The Torture Debate
Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus have an interesting article describing the debate between CIA and FBI over whether waterboarding worked with Abu Zubaydah. If the timeline they describe is accurate, then it means that Abu Zubaydah may have given up his most important intelligence before they started torturing him (save, perhaps, fingering Ramzi bin al-Shibh). As to the information he gave up under torture, the CIA and FBI dispute whether it was useful or not. The article suggests the possibility that the CIA may have destroyed the torture tapes to hide the fact that the water-boarding was ineffective (which also might explain why Kiriakou so far hasn’t gotten scolded for telling the world that the United States tortures, since he claims it was effective).
The article explains that Abu Zubaydah was first detained on March 28, 2002 and describes him undergoing traditional interrogation methods from April and August. And apparently, using those traditional methods, they were able to get two of the most public pieces of information from Abu Zubaydah.
There is little dispute, according to officials from both agencies, that Abu Zubaida provided some valuable intelligence before CIA interrogators began to rough him up, including information that helped identify Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla.
[snip]
Other officials, including Bush, have said that during those early weeks — before the interrogation turned harsh — Abu Zubaida confirmed that Mohammed’s role as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
But then, the CIA and Bush wanted more, so they started water-boarding Abu Zubaydah, apparently in August (at least according to the CIA).
Whether harsh tactics were used on Abu Zubaida prior to official legal authorization by the Justice Department is unclear. Officials at the CIA say all its tactics were lawful. An Aug. 1 Justice document later known as the "torture memo" narrowly defined what constituted illegal abuse. It was accompanied by another memo that laid out a list of allowable tactics for the CIA, including waterboarding, according to numerous officials.
Note, there appears to be some debate about this detail. But the assertion by the CIA that it started in August implies that they didn’t start waterboarding Abu Zubaydah until the Bybee memo authorized it. And that the intelligence used to arrest Padilla was gathered without using torture. Of course, the CIA has a big big incentive to say that they didn’t start torturing Zubaydah until they were authorized to, so take that detail with motivation in mind.
Bush, at least, claims the water-boarding led to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh.
"We knew that Zubaida had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking," Bush said in September 2006. "And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures," which the president said prompted Abu Zubaida to disclose information leading to the capture of Sept. 11, 2001, plotter Ramzi Binalshibh.
But the FBI holds that the information gathered from Abu Zubaydah got increasingly crummy as the torture continued.
But FBI officials, including agents who questioned him after his capture or reviewed documents seized from his home, have concluded that even though he knew some al-Qaeda players, he provided interrogators with increasingly dubious information as the CIA’s harsh treatment intensified in late 2002.
Abu Zubaydah himself maintains as much, too.
In legal papers prepared for a military hearing, Abu Zubaida himself has asserted that he told his interrogators whatever they wanted to hear to make the treatment stop.
So that appears to be the big debate. Did Abu Zubaydah give up useful intelligence under torture, or just crap? Did he give up Ramzi bin al-Shibh before or after they started torturing him?
Now, one of the most interesting details of this article, given the debate, is that Abu Zubaydah identified al-Nashiri under torture, and then al-Nashiri was in turn tortured.
According to the 9/11 Commission, which had access to FBI and CIA summaries of the interrogation, after August 2002 — when the harsh questioning is said to have begun — Abu Zubaida identified Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri as a productive recruiter for al-Qaeda. Nashiri was subsequently captured and subjected to harsh interrogation, including waterboarding, but videotapes of that questioning were also destroyed by the CIA
I find this particularly interesting. If Zubaydah gave up al-Nashiri under torture, was the intelligence any good? If not, it might explain why they’d eliminate Abu Zubaydah’s and al-Nashiri’s torture tapes, among all the tapes I presume they have. Or, there’s another possibility. The evidence about what Abu Zubaydah said when comes from the 9/11 Commission. Is it possible they got false information about what was gained under torture and what was gained before the torture started?
OT -FAbulous YouTube moment at ThinkProgress – Bush having to correct a questioner about nukes and Iraq – ah the circle of deception
Q But I’m concerned about the nations like Iraq, who now have nuclear weapons –
THE PRESIDENT: Iran.
Q Iran and Iraq both.
THE PRESIDENT: Not Iraq. (Laughter.)
He corrected the country’s name, but he didn’t correct the statement…he basically is saying that Iran now has nuclear weapons!!! That is what I find astounding and dangerous.
And the look on his face is priceless. “And I duped you into thinking there were nukes in Iraq, and you are such an idiot. THe questioner sounded like one of druggie Limpballs “ditto heads,” a totally clueless fawning idiot.
