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How Ghost Prisons Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: Visit Go to Meeting dot com slash stuff. That's Go
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Speaker 1: to Meeting dot com slash stuff. Hey and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Across this vast gulf of
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Speaker 1: a table in our brand new v o C heavy
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Speaker 1: studio is Charles You, Chuck, Brian, Alright, we're in people.
1:02
Speaker 1: This is our brand new studio. This is our first
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Speaker 1: time recording and now it's we gotta get used to
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Speaker 1: this weirdness all over again. Know things just can't be normal.
1:11
Speaker 1: So now we're in weird chairs and the table is huge,
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Speaker 1: and Jerry. I can't even talk about Jerry because she's
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Speaker 1: not even in the room with us anymore. Wait, Chuck,
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Speaker 1: did you just pronounced huge with the out the h
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Speaker 1: with the H being silent? Did you just say huge?
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Speaker 1: I've been saying human being and huge ever since I
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Speaker 1: came back from New York. Huge. Yeah, it's huge, huge.
1:34
Speaker 1: And Jerry isn't even in our vision line of vision,
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Speaker 1: and I hate that. Yeah, it's odd. Things are odd.
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Speaker 1: There's like a burlette curtain. I'm wearing headphones made out
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Speaker 1: of old potatoes. Alright, Chuck, let's let's get this going
1:50
Speaker 1: all right, All right, enough griping from us. No, seriously,
1:52
Speaker 1: nobody cares. No, one cares. Um. I had like a
1:57
Speaker 1: great intro to this one. Let's hear it. I can't remember. Oh, yes, Chuck,
2:03
Speaker 1: you know that there's a lot of finger pointing about
2:06
Speaker 1: how nine eleven was allowed to happen? Right? Uh? Is
2:10
Speaker 1: there there? There has been. I don't know if there
2:12
Speaker 1: is anymore. But at first there's a lot of finger pointing,
2:15
Speaker 1: and a lot of that fell on Clinton. Oh yeah,
2:18
Speaker 1: because you know, Bush is pretty new. He was a
2:21
Speaker 1: He was a newbie still as far as presidents go,
2:24
Speaker 1: and Clinton had been president for two terms. Blame it
2:27
Speaker 1: on the previous guy. It's an American tradition, it really is. UM.
2:31
Speaker 1: But the thing is Clinton's administration, Clintons CIA had passed
2:36
Speaker 1: along a list of high valued targets of people in
2:41
Speaker 1: the Alcadda network before the September eleventh attacks ever happened,
2:47
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of talk about what to
2:50
Speaker 1: do with this list of people. UM. After September eleven,
2:55
Speaker 1: like you know, say, eleven am on September eleven, the
3:00
Speaker 1: talk started about what to do with this list is
3:02
Speaker 1: it became clear that this was al Qaeda that had
3:04
Speaker 1: carried out this this heinous attack, right, And one of
3:08
Speaker 1: the things that we did with it was to publish
3:10
Speaker 1: a UM deck of cards. I have that deck? Do
3:14
Speaker 1: you really? Yeah? A friend of mine gave me that deck. Yes.
3:16
Speaker 1: Do you remember that you could get them like a
3:18
Speaker 1: comedience stores and American public beyond the lookout for these
3:22
Speaker 1: guys and also enjoy some you know, Texas hold them
3:26
Speaker 1: with them as well. And my mine is Camo on
3:29
Speaker 1: the other side. That's appropriate, UM, But so there's a
3:33
Speaker 1: lot of talk about what to do with this list
3:35
Speaker 1: of people. We had their names in a lot of cases,
3:37
Speaker 1: we knew where they were, and um one of the
3:42
Speaker 1: one of the ideas that was suggested was to start
3:44
Speaker 1: assassinating all of them, and that one was I think
3:48
Speaker 1: probably fairly well entertained. But the CIA had been as
3:52
Speaker 1: far as we know, out of UM practice with assassinations
3:57
Speaker 1: for a while. UM. So instead we decided to start
4:03
Speaker 1: UM stepping up a program called Extraordinary Rendition, right right,
4:09
Speaker 1: which would be a great band name. As soon as
4:10
Speaker 1: I heard it. You you think everything is a great
4:13
Speaker 1: band name? No, not everyone. Everyone thinks everything is a
4:16
Speaker 1: good band name, but not me. Okay, you're you're the
4:20
Speaker 1: I'm the guy who named his band El Cheapo, So
4:22
Speaker 1: I know it's a good one. What was the other one?
4:24
Speaker 1: A designer kiddy or what? There's another band name recently
4:28
Speaker 1: that you liked? Oh I don't know? Okay, Well, anyway,
4:32
Speaker 1: this Extraordinary Rendition program actually dated back to UM the
4:36
Speaker 1: Bush senior presidency. In January, George Herbert Walker Bush UM
4:43
Speaker 1: signed a Presidential finding authorizing extraordinary rendition, which basically is kidnapping.
