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Abu Zubaydah May Have Been Waterboarded MORE than 83 Times

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MadDog and I just realized something that should have been apparent since August. He and I have been looking at the passage of yesterday’s document dump that refers to CIA keeping OLC informed of how many times waterboarding was used.

First, and most obvious, Jay Bybee’s 1 Aug 2002 memo to John Rizzo stated, in part, “Moreover, you have also orally informed us that although some of these techniques may be used with more than once, that repetition will not be substantial because the techniques generally lose their effectiveness after several repetitions.” (p. 2) and again, “You have indicated that these acts will not be used with substantial repetition, so that there is no possibility that severe physical pain could arise from such repetition.” (p. 11). The OIG review determined that Abu Zubaydah was subjected to [redacted 2 characters?] waterboard sessions, consisting of at least 83 seperate exposures [redacted sentence] assured us that he gave regular updates to DoJ (i.e. John Yoo [redacted 2-3 words] at OLC) during this time frame, and DoJ was aware of the real numbers, but we were never able to verify this with DoJ, as INV management at the time elected not to interview witnesses outside the building. In addition to the disparity in numbers, the method of water application as recorded on the tapes was at odds with the Bybee opinion… [MadDog’s transcription and emphasis]

Now, here’s what the IG Report itself said about how they came up with that number, 83. (It’s worth actually looking at this passage–on PDF 41-42; this entire discussion appears in one paragraph in the “Videotapes on Interrogations” section.)

OIG reviewed the videotapes, logs, and cables [redacted] in May 2003. OIG identified 83 waterboard applications most of which lasted less than 10 seconds.

[4-5 lines redacted]

OIG found 11 interrogation tapes to be blank. Two others were blank except for one or two minutes of recording. Two others were broken and could not be reviewed. OIG compared the videotapes to logs and cables and identified a 21-hour period of time which included two waterboard sessions that was not captured on the videotapes.

That is, they got the number 83 from not just the videotapes, but also the logs and cables. That’s because the IG couldn’t have gotten the total number of waterboard applications from the videos. As the IG Report makes clear in the same paragraph that first mentions the number 83, two entire sessions of waterboarding should have appeared on the tapes that were taped over or otherwise damaged.

Remember the context of this. CIA’s Office of General Counsel had, in November-December 2002, reviewed the tapes, purportedly to make sure they matched the guidance the interrogators had gotten from Langley and the cables they sent reporting on the interrogation. Yet, as the IG  team had discovered during their investigation, the lawyer who conducted that review (according to the WaPo, John McPherson) hadn’t actually compared the guidance to what appeared in the videos. When the IG did a review themselves in May 2003, they discovered that the waterboarding in the video did not match the guidance. Perhaps that’s the only reason the IG Report seems skeptical about the self-reported number that appeared in the log and cables describing the two sessions not videotaped. Or perhaps the IG review of the videotapes had discovered a discrepancy between the numbers shown in the videos and those reported up the chain of command (which might be what the discussion in the four redacted lines is).

The bigger story remains that Abu Zubaydah’s torturers appear to have taped over or otherwise destroyed video of two of their waterboarding sessions. But one of the things that obscures about AZ’s treatment is the number of times he was actually waterboarded.

How Abu Zubaydah’s Sleep Deprivation Got Out of Control

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The latest CIA document dump also provides more background on how Abu Zubaydah got subjected to extended sleep deprivation long before it was approved. PDF page 113-114 explains:

After consulting with the NSC and DOJ, CTC[redacted] originally approved 24-48 hours of sleep deprivation.

In April 2002 CTC[redacted] learned that due to a misunderstanding, that time frame had been exceeded.

However, CTC[redacted] advised that since the process did not have adverse medical effects or result in hallucinations (thereby disrupting profoundly Abu Zubaydah’s senses or personality) it was within legal parameters.

There a number of important points about this.

First, note the timing: April. When AZ was still recovering from bullet wounds and surgery.

