Experts Address Intelligence Committee Report on Torture

Audio File: Press teleconference on the pending vote to adopt the SSCI CIA Torture Report

Date Recorded: Tuesday, December 11, 2012 at 1 p.m. EST

Participants

Brigadier General David R. Irvine, USA (Ret.)
Matthew Alexander, former Air Force Interrogator
Curt Goering, Executive Director, The Center for Victims of Torture
Melina Milazzo, Human Rights First, Pennoyer Fellow, moderator

About the Participants

Brigadier General David R. Irvine, USA (Ret.)

Brigadier General Irvine enlisted in the 96th Infantry Division, United States Army Reserve, in 1962. He received a direct commission in 1967 as a strategic intelligence officer. He maintained a faculty assignment for 18 years with the Sixth U.S. Army Intelligence School, and taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for several hundred soldiers, Marines, and airmen. He retired in 2002, and his last assignment was Deputy Commander for the 96th Regional Readiness Command. General Irvine is an attorney, and practices law in Salt Lake City, Utah. He served 4 terms as a Republican legislator in the Utah House of Representatives, has served as a congressional chief of staff, and served as a commissioner on the Utah Public Utilities Commission

Matthew Alexander

Matthew Alexander (a pseudonym) has spent over eighteen years in the U.S. Air Force and Air Force Reserves. He personally conducted more than 300 interrogations in Iraq and supervised more than 1,000. Alexander was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for his achievements in Iraq, including leading the team of interrogators that located Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who was subsequently killed in an airstrike. Alexander has conducted missions in over thirty countries, has two advanced degrees, and speaks three languages. He is the author of How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq (Free Press, 2008) and Kill or Capture: How a Special Operations Task Force Took Down a Notorious al Qaeda Terrorist (St. Martin’s Press, 2011).

Curt Goering

As executive director, Mr. Goering oversees an international staff with offices in St. Paul, Minneapolis, Washington D.C. and healing projects in Africa and the Middle East. CVT provides comprehensive care for victims of government-sponsored torture, conducts research and training, and undertakes policy efforts to commit the U.S. and other institutions to work against torture and aid torture survivors.

Mr. Goering began at CVT in May 2012. Prior to that, he was the Chief Operating Officer at Amnesty International USA, where he had worked for nearly 30 years. As COO, he managed the largest branch of the organization, and his tenure saw significant expansion in revenues, advocacy programs and membership. In addition to directing the day to day operations, he was involved in strategy development, public policy and planning, financial oversight and external relations. He chaired a global policy team based on five continents, leading to new research and advocacy policies. His experience gave him deep knowledge of international human rights and humanitarian issues.

Over his professional career, Goering led a dozen Amnesty International missions including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Mongolia, Taiwan, Turkey, and Tanzania. In addition to his positions with Amnesty as a researcher, advocacy director for Europe and the Middle East, Senior Deputy Executive Director and COO, he served as an interim Head of the Gaza office for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2009 and 2010.