4:49
Speaker 1: Yeah of finding it we should say it's sort of
4:50
Speaker 1: like an executive order. It's one of those things that
4:53
Speaker 1: a president can just say, make it happen. But it's
4:55
Speaker 1: pretty much a secret executive order. I mean, like its
4:58
Speaker 1: existence can be made public, but its contents aren't. And
5:02
Speaker 1: actually the executive order that Um Bush Senior signed um
5:06
Speaker 1: allowing or authorizing extraordinary rendition is still classified, right, But
5:11
Speaker 1: what we know is that it was used a couple
5:13
Speaker 1: of dozen times, largely in the Clinton era, and for
5:17
Speaker 1: the most part it was used to go into countries
5:20
Speaker 1: that harbor terrorists, kidnapped the terrorists, and then bring them
5:23
Speaker 1: to American courts for trial or other places. Well that
5:27
Speaker 1: that kind of stepped up after two thousand one, after
5:30
Speaker 1: after Bush Jr. Came into power. Um the CIA stopped,
5:37
Speaker 1: I guess, kind of wanting to put their faith in
5:40
Speaker 1: American courts and risk the coin toss of of an
5:44
Speaker 1: American jury going in favor of a terrorist. So they
5:47
Speaker 1: started using extraordinary rendition to third party nations. So now
5:52
Speaker 1: not only are we kidnapping foreign nationals or kidnapping foreign
5:55
Speaker 1: nationals and taking them to other countries that they don't
5:58
Speaker 1: have an affiliation with so that we can basically outsource torture, interrogation,
6:03
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, right, Yeah, And we should point
6:05
Speaker 1: out at this point that UM during this kind of rendition, Uh,
6:09
Speaker 1: this isn't the kind of rendition you want to hear
6:11
Speaker 1: if you're a detainee, because it basically means you can't
6:14
Speaker 1: you don't have a lot of contact with the outside world,
6:16
Speaker 1: as in none, you don't have rights to habeas corpus.
6:19
Speaker 1: You can't call your attorney and say, you know, get
6:21
Speaker 1: me out of here on bail. Uh, that kind of thing.
6:23
Speaker 1: It's very secret you're abducted. I think one of the
6:26
Speaker 1: stories you listed was a guy that they set up
6:29
Speaker 1: a fake fundraiser and invited this guy to it in
6:33
Speaker 1: order to capture him. Yeah. After after nine eleven, like
6:36
Speaker 1: the world stage turned into like this um plot exposition
6:41
Speaker 1: montage from a Mission Impossible movement or a Simpsons episode. Sure, yeah,
6:45
Speaker 1: people just started disappearing. Actually, yeah, pretty much. And by
6:48
Speaker 1: the very socio or the very um geopolitical definition of disappearing,
6:54
Speaker 1: it was they were kidnapped by a government entity and
6:57
Speaker 1: kept out of the um perv you, of the courts,
7:02
Speaker 1: and stripped of any kind of rights, right, right, So
7:05
Speaker 1: the problem is we went from using a couple of
7:09
Speaker 1: extraordinary rendition on a couple of dozen people throughout the
7:13
Speaker 1: entire nineties to UM by the New York Times estimate
7:18
Speaker 1: at least three hundred and seven UM between late two
7:22
Speaker 1: thousand one and two thousand five. That's probably a very
7:25
Speaker 1: very low number, right, So we go from a couple
7:28
Speaker 1: of dozen in a decade to three hundred and seven
7:32
Speaker 1: and more in about four years, and we don't exactly
7:36
Speaker 1: know where to put these people. The CIA didn't want
7:38
Speaker 1: to bring them to the US because they didn't want
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Speaker 1: them to be prosecuted in American courts. They wanted these
7:43
Speaker 1: people to lose all their rights and to disappear so
7:47
Speaker 1: that they could be kept for as long as the
7:49
Speaker 1: CIA wanted them until they found out what they needed.
7:52
Speaker 1: So what they did was set up as a network
7:55
Speaker 1: of secret prisons, right, ghost prisons as their call us.
8:00
Speaker 1: And they're known as ghost prisoners there and they are
8:04
Speaker 1: the podcast Yeah if only Human Rights Watch, you've heard
8:08
Speaker 1: of that group. They have a list on the internets
8:11
Speaker 1: about a list of ghost prisoners, suspected ghost prisoners, and
8:16
Speaker 1: it's very long, and the CIA is always like, we
8:19
Speaker 1: don't comment on that. Kind of thing because those lists
8:21
Speaker 1: are probably not accurate, right that they towed the company
8:26
Speaker 1: line there, right, because the c I couldn't say, yeah,
8:29
Speaker 1: that list is really accurate, and we do this. The CIA,
8:33
Speaker 1: for years and years and years after the the their
8:36
Speaker 1: cover was blown, would never acknowledge that there were secret prisons. Right. Well, yeah,
8:41
Speaker 1: but g W had to come clean and what oh
8:44
Speaker 1: six in Atlanta wasn't in atlantas Sony produced standing next
8:47
Speaker 1: to him. Yeah, he acknowledged the existence of secret prisons.
