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Air Date - December 11, 2009

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http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/19487 Episode 129

Thank you to the following for making this program possible: Nick Natzke and KAS Publicity
www.kaspublicity.com 

HOST: Bob Calvert

GUESTS:

(Ret) Captain Jason Meszaros
Army Intelligence Officer

Author of Interrogation of Morals 

Read Excerpts of  "Interrogation of Morals" at the end of this page

Jason Meszaros has 15 years of military experience as an Intelligence and Psychological Operations Officer. He has received the Bronze Star Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, and the Afghanistan Campaign Medal.

 Captain Jason Meszaros in Afghanistan

Jason Meszaros Current Photo

As an Army Intelligence Officer, Capt. Meszaros was assigned to a task force investigating Al Qaeda and the Taliban. In Operation Noble Eagle, he worked in the Washington, D.C., area with federal law enforcement agents on the investigations of detainees and was a liaison to the Central Intelligence Agency. As part of that assignment, he traveled to Guantanamo Bay and viewed the interrogation of detainees.

Capt. Meszaros traveled to Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom in 2004 and supported the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force. While in Afghanistan, he participated in the interrogation of numerous senior Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, including the man who led Osama bin Laden out of Tora Bora in December 2001, a senior Al Qaeda operative for Southeast Asia, and others.

During this time, he participated in highly classified missions targeting senior Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders such as Roze Khan, a.k.a. the Taliban Billy the Kid, as featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

Capt. Meszaros’s most important mission was documenting the Al Qaeda training camps (Al Farouq and Tarnak Farms) where numerous 9/11 hijackers received terrorist training in small arms, poisons, bomb-making, assassinations, and counter-interrogation.

Capt. Meszaros was a member of the only unit in the Army that specializes in Psychological Operations (PSYOP) with enemy prisoners of war, and he led a team comprised of analysts, product development specialists, and interrogators.

He deployed to Bosnia in support of Operation Joint Forge and traveled extensively throughout the country. He has received training at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, PSYOP Officer Training, and numerous trainings as an Intelligence Officer. 

Capt. Meszaros is currently the Chief Information Officer of a Minnesota state agency and is the Director of Operations of Vets for Freedom (www.vetsforfreedom.org) in Minnesota. He has appeared in the advertisements “Finish the Job” and “Some in Washington.” He resides in St. Michael, Minnesota, with his wife and daughter.

For more information, or to schedule an interview with Jason Meszaros, please contact Kristen Schremp at Kristen@kaspublicity.com or 703.928.5527

Interrogation of Morals

Excerpts

The constant media barrage of a small number of soldiers being killed every day will wear on the American people. The fight at home is much harder to win than the fight in Iraq or Afghanistan. The United States military knows how to win this war but without the support of the country, the politicians and the citizens back home, we will not be victorious… The greatest threat to US military success is the lack of support from the politicians back home. This lesson should have been learned after every major conflict but with new generations of politicians, the lesson is easily forgotten. (p. 21)

[I]f Al Qaeda sends all of the educated members into suicide attacks, they will eventually run out of smart people who can plan the attacks well enough to actually pull them off. Al Qaeda needs the uneducated zealots for cannon fodder. The war in Iraq has proven this theory time and again. (p. 31)

In my second week I was finally allowed into the warehouse for an introductory training class that gave me an overview of the directive of the task force and background on Al Qaeda. It was there I learned that the task force had conducted the investigations of John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban, and the Buffalo Six.2 The task force had the responsibility of investigating high level Al Qaeda and Taliban. (p. 32)

The mission, as I understood it at that time, was to evaluate all of the detainees being held at Guantánamo Bay and review the intelligence to see what could be used as evidence. The main focus of the HQ task force was to screen the detainees and determine who was actually a hard core Al Qaeda operative, who was a low- level fighter and who was a non-combatant that inadvertently got rounded up and shipped to Cuba. (p. 32)

Some of the videos I watched at the task force were Al Qaeda testing chemical and biological weapons on dogs. These were literally some of the most disturbing videos that I watched. Strangely, these videos were never shown by the media; perhaps out of some sensibility that cruelty to animals is more horrific than cruelty to humans. (p. 33)