He looks awful in that video BTW. White as a ghost….and bored.
Sorry for that. Now to read!
The bolded part may be some “weasel-wording” that if parsed one way could be read to say: “We tortured Abu Zubaida. Then we went to the DOJ and got Bybee to write an after-the-fact memo saying that the torture wasn’t torture. We be free and clear!
Hmmm…it almost sounds like Bushco wanted to “try out” their newly authorized “toy”…so why not use it on those two guys. I’ve said before that what they wanted was probably info to implicate Iraq to bolster the run up to the invasion….They didn’t spend too much time on Afghanistan or Al-Qaeda…
Remember, Cheney once said that Iran is the “Jewel” or something like that…they were already way past pretending to try to catch OBL at that point and were on to their new target, Iraq. If they could torture these guys and get them to “confess” that Saddam was involved, they would use it. Just like now, they are on to the next target, Iran.
Hey EW,
From a Marty Lederman post over at the Balkinization, check out the “remarkably thorough and helpful wiki-like timeline of the CIA interrogation program” that he links to.
Are those really mutually exclusive. Here is a totally hypothetical scenario spewed forth only for discussion, not as any sort of suggestion that it happened here (it could have, just not saying that it is). Suppose there was other evidence they had gathered on Nashiri, whether from other sources, or Nashiri before torture; and then, under torture, Zubayduh blurts out Nashiri’s name irrespective of context. A disingenuous interrogator claims this to be both “evidence” and “corroboration” even though it is neither.
One other thing. If you are really following sound interrogation and confession protocols and practice, subjects do not come and go in and out of credibility as to their statements. Once you get substantive crap, it is all presumed crap after that absent significant rehabilitation and corroboration .
“CIA’s harsh treatment intensified in late 2002“
When it was 24/7 Iraq, Iraq, WMD’s, WMD’s…
In these discussions, part of the dynamics that we should keep in mind are the contemporary partisan debates. Wasn’t this also shortly after the Democrats were hammering the administration for failing to “connect the dots“? That was big news in June, 2002. Of course,there were probably several factors involved (such as the desire to create a pathway of excuses to Iran), but getting hammered about something by your political opponents usually gets attention.
And, BTW, I don’t recall mention in our debates anything about The Top Secret National Counterterrorism Center. I’ll bet you don’t know where it is. Is this where all those warrantless wiretaps go?
Bob in HI
Do you think this is it:
n August 2004, the President established the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) to serve as the primary organization in the United States Government (USG) for integrating and analyzing all intelligence pertaining to terrorism and counterterrorism (CT) and to conduct strategic operational planning by integrating all instruments of national power. In December 2004, Congress codified the NCTC in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) and placed the NCTC in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Located at the Liberty Crossing Building in Northern Virginia, the NCTC is a multi-agency organization dedicated to eliminating the terrorist threat to US interests at home and abroad.
Thanks! Good catch.
What is the date of your source? If it is only 2004 or shortly after, they could have moved the center of operations. Or maybe your info refers to the political front office, and not necessarily the center of operations.
The article I linked to was dated in 2006.
Bob in HI
“I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.”
– G.W. Bush, 3/13/02
“I am truly not that concerned about him.”
– G.W. Bush, responding to a question about bin Laden’s whereabouts,
3/13/02 (The New American, 4/8/02)
So, by the end of 2002…they intensified torture, because suddenly Bush “cared”….
Not.
See, Bush wanted to use the AUMF for Afghanistan to justify torture (any means)…to catch the “terrorists that attacked us on 9/11″…he still tries that…
But, in fact, he didn’t care about that in 2002…he cared about invading Iraq, but that could not be justified in any way, shape, or form by applying the AUMF for Afghanistan.
Once he got the AUMF for Iraq, the techniques became more intensified. It was all about Iraq…not Al Qaeda.