8:51
Speaker 1: And it's probably after seeing W. It was probably just
8:54
Speaker 1: like a snaffoo, or he didn't. He didn't mean to
8:58
Speaker 1: say it. He was probably tricked into admitting it, but
9:02
Speaker 1: he did, and um it so it came out that yes,
9:06
Speaker 1: these these do exist, but but we don't use them
9:09
Speaker 1: any longer. And then in January of two thousand nine,
9:14
Speaker 1: Obama the first thing he does is shuts down the
9:18
Speaker 1: CIA secret prison network, three years after they stopped using it. Apparently,
9:23
Speaker 1: well that was on a second full day in office
9:26
Speaker 1: he did that. But pro Publica you've part of them too, right, Yes,
9:31
Speaker 1: they they say that there are um dozens of ghost
9:35
Speaker 1: prisoners still unaccounted for, so it's um you know, he
9:41
Speaker 1: says he shut him down, but they say pro Publica
9:43
Speaker 1: all these human rights groups say that they're still they
9:46
Speaker 1: don't know where these dudes are. Well, the other the
9:48
Speaker 1: other possibility is that the secret prisons have been shut down,
9:52
Speaker 1: but those people are dead. Um, that's kind of that
9:57
Speaker 1: was par for the course in a lot of ways
10:00
Speaker 1: for the CIA secret prisons. If you have no rights whatsoever,
10:04
Speaker 1: if you die in custody, nobody cares. Like let's say,
10:07
Speaker 1: or I shouldn't say, no one cares. There's no accountability
10:11
Speaker 1: for that. So for instance, let's say you were, um,
10:14
Speaker 1: you died of ahixiation because you were held in a
10:16
Speaker 1: shipping container. Yeah. Have you seen the road du Guantanamo. No,
10:20
Speaker 1: there's a it's a kind of I guess, doc. No,
10:23
Speaker 1: I know about it. I just haven't seen it. It's
10:25
Speaker 1: worth seeing, Yeah, I mean it's it's it's worth seeing. Um.
10:28
Speaker 1: But there's a there's a scene in there that that
10:30
Speaker 1: shows that these people being rounded up and shipped across
10:34
Speaker 1: Afghanistan in a huge like shipping container and like when
10:38
Speaker 1: they opened the doors the next day, like most of
10:40
Speaker 1: them are dead. It's gross, it's really disturbing. Well, it's
10:43
Speaker 1: like when you get the pet turtle in the shoe box,
10:45
Speaker 1: you gotta Mom always says, you know, remember the holes
10:48
Speaker 1: in the top. Yeah, so apparently mom wasn't around to
10:50
Speaker 1: remind them of this. No, people weren't thinking like that.
10:53
Speaker 1: And the one dude froze to death. Yeah, and the
10:56
Speaker 1: secret prison with and I have to say, they had
10:59
Speaker 1: some pretty cool names. Uh. The one of the first
11:03
Speaker 1: and one of the largest was codenamed Salt Pit. And
11:05
Speaker 1: it was in a brick factory and abandoned brick factory
11:08
Speaker 1: outside of Cobble. Uh. And um, a junior CIA officer
11:13
Speaker 1: who was kind of new on this kind of thing
11:16
Speaker 1: ordered a detainee strip naked in chain to the floor
11:20
Speaker 1: and he was left overnight. And it can get pretty
11:23
Speaker 1: cold apparently in Cobble. Uh. And the guy froze to death.
11:27
Speaker 1: So I mean, it's entirely possible that this two dozen,
11:30
Speaker 1: these two dozen people, I'm surprised it's not more. But
11:33
Speaker 1: these two dozen people who are unaccounted for are are dead? Right,
11:37
Speaker 1: that's probably the case. Yeah. Uh, you mentioned the names.
11:40
Speaker 1: I dug up a couple of more. Um, and I
11:43
Speaker 1: would say these are probably top ten lists of camps.
11:45
Speaker 1: You don't want to go to. But Camp Dark Prison
11:49
Speaker 1: was the one, and my favorite was Camp bond Steel
11:54
Speaker 1: b O N D S T E E L. I
11:58
Speaker 1: can't bond steel and thank you for spelling it. Well,
12:01
Speaker 1: it's not steel is in. Take its steel is in.
12:04
Speaker 1: This is the metal that I will beat you with.
12:06
Speaker 1: This is metal that you will live behind for the
12:08
Speaker 1: rest of your life if you, um, well, let's talk
12:12
Speaker 1: about what what you lose when you're in a CIA prison.
12:15
Speaker 1: That the right to lose um. Traditionally do you remember,
12:19
Speaker 1: like a few years ago, the whole you know, what,
12:23
Speaker 1: what are the people in Guantanamo Bay? Are the enemy
12:25
Speaker 1: combatants or the non combatants or the terrorists? Like what
12:28
Speaker 1: kind of rights do they have? Are they do they
12:30
Speaker 1: fall under the Geneva Convention. And it was largely decided
12:34
Speaker 1: by the Bush administration that no, these people didn't have
12:36
Speaker 1: Geneva Convention rights right, UM. With the under the purview
12:42
Speaker 1: of the Geneva Convention, the Red Cross is charged with
12:44
Speaker 1: going to visit enemy combatants and prisoners of war UM
12:49
Speaker 1: on both sides, and and and see how they're treated
12:53
Speaker 1: um with the secret prisons. First of all, the people,
12:56
Speaker 1: no one knew that these people had been you know,
12:59
Speaker 1: um kidnapped. What wouldn't be very good secret prison exactly
13:03
Speaker 1: if the Red Cross knew about it where they were
13:05
Speaker 1: And yeah, they were denied you know the Cross. Even
13:08
Speaker 1: after the Red Cross found out that they were here,
13:10
Speaker 1: and and I know, you've got this guy here and
13:12
Speaker 1: we want to visit them in the secret prison, will
13:15
Speaker 1: quiet see It's like, no, we're not letting you in. Right.
