Ex-FBI Interrogator: Harsh Methods Didn't Work

WASHINGTON — A former FBI interrogator who questioned al-Qaida prisoners testified Wednesday that the Bush administration falsely boasted of success from extreme techniques like waterboarding, when those methods were slow, unreliable and made an important witness stop talking.

Ali Soufan, testifying to a Senate panel behind a screen to hide his identity, said his team's non-threatening interrogation approach elicited crucial information from al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah, including intelligence on "dirty bomb" terrorist Jose Padilla.

Soufan said his team had to step aside when CIA contractors took over. They began using harsh methods that caused Zubaydah to "shut down," Soufan said, and his team had to be recalled the get the prisoner talking again.

Soufan appeared before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee holding the first hearing on extreme interrogation methods since the Obama administration last month released Bush administration legal opinions authorizing them.

Memos by the Bush Justice Department contended that waterboarding _ a form of simulated drowning _ as well as sleep deprivation and other extreme techniques were legal under U.S. and international law, but Democrats said they amounted to torture.

President Barack Obama has said he wanted to avoid partisan hearings over the interrogations, but the hearing turned partisan in its opening seconds.

Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., promised at the outset to unravel "our country's descent into torture" and vowed to expose "a bodyguard of lies" by the Bush administration.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked whether "we would have this hearing if we were attacked this afternoon."

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Graham called the hearing a "political stunt" and said Democrats were trying to judge officials who _ soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks _ "woke up one morning like most Americans and said, 'Oh, my God, what's coming next?'"

He also joined in the frequent Republican criticism that members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were briefed on the interrogation program and raised no protest at the time.

Graham appeared irate, commenting at one point, "The people we're prosecuting didn't rob a liquor store."

He said former Vice President Dick Cheney has suggested there was valuable information obtained from the extreme methods. "I would like the committee to get that information. Let's get both sides of the story here," Graham said.

Soufan countered that his personal experience showed that the harsh interrogation techniques didn't work even when there wasn't a lot of time to prevent an attack.

"Waiting 180 hours as part of the sleep deprivation stage is time we cannot afford to wait in a ticking bomb scenario," he said.

Soufan said the harsh techniques were "ineffective, slow and unreliable and, as a result, harmful to our efforts to defeat al-Qaida."

Soufan testified that "many of the claims made" by the Bush administration were inaccurate or half-truths.

He cited these examples:

_The administration said Abu Zubaydah wasn't cooperating before Aug. 1, 2002, when waterboarding was approved. "The truth is that we got actionable intelligence from him in the first hour of interrogating him" before that date.

_The administration credited waterboarding for Zubaydah's information that led to the capture of Padilla, who received a 17-year, four-month sentence, although prosecutors did not present any dirty-bomb information. Padilla was arrested in May 2002, months before waterboarding was authorized, Soufan said.

_Bush officials contended that waterboarding revealed the involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks of al-Qaida mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Soufan said the information was discovered in April 2002, months before waterboarding was introduced.

Another witness, Philip Zelikow, was a top adviser to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He described his efforts within the Bush administration to argue that the harsh interrogations violated the Constitution.

In early 2006, Zelikow said, he circulated his own analysis that dissented from the Justice Department view that the methods were legal under U.S. and international law.

"I later heard the memo was not considered appropriate for further discussion and that copies of my memo should be collected and destroyed," he said. "That particular request, passed along informally, did not seem proper and I ignored it."

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Wednesday that the memo has been found.

"We did locate a document that appears to be responsive to a request that came from Sen. Whitehouse... We've also received a request for the same document from other members of Congress. It is classified, so we are conducting a review, but we're unable to release it to the public because of its classification at this time," he said.

U.S. Circuit Judge Jay Bybee has declined to give Senate testimony on the memos he approved while at the Justice Department that concluded the interrogation program was legal, said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Leahy announced the refusal at the hearing but provided no details. Bybee serves on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Comments

[Hamish Gowans]

TORTURE WAS EFFECTIVE from the POV of the Bush administration. Combined with suspension of habeas corpus and indefinite detention, along with spying on Americans, I think it's pretty clear torture was part of a campaign of state terror directed at the American public. They used "enemy combatants" to test the waters, but the message was clear: you could be picked up off the street and whisked away to a secret prison to be tortured and held -maybe forever- if you were deemed a threat to the administration. This is the same sort of threatening atmosphere abused wives live in, where they must tread lightly lest they upset the master and "force" him to administer punishment. The aim was partly to come up with a justification for invading Iraq, but really the goal was to cow the American public into silent acquiescence while the Bush/Cheney regime did what it wanted. In this respect, it was very effective -and exposing the truth is the only way to free ourselves from these abusers' open-air prison.