bmaz, is AZ the state that is having policy wrangles about whether to videotape all interrogations, let the taping continue, or is the taping procedure halted now? My take on the terrorism tape destruction so far is the material that would create Abu Ghraib proportion scandal for the agencies involved in the preparation for the US presidential campaign season show trials and executions could be the most obvious reason to declare only those few archive masters sent to recycle. As for deciding now which of the taped material is substantive, it would seem to me the sensible plan would be to keep it all; make transcripts; but keep the video, as well; for the historians and analysts of future years. Another facet of the US tortcha scandal I have thought to be logistical, namely, that as the number of bounty-hunter rendered captives increased, suddenly what was likely an array of clandestine and illicit handling policies became a burgeoning problem by the sheer number of required tortcha chambers, taping apparatuses, translators, and tortcha practitioners, a cadre of processing personnel much greater than the involved US agencies had ever had to deploy and oversee in prior times. Yet further untold in this scandal, and in parallel to many other incentives in 2002-2003 employed by this administration, is the confounding silence about the history of both tortcha as US policy, and even wiretapping as agency standard procedure in a wide array of categories of targetted people. Part of the problem in understanding news reports now, from my perspective, is the absence of any, say, GAO or CRS quality writing of history of these ‘practices’; there are too many current government employees who have participated and have future careers to protect to endure the sensationalism of the media which would cavort with publication of any longterm history. The government during Truman and later Eisenhower administrations intermittently made an effort to describe in newsreports their then promised policies to prescind from maltretment of prisoners. But during the Johnson and later presidencies the same flaws in our watchdog mechanisms continued to make the news, with respect to tortcha, and wiretapping. When the teen who defaced private property in Singapore was a cause celebre and the US president intervened as much as possible to decrease the martial art tortcha of the youthful gentleman, I would imagine the US technical attorney department which records international law and prisoner abuse ebb and flow over many years, wrote a thorough background report for the US president as a resource for those negotiations. Public release of documents like that, if they actually exist, would be a worthwhile first step toward directing sunshine at US knowledge of and use of tortcha.
John- I think you are referring to the dispute that allegedly formed part of the basis for the firing of Paul Charlton as USA. Paul had instituted a policy of taping interrogations and confessions in reservation cases for a variety of reasons that were all sound. The “Loyal Bushies” hated the policy. But in Arizona, the issue of taping confessions and interrogations started long before that as a result of a state case colloquially known as the “Buddhist Temple Murder Case”. There was actually a Federal District Court spinoff case that resulted in a consent decree for state law enforcement mandating taping of critical interrogations and confessions; questionable application to the Feds, but they actually did adhere to it for a while in the mid to late 90s. At any rate, the issue has been front and center here for a long time.
On torture: I have been struck for a while on the links between torture and fictional accounts there of in current popular culture. Like sex, and politics, torture as a fantasy sport is something many people get off on at least at a distance. I would love to see a timeline between the mid east centered spy novels of neo-con Vince Flynn and torture (the tv show 24 comes a bit later, but also reifies the whole). In my other (real) life one of the questions I address is the interpenetration of fantasy and social value, both can be and often are manufactured. What was going on in the agency out of Bush and neocon hysteria over perceived Saddam and Islamic threats to the West, was being promoted in society more generally through vicarious means, the pleasure quotient, adding to the sense that the torture could not only get key results and was necessary (the whole “torture one person to save a city” mentality.
I don’t know anything about the questioning of this prisoner, but I do know that Dan Coleman enjoys an almost legendary reputation in Law Enforcement circles and I would be inclined to accept his judgement and analysis over most other people’s
OT, but Judge Kennedy wants an explanation Friday morning on why his order was ignored (via The Muck).
Also, did anyone else nearly choke on their lunch yesterday when Stevens got his knickers in a twist when he thought he wouldn’t get enough time to lard up the House appropriations bill? His exchange with Reid prior to Dodd’s onslaught, was truly priceless. Again from the Muck, the man appears to work fast…
I told you guys last week that the whole Kiriakou story reeked of White House self-inocculation.
I wish I could link in that comment both so we can see how my crystal-ball gazing turned out and to see if there’s something from that earlier post which we can call upon to illuminate today’s Pincus story. But, it seems I can’t.
Which brings me to something a bit OT, but not really.
I’m really starting to dislike the functionality of the site. There appears to be no way to either find a post more distant in time than the last ten posts (i.e., maybe a day or two old), nor an old comment I may have posted. If it isn’t in “recent posts”, it isn’t.
Compare that to the way Talkleft, for example, is arranged. I can post a comment there and, if six months later (or a year, or two) it comes to mind that someone said something relevant on a news item today, I can go back and, with a little effort, find what was written then and maybe use it today to flesh out a story.
Similarly, the search function on this site seems (in the words of a male relative) “about as useful as teats on a bull”. I typed in the word “kiriakou”, the name we’re using for the WH’s disinformation agent, and I get back one match. Today’s story. Even though that clown’s been in the news, and commented on here, for over a week.