At no point in my training as an intelligence professional and at no time in my work in Guantánamo and Afghanistan did I ever witness an intelligence professional strike a prisoner. I‘m not naïve enough to deny that it happens and I can cite a personal example of a detainee being struck by an Afghan soldier but Army interrogators are not taught to abuse prisoners nor is it encouraged. There is no denying that some bad things have happened in Guantánamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib. That should not be the basis for judging how the Army treats its prisoners. Most of the abuses were the result of a lack of leadership or determined focus on the basics.

The number of abuses is minimal in comparison to the overall number of interrogations and prisoners that have been handled through the system. I’m by no means defending the abuses and even a single one needs to be pointed out but by the nature of sheer volume; it was bound to happen eventually.

Let me say this, TORTURE is wrong. I personally feel that everybody has their own moral compass and it is important for each individual to know which way his or her compass points. In a war zone in the face of the enemy, it is easy to get lost. The beauty of America is that we recognize when our moral compass is pointing us in the wrong direction. Americans are taught to speak up when they see something wrong and escalate the situation to authorities. The US Army has made numerous mistakes throughout history but they are always self-correcting.

When abuses began in Guantánamo, the Army recognized that what was happening was wrong and began to correct it. Some of those mistakes made their way to Afghanistan and Iraq before they were caught. Once the mistakes were identified, the Army made its best effort to correct the situation and hold accountable those people who had strayed. That is the power of America, and it is what makes us unique in the world. Every human makes mistakes, law enforcement and military included, but in America we admit our mistakes and correct them, unlike other regimes and governments that either hide their dirty laundry, or tell the rest of the world to mind their own business (pps. 40-41)

While all of those techniques work very well, the most effective technique is what I call the cheeseburger approach. Was this the “torture” I had heard about in the liberal media?

The cheeseburger approach was developed by an Army CID agent along with an AF OSI agent. The technique was discovered by accident one day as the guys were running late and ran through the drive thru at a fast food joint at Guantánamo (Yes, they are there!).

They showed up for the interview with a few minutes to spare so they decided to eat their lunch in the booth. The prisoner was mistakenly brought in a few minutes early and subsequently had to endure watching the agents eat cheeseburgers right in front of him. He was hungry and sick of the food in the prison so he solicited a cheeseburger from them in return for some very valuable information. From that point on whenever the agents interviewed that detainee they brought him cheeseburgers from the McDonalds on base and he kept giving information.

Incidentally, the information has proven very valuable to the War on Terror and I personally experienced the value of the information gathered from him. The information that this detainee provided saved my life and the lives of the unit I was working with in Afghanistan. This particular detainee happened to be the master bomb maker and trainer at Tarnak Farms Training camp outside of Kandahar. He created detailed maps of the camp showing where there were booby traps set up within the camp. As we performed a crime scene investigation of the camp for use in the military tribunals we used those maps as guides and were able to locate and disarm or, at a minimum, avoid the traps. He did all this while downing burgers and fries.

The reality of operations with detainees is that if you make them miss the life they had before they were captured, the more they want to get back to that life. If getting back to that life means telling the truth about being a terrorist then most of them will admit it. If they can get a luxury item, such as good food, they will answer questions. To keep it simple, if you make friends with them and build rapport with them they will trust you and feel more comfortable telling you more details about what they did, saw and learned. Once you cross the line of physical torture, it is extremely difficult to cross back and build rapport with any detainee. I credit the professionalism and experience of the law enforcement personnel with ensuring that we were not involved in any questionable activities.

