Former CIA operative and senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kiriakou spent time in prison for blowing the whistle on CIA torture practices, and prizewinning journalist Joseph Hickman worked in military intelligence on Guantanamo Bay. In the first half, they shed light on America's war on terror, revealing how captives like Abu Zubaydah are held under shadowy circumstances. Zubaydah was thought to be al-Qaeda's third highest member, and Kiriakou was the one who captured him in Pakistan. After interrogations, it was determined that Zubaydah wasn't actually in al-Qaeda, Hickman detailed, yet he's remained at Guantanamo Bay for over 15 years, never charged with a crime or afforded due process. That said, Zubaydah did run a training camp for Jihadi fighters, and was a master forger, Hickman noted.
Kiriakou detailed the types of torture the CIA used on captives which included water boarding, sleep deprivation (some prisoners were kept awake for up to 12 days), and "cold cell" (captive is chained to an eye bolt in the ceiling in a cell kept at 50 degrees, and has ice water poured on him every hour). He believes the CIA went off the rails after 9-11. "Things that were ethically, morally, and even legally contestable to me became standard policy," he remarked. President George W. Bush declared in a news conference that "we do not torture," and at that point Kiriakou decided that the commander-in-chief was a "bald-faced liar."
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Educator, psychologist, and author of more than a dozen books about personal spirituality, dream psychology, meditation, and mind-body well-being, Mark Thurston, worked for the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) and is one of the foremost experts on the teachings of Edgar Cayce. In the latter half, he addressed Cayce's wealth of intuitive readings on such subjects as health, spirituality, and dreams. Thurston developed a template for discovering your soul or life purpose after reading through 1,900 of Cayce's readings. His strategies include clarifying one's spiritual ideals by identifying the core values in your life, and then writing a phrase that represents this.
Dreams, said Thurston, can give us information we need to find solutions, and be more effective, and creative in our lives. I think dreams are "giving us a very honest appraisal of what's going on inside of us on a lot of different topics – about our health, our emotional state, and about our spirituality as well." Regarding nightmares, Cayce believed they were often related to physiological disturbances or imbalances. For instance, a stressed digestive system may be symbolically portrayed in a frightening dream, Thurston recounted. Cayce was able to go into a trance state twice a day to answer people's questions about health, soul purpose, or dreams, and he also shared cosmic philosophical riddles about humanity, creating an archive of wisdom traditions.
News segment guests: John M. Curtis, Lauren Weinstein
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