[rschop]

Part 3

That when FBI HQ Corsi told Bongardt on August 28, 200, his investigation of Mihdhar had to be shut down because it would require information from the NSA he was not allowed to have, she already had been given written permission by the NSA on August 27, 2001 to give this NSA information to him and his team. See NSA release of information to Cole investigators, DE #448 at www.eventson911.com

That when Corsi told Bongardt on August 29, 2001 that the NSLU has ruled he could not be part of any investigation of Mihdhar, the DOJ IG investigators were told, later on November 7, 2002, by the attorney Corsi contacted, Sherry Sabol, that this was the opposite of the advice she had given to Corsi, and that she had in fact ruled the exact opposite and had ruled that Bongardt could be part of any investigation of Mihdhar since the NSA information had no connection with a FISA warrant. See page 538 9/11 Commission report, footnote 81.

It is now clear that the lives of 3000 people could have been saved with a little torture of the right people. Perhaps in addition to water boarding FBI Agent Corsi, CIA officer Wilshire and FBI Director Freeh, and even CIA Director Tenet, they could have used pliers to pull out their finger nails, after all what are a few finger nails compared to the lives of 3000.

[rschop]

Part 2

According to the DOJ IG report FBI IOS HQ Agent Dina Corsi told FBI Agent Steve Bongardt, FBI Agent Ali Soufan’s assistant on the Cole bombing investigation, on August 28, 2001, that he could not take part in any investigation of Khalid al-Mihdhar or Nawaf al-Hazmi, in spite of the fact they were known to be inside of the US and were thought to be preparing to take part in massive al Qaeda attack. Had Bongardt tortured FBI HQ Agent Corsi he would have found out:

That Corsi knew the CIA had been hiding from the Cole investigators the photograph of Walid Bin Attash taken at Kuala Lumpur al Qaeda planning meeting that connected Attash to both Mihdhar and Hazmi and the planning of the Cole bombing at that meeting. See DOJ IG Report on the attacks on 9/11, page 301.

That Corsi had been working directly with CIA Deputy Chief of the Bin Laden unit Tom Wilshire, who knew on August 22, 2001 that Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside the US in order to take part in massive al Qaeda attack that would kill thousands of Americans. See email July 23, 2001, in “Substitution for the testimony of John”, aka Tom Wilshire, at www.eventson911.com.

[rschop]

Part 1

Let me post what I am sure is a slightly different view on the ticking time bomb scenario and torture. The ticking time bomb in fact was the attacks on 9/11. It turns out these attacks could have been prevented using torture; the torture had to be applied on the right people. But the FBI had the names of the right people to torture, they just did not know it.

On November 2000 FBI Agent Ali Soufan made an official request to FBI director Louis Freeh to ask he would ask the CIA and Director Tenet for any information on any al Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000, or on Walid bin Attash, known to be the mastermind of the Cole bombing. Soufan was told that the CIA had none of the information.

But according to page 181 of the 9/11 Commission report and page 238-239 of the DOJ IG report, Freeh had been given all of this information in December 1999 by the NSA and in January 2000 by the CIA. This information appeared in his daily briefing papers on January 4, 2000 with the name Khalid al-Mihdhar, known to be traveling to an important al Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000. If Soufan had tortured Director Freeh he would have had all of the information needed to prevent the attacks on 9/11. But this might possibly have had a deleterious effect on Soufan’s next job performance review.

[Mulvaney]

Soufan stated that after he was pulled off the interrogation, the CIA introduced nudity and sleep deprivation, loud noise and temperature manipulation and confinement in a small box. So why are a few lowly soldiers, the only people who have been prosecuted for this kind of activity? If President Obama does not want to prosecute those who engaged in the practice, he should pardon those who have been convicted at Abu Ghraib.

[AliMB]

Part I

Consider this a supplemental to my three-chapter tome a few posts below (sorry :P):

Soufan's testimony corroborates that he was present at the CIA facility during a period of harsh treatment. This only confirms that his original NYT Op-ed piece was full of holes e.g. the claim that he interr0gated AZ "before the harsh techniques were introduced". When you're 'coming-out' piece is misleading you lose credibility.

