The FRONTLINE Interviews

Jane Mayer

Staff Writer, The New Yorker

Jane Mayer is chief Washington correspondent at The New Yorker. She covers politics, culture and national security.

The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Jim Gilmore on June 30, 2021. It has been edited for clarity and length.

This interview appears in:

America After 9/11

TOP

Jane Mayer

Chapters

Text Interview:

Highlight text to share it

The 9/11 Attacks

So let’s discuss [President George W.] Bush for a second here.Here’s a guy that, he’s got to feel guilty about the fact that he’s president at the point that the attack happens, that they didn’t catch it.They are very afraid of another attack.I mean, the anthrax thing happens soon after.He’s sort of looking into the abyss, has to, as anyone would in a leadership role.How do you think that looking through that prism affects almost everything else that he does when it comes to the war on terrorism over the next seven years, or whatever it is, for him?How does that play, do you believe, in how he viewed things?

I think, you know, there was a tremendous sense that Bush had, and Cheney had, that they had underestimated the threat, clearly.He had been warned about it, and yet he hadn’t taken real action on it.¹

Politico: What the CIA knew before 9/11

And so what that must have done, I think, is to really make them absolutely do anything they could to make sure there wasn’t going to be another attack.I mean, they were—they were obsessed with the idea that there would be another attack and that they would be held responsible and that they would be responsible again.And so fear just permeated everything during those years.

And Cheney specifically.So Cheney is the guy that’s on the ground, in the White House, the White House that they think is going to be attacked.He looks death in the eye, basically.How do you think that moment of that reality would affect him, and especially with the very aggressive positions that he takes during that period of time?

So in a way, this was Cheney’s nightmare come true.It was sort of the political equivalent of a prepper.He had been getting ready for doomsday for years and thought a lot about it.And then, on 9/11, it seemed like it was almost coming true.And so he became—he bent over backwards to do anything he could to make sure this would never happen again.He was completely, you know, he was just driven by fear.I mean, literally, when he went home every day from the White House to the vice president’s mansion, he would talk about how they needed to vary the route home in order to escape the jackal.He felt sort of death was stalking him.He kept a gas mask and a hazmat suit in a bag in the backseat, you know.

And so this was sort of ever present on his mind.And I think what it did was it meant that national security concerns became paramount to everything, and they lived in a constant state of emergency.And I think one of the most important things that happened was that they began to—because of this mindset that they were in, of constant fear, they looked at law not as something strengthening them but as something that was constraining them, and particularly human rights law.They looked at it as things that were handcuffing them, and they looked for ways to get out of the constraints of the law.Law became an impediment to get around, and that was the beginning of what we've come to know as the sort of the torture program.

Black Sites

… The CIA, of course, is put in a very different position than they’d ever been before.All restraints are off.And they’ve got prisoners, and they need to interrogate them, and so what do they do?How does it lead to these sites all over the world?Just talk about what they do and why.

Well, Cheney says, in order to win this war on terror, we’re going to have to go to what he calls the "dark side."Doesn’t really define it.But at that point, the White House authorizes a finding, a presidential finding, that enables the most breathtaking covert war, globally, that the world had seen since the Cold War.The CIA becomes authorized to operate in 80 countries and to set up secret prison sites and snatch, kidnap suspects, detain them outside of the rule of law, use methods of interrogation that, in the past, we would have thought were illegal and criminal because they were so harsh and cruel.And it becomes a secret war and black sites around the world.

Where do they set up these secret black sites?

Well, the problem is, they want to detain and interrogate people, but they don’t know where to put them.And they're afraid, if they bring them into the United States, they will have to operate under United States law.So they operate on the theory that, if we can take them outside of the United States, we’re outside of the Geneva Conventions.And they won't pertain to what we do to these prisoners.So they set up dark sites in Eastern Europe, in Thailand and, of course, Guantanamo.

So Gul Rahman seems to be one of the most aggressive examples of how prisoners are treated.