Bug told one story that I will never forget. He described a team that pulled up next to a couple sitting in a small beat up Toyota and ended up stopped next to them. As they looked over to assess the vehicle's occupants as we always do, the female in the vehicle looked up and made eye contact with one of the soldiers. Within seconds the male in the vehicle began hitting her for just looking at us. They badly wanted to pull him out of that car and beat the crap out of him, or maybe put a bullet into him, but of course couldn’t do either. The moral choice here was to either let the man get away with beating his wife, or risk going to jail for a war crime (shooting an unarmed civilian). They chose their own freedom and swallowed the anger. I still get nauseous when I think about those guys not being able to help her. I don’t know if the story is true or just an urban legend but soldiers face those same types of decisions every day in combat zones around the world. (p. 59)

In my case I made friends with the counter-intelligence team within the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force (CJSOTF). I had worked in that area before and I knew I could talk the talk. I made a presentation to the entire intelligence group within CJSOTF and they liked the value proposition that we offered. We would collect evidence during the capture of High Value Targets and ensure that they would not get let out of the prison at Bagram on technicalities or due to lack of proper evidence. Too many times they had sacrificed and put themselves on the line only to have the prisoner released months later due to a lack of evidence.

In the wake of Abu Ghraib and the scrutiny that all the prisons came under, they were letting prisoners go left and right. The liberal left and the media were having a field day. The glare of the media caused people to be let go to fight again, that it had taken our men months and years to capture. (p. 67)

During my tenure in Afghanistan I would estimate that at least a dozen people were eventually transferred out of Guantánamo and sent back to Afghanistan to resume their deadly ways. There were more than just those twelve but I specifically remember those released prisoners because they returned to the battle field. They had managed to fool the board at Guantánamo and get released and as predicted they still wanted to kill Americans. We had the connections to the Guantánamo databases that stored all the information about them so the local command leaned heavily on us to identify them.

My computer skills became a commodity very much in demand in a world where people are trained to shoot, not to type. I knew how to put together an SQL statement that would pull up the information that we were looking for, and I filtered out the unwanted information. Most of the analysts can manage to get the information but they also get a mountain of stuff they don't want. They then have to sift through it to determine what is relevant and what is not. I did that with simple code. It made me a rock star intelligence guy very quickly.

As you can see from the following reports, it happened time and time again. (p. 68)

**To my surprise, a little girl no older than six or seven years old walked up to me with her father. As he nudged her forward she very quietly and politely said to me, “Thank you for freeing our country.”My heart skipped a beat. I was touched and at that moment I knew that we were in Afghanistan for a good reason. We were there to provide this little girl with a future. This was my first glimpse into which direction my moral compass was pointing. I had never experienced a moment that truly felt so good and I knew that we had to continue making the right decisions. I’ll never forget that little girl's face as long as I live. Her smile made up for a lot of the other moments when I had not been certain of my mission. (p. 78)

The commander discussed at length, with all of us, the ramifications of the prisoner abuse scandal that had occurred in Iraq. We knew and understood that if we saw, heard about, or committed an act that could be deemed as abuse that it was to be reported immediately. Nobody on the task force felt that abusing prisoners was the best way to get information out of them.

I found it extremely disappointing that we even had to have the conversation. All of the honor and integrity that was at the very core of the military and my beloved Intelligence branch was being tainted. I knew what I had been trained to do and I knew that we weren’t trained to humiliate prisoners as the guards had done at Abu Ghraib. I was sickened by the pictures and I had a feeling that the repercussions would be enormous. I was definitely right. Every move we made was scrutinized and anything that looked out of the ordinary was investigated. In fact, that mind set ended up causing me no end of grief down the road. (pps. 86-87)

I spent the time at the mobile hospital, set up to vaccinate the children in the surrounding villages. Local villagers would come to the base from miles around and were able to receive basic medical care. The children were given vaccinations and medicine as needed, and all sorts of ailments and illnesses were treated there. These efforts are one more example of the way that we are winning the hearts and

minds of the local population through providing them with basic needs. Al Qaeda doesn’t understand that. Their tactics of fear and intimidation work in the short run, but helping people is a much better long term strategy. (p. 98)

I could see the hatred in their eyes and hear it in their voices. That feeling of knowing that they would happily kill me in a heartbeat is something I will never forget. (p. 104)

