The Abu Zubaydah Document
One of the most curious documents turned over in last week’s FOIA dump is the last one, titled “The CIA Interrogation of Abu Zubaydah” (PDF 110-122). While these are just wildarsed guesses, I suspect it may either have been a summary developed for the CIA Inspector General’s office for use in its review of the torture program or a summary to prepare Stan Moskowitz, then head of CIA’s Office of Congressional Affairs, to brief the Gang of Four in early February 2003.
The Timing
This document must have been written between January 9 and January 28, 2003. On PDF 117, the document describes CIA’s Office of General Counsel completing its review of the torture tapes; that report was finalized on January 9. The same page describes the “Guidelines on Interrogation Standards,” which was ultimately signed by George Tenet on January 28, as not yet having been approved. The document makes no mention of the Inspector General’s plan to review the torture tapes impacting the decision on destroying the torture tapes, that decision was initiated in early February. It also refers to the need to brief Congress on the torture tapes in the future.
The Structure
The document includes a long Top Secret section, followed by a short summary of the document classified Secret. That suggests that the audience of this document might in turn have its own audience with which it could use the Secret summary. So, for example, if the IG were the audience, it might be permitted to use the summary description in its final report. If Gang of Four members were the audience, they might be permitted to keep the Secret summary but not to see the Top Secret report.
The Top Secret section of the document has the following sections (each section has its own classification mark, which shows in the margin, which is how we know where redacted titles appear):
- Abu Zubaydah: Terrorist Activities
- Injuries at Time of Capture
- Highlights from Reporting by Abu Zubaydah
- [Completely redacted section]
- Interrogation Techniques Used on Abu Zubaydah
- [Redacted title and page and a half, though this section includes discussion of videotapes and training, which suggests the section describes the management controls on the torture]
- [Completely redacted section]
The Hand-Written Notes
Curiously, this document showed up in the January 8, 2010 Vaughn Index but not–as best as I can tell–in the November 20, 2009 Vaughn Index (or, if it showed up in the earlier Index, John Durham had not yet protected it under a law enforcement privilege). That means that the document existed as an electronic document. Yet, as the Vaughn Index tells us, this document has “handwritten marginalia” on it. These are presumably what the redactions are to the right of the main text on PDF 111 and 112. The redactions on PDF 113 are also wider than other sections, suggesting there is marginalia there, too.
In other words, the reader of this document made notes in response to the following claims (in addition to whatever appears in the long redacted section on PDF 113):
- [AZ] was heavily involved in al Qa’ida’s operational planning, and had previously been an external liaison and logistics coordinator.
- Abu Zubaydah was provided adequate and appropriate medical care.
- Abu Zubaydah identified Jose Padilla and Binyam Muhammad as al-Qa’ida operatives who had plans to detonate a uranium-topped “dirty bomb” in either Washington DC, or New York City.
The first and third of these claims, of course, are somewhat dubious (though the first is more restrained than the CIA was publicly making at the time). So the reader may have been questioning these claims. And the notation next to the claim about AZ’s “adequate” medical care reminds me of the Ron Suskind report that George Bush got enraged when he learned AZ had been given pain killers. In any case, these notations suggest the reader of this document may have had a very high level of information on AZ.
The Contents
Here are notable contents, by section:
Abu Zubaydah: Terrorist Activities
As I said above, the claims made in this section are more restrained than the CIA was making publicly in January 2003. Rather than call AZ the number 3 guy in al Qaeda, it calls him a lieutenant of Osama bin Laden (a claim that is still incorrect, however). The description of AZ as “an external liaison and logistics coordinator,” however, is a much more accurate description of AZ’s true role than CIA has traditionally given.
Injuries at Time of Capture
The report describes two bullet wounds: one, in his leg. The description of the second is redacted (but I believe this was a gut wound, though it might refer to him losing a testicle, which AZ described in his CSRT). There is a separate bullet point describing another physical issue; I wonder whether this is a description of the lingering effects of his 1992 head wound?
Highlights from Reporting by Abu Zubaydah
There are seven bullet points of information here. Perhaps most telling is the admission that “Over time, he had become more willing to cooperate on many issues.” You’d think someone might have questioned whether AZ’s cooperation increased as he got further from his torture?
First redacted section
This section would be the logical sequitur between AZ’s past interrogation and the techniques used to interrogate him. I wonder whether they discussed either inaccuracies in his information, or described the things he had not yet revealed (such as the location of Osama bin Laden) that they thought he knew? Alternately, it might describe what they had planned for his interrogation going forward.
Interrogation Techniques Used on Abu Zubaydah
By far the most interesting detail in this section is the redaction in the section on which torture techniques they’ve used on Abu Zubaydah:
The Agency sought and received Department of Justice approval for the following [redacted] enhanced techniques. [Four and a half lines redacted] the waterboard.
What should lie behind those redactions are the word “ten” and the names of the techniques approved in the Bybee Two memo. The fact that the passage is redacted must mean that that’s not what this passage says–which suggests that this document claimed DOJ had approved techniques they had not actually approved (or, that DOJ approved techniques verbally that were not ultimately approved in the Bybee Two memo). Given that we know this document is one John Durham considered important to his investigation, it may support the notion that some things shown on the videos–perhaps things like mock burial–were one of the things CIA was trying to hide by destroying them.
Also, as I noted earlier, this passage suggests how AZ’s sleep deprivation got out of control in the early days. But it doesn’t admit how long they did use sleep deprivation with him.
This section makes the ludicrous claim that AZ “is the author of a seminal al Qaida manual on resistance to interrogation methods,” presumably referring to the Manchester Manual. (Though AZ would describe “the Encyclopedia” in interrogations in June 2003.)
I find this description of James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen laughable:
Agency employees engaged in the interrogation are complemented by expert personnel who possess extensive experience, gained within the Department of Defense, on the psychological and physical methods of interrogation (SERE) and the resistance techniques employed as countermeasures to such interrogation. These expert medical personnel were present throughout the interrogations.
I find it curious that this passage makes no mention that Mitchell and Jessen developed the torture program, nor that they were contractors. And I’m amused that they are described as “medical” personnel, as if they had any concerns for AZ’s medical condition.