13:18
Speaker 1: That kind of shook things up. That's a big deal. Um,
13:21
Speaker 1: there's no habeas corpus And and like you mentioned earlier,
13:24
Speaker 1: they they would go to countries where they typically might
13:29
Speaker 1: torture people. And because the US isn't allowed to obviously
13:32
Speaker 1: to torture, they weren't at the time. Before it was
13:35
Speaker 1: we decided yeah, yeah we torture, right, but we outsourced it,
13:38
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, so we would, let's say, set up
13:40
Speaker 1: in um I think you said the first one was
13:43
Speaker 1: in Thailand. Yeah, so they were looking around there, like
13:46
Speaker 1: where would I go if I wanted to set up
13:47
Speaker 1: a secret prison where you might be able to uh torture.
13:50
Speaker 1: Somebody in Thailand was like, come on over, you can
13:53
Speaker 1: set up shop here, and they they outsourced it. But
13:57
Speaker 1: from what I read in your article was you wrote
13:59
Speaker 1: this right? From what I read was the US could say, like, hey,
14:03
Speaker 1: ask him about the micro film, right, we would pass
14:06
Speaker 1: along questions or direction or something like that. And the
14:09
Speaker 1: the last I wrote this thing in uh, I can't remember,
14:12
Speaker 1: some time in two thousand seven, I think late two
14:13
Speaker 1: thousand seven. And at the time, the last UM report
14:18
Speaker 1: I had had of of somebody being held in the
14:21
Speaker 1: secret prison was in Africa, I believe North Africa. Yeah, uh.
14:26
Speaker 1: And and some Americans and Canadians reported having contact with
14:32
Speaker 1: Americans in these like African prisons, Westerners being held captive
14:36
Speaker 1: secretly and some guy behind the curtain saying use the
14:41
Speaker 1: dental drill exactly, and he sounds like he's from Omaha,
14:46
Speaker 1: and he shouldn't because this is you know, Africa, uh,
14:50
Speaker 1: in other places, other other black site host countries. Yeah,
14:54
Speaker 1: that's what they're called, just like the black budgets and
14:58
Speaker 1: black ops the or black sites, right, or ghost prisons.
15:02
Speaker 1: So you put black in front of it, and if
15:04
Speaker 1: it's related to the government and there's no description, there's
15:07
Speaker 1: just like a huge budget on a line item. Yeah,
15:10
Speaker 1: with a sharpie that is exit out. That's the secret prison. Um.
15:15
Speaker 1: There are Some of the other countries are Azerbaijan, Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Syria, Egypt, Algeria.
15:22
Speaker 1: All of these places where UM receiving prisoners didn't necessarily
15:27
Speaker 1: have a black site may have, but then most of
15:31
Speaker 1: the black site UH countries host countries were UM Eastern
15:36
Speaker 1: European like Lithuania and Romania. Yeah, but once uh, once
15:40
Speaker 1: it came out, though, they would probably try to shut
15:42
Speaker 1: it down, right because they didn't want this to get
15:43
Speaker 1: out to the press. Well, not only did they not
15:46
Speaker 1: wanted to get out to the press, they didn't necessarily
15:48
Speaker 1: wanted to get out to the president of that country.
15:50
Speaker 1: And a lot of cases it was like the c
15:52
Speaker 1: I a uh, maybe a couple of maybe the the U. S.
15:56
Speaker 1: Ambassador of that country, and a couple of like say
15:59
Speaker 1: bulgar Area's secret police, like high commanders. Those are the
16:03
Speaker 1: only people on the planet who knew that there was
16:05
Speaker 1: a secret prison Bulgaria. What do they get into Romania?
16:09
Speaker 1: I wondered that myself too. I mean, like it's gotta
16:11
Speaker 1: be money, right, Sure, it would have to be, because
16:14
Speaker 1: do you really think Bulgarians are quite as amped up
16:17
Speaker 1: about American patriotism is? Say, you know, the average American
16:20
Speaker 1: is yeah, I wouldn't think so, and especially uh Bulgarian
16:24
Speaker 1: secret police officer, you know, well yeah, so yeah, I
16:29
Speaker 1: would think money. Well we yeah. What I said though,
16:31
Speaker 1: second ago is they would close like Thailand when the
16:34
Speaker 1: word got out that they were doing this and now
16:35
Speaker 1: we should close this. But it seems like every time
16:38
Speaker 1: it happened, they would just find a different country and
16:39
Speaker 1: then go set up shop there, right, And what with
16:42
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe in particular, it was a little prickly or
16:45
Speaker 1: ticklish because, um, well when the Washington Post broke this story,
16:50
Speaker 1: they even said in the article, like, we're not going
16:52
Speaker 1: to reveal the names of the host countries because it's
16:55
Speaker 1: so sensitive. Um that these countries governments are really gonna
16:59
Speaker 1: have problems on their hands when it comes out. And
17:01
Speaker 1: indeed they did at first. Um. But the reason why
17:05
Speaker 1: is because these were all post uh Soviet Block countries
17:10
Speaker 1: that had, you know, adopted democracies after the fall of
17:13
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. Um. And we're now you know, involved
17:17
Speaker 1: in this horrible uh secret prison network. You know you
17:23
Speaker 1: were talking about when word got out? Do you know
17:25
Speaker 1: how word got out? Well, this is a Thailand one.