In his testimony, Soufan went on to state that "throughout this time, my fellow FBI agent and I, along with a top CIA interr0gator who was working with us, PROTESTED" the treatment of AZ. Yet according to the IG report, the other FBI agent (alias Gibson) downplayed the severity of CIA's techniques, likewise stating that he had no "moral objections" to their application (which I quoted below).

In fact, sometime after the Bureau canceled its participation in CIA interrogations, a r a t sent an anonymous letter to the FBI alleging that Gibson took part in the a b u s e of AZ. The letter claimed that Gibson "spoke openly and with much enthusiasm about the t0rturing of captured of AQ terr0rists".

Bottom-line: the squeamish on-scene individual was Soufan, and not his FBI colleague (nor most of the CIA team). Yet conveniently, only Soufan made it on the hearing's witness list.

Another interesting snippet: throughout his testimony, Soufan mentions various pieces of information in an attempt to convey his superior interr0gation skills.

[AliMB]

Part II

For example, he declares that "we" got AZ to admit "the role of KSM as the mastermind" of 9 - 1 1.

The key word is "WE" because according to the IG it was the OTHER agent who extracted this information (the agent who had no problem with AZ's harsh treatment). Soufan may be showing a propensity to ride coattails.

Based on his statement, I believe that Soufan has either an amateurish understanding of interr0gations or his comments were manufactured to support his argument (given his vast experience, it's almost certainly the latter). His dichotomy of "Informed Interr0gation Approach" and "Harsh Interr0gation" is inaccurate; the concepts are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

EIT-based interr0gations may likewise use the "leveraging" of "culture and mindset", fears, known information, "cognitive" and "emotional" strategies, etc. Moreover, the IG itself calls Soufan's preference "relations­hip-buildi­ng techniques" (or 'rapport-based'), not "Informed Interr0gation". Soufan's attempt is clear: to portray any EIT interr0gation has an arbitrary/­unintellig­ent fishing expedition (as if the CIA had no access to other information), while non-coercive interr0gation as a sagacious use of data points.

The fact is that Soufan left way before the introduction of the 'extr.emer' set i.e. the EIT program (which I demonstrate below). Therefore, his commentary on the efficacy of the program is speculation. Similarly, his description of AZ's early interr0gation is hotly disputed.

I look forward to the day when the OTHER INDIVIDUALS who were involved with the EITprogram can fully challenge Soufan's claims.

[Project4NuBostonTeaParty]

As chair of this hearing, Sen. Whitehouse did himself no favors by having to catch a plane and cut the hearing short. He interrupted Soufan near the end because of this and effectively cut off an important response Soufan was making to Sen. Graham, who was a total buffoon every time he opened his mouth.

The collective weight of the witnesses seemed to be Republican.

Whitehouse, who must have made being polite his priority, somehow managed to let Graham dominate the entire proceeding. Graham's role as the lone Republican was to obstruct, deny, confuse and accuse. He couldn't help himself -- he simply had to insult the law ethics professor who was there to testify regarding the questionable content of memos written by Yoo and Bybee.

An off day for Chairman Whitehouse? I hope the next hearings unfold without the uncontrolled antics of Republican obstructionists like Graham.

[lobear00]

The infamous lindsey graham, the snake who always cries foul' when the snakes of his party are guilty of crimes against humanity. This snake who has to remind himself , he was once a Jag officer, who turned a lying criminal when he became a republican, and stuck his "Oath ' to the constitution inside his shoe. A typical republican.

[Birdman]

The thing that blows my mind is that we can have the testimony of hundreds of people who know first hand that these techniques do not work, then you have Rush, Hannity, O'Really, and Scarborough saying it does and then 40 percent of the country says ya. We are not being protected because of having no torture. Actually now that I think about it, it is very sad that we have so many in this country willing to torture others because they are afraid. I guess you could say chicken, chicken hawks

[Prakosh]

Cheney will be out and about telling every one how he knows more than someone on the of the front lines of interrogation and Graham still thinks that Abu Zubaydah told everything he knew in 35 seconds. He appeared genuinely surprised to find out that he had been waterboarded 83 times. And this doofus is in the U.S. Senate.