I find it really telling that this passage boasts of having done medical examinations before and during the torture, but not psychological evaluations before and after.
Medical evaluations were conducted on Abu Zubaydah before and during the interrogations. In addition, a psychological profile was conducted on him before the interrogation began.
You’d think someone at CIA would order up a psychological evaluation after all this torture, huh? But what this passage seems designed to do, instead, is spin the medical monitoring that was part of the experimental side of AZ’s torture as good medical care (which is also what the description of Mitchell and Jessen as “medical personnel” seems designed to do).
Which may be what the following section is designed to do, too:
It is not and has never been the Agency’s intent to permit Abu Zubaydah to die in the course of interrogation and appropriately trained medical personnel have been on-site in the event an emergency medical situation arises.
Let’s unpack this. First, the denial that the Agency ever intended to let AZ die suggests perhaps the denial itself is untrue. I’m curious why this passage describes these personnel as “appropriately trained medical personnel” and not something like “doctor,” “nurse,” or “medic”? Is it a way to try to explain away the presence of people collecting medical research information, to suggest that they had to have that kind of training? And the reference to “an emergency medical situation,” when we know that they had real concerns about AZ’s injuries and were closely tracking whether torture caused severe pain, is just cynical. The whole passage is one of the creepiest in the entire document!
This section describes the terms of approval for torture from DOJ. But it never once mentions the Bybee memos (perhaps because it might lead someone to discover that the ten techniques in the Bybee Two memo don’t match the techniques listed in this section)?
Finally, look at how underwhelming this claim about the effectiveness of torture is:
The use of enhanced interrogation techniques proved productive; Abu Zubaydah provided additional useful information.
It’s telling, too, that they make this claim in an entirely different section from where they boast of all the good intelligence AZ provided. They chose not to tie the specific pieces of intelligence he gave to the techniques use.
Redacted title–probably on management controls on interrogation
As I said, the title of the section that includes the videotapes and training is redacted, along with three primary and two secondary bullet points (which span a page and a half) before the videotape section, and two more after the training section (which take up another half page). I’m wondering if this redacted section talks about the reporting from the Field to HQ?
The section on videotapes makes a claim that–from what we see of the McPherson interview report–appears to be false.
The attorney concluded that the cable traffic did in fact accurately describe the interrogation methods employed and that the methods conformed to the applicable legal and policy guidance.
At the time of his interview, it appears that McPherson said he’d have to review the guidance again before he could say whether the torture portrayed in the videotapes matched the guidance (which, the IG team concluded, it did not). And here’s how this document describes the state of the discussion on destroying the torture tapes.
After his review, the General Counsel advised the DCI that OGC had no objection to the destruction of the videotapes, but strongly recommended that the new leadership of the committees first be notified about the existence of the tapes and the reasons why the Agency has decided to destroy them.
Boy, I guess Jane Harman really screwed up their plans when she objected, in writing, to the destruction of the tapes? This passage is one of the things that makes me wonder whether this document wasn’t written to fill in Stan Moskowitz before he briefed Congress; though I’m inclined to think CIA wouldn’t give the Gang of Four this much information, even though it is very deceptive in parts.
The Summary
The Secret Summary section covers the following four areas:
- AZ’s nationality
- His role in AQ (again using the “external liaison and logistics coordinator” language)
- The intelligence he gave
- His physical condition
Of note, the intelligence section includes this language, which is either redacted or not present in the Top Secret description of the intelligence he gave.
[AZ] has provided information on Al Qa’ida’s CBRN program and on individuals associated with that program.
Also compare how the Top Secret report refers to AZ’s intelligence on Padilla and Binyam Mohamed…
Abu Zubaydah identified Jose Padilla and Binyam Muhammad as al-Qa’ida operatives who had plans to detonate a uranium-topped “dirty bomb” in either Washington, DC, or New York City. Both have been captured.
…to how the Secret summary refers to it:
Information from AZ was instrumental in the capture near Chicago of Jose Padilla, a “dirty bomb” plotter, explosives expert, and terrorist trainer at Qandahar.
Other Details
I’m interested, then, in what this says about Durham’s investigation. Obviously, it provides a great snapshot of what CIA claimed it believed at the time it first planned to destroy the torture tapes. It may show CIA claiming it had approval for torture techniques it did not have approval for. Oddly, the document doesn’t appear to explain why the tapes were first made–it appears that the first mention of them comes in the description of McPherson’s review.
This document has three sets of Bates stamps on it: the five-number series, the six-number series, and the IG series from 2007. So it has been reviewed several times in a legal context.
Do we know anybody who was in government that liked to write hand written notes in the margins. Something about a NYT article about Niger rings a bell?
I don’t know if that’s rhetorical, but…
Cheney wrote “Did his wife send him on a junket?” on a copy of Joseph Wilson’s NYT op-ed.
According to Jane Meyer, Rumsfeld wrote [on Haynes’ Nov 27, 2002 recommendations about torture techniques]: “Torture?! That’s not torture!“-about forcing detainees to stand 4 hours a day.
My first thought exactly about handwritten notations scribbled next to print on a page.
And in seeing how detailed (though redacted) this CIA document is, I still wonder what the after-incident CIA report on the outing of covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson (and Brewster-Jennings) looks like…since this has never been released, although an investigation would have been conducted into any damage done to our national security (or deaths) by the treasonous outing of career CIA officer and counter-proliferation expert Valerie Plame Wilson.
Former VP Dick Cheney is bound to have seen this after-incident CIA report. I wonder if he wrote notations alongside the descriptions of what his mean-spirited treasonous action caused, too?
We do have copies of some of his handwriting for comparison.
A fantastic breakdown of an one of the more bizarre documents to come out way. I’m so glad you highlighted this section, which also jumped out at me:
Why are they saying this? It is creepy, and your excellent questions about the role of the medical professionals in the experiments upon Abu Zubaydah are spot on. The quote recalled another famous quote by CIA legal counsel Jonathan Fredman, made at a meeting at Guantanamo in Oct. 2002. From those Guantanamo minutues that just keep on giving (bold emphasis added):
These people are insensible to the irony of their own statements.