Here, there is a nice function where I can put in my profile. Like I give a shit about that. If I wanted to tell everyone all about myself, I sure as hell would neither write under a nom de plume, nor make the effort to deliberately omit location, gender, name, relationships and all the other personally identifying information that I really try to keep out of my posts.
Is this site (and this applies to FDL, too) going to be a place where we all sit around clucking, gabbling and flapping our wings uselessly, or one where we can work together to (a) disassemble the bullshit the Admin and TradMed feed and (b) try to move policy and its’ execution toward what the Constitution and “Rule of Law”* actually say and mean. With the current setup of the site, it seems like we’re inclining toward the former.
* I get a kick out of using that phrase, remembering back to James Baker repeatedly intoning those words as the public face of the coup, when the Republicans fixed the Supreme Court decision in the winter of 2000-2001. The kick, being, of course, to my stomach acid level.
bmaz, the reply helps, for local jurisdictions’ history writing. While it may be a delicate and very public topic in that region, it sounds, as well, as if it is a controversy and a practice standardized in other states. It is also one of the interesting aspects of the government agencies’ embarrassments in the war criminials treatment tapes, that the practice of archiving video and audio was formalized a long time ago, not exactly a Miranda rights situation but a distant analog.
Give me Libby or give me death? Henry Waxman
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/….._1218.html
Bushco use of torture is a mechanism to fudge the evidence. To be able to link individuals to the characters created to enhance “The Global War On Terror” fiction. Useful patsies to fill the shoes of the evil, mastermind terrorists.
Mukasey helped evolve the law regarding terrorism from the first WTC bombing to 9/11 and beyond. He gave Bushco significant judgements from the bench that were crucial to implemetation of legal fiasco we see today.
There is much at stake including the truth about those events.
I wouldn’t buy for a minute that Zubaydah “gave up” Ramzi Binalshibh at all. It’s pretty clear from Suskind’s book and other sources, that it was the Emir of Qatar, via one of his al-Jazeera reporter sources, who both confirmed the KSM “mastermind” status and the Karachi safehouse location.
IMO, the fact that the Emir wanted that kept quiet bc it was betraying the reporting source just happily coincided with Tenet’s need to meet the President’s demand that they get something out of Zubaydah, so they could create the question – apply torture to get an affirmative answer – and voila. Keep in mind, the fact we had Zubaydah wasn’t a secret – Bush had plastered it all over the press immediately when it happened and he had also jumped the gun to call him something like the number 3 guy in al-Qaeda.
What really appeared to be the case, once they found him, was that the reason Z’s name came up in sigint so often was not that he was a big operationally important guy – but rather that he was the guy the foisted off all the “get the families here and there, hook up this guy with transportation, help that guy’s family get moved” guy. I think Coleman (who doesn’t hide behind anonymity – never has – and who doesn’t make any pretense of buying into torture as a state secret) gave the most descriptive phrasing when he called him something like the travel agent and meet & greet guy.
Pincus and Eggen pretty much omit that Coleman wasn’t just some FBI guy who looked at stuff. He was on O’Neill’s terrorism team and also worked as liason with Scheurer’s CIA team. The reason the Z’s documents went to him is that he was about the top source we had after 9/11. If there is anyone who can call bull on whether or not info was helpful and credible – he’d be the guy.
The real treasures they got from the capture of Z were, as P&E do briefly mention, “Documents, cellphones and computers were seized at multiple sites.”
Some of the other info that was important is what comes, as they mention about the Padilla info, “incidentally.” That is, after all, why you do the kind of questioning Coleman wanted to do – with someone who is knowledgeable. And it is why you tape and KEEP THE TAPES questioning. For those details. Of course, if you are taping yourself being a depraved criminal at the same time, I guess saving a personal hide trumps preserving information that might be important to keep babies from dieing in the next 9/11. It’s a pretty new definition of cowardice.
In any event, here’s Suskind on where we got the binalshibh info:
http://www.democracynow.org/20…..nalist_ron
Oh, and btw. When DOJ came up with the bizarre argument that one of the GITMO detainees could not speak with his lawyers about anything that happened before he came to GITMO, including his torture, bc it was all state secrets – it’s no real “accident” that the detainee the have clamped down on so hard is Majid Khan, who reportedly was kept at the same facility as those minor children of KSM and has his own story on how they were being abused.
After all, you know, you have to torture a 6 year old if you want to get really good, solid intelligence information.
Its hard work for a Commander Guy trying to deciderer hows yur gonna go bout protektun teh homeland. Hard work I tell ya. Anyway, Big Dick said Ayrab chillun are fair game.