.

Glenn Carle is a career spy for the CIA - he's traveled the world, telling lies, manipulating agendas, gathering information. The Interrogator is his memoir of being pulled off a desk job to interrogate a HVT (high value target), code named CAPTUS, possibly affiliated with Al Qaeda/Bin Laden. Carle begins to realize the man he is meeting with is not the mastermind the CIA wants or needs him to be. The CIA urges the interrogations to persist, and Carle finds himself in a unique moral dilemma.

Carle seems born to tell this tale - a spy with a penchant towards classic literature, a multilingual Harvard man who is just as comfortable sleeping in the jungle as debating politics and philosophy in the salons of Europe. A contradiction, he stands as the lone intellectual in what he insinuates to be a meat-headed culture within the CIA. His love of the classics shines through in his beautiful soliloquies on his situation (and what his situation means for the rest of us) throughout the book. With an author less concise, these points could have easily strayed towards diatribe or rant.

I was bracing myself for a gore-filled memoir of torture, but this isn't that book. The amount of brutality here is limited to that which is suggested to Carle and which he always refuses, saying "We don't do that."

What stands out most about this book is what isn't there - a huge amount of Carle's account has been redacted by the CIA. Although CAPTUS is never named in the book, his identity has been deduced as Pacha Wazir. A Goodreads review lead me to an article called "Unredacting The Interrogator" at Harper's online which sheds light on Pacha Wazir, as well as the locations featured in the book.

Carle meanders a bit, and the story is made better for it. He dabbles in the stories of his personal life (his wife has struggled with alcoholism), explains his past and future roles at the CIA, takes time to expound on the inner-workings of the CIA, and analyzes the KUBARK manual and the effectiveness of torture in general. He ends the book with specific suggestions he believes would improve the way the CIA develops its terrorism intelligence. The book isn't all straight information, however. His writing is haunting, and it is hard to not be reminded of the noir detective fiction of the twenties and thirties as he describes himself as a lone man wandering the streets of a foreign land.

The most poignant scene for me, and the reason I think this book is an important read, is near the end. Carle has come home from his mission and is at a dinner party. Knowing he works for the CIA, a woman is asking "Why haven't they found Bin Laden? What are you guys doing? If it was up to me, I'd just grab them all and make them talk." Carle's experience illustrates how complicated a process tracking terrorism truly is, how the CIA is a bureaucracy like all other governmental agencies, how interrogation is a truly intimate process, and how a solution as simple as "making someone talk" by roughing them up is never the solution.

[G · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to call this book incredible but I'm afraid that word choice might lend the wrong connotation, as it could hardly get more credible. Written by the former CIA operative who interrogated Pacha Wazir, the man the CIA rendered in 2002 for allegedly being "bin Laden's banker", this book chronicles the journey of a deeply committed, patriotic man who slowly comes to realize that his beloved Agency has rendered a largely innocent man, refuses to acknowledge or correct its mistake, then further compounds the error by engaging in interrogation tactics he knows to be tantamount to torture. His experiences eventually cause him to question the entire dominant narrative of the "Global War on Terror" that casts Islamic terrorists as a unified whole engaged in a coordinated jihad against "The West". He eventually concludes "our own atavistic reflexes and errors are the deepest failure of 9/11, not the attacks themselves, because although we sometimes must suffer the deeds of others, we always must be responsibile for our own."

A good portion of the narrative has been redacted by the CIA, in the guise of protecting "sources and methods" though the author maintains
"the Agency has overstepped its bounds and made itself a fool" in demanding redactions of text that reveals "no source or method - other than contemptible institutional incompetence." Fortunately for us, it's pretty easy to figure out most of the major "secrets" in the text - making the CIA's attempt to obscure all the more bizarre - and this article in Harper's reveals much.