This was also the same time period when (oops!) Binyam Mohamed was being subjected to extended sleep deprivation, presumably pursuant to the same kind of “misunderstanding.”

But also note the language. The “profoundly disrupt the senses or personality” is the language on severe mental suffering that John Yoo gave John Rizzo on July 13, 2002, which Jonathan Fredman sent to the torturers as their guideline on torture. It seems likely, then, that this (oops!) sleep deprivation was the “incident” that CIA was so concerned about as they were writing the Bybee Memos.

“High Side” Cables and FOIA Responses

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As you’ll no doubt understand over the next week or so, bmaz and I have been comparing the case of David Passaro, the only CIA-related person to be prosecuted for detainee abuse, with what happened in Gul Rahman’s death at the Salt Pit. Passaro, a CIA contractor obviously trained in SERE-based interrogation techniques, was convicted of assaulting an Afghan, Abdul Wali, with his hand, foot, and flashlight, while interrogating him at the Asadabad firebase in Eastern Afghanistan in June 2003.

I’ll have a lot more to say about Passaro’s case in upcoming posts (short story, though, is his defense tested many of John Yoo’s favorite theories and lost). But for now, I wanted to point to two passages in this filing, which requests electronic communications evidence related to Wali’s interrogation and death. One thing it requests are transcripts of satellite phone calls from the Field.

The audio recordings and/or text documentation of the contents of satellite phone calls related to the events which prompted Wali’s surrender; his subsequent intake, detention, and questioning; his death; and all investigations into these events. Counsel for Mr. Passaro has learned that CIA operatives and contractors, members of Special Operations forces, and military intelligence unites, and members of other governmental agencies (OGA) frequently used satellite phones to communicate from this region of Afghanistan, and that the government maintains voice recordings of all satellite phone calls;

Granted, Afghanistan is apt to be more reliant on Sat Phone calls than–say–Thailand or Poland. But this request suggests there might be another set of documentation pertaining to (for example) daily authorizations for torture techniques in April and May 2002.

Then there is Passaro’s lawyer’s suggestion that the government has withheld what is called “high side” message traffic from him.

All message traffic to or from any member of a Special Ops (Special Forces, Delta Force, Navy Seals, etc.) or Military Intelligence unit, or OGA, related to the events which prompted Wali’s surrender; his subsequent intake, detention, and questioning; his death; and all investigations into these events. Counsel for Mr. Passaro has learned that members of these units [redacted] and submitted daily situation reports which detailed the detention and questioning of all detainees. Based on our review of the redacted messages the government submitted November 10, 2004, it appears that these messages–classified as “secret” and known as “low-side” traffic–originated from a member of the CIA. Message traffic to and from members of the units specified in this request were typically sent as “high-side” traffic and were sent independent from any CIA messages;

As I understand it, “high side” and “low side” refer to two different communication networks, Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS) and Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), respectively (I believe that’s what’s pictured in the image above). Stuff that’s Top Secret or TS/SCI has to go over the JWICS network because it’s more secure. And Passaro was complaining that he only got cables that were classified Secret, which, he suggested, meant the government had not turned over the cables that had been sent over JWICS.

Now, I’m more interested in what this means for public disclosures rather than Passaro’s case. Many of the cables we’ve seen referred to in CIA Vaughn Indices refer to Secret, not Top Secret cables. Since we’re getting just Secret cables, it suggests the possibility that we’re getting just “low side” communications, rather than the most sensitive communications.

The exception to that assertion–the one case where it appears CIA has described a whole bunch of Top Secret cables, actually raises even more concerns. The index of cables back and forth from Thailand to Langley from 2002 appears to show a batch of cables that are almost all Top Secret cables. But recall what Leon Panetta revealed in a footnote last year: that “many” of the cables were actually classified “Secret,” but that he was retroactively calling them “Top Secret.”