[Dr. Sam]

We all love America! But Cheney speaks as if he owns it. In a real and figurative sense, he might have come close. After dodging military service so many times (five deferments), he took so much for himself out the country to make himself a very rich man (note the role of Haliburton--like Bethel Corp before it--and other financial dealings and tax break for the rich under Bush). It is a shame that this man could choose Limbaugh over a four star general who served his country so well and who is so well respected by millions of Americans. Who really is Dick Cheney? Who really is Dick Cheney? I think Ms. Dowd of the New York Times did a very good job of telling us (or reminding us) in her Op-Ed piece of today. It is so ironic that it is this Dick Cheney who is shouting from the roof-top daily now that he loves America more than anyone else in America. Dick Cheney is an inhuman abstract who seems to be consumed by self-individualism. The focus of our debate should not be what interrogation or torture works, but what value we as a nation must and should up-hold. The Republicans are so far doing a good job of deflecting the debate into what works.

[rschop]

But beyond torture, Soufan is important because of his knowledge of what went on at the FBI and CIA prior to 9/11.
His information is so explosive that virtually all mention of Soufan was virtually stripped out of the 9/11 Commission report and even the DOJ IG report, when in fact he was lead investigator on the Cole bombing.
He is noted once in the DOJ IG report as the NY FBI Agent that spoke Arabic, when he flew out in February 2001, to show the FBI/CIA source the passport photo of Walid Bin Attash, Khallad, mastermind of the Cole bombing. The CIA kept secret that the month before, Khallad had been identified by this FBI/CIA source from the photo taken of him at the Kuala Lumpur meeting in January 2000, planning the Cole bombing with terrorists, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.
This information was hidden from the FBI Cole investigators until after the attacks on 9/11. Because the planning for the Cole bombing and the attacks on 9/11 took place at this same meeting, keeping this information secret from the FBI led directly to the successful al Qaeda attacks on 9/11.
What is so horrific is that the CIA kept this information secret even when they knew on August 22-23, 2001, that Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside the US in order to take part in a massive attack that would kill thousands of Americans on, see www.eventson911.com.

[Le`Cheer]

Testing 123

[AliMB]

Part I

As someone who has read the relevant documents, I believe that Ali Soufan lacks credibility.

In his original NYT Op-ed piece he stated the following:

"Along with another FBI agent, and with several CIA officers present, I questioned [AZ] from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interr0gation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence."

This comment is flagrantly false as even the NYT reported in 2006 that "within days" AZ was subjected to coercive interr0gation techniques, including being "stri.pped, held in an icy room and jar.red by earspli.tti.ngly loud music". The DOJ's 2008 Inspector General Report, as well as AZ's testimony to the ICRC, confirms that harsh treatment began almost from the onset.

Soufan could be defining "harsh technique" as the extre.mer set approved in the August OLC Memo (including waterb0arding, which was not applied prior to August). However, such an equivocation is misleading given that SOME harsh treatment was applied during Soufan's presence. In fact, at the time he himself described it to CIA personnel as "borderline t0rture".

It is important to note that Soufan and his colleague were specifically instructed by a superior to "leave the facility and call Headquarters if the CIA began using techniques that gave the agents disc0mfort". How long did Soufan wait until informing superiors, given that within days of the CIA interr0gation team's arrival "borderline t0rture" was applied?

[AliMB]

Part II

In today's testimony, Soufan implies that he witnessed the application of EITs during AZ's interr0gation when he testified that they were "ineffective, slow and unreliable". If this is accurate, then he was lyi.ng in her earlier account when he wrote that he interr0gated AZ "before the harsh techniques were introduced". If he is simply stating an opinion, then he lacks credentials because he was not present to determine whether EITs were "ineffective". Actually, I have a strong suspicion as to why he is making this conclusion (which I'll withhold for now).

Another misleading aspect of Soufan's Op-ed relates to his eventual departure:

"After I 0bjected to the enhanced techniques, the message came through from Pat D'Amuro, an FBI assistantdirector that "we don't do that," and I was pulled out of the interrogations by the FBIdirector"

Let us assume that by "enhanced techniques" Soufan is referring to the program EITs and not the aforementioned sens0ry b0mbardment. Regardless, a quick analysis of the IG report exposes a serious timeline discrepancy. While Soufan was pulled, the other FBI agent REMAINED on-site for significant more time (a point conveniently left out by Soufan). Yet, according to Soufan, "I questioned" AZ up until "June2002". That is impossible considering that the other FBI agent remained at the interrogation "for several weeks after [Soufan] left", eventually leaving "around early June" to attend a meeting. Is Soufan prepared to claim that he questioned AZ by phone?