Redaction spoilers:
Carle speaks French.
CAPTUS is Pacha Wazir.
The first country in which Wazir was interrogated was Morocco, "Point Zero Station" is somewhere around Rabat.
The second country was Afghanistan and the secret prison there ("Hotel California") was known as The Salt Pit, which is north of Kabul.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this in one day. Couldn't put it down. I had initially approached this book with some cynicism and was both weary and wary of another guy who saw it happening but did nothing and now wants to expiate his troubled soul. And that's exactly what this is. Carle is a Harvard educated spook who had some problems following security regulations during his 23 year career and it puts him in the doghouse. His wife battles alcoholism. He is a straight shooter though and writes a page turning book. It's pretty easy to figure out the places he can't reveal. It's pretty ludicrous too what the CIA redacted in this account and Carle vents righteously on the many iterations and ludicrous censorship battles. National security is all about not being embarassed over being stupid or arrogant. I kept hoping to see if anybody I knew was in the book but it's all pseudonyms for the most part. Book is best when he tells his story and doesn't engage in rants and epistles or prescriptions like at the end. Bureaucracies can not admit errors is the takeaway.

[Paul Petrone · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really didn't like this book. First off it is so overwritten and pretentious it's hard to suffer through. Second, the author himself is so incredibly unlikeable it's almost hard to focus on anything else. It's a shame because there might be an interesting story here, but can't get out of its own way.

[Dewayne Stephens · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn’t finish. So little about actual interrogation, and so much about the author’s narcissism and pretentiousness. Got about halfway through and couldn’t force it any longer.

[Editswlonghair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scathing, infuriating, and at times laugh-out loud funny, this book is a 'Catch-22' for our times. The swaths of redacted text are Kafka-esque, the author's Afterword and asides about what was expunged are often hilarious, and what was done to CAPTUS and our civilized ideals depressing and absurd.

But as horrific as what is being done in our names at black sites in the prosecution of the "global war or terror" is, I still find the author's description of how the true believer "Wilmington" and the religiopolitical zealot Douglas Feith comported themselves in meetings to be more existentially terrifying for the continued health of our Republic.

Here's a good article that follows up on the CAPTUS case.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written by a self confessed master manipulator, you wonder how much you're being manipulated.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carle offers keen and well-formed insight into how the CIA's interrogation program was run in 2002. Although it would be several years before the general public learned more about "enhanced interrogation," Carle makes it clear that those authorizing the program and those administering it should have more closely examined their basis for using non-standard techniques of interrogation.

The authors of memoirs like this sometimes inflate their own importance or use them as opportunities to settle scores with decision and policy makers higher up the chain of command. Carle does a good job avoiding these traps and offers a seemingly balanced account of the individuals he interacted with during his time in the interrogation program.

The challenge of this book seems to be that Carle's commentary is on aspects related to, but uncovered in this book, of the CIA's interrogation program. Carle's main, and seemingly only, subject CAPTUS does not seem to have useful information. However, Carle seems to be talking around the enhanced interrogation techniques, but does not let us know if these were used on CAPTUS or if his understanding of them comes from his involvement in the program.

Unfortunately, much of Carle's book is redacted and it would have interesting to read what he would have said if not subject to redaction. He also seemed to only be involved in the interrogation of one person, and thus cannot offer a broader perspective on the whole program. These weaknesses aside, this book is still a worthwhile read.

[David Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

A candid overview of the extremes to which the United States went to fight the war on terror. The author discusses his experiences of extracting information from people as a CIA handler and how much the torture techniques that the government employed later differed. He draws lines in explaining why torture doesn’t work and how intelligence gathering is more nuanced and time consuming. He said he was made “aware of grave conceptual errors in our counterterrorism structures and practices” and this book details his struggle with the results of these flawed policies. I think this book would’ve been a little bit better had the author not been so heavily censored. At the end of the book he gave an overview of the types of things that were removed from his early drafts. It’s clear that he wanted to write a harder hitting narrative and I think the story would’ve been better had he been given that freedom.

[Nikki Robbins · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Torture is worse than a crime, it is an error”

“We do not need more laws. The laws are only as strong as the men who interpret and enforce them, and the social compact that embraces them... I saw that a few of our leaders, in their insularity and sanctimonious certainty, corrupted the laws and started to corrode our social compact. We can take actions, however, to diminish such men, and that reaffirm our society’s commitment to our principles, our institutions, and the rule of law.”