17:29
Speaker 1: No word got out on what then unlike the existence
17:33
Speaker 1: of the secret prison period. H yeah, it wasn't a
17:37
Speaker 1: canary singing singing like a canary. No, there was a
17:40
Speaker 1: vision there was Basically it was the CIA's fault. They
17:43
Speaker 1: didn't do their leg work. They didn't do their homework
17:46
Speaker 1: with the manifest for the planes. Yes, so this is
17:49
Speaker 1: what this is what cracks me up, is kidnapping people,
17:55
Speaker 1: taking them to a secret prison network that they've set up,
17:59
Speaker 1: and yet the honest about flight manifests right right, Yeah,
18:03
Speaker 1: that's what I don't get. So there was a Swedish
18:06
Speaker 1: TV producer who um basically did some like hard hitting journalism.
18:10
Speaker 1: I think it was called cold Facts was the translation
18:13
Speaker 1: of the Swedish. We'll call him Spence Fencing. I think
18:17
Speaker 1: that's good. And if that's not his name, I'll bet
18:20
Speaker 1: Spence Spencon is better than his real name. So Sven
18:23
Speaker 1: um was was, I guess, investigating the the extradition of
18:30
Speaker 1: two um Swedish citizens to Egypt for questioning. They were
18:34
Speaker 1: suspected terrorists. So sven starts looking into um the plane
18:40
Speaker 1: that that took them there, and it was a Gulf
18:42
Speaker 1: Stream five. Yeah they charted these right. Yeah, it was
18:45
Speaker 1: a Gulf Stream five and it was registered to a
18:49
Speaker 1: company Sven found out very quickly UM called Premier Executive
18:55
Speaker 1: Transport Services, and it was registered in Deadham, Massachusetts. So
18:59
Speaker 1: Sven and calls Premier Executive Transport Services, leaves a message
19:04
Speaker 1: wants to know about, you know, why they would be
19:06
Speaker 1: transporting UM suspected terrorists to Egypt, And fifteen minutes later
19:12
Speaker 1: it gets a call from the Swedish Intelligence Service saying like,
19:15
Speaker 1: stop asking questions, and so Savin starts looking a little
19:19
Speaker 1: further and apparently UM finds out very quickly, in very
19:22
Speaker 1: short order that there are thirty six planes chartered by
19:26
Speaker 1: the CIA UM making odds that are all that are
19:31
Speaker 1: all yeah, making odds. Stops with the nationalities of the
19:34
Speaker 1: people on board, and they would go from like say, UM, Afghanistan, Yeah,
19:40
Speaker 1: this guy out to Egypt, trough UM Morocco, and then
19:44
Speaker 1: to Guantanamo. Yeah, they're flying from Afghanistan to Guantanamo. But
19:47
Speaker 1: somehow they can't get a direct flight. And they stop
19:50
Speaker 1: off at like four places along the way right and
19:52
Speaker 1: then at each stop there's somebody who's um, you know
19:56
Speaker 1: uh uh country of origin is Ohman and they but
19:59
Speaker 1: they get off know in in Cuba, you know. So, yeah,
20:03
Speaker 1: it's very flimsy. All the all of the companies were
20:06
Speaker 1: dummy corporations that had like p O boxes listed And yeah,
20:11
Speaker 1: the Swedish intelligence Service basically tipped this guy off and
20:14
Speaker 1: he blew the whistle. And I think two thousand four
20:17
Speaker 1: when yeah, Spence Svince Svince in r I p so
20:22
Speaker 1: these prisons, Josh, we're not saying that, you know, these
20:26
Speaker 1: are nice guys that shouldn't be picked on. These you know,
20:29
Speaker 1: these are big, big time. And the one in Thailand,
20:31
Speaker 1: I think the first one, their first guest, their first
20:34
Speaker 1: overnight guest, was Abu Zuba Zobeida, and he was a
20:40
Speaker 1: top al Qaeda guy. He was captured in a shootout
20:42
Speaker 1: in Pakistan, was recovering in the hospital and I think
20:47
Speaker 1: he probably knew what was what was going on. You know,
20:50
Speaker 1: he's in the hospital saying, I'm still not feeling that great,
20:52
Speaker 1: maybe I should stay here a little longer. And then
20:55
Speaker 1: he recovers and then they're like, well, why don't you
20:57
Speaker 1: come stay in our our private hotel. Was he the
20:59
Speaker 1: one that they they kidnapped out of his hospital? Ben Somalia,
21:03
Speaker 1: Uh no, no, no, they just Pkistan. Yeah, they were.
21:06
Speaker 1: He was just recovering after a shootout and then they
21:08
Speaker 1: brought him to their little the secret hotel. And you
21:12
Speaker 1: pointed out that he was treated well. Well, he was
21:15
Speaker 1: tortured and treated well, said they. You said they fed
21:18
Speaker 1: him breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and yeah, and he loved
21:20
Speaker 1: kit cats and they gave him kick cats all the time.
21:22
Speaker 1: Did he I don't know. That's what I was, That's
21:26
Speaker 1: what I read. Well, it said they fed him. He
21:28
Speaker 1: was treated well because they fed him baked chicken and
21:30
Speaker 1: candy bars. But what if on his little questionnaire he
21:32
Speaker 1: filled out like allergic to chocolate and I hate chicken.
21:36
Speaker 1: Part of entirely possible. I just wanted to bring that up.
21:39
Speaker 1: There's also um Chuck a list on Mother Jones I think, yeah, yeah,
21:45
Speaker 1: of UM music the Music of Torture or something like that.
