Harsh Interrogation Methods Played 'Small Role At Most' In Bin Laden's Capture: NY Times

The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Did brutal interrogations produce the crucial intelligence that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden?

Read the whole story: The New York Times

Comments

[Kansiov]

09:24 AM on 05/05/2011

"One detainee who apparently was subjected to some tough treatment provided a crucial description of the courier, according to current and former officials briefed on the interrogations. But two prisoners who underwent some of the harshest treatment — including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times — repeatedly misled their interrogators about the courier’s identity."

Dear Republicans, the NYT did not deny the comments made by Peter King.

kthxbai.

[Whinger]

07:58 AM on 05/05/2011

Brutal / Harsh interrogation is still torture no matter what weasel words are used to soften the image
Intel via torture is not always reliable or credible due to the very fact it is forced and not voluntary.
The message other terrorist leaders and rank and file cell members can take from the elimination of Osama Bin Laden, is, once located your fate is written in stone!
President Obama and all the other unseen faces behind this success, deserve the admiration and respect of the nation and nations globally, for their determination, dedication and expertize in bringing one of the most ruthless and brutal men on this earth to justice!

[sc29403]

02:11 AM on 05/05/2011

LOL, as of the day Obama was inaugurated (1/09) Bush and the repubs wiped their hands clean of any responsibility for the deficit (trillions spent on a trumped up and unpaid for war) and the economy which had already crashed (they did the Wall St bailout in 10/08) and pinned it on him, but 28 months later they take credit for finding bin Laden?!? They knew he was living in middle class Pakistan suburbia and did nothing. Bush, still as president, even said bin Laden was not a priority. They continue, everyday, to prove they are nothing but immoral and despicable liars and political game players with no interest in the well being of the American people.

[politicscorner]

08:11 PM on 05/04/2011

Thank you NYT. I'm tired of hearing the irresponsible and ignorant at Fox making statements that are just plain false.

[Westdude]

11:40 AM on 05/06/2011

Don't forget, dude: Read the foreign press, too.

[DRaymond]

03:03 PM on 05/04/2011

First, the rationalization constantly given for using torture is the 'ticking bomb' scenario.  Clearly this was in no way whatsoever a 'ticking bomb' situation.

Second, the person who gave the critical morsel of information was not one of the people subjected to the most extreme interrogation techniques.  Those people gave nothing but lies.  Which fits with the experts understanding of the uselessness of torture techniques.

Third,  The morsel of information was given well after the period of torture techniques was over.  In other words it was given under standard interrogation techniques.  Now maybe you could say that if he never was given the torture he wouldn't have said the name later.  But to know that you would need some sort of side-by-side comparison, which is not possible.  With the lack of that I will just go with the experts saying that torture is useless for gaining useful information.

[Susan Shaffer]

04:11 PM on 05/04/2011

so how did they get him to cough up the information?
share a pizza with him?

[DakkonA]

04:41 PM on 05/04/2011

Interrogation does not require torture. We have FBI agents highly skilled in this.

[DRaymond]

12:54 AM on 05/05/2011

Interrogators have a wide variety of techniques that are in compliance with FBI regulations and the Army Field Manual. And the more experience the interrogator the more likely they will agree that being harsher than those standards is counterproductive. Essentially you have three levels. The first are humane psychological techniques, which as I said are quite effective for intelligence gathering, if slow. The second are inhumane methods that do not reach the level of torture. These can include sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation (completely dark rooms), warm/cold cycles, and so forth. These certainly are not as sadistic as torture and have some proponents but generally have the same problem, the target just says stuff to make the abuse stop. Then there are things like water-boarding that are commonly agreed to be torture except if you are a Bush administration lawyer. The facts that have been given are that the person who gave up the critical part of the mosaic had previously been given the middle tier of treatment in earlier times but at the time of the disclosure was only subject to humane interrogation.

