Ali Soufan's The Black Banners (Declassified): How Torture Derailed the War on Terror after 9/11
Author
Ali Soufan,
Former Supervisory Special Agent, FBI; Chief Executive Officer, The Soufan Group and Founder, The Soufan Center
In Discussion with
Karen J. Greenberg,
Director, CNS
Thursday, September 24th, 2:00PM
In 2011, when Ali Soufan’s first book The Black Banners was published, significant portions of the text were redacted on what were claimed to be national security grounds. Nine years later, and after subsequent review by the Central Intelligence Agency, those redactions have been lifted and Ali Soufan can now talk about his book in full for the first time. The removal of the redactions corrects the record on how vital intelligence was obtained from al-Qaeda suspects and brings forth important new details on the controversial use of enhanced interrogation techniques, or torture, to extract information from terror suspects. For many years, proponents of the use of these techniques have argued that they produced actionable intelligence in the war on terror. This conversation between Karen Greenberg and Ali Soufan will discuss the newly released The Black Banners (Declassified) to understand the complete story of what happened in America’s name after the events of 9/11. The discussion will specifically touch upon the ways in which truth was manipulated in post-9/11 America and the serious challenge faced in setting the record straight on this dark and painful period of America’s history.
Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent and a leading national security and counterterrorism expert, is the CEO of The Soufan Group, Founder of The Soufan Center, and author, including of The Black Banners (Declassified): How Torture Derailed the War on Terror after 9/11 (W. W. Norton, 2020).