Once the questioning started, he opened up very quickly. We had taken the time and effort to build the rapport and the trust necessary to get a prisoner to tell us whatever we asked him. We began to show him pictures and he immediately started to identify senior level Al Qaeda and Taliban personalities. Our method had worked. He even identified Osama bin Laden himself as the “tall Arab” he had led out of Tora Bora in December of 2001. He confirmed what had been suspected all along. He identified routes on a map and we plotted the exact route he had taken to get into Pakistan. It was amazing to witness the level of trust that he had for us. (p. 128)

I did not witness the torture as portrayed in the movies or by Hollywood or even in the liberal media. In real life, the interrogation of prisoners does not take place as perceived by media and therefore wrongly communicated to the American public. (p. 129)

Timmy and I began interviewing another prisoner shortly after O’Hara left. The prisoner was supposed to be a fairly significant prisoner but we didn’t realize why until we got into the booth with him. I had read the dossier on the prisoner and he was considered to be the head of Al Qaeda for all of Southeast Asia. Reading his file I pictured a large foreboding man that I would be intimidated just by being in his presence. Even looking at his picture didn't dissuade me from my mental image.

When we walked into the booth the first time, I was extremely disappointed. The man was small and fragile looking just like his picture accurately portrayed. I had built an image in my head based on the guy’s title and not the dossier's facts. I learned a great lesson that day.

Not all prisoners are what they seem and preconceived notions can be dangerous. (p. 130)

As we waited for the assault to begin, the air was thick with tension and the excitement level was pegged on high. This SEAL team was already on track to capture or kill more senior Taliban than any other unit thus far in the war. This mission would no doubt add another high-value enemy commander to their credit. (p. 162)

We moved maybe a quarter of a mile before coming to a complete stop. The time we sat stopped ticked by, second by second, and felt like an eternity. We were all wired from not sleeping, jacked up on adrenaline, armed and ready for a fight, and yet being held back like race horses behind the gate. The halt lasted only about thirty seconds but we all kept asking each other “what the -uck is going on?” (p. 176)

It took several long, hot miserable hours before we lifted off from that godforsaken place and the flight back to Kandahar was very quiet. I think everyone was drained, but we were also overwhelmed with what we had seen. To think that the ground we had walked on and the places we had explored had been occupied by our country's worst enemies, terrorists who had vowed our death, was troubling. The images you could conjure up in your mind were ghostly and disturbing.

To see videos, to read a book, or to hear about these training camps is one thing, but to actually see it, smell it, and touch the stones was something else altogether. I'll never forget it. (P. 194)

Without much time to recover, the very next day we started all over again on another mission, only this time we had a convoy and not choppers. We were heading out to Tarnak Farms. You may recall from news reports that Tarnak Farms was the infamous training camp where bin Laden’s son had gotten married. It was a huge gathering and the CIA could have circumvented the horrific events of September 11 had President Clinton allowed them to blow up his convoy. (p. 194)

A camp that has been disputed as being part of the Al Qaeda network was Khalden. A number of the detainees being held at Guantánamo Bay have stated that the camp was never affiliated with Al Qaeda. It may have started as a non-Al Qaeda camp but it survived the Taliban shutdown of camps and eventually became an Al Qaeda camp. It was bombed for that very reason. Khalden was the primary

camp used for training terrorists in defensive operations. Those types of operations were primarily designed to attack occupiers of any Muslim country such as Bosnia, Palestine, Chechnya and Afghanistan.

The list of senior level Al Qaeda who attended training here is quite long. It includes Ramsi Yousef from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Richard Reid the shoe bomber, Omar Al Farouq head of AQ in SE Asia, Mohammed Atta, from the Sept 11 hijackers, Zacarias Moussaoui arrested in Minneapolis attending flight training, Ahmed Ressam, the Millennium Bomber, Satam al Suqami, another Interrogation of Morals / 199 September 11 hijacker, and Mohamed Moumou.

