Julian Barnes, an intelligence reporter at The New York Times, dives deep into the shadowy world of government secrecy and the high-stakes environment of Guantanamo Bay. He reveals the formation and tactics of a Special Projects team aimed at extracting information from detainees like Mohamedou Slahi through unconventional and often brutal interrogation methods. The conversation touches on the psychological manipulation involved, the moral dilemmas faced by operatives, and the profound impacts of trauma on detainees, inviting listeners to ponder the ethics of intelligence operations.