[Lovenox]

02:59 PM on 05/04/2011

How quickly Liberals turn thier opinions when it comes to a Democratic President executing a military action. Let's review shall we? This President mostly ran on an anti-war platform but has been anything but. Afghanistan? Ramped up and causalties are at thier highest. Rendering? Still on going under a cloak of secrecy. GITMO? Not closed as promised. Patriot Act? Resigned by the President. Pakistan? Will continue to recieve billions and Clinton sings thier praises while they claimed not to know Bin Laden whereabouts while at the same time the nieghborhood kids knew something was up.
They has been public praise for the President but behind closed doors there has got to be some handwringing going on by even some of his most ardent supporters. Voter remorse? You bet.

[gevan]

11:51 PM on 05/04/2011

Did you sleep through the 2008 campaign? He always said that Afghanistan needed greater attention from the US effort to catch al Qaida.

[Lovenox]

02:29 PM on 05/05/2011

Did you sleep through the news? He, bin Laden, was killed in Pakistan.

[sc29403]

02:31 AM on 05/05/2011

What's not to like? He said he would go into Pakistan with or without their support/permission to get bin Laden and he did. McCain said he was naive, but he got the job done, didn't he? Yes, Bush had the same info, but did nothing. What goes on behind closed doors is of no knowledge to you or anyone else, but evidently it is effective. Repubs go after him if he pulls out troops or puts them in?!? He's either too weak or too strong?!? Make up your friggin' minds. At least his supporters know he inherited a quagmire of a war started on lies, he didn't start it, but was left to finish it....something Bush et al could not do themselves. Blame, blame, blame. The repubs have nothing good for which they can take responsibility. They have no one who can hold a candle to the class and intelligence of Obama. Regrets? I don't think no.

[Lovenox]

02:33 PM on 05/05/2011

You are obvioulsy getting me wrong. I like the gutsy move that Hillary and McCain said was naive. Now lets examine this a bit further. Had bin Laden been found to be hiding in England, a staunch ally, would have Obama made the same move? Nope. The fact that he made this move in Pakistan proves that he doesn't trust the Pakistania government in the least bit. I never thought I'd see the day when Liberals would celebrate the shooting of an elderly unarmed man but at the same time denounce pouring watrer on his face..

[Yeuk Moy]

02:52 PM on 05/04/2011

I hear a lot about theuse of torture, but pretty much every proffesional interogator says it isn't effective.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/democracy-now/former-military-interroga_b_857581.html

And I have seen tv interviews with FBI interrogators who say the same. Can you get info through torture? Yes. But is far from efficient, effective and usually counter productive. End of story.

We can now argue the presence of WMD still in Iraq somewhere or that Saddam was negotiating with Ossama on the sale of a nuclear bomb.

[poster1122]

05:30 PM on 05/04/2011

Is it the most effective way to obtain information? I don't know. Certainly, prisoners subjected to torture have been known to lie. As have prisoners who have been subjected to normal interrogation.

It took us how many interrogations of how many prisoners over how many decades before we could find someone like Sammy the Bull who would give up a big fish like John Gotti?

I agree the results of torture are often unreliable. But the fact that the Five Families among others have gotten away with it for decades, and the presumptive unreliability of prison informants tells us that other methods can also be quite unreliable too. To claim that it is the least effective means for eliciting information requires some hard data to prove. Otherwise, it's an opinion informed on by our personal feelings about the topic.

Really, does anyone know the percentage of truthful statements made by prisoners who have been tortured? What's the percentage of statements made to police and investigators that are truthful versus fabrications?

[Yeuk Moy]

05:48 PM on 05/04/2011

In this regard, I would defer to the professional interrogators, not political pundits, armchair philosophers, or defense contactors.

From a logical standpoint, I see torture effective if you need something extremely specific and fast. BUT, you need a bunch data beforehand. The captive must suffer when they fail to answer questions AND when they try to decieve you. You must question then endlessly on what you already know so that they are conditioned to tell the truth. You must also keep the captive reeasonably clear headed understand your questions and to provide the information you seek. I would think these circumstances are very rare.

Do you see any fault in my thinking?

[gevan]

11:52 PM on 05/04/2011

Torture me and I'll agree to sell you an H-bomb or two...as many as you want.

[dmortonrei]

02:48 PM on 05/04/2011

Clinton avoided all this discussion on what is torture by outsourcing it to countries that had no problem with torture and called it "rendition". Why bother if it does not work???