Mohammed Moumou is an interesting case. He was connected to Abu Musab Al Zarqawi who later became the head of Al Qaeda in the war in Iraq. He was leading the Al Qaeda charge for the development and use of chemical and biological weapons in Europe. (p198)

I wish we had taken the training camps out sooner. I wish the administration in power during the 90’s had taken steps to prevent the training of thousands of terrorists. The use of pre-emptive strikes against our enemies has become a negative cliché of sorts since the Bush administration invaded Iraq. (p199)

I would rather risk the international reputation of America to prevent another Sept 11 from happening. Being passive and just allowing things to 'play out' is no longer good enough. Other countries will still trade goods with us even though we invaded Iraq. America is too powerful of a player in the world economy for anyone to shun us and stop trading with us. We need to remain humble as we play our role on the world stage, but we also need to protect ourselves and the line between humble and strong protection was crossed when we allowed ourselves to be attacked on September 11.

I know that Iraq had nothing to do directly with the attacks on Sept 11. But I also know that Iraq harbored and trained many Interrogation of Morals / 200 men with extremist views, not just the men who attacked us. America can never let the situation get that bad again. We can only turn a blind eye to extremism for so long before it strikes out and blackens that eye. (p 199-200)

As I struggled internally with what was about to happen, the four wheeler approached the man under the tree, and he rose to his feet and began to fire at it. Instantly my pity for the man went away. I no longer felt sorry for him that he was outnumbered. I didn’t care any longer and I wanted him dead. I wanted him dead for Brian, for

September 11, 1001 in the name of freedom this man needed to die. He knew he was out numbered and made his choice. Now he would pay the price. Choices always have consequences, as I was learning. (p 208)

Lara Logan was interviewing some of the senior SEALs about the success of killing a commander such as Roze Khan. They told her all about how it would disrupt the operations of the Taliban and make it much harder for the Taliban to pull off future operations. Nobody mentioned the vengeance factor about Brian. They didn’t need to. I felt incredibly satisfied knowing that I had been one of the shooters on the mountainside that day. In reality though, if Roze Khan had surrendered, or even not tried to run away, he would not have been killed. His death was the direct result of his decision to fire on U.S. troops. He was hardcore Taliban and wanted to die fighting, I was glad we granted his wish. (p. 212)

In between analyzing the intelligence and questioning the courier, we made a trip over to the morgue. We pulled Roze Khan’s body out of the cooler and we showed it to a local Afghani who had been captured and tortured by Khan. He broke down in tears when we showed him the body.

It was an extremely emotional moment for all of us but it was blatantly obvious that this man was very happy that Roze Khan was dead.

We asked the obvious question, “Why?”

The man was a former Afghan soldier and he told us a story about getting captured by Khan and his men and being tortured. He pulled up his pant legs and showed us the scars that covered 90% of his legs. Khan had poured boiling hot oil on the man’s legs to torture him for joining forces with the Americans. The man told us that he considered himself the lucky one.

Of the twenty men that had been captured, he was the only survivor. The rest of the men had been killed in front of him, many by Khan himself. Khan was trying to get information about American operations out of them and none of them would talk. There is a reason that we should not use torture as a means to obtain

information and this just reinforced that for me.

The man was released because the villagers had come out and begged for Khan to let him go. They had stood up for him and it had worked. The man’s sobbing turned into full fledged crying as he relayed this part of the story because he knew that he was the only one who had survived. He felt the guilt of losing his entire platoon. I can’t imagine what that feels like. (p. 215-216)

All three investigations found that we had done nothing wrong. In fact, Nate was awarded the Distinguished Civilian Service Award, which is the highest honor awarded for civilians serving in the U.S. Navy. I was awarded a Bronze Star Medal for my service through the Hotak mission, not surprising, I received nothing for the Khan mission. I heard a rumor that the two Seals on that hillside were also awarded Bronze Stars with a V device for Valor. They deserved it! (p. 225)

The election of 2004 had just ended and presidential candidate John Kerry had made a theme in his campaign that this was “the wrong war at the wrong time”. I knew he had to have been looking at the same intelligence that I was while I was in Afghanistan and I didn’t understand how he came to that conclusion. He was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and yet he was claiming things in his campaign that I knew were blatantly false about the war in Iraq. Sentiment turned it from the War on Terror to the War in Iraq. The two fronts were becoming disconnected as the war began to politicize. I knew I had to get more involved. (afterword)

If I had political aspirations I thought it would be a tough call for me to determine which party to align with. I clearly fall into the conservative Republican category but if you cross party lines and work with the Democrats across the aisle you get eaten by your own party for straying and accused of not having “values”.