… So among the methods that they authorized are stress positions and various other ways of breaking people down to make them talk, and that includes nakedness and extreme temperatures.And so you get this situation where one of the detainees in U.S. custody, Gul Rahman, is held in freezing temperatures and dies of hypothermia.

We talked to [Secretary of State Colin] Powell.… It’s an interesting interview, because he doesn’t admit to as much as you might expect.Again, this was done a couple years ago.But he does acknowledge the fact of the brutality of it.So it’s fascinating.But talk about, also, the fact that the way that that speech was received.… Discuss the America of that moment.

You know, I think it’s hard to convey almost how scary that period was.And the idea—you know, our sense of invulnerability had been completely shattered by 9/11, and people were seeking security somehow, and safety.And so when we were told by the most important people in our government that there were weapons of mass destruction that could be used against us by a madman in another country, it seemed entirely believable.And, you know, I think there was a kind of a suspension of critical thinking, almost.

The Mission in Iraq

So we’re in Iraq now.Describe the certitude of the Bush administration on the fact that there were weapons of mass destruction, but more than that, that we would be received as heroes, that it would be a cakewalk, and that it would not be that difficult to set up a democracy in an important place in the Middle East, that would then spread throughout.

Well, you know, you look back now, and it’s hard to believe.But really, what the Bush administration was telling itself, and telling the rest of the world, was that we would be so welcomed in Iraq, that people would be dancing in the streets and that they were just hungry for American-style democracy, and that we were going to set it up, and we weren’t going to be conquerors; we were going to be liberators.And that they were just waiting for us, really.And I mean, it was a fairy tale that we told ourselves.

And the reality of what happened very soon after, before the insurgency and stuff, but the people breaking into the ministries and looting them, and the American troops that were there, sort of like in between a rock and a hard place, not knowing what to do and not making any decisions—I mean, what did that show about our position?

You know, we had a collision with reality in Iraq.And what happened was people were looting in the streets, breaking into the museums and smashing antiquities.And the Defense secretary, Don Rumsfeld, was just saying, “Well, you know, stuff happens in a war.” He was so nonchalant about it.But it was, you know, clear; it was nothing like what we had been told it would be.

Skipping up to April '04, when Abu Ghraib pictures are released, what are your first impressions?

Oh, you know, those first pictures that came out in 2004, it was a horror.I mean, you think of the United States as sort of the torchbearer of human rights and rule of law and fairness and justice, and there we have these pictures that come out that look like medieval pictures of a torture chamber, and United States troops are mugging it up next to these horrible pictures of these victims, who are naked, cowering from dogs in chains, screaming.They're standing on chairs in hoods that, you know—these were pictures of horror.These were pictures that you never would have imagined were America.

And what it said to the world at that point, and how the world reacts, about American values, American exceptionalism?What was the effect?

What it did was it made us look like hypocrites in the eyes of the entire world, because we had been the standard-bearers for human rights and decent treatment of prisoners, among other things.And we have a very exceptionally sophisticated code of military justice, and it bans all of that kind of barbarism.And here we were caught.These pictures showed that the United States was participating in it.

What George Bush, the president at the time, said when these pictures first came out was, “Well, there are always a few rotten apples at the bottom of the barrel.” But I think the most important thing that those pictures did was they captured protocols that turned out to be a policy of the United States and that you could see in other parts of the world, too, where we were holding detainees.It became clear, because of those pictures, there was a pattern of misbehavior here and that it had been authorized.

The effect, also, on the American public, was this a turning point?Was this a point where some Americans saw it all going wrong?

… Well, it’s certainly not dancing in the street, yeah.I think the WMD thing maybe was more important.You know, the Abu Ghraib pictures, I mean, they showed a kind of warfare that you couldn’t be proud of.This was nothing like those World War II pictures of D-Day.This was something—this was a horror scene.And I think maybe it began to cause people to raise questions about our involvement in Iraq that only deepened, of course, when it turned out that there were no weapons of mass destruction.

And that story, the idea that there were no weapons of mass destruction, sort of what was the effect of that?And what did it say about the government in the eyes of the American public?