Then there’s the last bit, wherein cables originally classified as SECRET apparently have become TOP SECRET.

In his declaration, Panetta notes that some of the documents in the declaration were not marked properly:

Many of the operational communications were originally marked as SECRET in our communications database even though they should have been marked as TOP SECRET, and some of the miscellaneous documents were not properly marked. While we are not altering original electronic copies, this error is being corrected for copies printed for review in this case.

Given that Panetta uses the word “many,” I assume this means more than just the one operational cable from HQ to Field, dated November 30, 2002, that is marked SECRET on the CIA’s list of documents (I believe the other documents marked SECRET are what Panetta treats as “miscellaneous” documents). So, first of all, there’s the funny detail that the CIA has been representing these documents to be TOP SECRET to Judge Hellerstein since at least May 1, yet they’re only now getting around to telling him (now that they’re turning some over for his review) that they were originally actually marked SECRET.

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How CIA Avoided Negligent Homicide Charges in the Salt Pit Killing

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Since the AP story on the Salt Pit death, reporters have focused a lot of attention to a particular footnote in Jay Bybee’s second response to the OPR Report and what it claims about intent (and, to a lesser degree, what it says about Jay Bybee’s fitness to remain on the 9th Circuit). In it, Jay Bybee references a memo CIA’s Counterterrorism Center wrote in response to Gul Rahman’s death at the Salt Pit; the memo argued that the CIA officer in charge should not be prosecuted under the torture statute because he did not have the specific intent to make Rahman suffer severe pain when he doused him with water and left him exposed in freezing temperatures.

Notably, the declination memorandum prepared by the CIA’s Counterterrorism Section regarding the death of Gul Rahman provides a correct explanation of the specific intent element and did not rely on any motivation to acquire information. Report at 92. If [redacted], as manager of the Saltpit site, did not intend for Rahman to suffer severe pain from low temperatures in his cell, he would lack specific intent under the anti-torture statute. And it is also telling that the declination did not even discuss the possibility that the prosecution was barred by the Commander-in-Chief section of the Bybee memo.

As Scott Horton noted the other day, analysis of the torture statute should not have been the only thing in the declination memo. Prosecutors should have analyzed whether or not Rahman’s killing constituted negligent homicide, among other things.

Note that the declination, issued by politically loyal U.S. attorneys who were subsequently rewarded with high postings at Main Justice, carefully follows the rationalizations that Yoo and Bybee advanced for not prosecuting deaths or serious physical harm resulting from state-sanctioned torture. But the obvious problem, as John Sifton notes at Slate, is that torture and homicide are hardly the only charges that could be brought in such a circumstance. Negligent homicide or milder abuse charges would have obviously been available, and a survey of comparable cases in the setting of state and local prisoners suggests that they are far more common. By looking only at homicide and torture, the prosecutors were paving the way for a decision not to charge.

But the OPR Report and the Legal Principles/Bullet Points documents it describes may explain why this didn’t happen. The Legal Principles/Bullet Points document shows that CIA claimed–possibly, with the tacit approval of the Principals Committee–that the only two criminal statutes that could be applied to its interrogation program were the Torture Statute and the War Crimes Statute.

As a threshold matter, Horton appears to be misstating what the declination memo described in the footnote is and–more importantly–who wrote it. “Politically loyal US Attorneys” did not write the declination described here. Some lawyer at CIA’s CTC wrote it. That’s because, as the OPR Report explains in the section preceding the entirely redacted passage that discusses this letter (the declination letter appears on PDF 98, which appears in the same section as the following quotes from pages PDF 96 and 97), DOJ told CIA to go collect facts about the abuses they reported in January 2003 (which include the Salt Pit killing and threats of death used with Rahim al-Nashiri) themselves.

