Author(s): Glenn Carle

World History

This is a confession from a senior CIA operative, Glenn Carle, who led the interrogation against one of the most high profile CIA catches of the last decade, a senior Al Qa'ida man who was thought to hold the key to finding Bin laden. Carle's journey is a tale of international intrigue, deceit and betrayal - it is also an extraordinary and intimate portrait of our war on terror. Carle had years of training and experience leading up to this encounter. He had been all around the world, under many guises. Brilliant at languages, this was his apotheosis as a career spook in the Directorate of Operations. But as the interrogation begins and he builds a rapport with his subject, a feeling begins to gnaw at him slightly. The man he is interrogating isn't who he is alleged to be; he is low level at best. But while this dawns on Carle and as his skepticism grows, his superiors continue to insist that they have the right man and the interrogation must continue. There comes a point when Carle can only go so far with the suspect. He can pry no information from him. He needs to be released. But how do you release a man who has been secretly renditioned, who is a ghost?
CIA superiors continue to insist that Carle's suspect is the genuine article. So the suspect is plucked from his interrogation environment and spirited away to one of the CIA notorious black sites where he is subjected to 'enhanced interrogation techniques.' And our skeptical CIA man is also spirited away, to the same black site, where he will continue the interrogation...Initially enthusiastic about his role in the CIA's efforts to gather intelligence, Carle eventually began to question the policies and their implementation of the War on Terrorism because of his involvement in this high level interrogation. He was forced to grapple with the most difficult question a patriot can face: what do you do when your government tells you to do something morally abhorrent? Carle's journey is a tale of international intrigue, deceit and betrayal - it is also an extraordinary and intimate portrait of our war on terror, a work that deserves comparison with the work of Graham Greene and Don DeLillo.