Those minutes also speak to EW’s observation that they don’t report an “after” psychological evaluation. It’s the part where the Psychiatrist, Major Burney, predicts AZ’s coming PTSD:
I think he was trying to say that death isn’t the only outcome they had to worry about. Yoo, Fredman, Michell, Jessen – all seemed oblivious to the fact that what they were doing was going to have lasting mental repercussions that would show.
I think if you put the scary brown moslem named AZ in front of the jury, his scars from being tortured might show enough to bring around even a Texas jury.
I think you have a lot more faith in the average American than I do. I hope you’re right and I’m wrong.
Boxturtle (But I’ll bet a $100 donation to your local foodbank that nobody is ever convicted for AZ’s mistreatment)
I share your cynicism about the average American, but I also have faith in the evocative power of psychologically damaged people. If his lawyer was telling anything like the truth, AZ is pretty sick from all of that. Maybe a jury wouldn’t care, but that’s not the way it always goes. I expect I ought to go ahead and make my yearly food bank donation, but I’ll hold my point that if they can get AZ in front of a committee or a panel of independent psychologists, I think it will be very obvious that his interrogation lead to “prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from … procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality.”
Oh, I agree with that point. But there’s a world of difference between a panel of experts making an evaluation in their field, and a pseudo-random selection of average citizens.
Gimme four preempt challenges and a trial in Florida, and I bet I could win an aquittal, as opposed to a hung jury. But this is simply a thought experiment, no
Floridafederal prosecutor would even bring a case.Boxturtle (*sigh*)
Actually, I’m hoping that AZ will get a first class psychological evaluation when Sheldon Whitehouse and the SSCI investigate the case [I wrote Whitehouse suggesting that, but I’ll bet my email hasn’t made it to the top of his pile].
His attorney’s have been trying to get copies of his medical records for some time. I believe they have also asked for an independent evaluation.
Don’t know if his symptoms in the court room were as dramatic as those of others might be, but the jury in the Jose Padilla case convicted in short order.
LINK.
LINK.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about this is–on the assumption it might have been something Helgerson got at the beginning of his review–whether there’s something in the report that would have made him key on the psychological exam. It was sent to IG at the end of January.
In other words, while they might have tried to avoid any review from Helgerson w/this document, is there some reason he chose to do one?
It kinda makes me think of an old bookeepers trick: You keep one ledger for the Boss, one for the Company, one for the IRS, and you keep the real one in Great Aunt Sally’s garage in the pile labeled “1940’s”.
If it weren’t for the fact that the Boss and the Company want you to keep ’em that way, you’d be in trouble.
Boxturtle (Which means that somewhere, you’ve stashed paperwork to cover your butt)
“Medical evaluations were conducted on Abu Zubaydah before and during the interrogations. In addition, a psychological profile was conducted on him before the interrogation began.
You’d think someone at CIA would order up a psychological evaluation after all this torture, huh? But what this passage seems designed to do, instead, is spin the medical monitoring that was part of the experimental side of AZ’s torture as good medical care (which is also what the description of Mitchell and Jessen as “medical personnel” seems designed to do, too).
Which may be what the following section is designed to do, too:
It is not and has never been the Agency’s intent to permit Abu Zubaydah to die in the course of interrogation and appropriately trained medical personnel have been on-site in the event an emergency medical situation arises.”
I think there were other professional medical personal there to operate the tracheotomy kits that were available. They had to go too far from time to time and needed to bring ‘um back for more experiments.
He was examined before each water torture session , now if this was on a daily basis then the first mental exam would be the base line and every exam there after charted his deteriorating mental condition.
They have to be very careful with what they say wrt to medical and psych monitoring. The difference between what they did and the experimentation on POWs in WWII is pretty much whatever their lawyers can spin.
Boxturtle (Thinks they’re WELL into the gray area anyway)
Ding ding ding ding.
Exactly!
I forgot to mention that they kept “psychologist’s notes” in each interrogation, which were inventoried, and presumably, theoretically available to us at some point (unless they, too, were destroyed). I’m writing an article that amplifies the significance of the notes.
Yes. But I suspect that they were also measuring physiological signs. They only need a swab of saliva to measure cortisol, a key biological marker of stress. There are also machines now that can with minimal intrusion quickly pick up other signs of physiological overload, which also can be measured, logged, and later, (satanically) analyzed.
Excuse me, as I haven’t finished reading yet, but is the following a typo?:
Oops. Yes it was. I meant “OBL.” Thanks.
I assume EW clearly means whether AZ knew his location.
There is a strange typo in the document itself. It’s full title is “The CIA Interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, March 2001 – January 2003”.
March 2001? Unless they are signaling something we aren’t aware of, that’s clearly a typo.
Oh yeah, I forgot to even mention it. In what otherwise must have been a meticulously prepared document, it’s kind of weird.
As someone who worked as a proofreader for a number of years (which you wouldn’t know from my typos in the first line of my comment upthread), I can attest to the fact these kinds of headline typos are quite common. Still, fertile soil if one wishes to spin a deeper conspiracy. I’ll stick with plain old typo in this case.
Actually, I think that’s right. There are also some spelling inconsistencies throughout the document, even including the spelling of al Qaeda, which seems very standardized as Al Qa’ida throughout CIA docs.
Yes, it does seem queer that the CIA felt it necessary to document that it “did not intend” for AZ to die (a passive construction, omitting the agency of death) while in their custody and control, and under their interrogation.
As you say, it suggests there was considerable debate over whether that was true, possibly involving personnel not from the CIA. The CIA is constructing a defense to a range of possible criminal charges – suggesting a fear that they would be brought – from murder to negligent homicide. That is, from intentional killing to negligently failing to monitor his condition or provide medical assistance to a person under obvious distress. I wonder how much AZ was a model or test case for constructing such defenses, as well as for how well specific torture practices worked.
How would McPherson, a lawyer not apparently trained in interrogation techniques or torture, competently evaluate whether what he saw or heard on recorded media was consistent with actions declared admissible by other lawyers in the DoJ, themselves not trained in the medical or psychological consequences of specific acts of interrogation or torture. Somehow, I don’t think the “looks like a duck, quacks like a duck” metaphor would constitute an adequate evaluation over such a sensitive issue or program.
The utility of information possessed by a person being interrogated is not a legally sufficient defense to the crime of torture.