According to a CIA MFR drafted by John Rizzo on January 24,2003, Scott Muller (then CIA General Counsel), Rizzo and [redacted] met with Michael Chertoff Alice Fisher, John Yoo, and [redacted–probably Jennifer Koester] to discuss the incidents at [redacted]. According to Rizzo, he told Chertoff before the meeting that he needed to discuss “a recent incident where CIA personnel apparently employed unauthorized interrogation techniques on a detainee.”

[snip]

Chertoff reportedly commented that the CIA was correct to advise them because the use of a weapon to frighten a detainee could have violated the law. He stated that the Department would let CIA OIG develop the facts and that DOJ would determine what action to take when the facts were known. According to Rizzo, “Chertoff expressed no interest or intention to pursue the matter of the [redacted].

On January 28, 2003, CIA Inspector General John Helgerson called Yoo and told him that the CIA OIG was looking into the [redacted] matter. According to Helgerson’s email message to Rizzo, Yoo “specifically said they felt they do not need to be involved until after the OIG report is completed.” Rizzo responded to Helgerson: “Based on what Chertoff told us when we gave him the heads up on this last week, the Criminal Division’s decision on whether or not some criminal law was violated here will be predicated on the facts that you gather and present to them.”

Alerted that, in the course of interrogating detainees, CIA had killed one and threatened to kill another detainee, DOJ’s first response (at least according to two different CIA versions of what happened) was to tell CIA to go collect information on the events themselves. Only after CIA finished investigating and presented the facts of the case would DOJ weigh in on whether a crime had been committed.

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Why John Yoo’s Attempts to “Negate” the Torturers’ Intent Fails

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In my last post, I showed how the Bybee Two memo, purporting to find each of ten torture techniques used with Abu Zubaydah legal, was a very specific response to John Yoo’s July 13 memo to John Rizzo. The July 13 memo had basically said, “if you consult with experts that tell you techniques won’t cause prolonged mental harm, then it will “negate” any intent you had to use specific acts listed in the torture statute to cause mental pain and suffering.” So, in response, CIA barraged John Yoo and Jennifer Koester with information purportedly showing that waterboarding and sleep deprivation did not cause prolonged mental harm, Yoo and Koester threw it into a memo, and said that as a result those techniques weren’t torture.

But there’s a problem with the gimmick (even aside from the offensiveness of the premise): the timing.

The memo itself bears evidence that the CIA had already used at least some of these techniques by the time they asked for the opinion. And the details we now know surrounding the process make it clear that they didn’t even consult the experts until after they used some of the techniques. Indeed, it appears that one of the studies they claim to have “consulted” was actually an experiment they conducted on Abu Zubaydah himself. That is, they’re citing their own “study” on Abu Zubaydah as their expert advice to prove they didn’t have the intent of causing him prolong mental suffering.

The torturers had already used the techniques before getting approval

Now, there are many reasons to suspect that the torturers used waterboarding (and perhaps mock burial) before August 1. But I can’t prove that. But their single-minded concern about mental suffering–and not physical suffering–dating back at least to July 10, 2002 strongly suggests that they may have already done something to cause AZ prolonged mental suffering. Otherwise, what would explain the imbalance in their focus?

But there are several details in the Bybee Two memo itself that show they had already used some of the techniques on AZ.

Take, for example, my observation of the other day: a draft of Abu Zubaydah’s psychological evaluation noted that “he showed strong signs of sympathetic nervous system arousal (possibly fear) when he experienced the initial ‘hard’ dislocation of expectation intervention following session 63.” [my emphasis] Well, it turns out we have seen that term, “dislocation of expectation” before … in the Bybee Two memo, where Yoo describes the whole point of the ten torture techniques!

As part of this increased pressure phase, Zubaydah will have contact only with a new interrogation specialist, whom he has not met previously, and the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (“SERE”) training psychologist who has been involved with the interrogations since they began. This phase will likely last no more than several days but could last up to thirty days. In this phase, you would like to employ ten techniques that you believe will dislocate his expectation regarding the treatment he believes he will receive and encourage him to disclose the crucial information mentioned above. [my emphasis]

They knew at this point that AZ had already been subjected to such a condition, even while they were purportedly approving the ten techniques in the future.