I'm guessing most Gitmo terrorists would MUCH RATHER be waterboarded by the CIA than be sent to a Turkish prison for some "rendition."

[gevan]

11:53 PM on 05/04/2011

Plaese go there and ask them. We wouldn't want to be getting bad info on this thread.

[FTracy3]

02:46 PM on 05/04/2011

Great headline. I thought we killed, not captured him.

[gevan]

11:54 PM on 05/04/2011

I think he was arrested, but resisted arrest.

[sc29403]

01:40 AM on 05/05/2011

He was captured and killed.

[TYRANNASAURUS]

02:34 PM on 05/04/2011

NY Times: Harsh Interrogation Methods Played 'Small Role At Most'....

Which is probably true....the republican always try to find a way to get their name on something that goes right even though they have nothing to do with it and were usually trying to keep it from happening in the first place.

[dmortonrei]

02:43 PM on 05/04/2011

And yet Leon Panetta and Peter King, both in a position to know, say different.

[sc29403]

02:39 AM on 05/05/2011

The only two out of hundreds of opinions from US interrogators and military personnel who say different.

[gevan]

09:53 PM on 05/05/2011

Peter King in a position to know what? He makes stuff up as he goes along. Panetta just included the "harsh" interogation tecniques in the whole panoply of collection methods, not giving it any special distinction in whether it was successful or not.

[demshuff]

04:03 PM on 05/04/2011

Ya, as when they're handing out those big checks from the federal government they swore not to accept.

[dmortonrei]

02:24 PM on 05/04/2011

That bastion of liberal propaganda, the New York Times, believes harsh interrogation methods played a "small role" in Bin Ladens capture?

Are we to believe KSM cracked under the intense pressure of the Obama mandated "Army field manual" techniques?? Are we to believe KSM broke down after he was asked his Name, Rank and Serial number for the billionth time since Obama was elected???

The NYT's knows what their "everything I need to know I learned in Kindergarten" readers want to hear................ despite what Leon Panetta, Peter King and others in a POSITION TO KNOW BETTER, say.

[Jupitersky]

03:11 PM on 05/04/2011

One problem with your kindergarten theory.

KSM never broke! He didn't reveal the name of the courier.

[Susan Shaffer]

04:16 PM on 05/04/2011

i thought i read in another story that he gave the nick name of the courier. i believe i read that in another story.
then a second person interrogated also gave up the same nick name.

[demshuff]

04:08 PM on 05/04/2011

How does "My Pet Goat" explain torture.

[gevan]

11:59 PM on 05/04/2011

Where are those kids today? Just wondering.

[15Vortex]

02:16 PM on 05/04/2011

The enhanced techniques were torture.

Torture is epistomologically neutral, and, therefore, given the costs associated with it, inherently flawed and invalid. It accomplishes precisely nothing in terms of collecting information.

This is known to all of us.

Those who employ it do so for reasons other than collecting information.

They, on some level, believe it works, for example, to deter enemies, exact retribution, etc., etc.

The problem is, it doesn't accomplish any of these things. The only thing it actually accomplishes is the illusion of decisive action.

To a person (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Yoo) know this to be true, and yet they dispatch operatives to torture other human beings literally purely for show, for their own political ends. Let's just say they should all be in prison.

Those who claim success from torture, since they have, by virtue of such success claims, already revealed secrets, must provide specific documentation of exactly what happened, and how "it worked."

This will never happen primarily because there was no such success. In simple terms, they are lying.

Wait for any proof, that is statements and documentation by the operatives, of meaningful actionable intelligence as a result of torture. It will never come, because it does not exist.

The only way is to appeal to the person's ego and sense of being above average, justified, and the real victim in the situation. Then, they sing like a canary. Any other way fails.

[dmortonrei]

02:42 PM on 05/04/2011

And despite your analysis Clinton outsourced torture to countries willing to do it and called it "rendition."

I'm sure many detainees cooperated with our people knowing if they did not it was off to Turkey for them..........where rendition policies in a Turkish prison would not have to deal with the sensitivities of the "everything I need to know I learned in Kindergarten" set.