Well, of course, the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction opened up a tremendous credibility gap for the United States government.The country had been told that this was a war we had to fight for our own survival and safety.And it raised the question: Why are we there then?Also, I think you could see the beginning of some of the conspiracy theories that have sort of infected the American mindset.People began to come up with: “Well, if it wasn’t for WMD, is our government lying to us?And why?” And they began to think, well, maybe they're doing this for oil; they're doing it for the oil companies.People began to sort of distrust their own government in a big way.

And the pivot, where the argument all of a sudden only became that we’re there to establish democracy for these poor people that have been suffering under Saddam Hussein, how do you view that?And how did the American public view that?

Well, I think a lot of people felt that’s not what we were here to support.It would have been nice if there was democracy, but that was always the fringe benefit.What we were thinking, what we were told, was this was a necessary war for our own self-defense because of those weapons of mass destruction.And you know, I think it was the beginning of the sort of exhaustion at constant warfare.

The Obama Years

So moving to Obama years, what does Bush leave for the incoming president when it comes to specifically the wars and the issue of terrorism?

Well, among other things, what Obama comes in and he inherits is a Guantanamo that he has trouble closing down.He inherits a program of extralegal CIA black site prisons, which he does succeed in closing down.And he makes a statement saying, “Torture, you know, waterboarding is torture, and we are not going to do it anymore.” He reasserts, basically, American values as we knew them before 9/11.But there are many programs that continue to operate in the dark anyway, including the drone program.

And the quagmire that he finds himself in with these two wars, and what he had promised?I mean, the reason he had gotten elected was really because of the war.

Obama campaigned on getting us out of these wars, and I think there was a sense of, you know, once he met with the military leaders and was told that, you know, it’s much harder than you think, and he instead increased the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, that created, I think, you know, great disenchantment among some of his base, the liberals and the progressives.You know, my own daughter, she was young.She was a teenager at the time.She cried when he gave that speech.So, you know, I think there was a great sense of disappointment.

… Why does he embrace drones?Why does he turn to drones, and the consequences of those decisions?

Well, you know, it’s amazing.The drone program that had started under George W. Bush was really booming by the time that Obama came into office.… It was a miracle kind of weaponry.But it was also taking out civilians, and it was operating half in secret, because some of it was a military use of drones, and the other was the CIA program, which was never acknowledged because it was a covert program.

And you know, imagine being the president.You're just inaugurated, and there were already, three days after you take office, all these deaths on your hands.And so what do you do, you know?And I think what happened was that basically, the intelligence agencies that were running these wars, both the military and then the CIA, were formidable, powerful and very much engaged in it.And you’ve got a young president with no national security experience, who was in a, kind of a weak spot, in terms of confronting them.And his aides were, in some ways, afraid to confront the military and intelligence leaders, so they let it go.

… But the initial idea was also that this was a surgical manner to take out leadership, and would accomplish.And then, you know, remember, forever on, they were always taking out the third leader of Al Qaeda, who would always be replaced.

It was like Whac-A-Mole.They just kept popping up.It was a hydra, or whatever.Yeah, it just kept resupplying the third leader in Al Qaeda over and over again.And meanwhile, you know, there were these people that they called squirters, who were the people who were running out of the houses to try to get away from these drone strikes.And you know, some of them were civilians.

And the morality of that?

I mean, I think the immorality of it was something that weighed heavily on Obama and anybody else who was really paying attention.What I think—you can correct me if I'm wrong—but I think one of the things that the Obama administration did was that they tried to take authority for the drone strikes—that is, for each individual strike—out of the hands of just the intelligence agency, in the case of the CIA, and they took authority back from the CIA and put the president back in the loop of having to authorize the strikes.Am I wrong?

No, no, you're right.

So, you know, so it was clear, this was weighing on their conscience enough that they didn’t want this thing to be kind of automatically operating without supervision and just popping people off in the other side of the globe.So they tried to bring it into some kind of framework of accountability.

Guantanamo

Why can't he close Guantanamo Bay?