More damning, though, are the admissions that they had already subjected him to sleep deprivation. There’s the admission they had subjected him to sleep deprivation in the description of the technique itself.

You have orally informed us that you would not deprive Zubaydah of sleep for more than eleven days at a time and that you have previously kept him awake for 72 hours, from which no mental or physical harm resulted.

Then there’s a more interesting reference, because it shows up in the section on page 8 that regurgitates his psychological evaluation.

During detention, Zubadaydah has manged his mood, remaining at most points “circumspect, calm, controlled, and deliberate.” He has maintained his demeanor during aggressive interrogations and reductions in sleep. You describe that in an initial confrontational incident, Zubaydah showed signs of sympathetic nervous system arousal (which you think was possibly fear). [my emphasis]

Now, this entire larger section repeats back the content of the psychological evaluation (though the use of the word “confrontational” shows they were citing from the later draft of it), almost all in the same order at the paragraph level as it appears in the evaluation. There is nothing in the unredacted document referring to sleep deprivation. But this entire passage otherwise replicates the paragraph spanning pages 3-4 of the evaluation. Which strongly suggests that the redaction also spanning pages 3-4 includes a discussion of both aggressive interrogations and sleep deprivation.

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How John Yoo Negated the Mental Suffering of Death Threats in the Bybee Two Memo

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It’s time to read the Bybee Two memo again.

Since the OPR Report came out, we’ve learned the following (some of it was already out there, but I, at least, hadn’t noticed it):

  • After his 63rd interrogation session, Abu Zubaydah experienced what his torturers call “hard dislocation”
  • An “issue arose” during the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah that two CIA lawyers discussed via email on July 10, 2002
  • In the days following CIA lawyers’ discussion of that issue, Criminal Division Chief Michael Chertoff got his own briefing on the torture memo (July 11), followed the next day by a meeting with Alberto Gonzales and probably David Addington (July 12), followed the next day by a larger briefing including Gonzales, Chertoff, John Rizzo and FBI Chief of Staff Daniel Levin that covered both the planned torture techniques and the torture memo (July 13)
  • After Chertoff told CIA at that July 13 meeting that he would not issue an advance declination of prosecution for torture, Rizzo asked for and received a memo laying out “the elements of the torture statute;” the July 13 memo focused closely on the definition of intent to cause mental suffering; Yoo’s supervisors John Ashcroft and Jay Bybee claim to be unaware of the memo
  • In his cable to AZ’s torture team written after both Bybee Memos were completed, Counterterrorism Center lawyer Jonathan Fredman relied on the language on intent from the July 13 memo, not the Bybee One memo
  • Also after the meeting at which Chertoff refused an advance declination, David Addington appears to have directed John Yoo to include several affirmative defenses in the Bybee One memo
  • The next draft of the memo–dated July 23 and for the first time addressed to Alberto Gonzales–included the affirmative defenses Addington had asked for as well as language on intent to cause mental harm adopted from the July 13 memo
  • In the days following that draft, several things happened to change the approach to torture authorization
  • CIA removed mock burial on its list of torture techniques because approving it would hold up the overall memo
  • CIA asked for a separate letter addressing specific techniques–what would become the Bybee Two memo
  • As part of several packets of information they received from CIA on the long term mental effects of torture, Yoo and Jennifer Koester almost certainly received a draft psychological evaluation noting that AZ had experienced “hard dislocation” after session 63, though we can’t prove that they saw that phrase because the copy of the document they received has been altered before being released in FOIA
  • A large packet of information received on the same day as one of the draft psychological evaluations disappeared from the OLC SCIF

All those details make it fairly clear that the Bybee Two memo was designed to respond to the July 13 memo. But they also help to prove that it failed to do what it was intended to do.