21:50
Speaker 1: Metallica's hype the list I know that Metallica, Rick Astley, Yeah,
21:54
Speaker 1: the Barney there, yeah yeah, the Barney song at UM
22:00
Speaker 1: Guantanamo very loudly, over and over and over again. And
22:04
Speaker 1: Mia mix commercial really yeah, yeah, I would do the
22:08
Speaker 1: um Cook's pest control here locally looking looking lucky. Here
22:14
Speaker 1: comes cookie pass control. Yeah, the the guy I mentioned that,
22:19
Speaker 1: the Abu Zubdaya Zubaya. Yeah, he was joined shortly thereafter
22:24
Speaker 1: by Khaleed Chiek Mohammed, who's a high value, high high
22:28
Speaker 1: value target. So I'm sure when he checked in to
22:31
Speaker 1: the secret hotel the other guy was like, oh crap,
22:34
Speaker 1: what's not good. What's odd is that you know it
22:36
Speaker 1: took us as many years as it did to start
22:39
Speaker 1: assassinating people like uh. I think it was just in
22:42
Speaker 1: the last couple of months that UM news broke of
22:45
Speaker 1: some programs that the CIA was outsourcing to, like um
22:49
Speaker 1: ZE Worldwide, Blackwater and other contractors, Extel's force. Guys. Who
22:54
Speaker 1: were you know, going into Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and assassinating
22:59
Speaker 1: UM like al Qaeda leaders and other terrorists guys. Right,
23:03
Speaker 1: So I wonder why we didn't just do that at first, instead,
23:06
Speaker 1: you know started I guess we needed info. Yeah, intelligence,
23:11
Speaker 1: we had none, So I guess that's probably why they
23:13
Speaker 1: were like, well, we can't kill them, Yeah, what's going on?
23:16
Speaker 1: So we can water board him? And then eight years
23:19
Speaker 1: later we'll start assassinating and give them kitcats, right apparently,
23:24
Speaker 1: so oh latest news on this UM Yeah, there's some
23:27
Speaker 1: pretty recent stuff going on. Yeah, did you read about
23:30
Speaker 1: the UM Physicians for Human Rights report? So basically there
23:36
Speaker 1: were physicians present at a lot of these enhanced derogations,
23:40
Speaker 1: and not just in an observational manner. Well that's what
23:42
Speaker 1: they were supposed to be there forest and basically like, hey,
23:45
Speaker 1: you just almost drowned, so let me make sure you're
23:47
Speaker 1: still alive and breathing in in good health. Right, Yeah,
23:51
Speaker 1: that's UM, that's okay. Actually, apparently as far as the
23:55
Speaker 1: American Medical Association and and international UM treaties are concerned,
24:01
Speaker 1: you're allowed to do that. You're still fulfilling your purpose
24:04
Speaker 1: as a physician. They took it a step further, right, Yes,
24:07
Speaker 1: they did. They have a report out Josh called Experiments
24:11
Speaker 1: and Torture Evidence of Human Subject Research and Experimentation in
24:15
Speaker 1: the Enhanced Interrogation Program. And from what I gathered, the
24:19
Speaker 1: long and short of it is they were gathering information
24:23
Speaker 1: that could later be used to defend and court the torturers.
24:28
Speaker 1: Is that right? I think they were quantifying pain thresholds,
24:31
Speaker 1: like if you waterboard this guy for this long, he'll
24:35
Speaker 1: experience a pain of eight. So they were kind of
24:39
Speaker 1: writing an outline of what you can do and still
24:42
Speaker 1: get defended in a court of law, right, which transferred
24:44
Speaker 1: their position as physicians to UM researchers. And it's transferred
24:51
Speaker 1: the position of these detainees as patients to test subjects.
24:56
Speaker 1: So they were engaging in human experimentation, yeah, pretty much,
25:00
Speaker 1: and gathering data from torture, which is totally illegal. Yeah.
25:04
Speaker 1: But isn't everything about the ghost prison network illegal? Yeah?
25:08
Speaker 1: Pretty much. Everything that took place as far as the
25:10
Speaker 1: CIA was concerned after two thousand one was illegal. And
25:13
Speaker 1: it's not like we're little babes in the woods. It's
25:15
Speaker 1: not like the CIA has just been, you know, on
25:18
Speaker 1: the up and up since then. But this is what
25:20
Speaker 1: this is. So this is recent, this is going on
25:23
Speaker 1: now still, I imagine. Yeah, there was another joint study,
25:27
Speaker 1: a two d and twenty six page report published in
25:30
Speaker 1: January of this year, and um, it's a joint study
25:35
Speaker 1: by this Well, there's like four different groups I won't
25:38
Speaker 1: read all of them, all human rights groups, and they said,
25:41
Speaker 1: of a particular concern to the authors, I'm gonna read
25:43
Speaker 1: this verbatim, beyond the overall illegality of the entire project
25:47
Speaker 1: conceived and executed by the Bush administration is the fate
25:50
Speaker 1: of dozens of men held in secret prisons run by
25:53
Speaker 1: the CIA or transferred to CIA prisons. So they estimate
25:58
Speaker 1: you said a couple of dozen. You said a couple dozen?
26:01
Speaker 1: I thought, did I know? They're saying that ninety four
26:04
Speaker 1: prisoners um had been redacted and had enhanced interrogation techniques
26:10
Speaker 1: to varying degrees performed on twenty eight of the ninety four.
26:14
Speaker 1: So this was part of the whole torture memo thing.