Put a fellow in front of a jury of Americans for torturing a Scary Brown Moslem, you MIGHT get a conviction. But if that Scary Brown Moslem coughed up even one item of useful information under the torture, do you think you could get 12 votes to convict?
Boxturtle (I’ll make it easier on you, you don’t have to hold the trial in NYC or Texas)
Help?
How do I find the document in the link Marcy provided?
Thanks!
Marcy’s directions are in this post. You gotta have Adobe to read them.
Boxturtle (PDF’s are a necessary evil)
Thanks very much, BoxTurtle
and also responding to EW @16 and Jeff Kaye @18:
I sort of knew that it was, but am feeling just a bit dizzy with all this information and wasn’t quite sure…my head is spinning!
In this case, just scroll to the end.
In big PDFs, I try to use the PDF page number, so you can go right to the physical page in the PDF and don’t have to worry about the document pagination. But like I said, this is the last one in the set, so you can just go to the end and work back 13 pages to where it begins.
Thanks, Marcy!
I thought that Mitchell and Jessen were both psychologists, not psychiatrists – i.e., that neither has a medical degree. Of course, the CIA might not obey the standard rules, but if I’m correct, then it is not appropriate to refer to them as “medical personnel.”
I raise this point since the CIA probably does obey the standard rules, so when some report refers to “medical personnel” it is probably not in reference to M&J.
“it is not and has never been the agency’s intent…”
y’all’s comments display such deep cynicism.
this passage is clearly from the heart of a gentler, kinder cia than we had imagined.
perhaps even a reflection of our leader’s compassionate conservatism.
Yeah, like:
“I am not a crook.”
and
“I did not have sex with that woman.”
IIRC re Jane Harmon and intel briefs, briefees not permitted copies nor take notes, nor allowed to discuss content w others after briefing.
Fair point. Though it’s possible they were given that document to see, unlike the larger document, which would have just been for Moskowitz’s use.
If we contemplate:
in light of Marcy’s detective work on the timing of when the document was written and then put that timing into the context of the overall torture timeline, it seems to me that there were plans for additional, even more severe torture of AZ. In that case, the statement was an act of putting down a marker to say we really don’t intend for him to die, but if he dies later it’s all just an unfortunate mistake.
Those plans probably were put on hold when KSM was captured a few weeks later and KSM then was subjected to more waterboardings than AZ. I wonder if there is a similar statement somewhere that they didn’t intend for KSM to die in interrogation, either.
And driving the calendar of all this timing, of course, was the planned invasion of Iraq and the desperate desire for evidence linking al Qaeda and Saddam.
“And driving the calendar of all this timing, of course, was the planned invasion of Iraq and the desperate desire for evidence linking al Qaeda and Saddam”
Or destroying any evidence that there was no link, by unending water torture until the guy couldn’t tell you how many days were in a week, then parading him around as the simple minded mastermind. Of course that supposes the director of torture already knew that there was zero connection.
You know, one other possibility–and one of the possible things redacted–is the end game (which I think gets discussed in the IG Report).
THat is, at this point, people presumably were beginning to realize they couldn’t just keep moving AZ around, hiding him, for the rest of his life. (It’s worth remarking that at some point in 2003-2004, he appears to have been in Gitmo, but then got moved out as the Abu Ghraib thing was breaking). So the question is, what do you do with him? And it may be that people were like, “well, we’ve gotten what we’ve wanted, let’s just off him. But let’s do it in some fun experimental way, just so it can be valuable in the process.”
This reminded me of Jeff Kaye’s article connecting al-Libi’s [supposed] suicide with the AZ “experiment”:
“The Zubaydah Torture “Experiment”: Connections to the al-Libi Case?“; 5/16/09
http://valtinsblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/zubaydah-torture-experiment-connections.html
I think that’s totally right by the way. They set up a secret interrogation unit for HVDs at Gitmo in 2003, moved AZ and others there, and then when Rasul v. Bush came down they quickly moved the HVDs out of Gitmo and back to black sites.
I’ve been thinking about it, and I have a suspicion that the experimentation with waterboarding technique continued for years. Bradbury was still okaying waterboarding in 2005. In 2006, the three dead prisoners at Camp No died with rags down their throats, which can happen with waterboarding (aspriation). When you start down the path of such grotesque experimentation, there’s no end to how dark you can go.
Go read something like Charlie Stross’s Atrocity Archives, which gives a picture of where it could lead under different circumstances … which aren’t as different as they should be.
Geez, wandering around in the weeds for a long time sure can affect the thinking process. That would fit with those freaks so well.
Don’t forget to come up for air now and then…
the para on cia’s intent could be read as a reassursnce to a higher authority than any within cia.
something along the lines of: “we know he’s valuable property and we intend to take care to see that that property doesn’t doesn’t become wprthless, i.e., die at cia’s hands.
parenthetically, this interpretation of the para demonstrates how a torturee shares the same social position as a slave -property to be treated as the owner wishes, subject only to the constraint of not killing the property.
jeff kaye @42
but the carcasses of the 3 camp no torturees were returned to their families with the hyoid(?) bone cut out, suggesting to me they may have been strangled.
More than the hyoid bone was missing, apparently. Perhaps I shouldn’t speculate on how they died, as I’m not a medical professional (see someone’s note above re psychologists… whether they are medical professional or not).
Driving the calendar of the torturing of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others was the need to provide testimony corroborating the government’s desired narrative of the operational details of 9/11. Which then appeared in the 9/11 Commission’s report, with the sections on the operational details largely being sourced to the testimony of detainees, notably KSM.
When they started torturing, they must have realized they needed not the truth (which torture is notoriously bad at providing), but false claims (which torture is very good at providing).
Actually, most of the reports FROM ANY DETAINEE that appear in the 9/11 Report came from long after the period in which they had their greatest torture. So while they rely a lot on KSM, they rely on reports that didn’t start flowing in significant way until July 2003, and really started peaking in September-November, so 6 months after his 183 waterboard month in March.
Well, the fact that the detainees’ jailers were so adamant in refusing to allow anybody from the 9/11 Commission any access to the detainees and insisted on relaying the commission’s questions to the detainees and the detainees’ alleged answers to the commission does suggest they still had a lot to hide.