BTW: Waterboarding is routinely used on our own military personnel to SAFELY simulate the same pressure and panic one could expect to endure during a hostile interrogation if captured.
We are not talking bamboo under fingernails but the same techniques used on our own people in training.

[DakkonA]

04:47 PM on 05/04/2011

Training they voluntarily undergo to harden them. Forcing someone into such 'training' is wrong.

Whether Clinton did or did not do something doesn't make it okay.

[15Vortex]

05:51 PM on 05/04/2011

Rendition is terrible and an obvious failure.

Torture like the Egyptians et al practice (peeling skin and so on) accomplishes only more violence. The only purpose is to display the bodies, which, of course, only inflames people more, which leads to more violence, and more torture (which is the whole point). They want a justification for continued oppression. They don't care about getting information.

What we want is to shut down these fanatical murderous thugs. Gathering information from them is crucial. It is wholly unacceptable to waste time and scarce resources on activities that do not focus on accomplishing this goal in real time. This has nothing to do with kindness or kindergarten.

Using fake torture (like the ersatz waterboarding in the SERE program) obviously won't work. Using real torture (actual waterboarding) also doesn't work because the person, will say anything to get it to stop, and thus what they say isn't reliable. Useless on both counts.

News: they can practice too.

Also, waterboarding is favored torture because it allows lengthy torture sessions, and it reduces unscheduled dying (which requires prepping another person etc.).

All you have to do is relate to the (human) murderous fanatical thug on a human level. Validate his victimhood and moral justification. He's above average. He's a risk taker. He's done the real work, while the others are sitting around in Damascus eating olives. Ego.

A good interrogator gets this done in about 5 minutes. Then it's just turn on the recorder.

[gevan]

12:00 AM on 05/05/2011

But but but...it works in a scripted show like "24", why wouldn't it work in real life? No script writers?

[sc29403]

03:11 AM on 05/05/2011

Minds are being fried and desensitized by what they buy into as reality on TV.

[MachCrit]

02:05 PM on 05/04/2011

As a former military officer and graduate of SERE training, I'm not naive in regards to interrogation techniques. Still, I'm gobsmacked that a significant fraction of Americans, mostly Conservative, completely disregard established precedence and current US and international accords in the matter of waterboarding as torture. Ten years ago, if a group of Americans were surveyed, probably 98% would have felt waterboarding, or any other form of torture, were barbaric and would never be practiced by the US. Sadly, it wasn't 9-11 that changed opinions, but a cynical (Bush) admistration, aided by aberrant right wing ideology and a willing press (Fox).

[Lovenox]

02:38 PM on 05/04/2011

Funny that you call waterboarding torture but what the Navy S.E.A.L.s go through to be called SEALs is called "training".

[DakkonA]

04:48 PM on 05/04/2011

Training they voluntaril­y undergo to harden themselves. Forcing someone into such 'training' is wrong.

[MachCrit]

06:04 PM on 05/04/2011

Please see my first sentence above. I participated in the SERE training, and I can tell you that training is only a brief introduction to the techniques used. There is NO equivalency, and the candidates know that.

[JustABriefThought]

02:04 PM on 05/04/2011

I think we should start a contest of "Who Can Come Up with the Best GOP-TP Diversion to Dilute Obama's Role in The Demise of OBL" I'm thinking I saw some aliens landing a spacecraft in area 51 today. Was that John Boehner's head I saw spinning while he was speaking to the House? Did Paul Ryan ascend to heaven? (If he did I hope he took that "budget" with him.

[demshuff]

04:14 PM on 05/04/2011

You are right.......they just can't stand our successes. The cons conference call on Monday must have been a hoot.

[sc29403]

03:28 AM on 05/05/2011

Excellent! (I don't know what the "TP' stands for...toilet paper?) Oh, just got it, talking point...same thing, GOP Toilet Paper!

[rakimfan]

01:54 PM on 05/04/2011

What's next, Bush getting credit for Obama's college acceptance?

[sc29403]

03:30 AM on 05/05/2011

LOL, Bush can't get credit for his own!