26:18
Speaker 1: How is it that low? I would think it would
26:20
Speaker 1: be way more than that. Yeah, you know, I would too,
26:24
Speaker 1: So well that's what they found out, So who knows,
26:27
Speaker 1: it may have been more good good times. Yeah, yeah,
26:32
Speaker 1: it's weird. America in the twenty one centuries was a
26:36
Speaker 1: weird place. The first decade was odd, Yeah, if you
26:39
Speaker 1: ask me. But Obama's trying to shut these down, and
26:41
Speaker 1: I think has for the most part. Yeah. Well, see,
26:43
Speaker 1: I don't but I don't know. But I'm not I'm
26:45
Speaker 1: not saying that there's not, you know, pinky stuff going
26:49
Speaker 1: on there too. Definitely not again, Babes in the Woods.
26:55
Speaker 1: This episode of stuff you should know. It's brought to
26:58
Speaker 1: you by go to meeting the affordable way to meet
27:01
Speaker 1: with clients and colleagues for your free thirty day trial.
27:04
Speaker 1: Does it go to meeting dot com slash stuff You
27:09
Speaker 1: got anything else? Uh no, I'm good. If you want
27:11
Speaker 1: to learn more, Um, you can read my two thousand
27:15
Speaker 1: seven article. Uh was there was there a secret CIA
27:21
Speaker 1: prison network? Just type in CIA in prison in the
27:25
Speaker 1: handysearch bart how stuff works dot com and that takes us,
27:29
Speaker 1: of course to listener Maile, No, no, Josh, oh yeah,
27:34
Speaker 1: We're gonna do just a little quickie New York recap
27:37
Speaker 1: for those of our friends who could not be there. Dude,
27:40
Speaker 1: New York was hugeog. It was odd and weird and
27:45
Speaker 1: surreal and awesome. One of the things I learned about
27:49
Speaker 1: our fans, um at least our fans in the Brooklyn area. Yeah. Um,
27:56
Speaker 1: they're very self aware, in self conscious people, and that
28:00
Speaker 1: makes them highly relatable to us. So, like the question,
28:04
Speaker 1: the biggest question I got was this must be very
28:07
Speaker 1: weird for you. Huh. I didn't get that much. I
28:09
Speaker 1: got it every time, and every time my answer is like, actually,
28:12
Speaker 1: it's really weird. Maybe this because you were standing there
28:14
Speaker 1: like like twitching. Yeah, yeah, but I got it. A
28:17
Speaker 1: lot and it was it was nice that actually I
28:19
Speaker 1: found it um disarming. Yeah that's good. Yeah. So we
28:23
Speaker 1: you know, everyone knows. We went to New York. We
28:24
Speaker 1: had a few media opportunities, we did a few interviews. Um,
28:29
Speaker 1: but Monday night was when we had our happy hour
28:32
Speaker 1: at the knitting factory in Brooklyn with the Onion, which, dude,
28:36
Speaker 1: we couldn't have done any of this without the onion.
28:38
Speaker 1: Thank you to Dan and Joe for putting this stuff
28:42
Speaker 1: together and just being our buds. Yeah, that was a
28:45
Speaker 1: real treat to get to know those guys for sure.
28:47
Speaker 1: It was since your sensation, like my dad, It was
28:51
Speaker 1: a real treat, Josh. So we have our happy hour,
28:54
Speaker 1: we get there, um, tons of people show up. The
28:57
Speaker 1: fire department comes at one point because there were too
28:59
Speaker 1: many people there, which was so awesome. I know, I
29:02
Speaker 1: was like, what is the somethinge fire? And they weren't
29:04
Speaker 1: in a hurry. They were just kind of standing around
29:06
Speaker 1: talking to people, like, you know, trying to gauge the
29:09
Speaker 1: amount of people. I think. So we got to meet people,
29:13
Speaker 1: We got to hang out with people and drink an
29:16
Speaker 1: adult beverage with people. We got to meet Mark, Australian
29:20
Speaker 1: Wagga Wagon mak Yeah, thanks for the couzy bud. Yeah.
29:23
Speaker 1: And we got to meet a lot of people who
29:24
Speaker 1: and I remembered a lot of showed up on Monday.
29:27
Speaker 1: Sock Ninja, the dude Chris Uh, Chris and his wife
29:31
Speaker 1: whose wife was car Chris Wit. Yes, he was there
29:35
Speaker 1: with his wife, and they were super awesome. They were
29:38
Speaker 1: almost kind of working for us. They were helping with
29:41
Speaker 1: the T shirts and taking photographs. Yeah. And there was
29:44
Speaker 1: Greg I believe he was kind of helping me too.
29:48
Speaker 1: He was helping me like move the line along and everything. Yeah.
29:51
Speaker 1: There are some really genuinely cool people here. Everybody there
29:54
Speaker 1: was super Yes. Yes, as a matter and I need
29:57
Speaker 1: to say special thanks to the banjo dude, remember him, Yeah,
30:01
Speaker 1: the guy with the banjo and his girlfriend. They gave us.
30:03
Speaker 1: They well, a lot of people brought gifts, and they
30:06
Speaker 1: brought me this Uh. She made this really neat little
30:08
Speaker 1: egg where she had made a design of thread that
30:12
Speaker 1: was on the egg. It was really intricate and very cool.
30:17
Speaker 1: And they also met my friend Justin and helped him
30:19
Speaker 1: out in some ways. And they were very very cool kids.
30:22
Speaker 1: And I can't remember her name, but there's a fan
30:25
Speaker 1: that um, both of us met, but I talked to
30:28
Speaker 1: her for a while. Grundy she gave us No, not Grundy, Um,
30:31
Speaker 1: but hey Grundy. Yes, she gave us a molecular gastronomy book.