I’ll have to say, one of the things that I find most shocking, unforeseeable, unimaginable is that 20 years later, Guantanamo is still a prison, still holding U.S.-held prisoners who have had no due process, some of them.It’s just—it’s just such a violation of everything that you think of as American values.The Obama administration took a swing at closing it, and I think they eventually found it would be just too politically costly.

One of the things that happened, when they announced that they were planning to move the detainees out, and then tried to get agreements with other countries to take them, was they found that the only way to do that was to take some in the United States.We had to make an example of ourselves.And so there was a plan, originally, to take some of the weaker prisoners and bring them into the United States.And the opponents of Obama in Congress made such a fuss about it and made it sound like this was going to be such a threat to life and limb in the United States that it just became too politically costly, and Obama gave up.

I mean, there was a while when Mitch McConnell made it his life’s mission to raise the heat about the idea of bringing any kind of Guantanamo-held prisoner into the United States.He went down to the floor of Congress every single day and just ranted about it, and what he was trying to do was just make it politically untenable for Obama to do this.

And he was pretty successful.So talk about Obama.He came in.His interest always was to be a domestic healer.He was going to restore the values lost post-9/11.But he pretty much became a war president, at least the way a lot of people viewed him.And certainly his legacy is so entangled with the wars.Looking back in the legacy of the Obama administration, how will people view it, due to the fact that he was also unable to completely disentangle America from these two wars?

I think that what you see in Obama is how powerful the military and intelligence establishment is.It takes a tremendous amount for a president to come in and stand up to them, and what it takes is a willingness to run the risk that there might be repercussions, that American security might be risked.And most people in politics don’t want to take those kind of risks.

Talk about that risk.This is still a blowback, to some extent, of the fear that Cheney and Bush had, which was, the fact is, that if politically, all of a sudden there is another attack, or the next attack happens, you're going to be in a lot of deep water there.

Absolutely.When they talked about bringing even a detainee or two up from Guantanamo, and bringing them into the United States, there were meetings over at the White House where they mentioned that, if there's a terrorist attack, if something goes wrong, there will be not another Democrat elected for decades.They saw this as a huge political risk.And fear kind of still hung over the country.

So let’s talk about the blowback at home, and on two different sides.The fact is, is by the end of Obama’s term, there were detractors on both sides due to decisions made about the wars.On the left, you mentioned some of the things already—I mean, the fact of the domestic surveillance that he allowed to keep going, the fact of he couldn’t close Gitmo, the fact that he was the Nobel Prize winner with a "kill list."Talk a little bit about the left and sort of what he was battling there.And then we’ll talk about the right, which was sort of off the charts about this Muslim American apologist, who is in league with the enemy and is more dangerous than the enemy itself, which went off the charts.But talk a little bit about what he was dealing with, first starting with the left.

Well, the inability of Obama to bring these wars to an end, I think, enraged some parts of the left, who, you know, gravitated towards someone like Bernie Sanders, who was much more emphatic that we need to just, like, get out of these countries.So the left becomes further left, I think, over some of this.

And the right, which is stoking this anger towards the individual, as well as his politics.The apologist, the distrust and the anger within the right about this president—what was that all about, and how it affected his ability to accomplish things?

I mean, you can't really talk about the Obama presidency without mentioning that he was the first Black president of the United States, and there was a tremendous backlash taking place.And there were, I think, many Americans who never really accepted that.And the way that they voiced it was by defining him as claiming that he was not American.They said he was a foreigner, foreign-born.He didn’t have an American birth certificate.This was all a complete lie, but those lies just spread like wildfire.And among the people who spread them, of course, was Donald Trump, who went on Fox News in 2011 and made a big issue of the birth certificate that he claimed that Obama didn’t have.

And so, you know, there was this kind of constant sort of torquing up of phobia about Arabs, about Muslims, about foreigners, equating them with criminals and terrorists, and throwing Obama into that camp.

