The Interrogator

John McCain and Rand Paul are joining the majority of Senate Democrats in opposing Gina Haspel's nomination as CIA director - on the grounds of her involvement with "torture". By which they mean the enhanced interrogation methods used in the post-9/11 era. With that in mind, here's an encore presentation of Mark's in-depth interview with the man who knows more about those methods than anybody else: James E Mitchell. In an extended conversation about his book Enhanced Interrogation, Dr Mitchell talks to Steyn about waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and getting to know some of the world's most high-value terrorists - and what happened to him when his own government decided he was the problem.

If you missed this on its first airing last year, we think you'll find it a very compelling discussion, so please click to watch:

~Mark will be back later today with an audio special as part of our first-anniversary observances of The Mark Steyn Club, so we hope you'll join him for that. The crucial element of our Club is the members - and we're very appreciative of all those who signed up in that first week last May who have been so eager to re-subscribe. For more information on the Steyn Club, see here.

Oh, and we have a first-birthday competition, open to all: As you may know, Cary Katz and CRTV, despite losing comprehensively in their $10 million suit against Steyn, have decided to re-sue him, this time for a mere $5 million. Their legal complaint includes as part of Exhibit C his January Song of the Week essay on "Oh Happy Day" - which doesn't mention Katz but which he claims nevertheless is derogatory and defamatory of him. So we're running a competition to help Katz's crackerjack legal team (Eric M George, Benjamin Scheibe, "Governor" Pete Wilson, Jeffrey Mitchell, Kathryn Stuart, Diane Torosyan, Jacqueline E Baker and Claudia Bonilla - we may have neglected one or two) find something actionable in that "Happy Day" column. First prize is a year's subscription to CRTV, and second prize is (all together now) two subscriptions. Email your entries here by midnight Eastern/9pm Pacific tonight (Friday), and we'll announce the winner on Monday.