“What good, then, is a public hearing that ruthless politics is sure to distort and sully? The facts. The facts. The facts in conflict with our laws and principles. In the end.. the facts will out- and will make it harder for leaders to corrupt our system of laws, checks, and balances when a new crisis pressures them to shake off the fetters that bind our power but guarantee our freedom.”

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Haleluja! A true believer. An innocent flower. Sheep amidst the wolves. He might have seen something. He is telling something already told by many before in order to what? To be a Snowden and a brown nose at the same time? And the childish style of writing makes the text even worse. A test, but he does not know what for, but he assumes, but anyway let's move on and that goes on and on for way too many pages. And this guy is not even a James Bond. He is a gorilla in flip-flops and with a way too big pension plan.

[Mark Pool · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried reading this book twice. The first time I read to p. 117. The second time around I could only get to p. 23! Not very engaging.

[Trinity · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Stars for the last chapter alone. Enlightening.

[Lydia]

Ok

[Elie-Joe Dergham · Rating 5 out of 5]

A first hand account of an individual who was on the front lines in the War on Terror. Interesting read that shows how individuals can serve yet have a conflicted feeling.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative and quick-paced reading.

[Spencer Wickert]

I finished a book all about a man working for the CIA and is an interrogator. He tracks through his day while working in the office before getting ready to leave to a long period of time. The story talks about the hardships of his position and what happens to people's families after these long trips. This story seems like it is true with its facts, but has made up characters. I enjoyed most of the book and only disliked a few things about it.
This story had many positive parts, but I didn't enjoy. For one thing the story took a very long time to get started and get into the whole point of it. Also it tells about important code words that if you don't remember it makes the story hard to understand. The book was very good with only a few problems.
This book a good read and I found many positive things about it. First was how it had blacked out lines that made it look like a secret file for the CIA. Also some of the code words and different ways they chose to say thing like by abrivating simple phrase in order to get it out quicker. Last I enjoyed the way he tells you about inside details that you would know from the news. The author tells you these facts because he was a agent for the CIA. One thing he talks about is to go into covert ops(under cover) you must be fluent in many languages and be able to have a local accent in order to avoid suspicion. Over all this was a good book with interesting facts.
The book was a fun read and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the CIA or any government based job. It talks about what you may need to do and how it could affect you. Also it shows how these jobs can change you and change your life. Over all I had a good time reading this book and enjoyed most of it except for the slow beginning.

[Eli Bickley · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Interrogator, a book about Glenn Carle's experience in the CIA, explains what he did for several years in an unknown (to the reader because of blocks in the text) country. At first I thought it would be a good book, but I was proved otherwise.

For background, the CIA is doing work in this book to find Bin Laden and so meanwhile they use Glenn to interrogate CAPTUS, someone who they thing has information on Bin Laden. He has to leave his wife and family behind, who by the way have been having issues. As Glenn's time with CAPTUS and in the CIA progresses, he realizes that the CIA is a cruel society, at least in his opinion. He doesn't like that they command him to use brute force and torture to get information. He decides that our western view of Islam and all of them being terrorists is sick and wrong, mainly from all his conversations with people in the area that he is living in to interrogate CAPTUS.

It's unfortunate that we (the CIA specifically) are so corrupt, at least according to the book. Since apparently CAPTUS' interrogation was unsuccessful and it turned out he was innocent of what we accused, it's sad that we spent so much time on him. But at the same time, what if he was who we thought he was?

All in all, I thought the book was not very well written, it was hard to keep reading, and pretty boring. However, it was interesting to see this view on the CIA and what our country does to get information.

[Michael C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I probably liked this book more than the 3 star rating shows but didn't quite feel right giving it 4 stars. Carle is a good writer and overall I enjoyed reading this book.

I obviously had some preconceptions going into this book about the content, expecting something like a clean-cut CIA agent gradually succumbing to pressure to use torture/enhanced interrogation tactics, but this is not the story or intention of the book. Carle appears never to use torture during the length of this book, if he did, it was blacked out by the CIA. But the overwhelming evidence suggests he never once broke the law. I wouldn't be to eager to share the fact that I had used torture, but I believe Carle when he says he never tortured, instead trying to build a rapport with the interrogated (known as CAPTUS in the book).