And the anger and the distrust in government that had been brewing since, you know.We’ve already gone through weapons of mass destruction under Bush, and Abu Ghraib and lying about the wars, and then Obama coming in and not being able to end the wars, this growing distrust.How did it affect politics, and how does it lead to somebody like a Donald Trump, who can work all of this into the politics of fear that helped get him elected?

Well, if you imagine that there's this kind of emotional cauldron in the United States, there's growing distrust, and there's been a huge recession, and people are mad that it seems like the rich are getting richer, nonetheless, and these wars are going on and on, there's kind of a—you know, there are a lot of emotions for an unethical person to exploit, and if they can capture them.And I think, you know, Trump saw an opening with this.

And it wasn’t just Trump.You know, if you take a look and see, you know, the first expression of it, in some ways, was the rise of the Tea Party, which takes place in about 2010.And who’s stirring the Tea Party?It’s this mostly white, right-wing American uprising against the United States government.Who’s stirring that up?Well, if you sort of pull the cover off, what you see are a number of very wealthy billionaire libertarians who have been hoping for more libertarian policies in the United States for a long time.They haven't been able to get much traction.But in this backlash against Obama, and this moment of distrust generally, they're able to sort of exploit the emotions and organize it. …

The Rise of Donald Trump

… So let’s talk about Trump.So you started talking about it, but how central was 9/11 to his campaign in some ways, the ability to use it as a wedge issue?

Let’s think what he said.He talked about 9/11 as people dancing on the rooftops in New Jersey, right, and things like that.

He also talked about the dumb leadership that got us into these stupid wars.

Right.What you hear from Trump, as he’s campaigning, is that he is kind of shockingly attacking the U.S. military, the intelligence agencies and the top ranks of the United States government, saying that they're stupid.They're dumb.And he says, you know, he also embraces torture, right?He says, you know, “It’s a great thing.” He’ll be the first to do it.He is, in a way, you know, he’s stepping out of the line that has been a traditional spot for Republican candidates and just bashing the sort of Washington conventional wisdom.

And so he’s milking the distrust and the sense of failure in the United States and saying only he knows how to fix these things.

Talk a little bit about that, that weird dichotomy, that he is Mr. Strong, and he is all Mr. Military, and he backs the harshest tactics used by Bush, and also by Obama, you know, with drones and attacks and such.On the other side, he has these fights with [Secretary of Defense James] Mattis and everybody else afterwards about just saying, “Pull them out.Pull the troops out.I don’t want troops in there,” and then going behind the backs of the military and such and sort of working out negotiations with the Taliban.What does that say about his view towards these wars?

Well, first of all, you have to remember that Donald Trump had no military experience.He went to a military boarding school for a couple years when he was a teenager.But when it came to his turn to serve the country, he got out of the draft by claiming he had bone spurs in his heel or something.And so this is someone who’s relatively, I think you can say safely, ignorant of what the code of military justice requires, and why it is that anyone who really knows about fighting wars says that torture is counterproductive.You know, he’s somebody who’s gotten his ideas about, you know, how to be a strongman maybe from watching war movies, or—or, you know, the show <i>24</i> or something like that.

So he’s saying he knows better than the military, and he’s saying it at a time when a lot of people in this country are tired of these endless wars and ready to see them end, and ready to be critical of the military.

After the election, Trump didn’t seem—he never was that worried about the policy.I mean, Bush and Obama were all about the policy and trying to figure out the reasons for being there and doing things, and directions to go to sort of get out of the wars and such.But Trump seemed to be more worried about the politics of it, about how it would be viewed, about the Middle East as an area that allowed him to garner more power and backing by his base.Talk about that policy versus politics.

Well, I think you see with Trump that he had very little patience or understanding or interest in policy, really.What he was was a tremendous marketer, most principally of himself.And so he was looking at how he could be popular, how he could sell himself.He wanted to be a hero.He wanted to be the one who got us out of these wars and got the—you know, the palm fronds.He wanted a big military parade.He thought he deserved and wanted the Nobel Peace Prize, you know.And so it is all about accolades for himself, really, much more than it is about what the effect of these policies would be around the world.