And even if the torture had stopped by that point, you’re still under a lot of pressure, once you’ve already been tortured, to give the former torturer the answers to questions he poses that you think he wants to hear. Maybe not as much as while you’re being tortured, but still a lot of pressure. And even the fact that you may have heard of others being tortured puts pressure on you too.
VS
Compare and contrast.
Extra credit:
Expand on any other possibilities that the bolded statement does not preclude.
Remember that Zubaydah said at his tribunal that doctors told him that he “nearly died four times.”
ALright, that’s the passage that made me think he had one gunshot wound in his leg and one in his gut (and then presumably the leg wound is the one that took out his testicle).
So how did he injure his eye?
Well, not sure this has been reported but AZ has a glass eye. He lost his eye. He wears a patch now most of the time. But it’s unclear exactly how that happened. Speculation it may have been during surgery after he was shot, but no one seems willing to discuss how it happened.
Yeah, it has. I’m not sure but I thought taht was from before–when I first learned about it I wondered if he lost his eye when he had his head injury.
actually, it was in the Glenn Fine report regarding AZ’s glass eye:
In a vain attempt to break an interrigators finger?
Boxturtle (Similar to a crook breaking his knee attempting to damage a cops nightstick)
Omar Deghayes lost sight in one of his eyes at GITMO. I’m thinking I’ve heard of at least one other, but since I can’t pin it down, maybe not.
I’ll bet Andy Worthington would know how many Gitmo detainees lost eyes.
I was going to wait until reading all the comments before commenting on this, but by the time I got to #63, I can’t wait.
I think the passive works better in this case, because I doubt it was AZ who injured his eye [i.e., better to ask, “How was his eye injured”?]
My wildarsed guess: during the course of one of his beatings, someone poked him in the eye, causing an injury which got infected but wasn’t treated.
Bob in AZ
I think it might be worthwhile to keep a couple other things in mind about this time frame (I’m not going to say anything new and you can’t include everything under the sun, but these things just strike me)
First – at the time this was being prepared, CIA was gearing up for the Powell presentation to the UN the first part of Feb. They were finishing up a rehash of the al-Libi info, walking back the reliabiity of it some, even though they were to go on and let Powell put the info in his presentation without any such caveats.
Second – the Salt Pit death had occured in November, which might have triggered some of the reference to the CIA not intending to toture to death this guy they way they did others.
Misc – Maher Arar had been sent to Syria for torture in Sept and that wasn’t turning out well. By that Sept, al-Faruq had given them, also under torture, all kinds of info that ended up not being true. By Dec of 02, Fitzgerald in Chicago and other attys in Mich are trying to pursue charges against al-Marabh and reportedly Fitzgerald even had an indictment drawn up, but any actions against al-Marabh are being blocked (and he is eventually deported to Syria.)
*******************
Different matter – unless it is in one of the redacts, the lack of discussion of the diaries is really interesting too imo. It’s almost as if no one wanted to discuss Hanni 1 – or Hanni 2 – or even Hanni 3.
Will I ever be able to hear/read the word “intent” again, without thinking of this almighty mess?
The word “intent” is also used on pdf 50:
http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/cia_release20100415_p19-27.pdf
If AZ’s death is not the “specific intent” of the treatment they subject him to, then the experimenters will not have “violated the law” no matter what the actual results are. Uggh.
Sorry- I didn’t see your comment when I went into some of the intent stuff below – I’m doing other things and leaving my response box open for way too long without refreshing.
No worries, Mary. Your comment, as usual, adds a lot more to the discussion than I could formulate. Thanks.
Does all this “intent” language refer back to Yoo’s assertion that as long as a detainee’s tormentors didn’t “intend” to hurt him, it was OK if the detainee was, in fact, injured?
If so, what a bunch of crap. Negligent homicide, and related crimes come to mind.
Bob in AZ
So what are the bets on who it was in the third bullet point under “Highlights” that AZ identified as being a senior al-Qaeda operative in [redacted]?
*******************
A whole aspect of this document that is pretty interesting is how it ties, or tries to tie, the CIA activities with DOJ advice and input, while at the same time excluding all FBI input from the paths that crossed during the interrogations. You don’t see any mentions of CIA coordinating with FBI on anything mentioned in this doc, and yet Dan Coleman was the guy that the diaries went to for analysis. If you just don’t mention FBI, you don’t have to mention that the FBI agents who witnessed interrogation aspects thought they were torture or borderline torture or counterproductive and with AZ you get the added benefit of not having to mention he is mentally impaired.
Anyway – on this DOJ interaction topic, does anyone have a good guess as to what it is that gets redacted so often when they are talking about quasi-legal torture topics after “CTC?” For example, when they say that, “After consulting with the NSC and DOJ, CTC/[redacted – maybe 3-4 characters,looks like they meant to redact the backslash too but didn’t get it all] originally approved 24-48 hours of sleep deprivation…
They go on to say that CTC[redacted – and presumably the same /redact?] learned (but not how or when) that the time had been exceeded due to a misunderstanding (but not the nature of the misunderstanding – did someone think hours were days?), but that “CTC[redacted – maybe the same/redact?]advised that since the process did not have adverse medical effects or result in hallucination (thereby disrupting profoundly Abu Zubaydah’s senses or personality) it was within legal parameters.”
So what joined with CTC as the redact and how was CTC and whatever was redacted in a possition to know there were no adverse medical effects and to whom did they give the advise that it was withing legal parameters and what was the impact of telling someone that it was “legal” to do much more than what their had been previously given advice to do?
As CIA lets on later, they have been getting DOJ to brief them on how to claim a lack of intent to evade criminal actions, but they let that coaching slide in first without reference to DOJ with: “It is not and has never been the Agency’s intent to permit Abu Zubaydah to die”
It’s not till later that they reveal that DOJ has coached them that a claimed lack of intent will help DOJ protect them against prosecutions.