How John Yoo told the CIA to “negate” their specific intent to torture

Yoo’s July 13 memo stated that several things were necessary to prosecute torture for the infliction of mental suffering:

  • The commission of certain kinds of predicate acts, that included but were not limited to the use of procedures designed to profoundly disrupt the senses and/or the threat of imminent death
  • The infliction of prolonged mental harm as a result of those predicate acts
  • The specific intent to inflict the severe mental suffering from those predicate acts

But even if someone had the specific intent to commit those predicate acts and prolonged mental harm resulted, Yoo included an escape hatch. He basically said that if a person had conducted studies and based on those studies had concluded that prolonged mental harm would not result, then he could claim to have been operating with a good faith belief that those actions did not cause prolonged mental harm.

Specific intent can be negated by a showing of good faith. Thus, if an individual undertook any of the predicate acts for severe mental pain or suffering, but did so in the good faith belief that those acts would not cause the prisoner prolonged mental harm, he would not have acted with the specific intent necessary to establish torture. If, for example, efforts were made to determine what long-term impact, if any, specific conduct would have and it was learned that the conduct would not result in prolonged mental harm, any actions undertaken relying on that advice would have be [sic] undertaken in good faith. Due diligence to meet this standard might include such actions as surveying professional literature, consulting with experts, or evidence gained from past experience.

In other words, to “negate” the specific intent to cause prolonged mental harm that constituted torture, you could do a bunch of study and if that study showed no prolonged mental harm had resulted from these actions in the past, you could then claim that you had no idea that those actions might cause prolonged mental harm in the future, and therefore any deliberate actions that ended up causing prolonged mental harm weren’t really torture.

Abracadabra!!!

As I’ll show below, the Bybee Two memo was designed to show that CIA had done that kind of study. (Note, this is not an original observation; I’m fairly certain both Jeff Kaye and William Ockham have made this observation in the past.) But, as I’ll show in a follow-up post, it fails in what it was designed to do.

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The Government Makes No Claim Abu Zubaydah Had Knowledge of Impending Terrorist Plans

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There’s one more really incendiary passage from the government’s response to Abu Zubaydah’s request for more information in his habeas petition (see here, here, and here for more on this document). In response to a request for evidence indicating that Abu Zubaydah had no knowledge of pending terrorist attacks when he was captured in 2002, the government responds that they have not contended, in this proceeding, that he did have such knowledge.

The Government also has not contended in this proceeding that at the time of his capture, Petitioner had knowledge of any specific impending terrorist operations other than his own thwarted plans. Accordingly, there is no reason or basis to compel the Government to search for information indicating that Petitioner had no knowledge of such impending terrorist operations, as Petitioner requests in his Request No. 66.

Now, let’s be clear what this statement is not: it’s not an admission that the government knows AZ didn’t know of any pending terrorist attacks. By limiting their statement to AZ’s habeas petition–to their legal claim at the moment describing why they’re detaining him–they also limit their admission. That is, they may now believe that AZ didn’t know about any further terrorist attacks. Or they may still believe that AZ had knowledge of pending attacks, but can’t use that claim because they either have no untainted evidence to support it or doing so would too quickly rely on AZ’s tortured statements.

So while this is not a full admission that AZ didn’t know of any pending terrorist attacks, it is a pretty good sign that the government either can’t or doesn’t want to defend that claim.

Compare the caution about making such a claim with the claims made in another legal document submitted last year, the very first passage in Jay Bybee’s first response to the OPR report (Bybee submitted this on May 4, 2009, so a full month after the government submitted Abu Zubaydah’s factual return, though there’s no reason to believe Bybee would have known the content of the factual return).

Six months after the September 11,2001 attacks, United States forces captured top al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah. Because Zubaydah had assumed the role of chief military planner for al Qaeda, he possessed critical imminent threat information. In particular, the Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”) determined that Zubaydah had information about a “second wave” of devastating attacks targeting, among other things, the tallest building in Los Angeles.