30:35
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, she just wrote in today. I can't
30:37
Speaker 1: remember her name. I thank you for it. Yeah, it
30:40
Speaker 1: was very awesome. So hopefully possibly look for a molecular
30:42
Speaker 1: gastronomy podcast. And I got c d S and like, um,
30:47
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of bands were like, hey, man,
30:49
Speaker 1: listen to this. Yes, and we have to go listen
30:52
Speaker 1: to um the Large Hadron podcast. Yes, I have not yet,
30:56
Speaker 1: but we need to go check them out. And so
30:59
Speaker 1: that was Monday. So then we had our Wednesday flash
31:01
Speaker 1: forward Wednesday and we had our all Star Trivia night
31:05
Speaker 1: at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn and this was nuts. Yes,
31:10
Speaker 1: we had um D people in this big room. There's
31:18
Speaker 1: a big venue. It's like a concert venue. Yes, like
31:21
Speaker 1: you I could see sticks playing there, um but yeah,
31:25
Speaker 1: there's it was standing room only, I would say, about
31:27
Speaker 1: five people, and we we cobbled together this really awesome
31:30
Speaker 1: trivia team. Go ahead and lower the boom there. Okay,
31:33
Speaker 1: So we had Jackson Public who creates this, uh, this
31:37
Speaker 1: super cool cartoon called The Venture Brothers you may be
31:40
Speaker 1: familiar with. He was one of the head writers on
31:42
Speaker 1: the Tick. Yes, and he was brought along by our
31:45
Speaker 1: buddy John Hodgman. We can say our buddy, Yeah, we can.
31:48
Speaker 1: Now I feel like he's our friend. He is he is,
31:51
Speaker 1: you can feel that way. Uh. And I'm really glad
31:53
Speaker 1: that John brought um Jackson along because he actually saved
31:57
Speaker 1: our our butts like several times with questions. Yeah, we
32:00
Speaker 1: would have there would have been like five six questions
32:03
Speaker 1: that we wouldn't have gotten had it not been for him.
32:04
Speaker 1: And he's a very cool guy. Wyatt see Neck from
32:08
Speaker 1: The Daily Show came along. Another buddy, super cool. We
32:11
Speaker 1: actually had lunch with Ian Hodgman one day. Yes, the
32:14
Speaker 1: the esteemed Joe Randazzo, the editor in chief of The Onion,
32:18
Speaker 1: who again we couldn't have done any of this without Joe.
32:20
Speaker 1: Was awesome. Joe was there just looking pumped, you know,
32:24
Speaker 1: because he works out instead of smokes. Now he's very intimidating.
32:27
Speaker 1: And then um Ira Glass, Yes, the man that we
32:32
Speaker 1: stare up at in the iTunes rankings every day. Yes,
32:35
Speaker 1: Ira Glass was there and on our team not there
32:38
Speaker 1: to be rate and he was there on our team.
32:41
Speaker 1: He was very cool and I just need to say that.
32:43
Speaker 1: He came up to me afterward and was blown away.
32:46
Speaker 1: Do your impression show and I don't want to start
32:48
Speaker 1: impresonating glass. Your fans are amazing. That was pretty good.
32:53
Speaker 1: That was close. He was blown away by the by
32:55
Speaker 1: the enthusiasm of the stuff. You should know Army and
32:59
Speaker 1: he doesn't. And Randazzo came up to and he's like, man,
33:01
Speaker 1: Ira doesn't get this sort of like rock star thing much.
33:04
Speaker 1: So he was tickled to be there, I think, and
33:07
Speaker 1: have people you know fawning over him and telling him
33:11
Speaker 1: how much they loved him. It's which is something he deserves.
33:14
Speaker 1: And Hodgman, we mentioned John Hodgman was on our team
33:17
Speaker 1: and he was one of the funniest, quickest, witted, smartest
33:21
Speaker 1: guys I've ever met in my life. Agreed, I'm with
33:24
Speaker 1: you on that one. Like I told my buddy Scotty
33:27
Speaker 1: about that, and he said, you're really quick, though, man,
33:28
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, but dude, when I quickly make like
33:31
Speaker 1: a fart joke, Hodgeman is that quick. But he references
33:35
Speaker 1: like an eighteenth century poet and it fits and it's funny, right,
33:39
Speaker 1: it's like a drag racer. Yeah, in like a fifteen
33:45
Speaker 1: year old donkey in competition in that one. Thank you Yeah,
33:50
Speaker 1: same here, buddy, I got like the twelve year old
33:52
Speaker 1: donkey thing going up, all right, So yeah, thank you
33:56
Speaker 1: very much everybody who helped that. And it was such
33:58
Speaker 1: a success. We had such an a time that we're like,
34:01
Speaker 1: why would we spend any more time at the office,
34:03
Speaker 1: Let's go hit other cities. So look for other cities
34:06
Speaker 1: in the very near future. And we want to know
34:08
Speaker 1: where we should go next. So if you have a
34:10
Speaker 1: suggestion of what city where we should go that kind
34:14
Speaker 1: of thing. You want to play some trivia, let us know.
34:16
Speaker 1: Send us an email to stuff Podcast at how stuff
34:20
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
34:27
Speaker 1: other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com. Want
34:30
Speaker 1: more house stuff Works, check out our blogs on the
34:33
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