That comes out just a bit later when:
emph added [without ever providing information on HOW CIA could give representations that kidnapping, threatening with death, blackholing, isolating, stripping, sodomizing with drugs, beating, denying medication, waterboarding, walling, waterdousing, threatening family members, ec. etc. should not produce severe mental or physical suffering, especially when they had a dead Gul Rahman to show as evidence of how well qualified they were for such assessments)]
is followed by:
even though as we’ve discussed here, that’s not what the Bybee memo or the later Yoo memo to DoD says at all. Instead, those memos say that the question of intent will be determined by a jury and that it is not likely a jury will believe that there was no intent to torture when you are torturing.
And while DOJ is mentioned several times, the fact that the Crim Div of DOJ refused to decline prosecutions for the EITs isn’t mentioned.
We do, later, come to the same kind of CTC[redacted – likely the same /3-4 characters from before] in connection with who it is that drafted “Guidelines on Interrogation Standards” and “Guidelines on Confinement Conditions for CIA Detainees” [have we seen those guidelines on confinement conditions?]. What the CIA doc says is that the CTC/mystery redact drafted those documents, but they haven’t yet been “approved” and there’s no mention of who is going to do that approval. “The guidelines are being coordinated. Once approved,…”
I’m pretty sure that one is the one they use for legal–I forget, but I think it’s just CTC/LGL. In other words, a fancy way of referring to Jonathan “if the detainee dies…” Fredman and the few other lackeys who refused to cooperate with the OPR Yoo investigation.
So they think “LGL” is more classified or more top secret-y than CTC? This makes it sound, then, as if in addition to the OGC contacts that we know about from Rizzo references and docs, there were independent CTC/LGL contacts with DOJ and NSC that didn’t go through CIA OGC.
You have to wonder why it was that something like violation of DOJ parameters went only to CTC/LGL and not to OGC and OLC and NSC? Given how often it is Rizzo appearing in the communication chain with Yoo, it’s interesting that this document appears to be all about things done by CTC/LGL as opposed to CIA OGC. CTC/LGL wasn’t the named recipient for any of the memos.
CTC/LGL was the partner on the Bullet Points, though. And CTC/LGL appears to have been the ones who were feeding Koester information on a day to day basis.
Remember, there were at least four CTC lawyers who did not cooperate with the OPR Report, beyond Jonathan Fredman’s short phone call. That’s in addition to just Rizzo as the only other CIA contact on it.
Those are good points to remember, but I’m floored that they’d leave the CTC but redact the LGL. There has to be a reason for that – why are you redacting the full name of the dept that says it was in contact with DOJ and NSC and that says it was told by DOJ that the field torturers were good to go bc they couldn’t have intent or that says it was drafting and coordinating the Guidelines (do we have on anything on the one about confinement conditions btw?) (but not who it was coordinating with) etc.
Why is LGL redacted in this production unless there is some special significance for the LGL’s impact on the last doc? If CTC/LGL had some guys who were lying in what they made available for this doc and if this doc was used for something like briefing to Congress – – well, then I can think of some possible reasons. But in general, there’s no reason to be leaving the CTC and redacting the LGL, so it makes you wonder about the specifics that change the general – again, jmo.
I’m pretty sure they redact LGL (if that’s what it is–that was just a WAG from memory, but it might be something like LEG) is simply because it’s one of the top-secret acronyms that would cause taxpayer ears to melt off if they heard it. Remember they’re claiming they’re protecting the identities of those engaged in counterterrorism for stuff done by Muller, McPherson, and Moseman. They don’t want anything out there that suggests anything about the structure of CIA.
Maybe so, but I still think that would mean they redact the CTC part as well. To redact only the LGL part is very weird IMO.
I also wonder if some of the redacts in the Foggo exchanges (which I’m sure you are getting to later *g*) could be the whole reference (CTC/LGL) which kind of fits in some places, but wouldn’t explain why the full acronym was redacted there and only part of the acronym in the last doc.
I find it really odd to leave in a CTC reference but take out the legal dept qualifier. OTOH, it could just be different people doing redacting a bit differently. I still think there’s a reason, though.
One additional explanation might be that CTC/LGL are the lawyerly folks who provided Rodriguez with their “opinion” that there was no legal impediment to destroying the videotapes, and also that these CTC/LGL folks form part of Durham’s targeting for potential prosecution.
Would JSOC fit your mystery redaction?
The system of monitoring by OMS staff (and earlier, under Bybee, by SERE experts) was an integral part of the legal approval OLC gave CIA. So the medical staff and psychologists are part of the torture team, an integral part.
I recently went back and reread Sheri Fink’s Salon/ProPublica article from April 2009. I think it was very good, and the latest developments only amplify what is there.
Only 3-4 characters? How about “Head” or some such, which would point to a particular person?
Bob in AZ
Could the three letters after CTC be OTS? I have long noted the presence of OTS in this mess. OTS, for those who don’t know, was the portion of CIA that comes up with fancy weapons, assassination technologies, other gizmos. It was also the department in charge of CIA’s years long experimentation program, MKULTRA.
From the CIA OIG report (PDF) (emphasis added):
OTS is a separate department, not part of CTC, as that passage shows. I’m 90% certain that in this case it is CTC/LGL, because we know the lawyers were all over this.
Yes, after getting up this morning, I realized it was very, very unlikely that they would conflate two different departments with a slash. I certainly realize they are both departments, so that was a bad suggestion on my part to begin with.
However, given the prominence of OTS in the origin of the coercive physical techniques, it seems strange to me that we never see them mentioned in emails, cables, or routing sheets. Now this could be because they were not very involved in operations. Still, it seems very odd that they would not wish to be informed about any of this during these early testing days on AZ.
Of course, they may be mentioned in the many redactions in these CIA documents we’ve received over the months.
But if medical experiments were being run on AZ and/or other prisoners, it seems unlikely the department in charge was OMS, or even CTC (which was in charge of interrogations). A second taping system (or sytems) and accompanying data could have flowed back to OTC personnel, or to mask it even more, to OTP (Other Third Parties), acting as cut-outs, for OTS.
During MKULTRA days, many academics and their societies (Society of Human Ecology, for instance) acted as such OTPs. And all along, and historically for two decades or more, OTS acted as the department in charge of CIA interrogation experiments. I have every reason to believe that is the case now.
OMS is not in overall charge of the experiment(s), only of medical matters and their monitoring. Clinical assessments would be made by OMS, but passed on to OTS for further assessment and overall executive oversight of the program(s)/projects.