According to Jay Bybee–the guy who signed off on AZ’s torture–AZ “possessed” critical intelligence. He states this with no caveats.

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Abu Zubaydah Experienced “Hard” Dislocation After Session 63

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Whoever wrote Abu Zubaydah’s psychological evaluation claimed to have succeeded in subjecting Abu Zubaydah to “hard” dislocation after his 63rd session of torture. And that claim was made before OLC approved the use of torture with him.

I’ve long been aware that we got two versions of Abu Zubaydah’s psychological evaluation last August: the copy purportedly faxed to John Yoo on July 24, 2002. And the copy faxed to the Inspector General on January 31, 2003 as it began its investigation. I had reviewed them last August and–while I found some weird details I’ll get to in a second–had concluded that they were effectively the same content.

They’re not.

The key difference appears in the top paragraph on the fourth page of the evaluation. The copy purportedly sent to Yoo includes these sentences:

In addition, he showed strong signs of sympathetic nervous system arousal (possibly fear) when he experienced the initial “confrontational” dislocation of expectation [] during an interrogation session. Due to his incredibly strong resolve, expertise in civilian warfare, resistance to interrogation techniques (the latter two which he trained hundreds of others on) this experience was one of the few that led to him providing significant actionable intelligence. [my emphasis]

In the copy sent to the IG the following year, that passage reads this way.

In addition, he showed strong signs of sympathetic nervous system arousal (possibly fear) when he experienced the initial “hard” dislocation of expectation intervention following session 63. Due to his incredibly strong resolve, expertise in civilian warfare, resistance to interrogation techniques (the latter two which he trained hundreds of others on) this experience was one of the few that led to him providing significant actionable intelligence. [my emphasis]

The copy sent to the IG identifies precisely when this dislocation happened–after session 63–and calls it “hard” dislocation rather than “confrontational.”

I’ll leave it to the psychologists in the crowd to explain precisely what they mean by the phrase “dislocation of expectation.” And while we don’t know what numbering system the torturers were using for their torture sessions, if they had daily sessions the 63rd would have come some time in mid-June. Long before this memo was written. Whatever else this detail shows, it shows that the torturers were far down the path of torture before they wrote this assessment and they had already broken Abu Zubaydah.

Now, I said above that the first assessment linked here was “purportedly” sent to John Yoo on July 24. That’s because (as I and I think others have pointed out before) the document provides conflicting dates. The cover sheet is dated July 24. The instruction for Yoo to “call me at work or at home, whenever” reflects some degree of urgency. But the following pages clearly show a fax timestamp from July 25 at 5:02 PM. Unless this was a dateline issue (that is, unless it was sent from Thailand or something), then the copy we’ve got–the one with the session number removed–is a later iteration of the assessment.

Also note that the fax cover sheet of the July 24/25 version says the document includes 7 pages. And indeed, we do get seven pages. But the Bates stamp in the bottom right hand corner are missing a page from the series, 0000001 (in fact, the series seems to be different, given the “T” that appears on the cover sheet). Note, too, the Bates numbers from the top right hand corner, which show someone couldn’t decide whether this was document 71 or document 79 (the number 71 is the number from IG’s FOIA response).

One more interesting detail. Both of these assessments came from CIA’s IG. (Though the second number on the front page of the July 24/25 document bears a number showing it was once in Counterterrorism Center’s legal department.) Thus, even though we know OLC probably got at least two drafts of the assessment (one on July 24 and one on July 25), we haven’t seen the copy they should have in their SCIF.

Oh wait. OLC’s SCIF.

That would be OLC’s leaky SCIF, from which documents have a way of disappearing. In fact, one of the documents we know to have disappeared from OLC’s SCIF bears the date July 25, 2002. The missing document is probably not the same document (the missing document is much longer). But as I’ve said, it’s an awfully suspicious day to be losing documents.