And the first couple of years, it seemed that his generals were protecting America from some of his abrupt decisions, and Mattis certainly, and [National Security Advisers John] Bolton, [H. R.] McMaster.What was the situation in the government about his views on important policy in general, and the role that his generals played?

You know, I think that the more we hear, the more we realize that the people right around President Trump, particularly the military people, they thought he was ignorant.They thought he was dangerous.They tried to stop him.And they kind of colluded with each other the way you would, you know, about a wayward kid or something.I mean, they were really trying to figure out how to control him.

The 2020 Election

… So by 2020, Trump has rebranded the threat, the existential threat against America, and it’s no longer something overseas.It’s now antifa and Black Lives Matter and socialists, socialist Democrats, that are now the enemy.And he’s willing to use the weapons of the terrorist war, the DHS, and arrests out West, and the National Guard, and the military in Washington, D.C. Talk a little bit about this as a tactic—politically, again, it’s the elections are coming up.What's he doing?

So for Trump and for Fox News, which is so intrinsically woven in with him, both of them need an enemy in order to keep their supporters excited and activated.And so they sort of spin up the threat of Black Lives Matter and antifa.And they, you know, try to make it look like they're a tremendous threat, that there's, you know, riots and mayhem, basically, spreading through the United States, and that what it’s going to take is bringing the war home.I mean, the enemy is no longer abroad; the enemy is now in the American streets, and we need to have our National Guard and use our tanks.And we need to have—our police need to have sort of the kinds of weapons that were used in wars before.And all of this serves to scare voters and keep them watching Fox and keep them voting for Trump.

… But the claims of fraud and the fact that the election was stolen from him, why are so many Americans willing to accept the lie, and how it sort of helps, again, define what has taken place in the last 20 years, and people’s loss of faith in the institutions of the United States?

Well, what you’ve really seen is an erosion in trust.All the polls show, in the mainstream media, in the United States government, any sort of independent authority other than the president at this point, saying, “I'm the only one you can trust, and this is what happened, and this is what's true,” and a lot of people are willing to believe it by then.

Why?

Well, because they no longer believe the other sources of information.And as Hannah Arendt wrote, what really makes people susceptible to an authoritarian leader is not necessarily that they be completely cultlike following that leader.What makes the perfect follower is someone who doesn’t know what to believe and really doesn’t believe anything.Once they stop believing the media, and they stop believing the United States government, and stop believing science, they're susceptible.They're susceptible to kind of thinking, well, who knows?Maybe he’s telling the truth.Who knows?That becomes the mindset.

So how do we get to Jan. 6?… How do we get to a point where you have an American public breaking into the Capitol building on the day that they are deciding on the results of the election, and giving the imprimatur of an election, the most democratic functioning of the government?

Well, you know, primarily, you had a president who refused to concede and said that he was being robbed of a victory and that his followers needed to stop the steal.And there were followers willing to believe that, because of all the things that had happened for decades, in terms of distrusting the media, distrusting people who would have contradicted him, and just being willing to put their faith that he was right.

… And the lesson for America from this historic moment is what, 20 years later, after the endless wars are perhaps going to end?But in reality, they're not ending.

Well, I have a different answer for you than you're going to want.I know this isn't what you're looking for, but I think there's a growing sense among some people that these wars are unequal sacrifices in the United States, and they're fought by the working class and the people who have no other opportunities.You know, I think there's a rethinking, a little bit, about whether these wars are fair, and whether there should be a draft, or that makes everybody shoulder the burden.

I think there's a sense that this has been, you know, a horrible sacrifice that was hardly felt by an awful lot of the United States.

… At the same point, our own democracy is damaged.

It’s in a perilous state in this country at this point.And you know, and I think there's a sense that we’d better repair ourselves first.

Latest Interviews

Get our Newsletter

Stay Connected

Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation

Koo and Patricia Yuen

Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation; Park Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. Web Site Copyright ©1995-2025 WGBH Educational Foundation. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.