I want to make one comment about a point ew makes:
I actually draw a different conclusion about this. I think that the redacted word is “ten” and the redacted techniques are the ones in the Bybee memo. The memo is done in a monospaced font. There is room for five characters redacted, including the preceding and trailing spaces. That leaves room for 3 characters. We can rule out a three digit number. The only words that fit are “one”, “two”, “six”, and “ten”. Six is highly unlikely and one and two are impossible.
Which leaves with the question of why the redaction if the stuff that is redacted as already been released. The most reasonable answer is that the redaction was done when “waterboard” had been declassified, but not the rest. I am sure ew can pinpoint the time period for which this was true, but I know that there was a time when that was true. For a variety of reasons, I’m fairly certain that this is the explanation.
The first thing to notice is that the redactions are done with blackout instead of the more sophisticated system that the CIA sometimes uses (called MORI for Management Of Released Information) which puts whitespace where redacted information would appear. (See here, scroll down to “Automation at the CIA”). With the blackout, the redactions can’t be reversed, unless you go back to the original document.
Only an only slightly related note, I wonder if this document wasn’t prepared for CIA management (i.e. Tenet). Handwritten marginalia is what consumers of documents create and often that means management. Also, the two names of the document are interesting. The cover page is more descriptive of the document itself, but the first page title, “CIA Interrogation Techniques: Abu Zubaydah” is more in line with how I think the document was actually used: It served as a backgrounder for the DCI as he prepared the interrogation guidelines that came down on January 28, 2003.
Also, the last page doesn’t really seem like a summary to me. If anything it only summarizes the first 5 pages of the document.
I thought about it being Tenet, but DCI is referred to in the third person in at least one place.
Given the way they refer to people, this could be a DDO, possibly an OGC, or even an IG-written document. (Or OCA, thought I think that’s unlikely).
Completely unrelated, but did anyone figure out what the “CTG” numbering system is or even what “CTG” stands for?
Not what it stands for. But it seems to be the documents that were collected for DOJ after the public revelation of the tape destruction (all the dates are after December 7, 2007, and they go well into 2009.
Remember that most people who had previously been involved in this document production had to recuse, particularly when it got into Durham’s hands, so that might explain the CTG reference.
And if I’m not mistaken, there are no documents that bear BOTH an IG Bates and a TCG one. So it suggests the IG ones got sucked into the DOJ investigation, but additional new ones were TCG Bates.
I had thrown out the guess that TCG stood for Transmission Control Group in an earlier thread.
I was thinking along the lines of an automated numbering system provided by a classified faxing system.
If CTC = Counter-Terrorism Center, might CTG = Counter-Terrorism Group?
Bob in AZ
I don’t buy your argument about the techniques, btw. This was not even identified in a Vaughn Index until May, so after the time period when the other techniques were released. And there was never a time when sleep deprivation, as a technique, was discussed in this fashion when other techniques were not discussed. Indeed, this revelation is in some ways beyond what has been released about sleep deprivation in the past. And the information on the OGC review was not released for the first time until last August.
But that doesn’t mean the number can’t be ten.
One very simple explanation for why it might be ten yet might not match the Bybee Two memos is if they refer to “small box confinement” as “mock burial.”
You’re right, I hadn’t considered the way sleep deprivation is discussed in this document when I was thinking about this.
Well, in any case, I agree “ten” is teh most likely number there. Which means there is likely something else funky going on.
@ 69
I really think that it wasn’t done with CIA management as the intended ULTIMATE consumer of the info, i.e., that “It served as a backgrounder for the DCI as he prepared the interrogation guidelines that came down on January 28, 2003”
I think it was pretty carefully prepared to prep someone who knew that some of what was in it was likely not correct, for presentation to a third party or group. I really think a prep piece that would hit on the buzz words and talking points the CIA torturers want to rely upon in a presentation to members of Congress makes the most sense. There’s too much careful stepping around the landmines for this to be something going to Tenet unless it was going to him for use as a prep piece on the best way to sell the torture to members of Congress, especially after the torture death a few months earlier. imo,fwiw.
CTG – I guess CIA TortureGate isn’t likely, but I like it.
@71 – if the listing doesn’t match the same 10 things that were in the Bybee memo, that would be a reason for those who want to cover up bad acts to redact both, even if the number itself has been out before and most of the items had been out. If the number 10 was left in and and then one or two items only from the list are redacted, someone would be pulling the items from the Bybee memo and saying, “why did they redact X and Y” In particular if this doc was used for briefing to Congress, which didn’t have the Bybee memo, the fact that what was listed to Congress was incorrect might be pretty interesting.
Double OT: In the comments to my diary from today, I’m following the latest case of four civilians shot by NATO forces in Afghanistan. Here’s a quote from the father of two of the victims and uncle of the others:
But another aspect of that Reuters report really stands out to me. It speaks of a massive biometric database:
So, is this database fingerprints, DNA, photos or all of the above? How are people put in? I’m not sure I’ve run into references to it before.
And the big question: Is there a similar US database?
So they put the Afghan security forces like police and army they train into the database, then they use the existence in the database as a grounds to justify killing anyone in that database?
So anyone Obama sends to Bagram – ?
Retinal scans
Okay, it is LGL.
See the first document in this batch.
The letters that come before the CTC/LGL elsewhere would refer to the actual title of the person involved–though I don’t know what C/CTC/LGL would then be.
Also note the emblems used on stationary in that document, which we should be able to use to sort out which of the docs in this dump come from IG, CTC, and other parts of CIA.
Note, they also mostly redact LGL in the OPR stuff. Stupid, I know. Just be glad you’re not a redaction specialist.
That’s the same batch where they missed redacting Hiwa’s name. I never realized they missed redacting the LGL…
They’re very inconsistent with the LGL stuff. I know I’ve seen it recently in other materials (maybe some of the OPR stuff). Mary’s right–there’s no big operational purpose to redacting it. But there is a CYA purpose to it.
I’m at least as interested in collecting those emblems and matching them to what we see, bc it’ll help us figure out who was receiving these cables.