Steven Kappes and Ibn Sheikh al-Libi

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Jeff Stein has a long profile of Steven Kappes in the Washingtonian that challenges Kappes’ reputation for competence. For example, he points out how Kappes tried to get Jeff Castelli–the guy in charge of the notoriously incompetent Abu Omar rendition–placed in charge of CIA’s NY office. And he describes how Kappes helped the officer in charge of the Salt Pit prison avoid accountability for killing Gul Rahman.

But I’m particularly interested in two details, and the implications of them. Stein reminds us that, during the Obama transition period, Kappes tried to retain CIA’s ability to torture.

When Obama’s intelligence transition team had visited Langley, it had gotten a pitch from Kappes and other CIA officials to “retain the option of reestablishing secret prisons and using aggressive interrogation methods,” according to an anecdote buried in a Washington Post story.

“It was one of the most deeply disturbing experiences I have had,” David Boren, the moderate Oklahoma Democrat and former Senate Intelligence committee chair who led the transition team, told the Post.

Now couple that with Stein’s description of the earliest negotiations between Libya and the US.

In March 2003, leader Muammar Qaddafi signaled that he was ready to jump-start his on-again, off-again campaign to end his long diplomatic and commercial isolation, get off Washington’s list of terrorist states, and get back into the oil business with the West. Two years earlier, he’d dispatched one of his top operatives, Michigan State–educated Mousa Kousa, to a clandestine meeting in London with top CIA and British intelligence officials. Kousa carried with him the names of some of Osama bin Laden’s closest associates, including Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, a Libyan who would soon be the first major catch in the CIA’s pursuit of al-Qaeda. But with Qaddafi dragging his feet on final payouts over Libya’s 1988 downing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, negotiations stalled. [my emphasis]

Stein’s revelation that Qaddafi tried to get back in the good graces of the US by providing information on bin Laden’s associates is news to me. But I’m particularly intrigued that Kousa claimed that Ibn Sheikh al-Libi was one of “Osama bin Laden’s closest associates.”

He wasn’t (though he was “close” to al Qaeda).

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Government Admits Abu Zubaydah Suffered from Cognitive Impairment

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Jason Leopold has made the full filing revealing the scope of the government’s claims about Abu Zubaydah here. I’ll be reading through it today, but I wanted to point to one more clear admission that would seem to undermine the claims the government made in justifying his torture.

The government admits that AZ suffered from “cognitive impairment” due to the shrapnel wound he had in his head.

Respondent acknowledged in the factual return that [Zubaydah’s] diaries indicate that he suffered cognitive impairment from a shrapnel injury for a number of years.

Yet in the Bybee Two memo, John Yoo asserted (based on this psychological evaluation) that AZ had no pre-existing mental conditions or problems that might make him unfit for things like waterboarding.

According to your reports, Zubaydah does not have any pre-existing mental conditions or problems that would make him likely to suffer prolonged mental harm from your proposed interrogation methods. Tbrough reading his diaries and interviewing him, you have found no history of mood disturbance or other psychiatric pathology[,]” “thought disorder[,] … enduring mood or mental health problems.”

Which is probably why, beyond the narrow admission that AZ’s diaries made it very clear he had had a head injury that caused lasting damage, the government doesn’t want to provide any further evidence of mental illness or cognitive impairment.

Further evidence that Petitioner suffered any mental illness or cognitive impairment (Request No. 54) would not be relevant without any indication that one of the specific diary passages relied upon by the Government was actually linked to the mental or cognitive impairment.

Now, there are actually redacted passages in both the Bybee Two memo and AZ’s psychological evaluation that might include admissions of this injury (in the long redacted section on page 17 of the Bybee Memo and at the end of the first paragraph on Emotional/Mental States/Coping Skills in the psychological evaluation). But one way or another, CIA and/or John Yoo found ways to dismiss any concerns about waterboarding a guy with a known significant head injury.