Democrats on the other hand have few real stances on any one issue and therefore it is easy to cross party lines to partner with the other side and actually get something accomplished. Is it better to toe the line as a staunch Republican or be billed as a “Moderate” Democrat and accomplish a lot more by working with the Republicans? ( p. 236)

It took me a few years to come to a conclusion regarding the difference between being a Democrat and a Republican. I viewed them all as politicians. Today I can tell you honestly that I am an American, first and foremost.

As I stood up for veterans and allowed my voice to be heard in support of my brethren who were still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, I had a revelation about where I stood and how I got there.

I was standing up for something that I believed in. My moral compass had led me to this place. I want my elected officials to stand for what they believe in rather than what the party believes in. Each member of Congress should be voting their own conscience with each and every vote. They should never be voting strictly down the party line. That bears repeating. Politicians need to follow a moral compass and not a party line. I want people to know who I am and what I stand for. I am an American who believes in protecting our rights, freedoms and liberties just as my forefathers Interrogation of Morals / 237 have for over two centuries.

America should always come before the party. I am definitely conservative and fall in line with the right side of the political spectrum but I don’t want that to define me. I want people to know that I am an American.

As of June 2008 the President’s approval rating was at 29%. Not even 1 out of 3 people think he is doing a good job. As much as this upsets me, he is only one man. Congress had an approval rating of 19%. That’s less than 1 out 5 people think Congress is doing a good job. 535 members in Congress and Americans only think 101 of them are doing a satisfactory job. How can this be?

Shouldn’t we expect the opposite to be true? I want to see 4 out of 5 Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. In the current state of long term politicians and partisan politics I don’t see an end in sight. In order for that approval rating to rise, politicians need to have the interests of Americans in mind, not reelection.

They need to work together to make decisions for America, not prevent each other from achieving their “agenda”.

Collaboration on both sides of the aisle is what will earn the trust of American citizens because that’s when citizens will start to see results being produced. (236-237)

The Left is using soldiers for political gain. I am disgusted by the misinformation campaign regarding the American soldier. The left and the media have portrayed the American soldier as a bunch of raping, murdering, torturing, cold blooded killers. When they aren’t positioning us as the cruel heartless type they are trying to paint us as victims. All this when they should be supporting us so we can finish the job that Congress and the President sent us to do. Soldiers are neither. They are people trained to do a job and that job is to kill the enemy if necessary in order to protect the citizens of America.

We are not victims of this war. We are selfless volunteers and as such we should be taken care of for our sacrifice. That does not make us victims and should not be spun as such. In a world where so many people feel they are “entitled” to things rather than having to work for them, I find it comforting that the ultimate selfless servants, our soldiers, are not rising up and claiming a stake in America. That’s because we understand that it takes the sacrifices that we are making, above all else, for the country to remain free. (p 238)

Veterans are the one group in this country who know the true meaning of selfless service, courage, integrity, and patriotism. They have placed themselves in harm’s way and put their lives on the line for the freedom and liberty that America provides. There is nothing more noble than that. Veterans embody the courage and integrity that this country needs to remain the great country that our forefathers

founded.

I believe that courage is the ability to confront wrongdoing even when the odds are against you. Courage is being afraid and still finding the ability to act. Courage is knowing that you may not come back, but you go anyway. Courage is the heart and soul of every Veteran who has laid down his or her life for freedom.

Integrity is doing what you know is right. Integrity is keeping your commitments even when times get tough. Integrity is knowing when you have broken a commitment and having the moral fortitude to make a new commitment. Integrity belongs in the heart of every American. It should be the hallmark of our government leaders, but too often it is missing in action. (p 240)