The State We're In, 17 September 2011. Anthony Shaffer was an American spy whose last mission was in Afghanistan. The military didn’t want him to go public with his story of institutional bloat and incompetence, but he did, in a heavily-censored book. Abdul Salam Zaeef was one of the founders of the Taliban. He was imprisoned in Guantanámo Bay for four years, yet still believes in the movement. Anthony Shaffer returns to tell us how he interrogates prisoners, without resorting to torture.

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Operation Dark Heart
Anthony (Tony) Shaffer’s story is one that the US military machine doesn’t want you to know. Just as his book, Operation Dark Heart, was going to press, they forced large sections of it to be censored.

But his story of military bloat, intelligence failures around 9/11 and in Afghanistan have been making front-page news. He tells host Jonathan Groubert about the romance and realities of being a spy.

Operation Dark Heart homepage
  
Read more about the censorship of Operation Dark Heart

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My Life with the Taliban
Abdul Salam Zaeef is one of the founding fathers of the Taliban. He was its ambassador to Pakistan before he was captured and sent to Guantanámo Bay (pictured above), where he was imprisoned for nearly four years.

He explains why he still believes in the movement, defends its position on women and recounts what he experienced in prison. Read an excerpt from Abdul Salam Zaeef’s book
 
Web extra - in 2001, the Taliban destroyed the statues of the Buddhas in Bamyan, Afghanistan - a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Jonathan asked Zaeef to justify their actions - click to listen

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How to interrogate
Anthony Shaffer explains to Jonathan how he uses questions, and not torture, to get the information he needs from prisoners, and cites a real-life example from his tour of duty in Afghanistan.