This book is more about the utter incompetence of the CIA and CTC during the Global War On Terror and revealing truths not many know about the nature and day to day goings-on of U.S. intelligence operations and strategies.

The book is hindered by how censored it is though, and I found myself asking more questions than the book answered as a result. This took away some of my enjoyment of the book but has piqued my interest in the subject. Overall worth the (rather quick) read.

[David Buchan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential reading

Glenn Carle has taken great pains to be as honest as CIA censorship and redactions allow about the US use of kidnap and torture in its global war against terrorists following 9/11. He makes a powerful argument that these misguided policies damaged US law and democracy without enhancing national security. He speaks from the front line interrogation cells against a knee-jerk political pressure, which demanded all measures were taken - even those that were wrong and pointless. It is clear that he is a patriot who believes democracy can only be strengthened by embracing the truth, admitting our errors and correcting them.
This is not a fictional page turner, but his experiences and perspective are worth the effort to read. I'm happy to recommend this book. It makes a valuable contribution to an essential debate.

[William · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book but was disappointed. So much of it was redacted with footnotes explaining why. However it still seemed to be a politically correct book and the author seems to have an axe to grind on many levels about his work on the case involving a suspected Al Qaeda operative. I wouldn't recommend this book. It was dull and more about his feelings about how the CIA and all others involved were wrong and he was right. Just not my cup of proverbial tea. It almost seemed as of this was written as a way to criticize his former employer with no real interesting information that isn't already out there concerning renditions and "enhanced interrogation techniques." For me it really seemed to be holier than thou.

[Vicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably is an adult book, because of the vocabulary and insight the author has in the book. Some spots were confusing, but I got the overall storyline. Again, some of it was redacted, so that made it kind of frustrating to read. Shows how the government can mess up, and unfortunately they never sought to fix their mistake in this instance. Exposes a kind of "dark side" of the CIA and the American government, explores the moral aspects of torture. Powerful book, I felt sorry for both the author and the guy they mistakenly captured and interrogated. Good book, I'd certainly recommend it.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disturbing, but in a good way. Mr. Carle gives a gut-wrenching account of people trying to do the right thing, and the struggle to know what that is. An indictment on our rush to war, and the selling of the American soul. We are supposed to be better than that - and fortunately some of us are. The world is not black and white - but there are lines that cannot be crossed if we are to maintain our humanity

[Anthony Snow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Short and sweet - an interesting if true account, but the flow was thrown off by all the redactions. While I understand what they mean, I spent many moments in the book just staring at that bar, knowing that there was more of a sentence there at some point. Without the full story, I slowly began to lose interest. I finish it, and enjoyed it...but didn't find myself compelled in any way to want to read it ever again.

[Rosemary O'donoghue · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting to see what goes on inside the CIA - quite different to the fictionalised spy stories. With the "war on terror", it's frightening to see how Americans can justify cruelty for the greater good. It's zealots chasing zealots. War, in any guise, is horrifying and senseless.
The book was quite repetitive, as Glenn reflected on what he was part of and what he was doing, and was not much of a story. Just sad.

[Gustavo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a slow growth in the beginning, But gradually increases to its climax. It's astonishing piece goes to reader who are most Interesting in the spy world. Go step-by-step In a spy life, and explains in great Details how the show goes.
I strongly suggest this book to readers that are most interesting to Military branches or Military personnel. It has a great Beginning and end to this peace.

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. I commend the author for his humanitarian
stance. On the other hand, I found the interrogation story that is central to the
book boring. The suspected high value target turns out to be a nobody. As far as
I can tell, Carle's career didn't even suffer because of the principled stand he
took. I guess I shouldn't have expected a Tom Clancy thriller, but still...

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story of a CIA operative who was in charge of one of the first interrogations of terrorist suspects after 9-11 and how he started to believe his interviewee was not as dangerous as CIA had thought he was. It provides interesting description of the nature of a CIA interrogator's work. Good amount of the book was redacted by the CIA and is printed with black lines over text.