OT – but the Sup Ct, only Alito dissenting, voids legislation prohibiting distribution of animal cruelty videos
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100420/ap_on_bi_ge/us_supreme_court_pit_bull_videos
Roberts handling the op duties for the majority said it might make hunting videos illegal and you can’t have that.
So – like – FISA authorizations to surviel Americans on American soil without a warrant, or to torture just a bit and only when needed, or to use military commissions like condoms, responsibly – that kind of stuff, right?
Or not so much.
My head spins trying to absorb the depth of the work Mz. Wheeler (and others) has done on this topic.
But I’m compelled to comment just to say once again, thank you Mz. Wheeler for all your efforts.
And to others, who also contribute to exposing the dark matter to the light of day and us readers.,
It’s all so deeply detailed, layered and nuanced I don’t know how you source researchers do it.
But I’m glad you do . . . . Mz. Wheeler, you and the others are a great blessing for us all, and for truth and justice.
I just gotta repeat that every now and then.
Thanks, again.
Chief/CounterTerrorist Center/Legal?
O/T, but related. It only took 28 years, but, finally
“Argentina’s last dictator, Reynaldo Bignone, 82, was Tuesday sentenced to 25 years in prison after being found guilty of ordering torture and illegal detentions during his 1982-1983 rule.”
LINK.
fatster @95
dateline: the hague august 27, 2030.
george w. bush 82 yr old former president of the u.s. was sentenced in the hague today to life in prison for authorizing american cia and military forces to assassinate or torture of iraqui, saudi, afghani, and other muslim individuals.
the court noted in its sentencing report that the former president also authorized the kidnapping and/or detention of hundreds of muslim individuals in the period 2001-2009 who had caused little or no harm to united states intetests or to its occupying forces in afghanistan or iraq. the court noted many detainees had been brought to the attention
of american forces by perdonal or tribal feuds or by bounties of $5k per individual offered by the american govt that bush had led.
american vice-president richard cheney was sentenced to two life terms in absentia.
in absentia because he had died from lack of a functioning heart in april, 2012.
If you’re around when that happens, please send a little silent nod and smile to me. Lots of you should be; I surely hope so.
fatster @97
the odds i’ll be around in 2030 are somewhere between small and vanishingly small.
but if i am, i will :-).
Oh, you too, huh? I typically feel like a relic in these parts, so am grinning to know I’ve been rubbing shoulders with such sage company.
jeff kaye @106
“office of technical services”, eh.
now that’s one of the more chilling phrases i’ve heard from the cia’s lexicon of acronyms.
one reason for not mentioning ots (if they were involved with az) would be because az WAS a cia human experiment
and ots was notorious, including especially with congress, for its illegal and unethical human experiments performed in mkultra.
cia might believe that any mention of ots would prompt an immediate outcry and charge of human experimentation.
which brings up a possible legal matter:
would cia officials be guilty of violating laws or rules on human experimentation established as an aftermath of mkultra’s unmasking?
this wpuld be in addition to violation of anti-torture laws?
Probably not, as many of these laws and rules were put into place after the revelations around MKULTRA and other experiments on humans (Edgewood Arsenal).
Here’s a name no one ever mentions in relation to the torture scandal, but give that the OIG report says OTS was centrally involved in “propos[ing] certain more coercive physical techniques to use on Abu Zubaydah,” one wonders why.
Robert Wallace was head of OTS during this period. He left sometime in 2003 (I haven’t been able to pin down the exact date or month). Here’s some more about him — and go to link to know more and see picture) [bold emphases are added]:
Now, how is it we don’t ever hear about this person? Answer: not because he’s a nobody. But my guess is you’ll never see his name on any of these cables (or at least not in unredacted form).
But even more, why have we never heard about him in the press. If the OIG says OTS is at least partly responsible for the torture of AZ, and Wallace was head of OTS during this period, then why has he never been mentioned, or brought before a Congressional committee? (Maybe the Senate Intel Comm. in camera?)
Darn! forgot the link. Here it is.
Is this the same Robert Wallace?
Yes.
Thnx. If this account is accurate, and I don’t know if I’d be more surprised to learn it is or that it isn’t, these people need to get kicked off the public payrolls and made to do some actual productive work for a living.
Just some thoughts on time frame and other questions in the comments…
The following come to mind as I read this post EW: (an absolutely greta post BTW.)
Oct 2002 – Request made to use aggressive techniques on detainees at Guantanamo Bay
Oct-Dec 2002 – Various branches of U.S. military make legal concerns over new techniques known, a resulting legal review initiated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff Legal Counsel is shut down by William Haynes II.
Dec 2002 – Personnel from FBI register strong opposition over interrogation techniques being employed on Mohammed Al-Khatani to DoD General Counsel Office
Dec 2002 – Rumsfeld gives blanket approval for the use of aggressive techniques, does not provide any guidelines
December 4 & 10 – Two Afghan detainees die in US custody in Bagram as a result of torture or other ill-treatment.
Dec 26th, 2002 – Dana Priest article on Bagram Secret Prison.
Jan 2003 – Under legal pressure from Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora, Rumsfeld revokes authorization for the use of aggressive techniques, forms a Working Group of sympathetic legal opinions to explore legal implications of torture
Jan 2003 – CENTCOM interrogation technique memo issued, casting some of the SERE techniques as standard operating procedure
January 23 – CIA DDO James Pavitt informs OIG that he had received allegations that CIA personnel had used unauthorized interrogation techniques on Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri at a black site
And some other dates that stand out as I read this post:
Dec. 17th – David Brant NCIS re:abuse of detainees.
January 2003 – Mora complaint about torture
January 23 – James Pavitt, CIA DDO, re: unauthorized interrogation
jeff kaye @115
thanks jeff.
my question about culpability referred to the torturers of abu z and agency officials enabling that torture, not to mkultra personnel.
you had mentioned mkultra many times in your comments. with the inclusion in some comment here of info about the cia’s ots (completely new info to me), i decided it was time to learn more and went to wikip.
what an education.
what a completely and persistently lawless and dangerous federal agency cia is.
And they serve at the behest of the President.
intent to permit Abu Zubaydah to die
permit= allow? authorize?
authorize (allow) who to kill Zubaydah? Itself (CIA)? Zubaydah himself (to suicide)? contractors (to experiment too far for their own needs)? JSOC? Others?