"What Torture Never Told Us"

By ALI H. SOUFAN
Published: September 5, 2009

PUBLIC bravado aside, the defenders of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques are fast running out of classified documents to hide behind. The three that were released recently by the C.I.A. — the 2004 report by the inspector general and two memos from 2004 and 2005 on intelligence gained from detainees — fail to show that the techniques stopped even a single imminent threat of terrorism.

The inspector general’s report distinguishes between intelligence gained from regular interrogation and from the harsher methods, which culminate in waterboarding. While the former produces useful intelligence, according to the report, the latter “is a more subjective process and not without concern.” And the information in the two memos reinforces this differentiation.

They show that substantial intelligence was gained from pocket litter (materials found on detainees when they were captured), from playing detainees against one another and from detainees freely giving up information that they assumed their questioners already knew. A computer seized in March 2003 from a Qaeda operative for example, listed names of Qaeda members and money they were to receive.

Soon after Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the 9/11 attacks, was captured in 2003, according to the 2005 memo, he “elaborated on his plan to crash commercial airlines into Heathrow Airport.” The memo speculates that he may have assumed that Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a fellow member of Al Qaeda who had been captured in 2002, had already divulged the plan. The same motivation — the assumption that another detainee had already talked — is offered to explain why Mr. Mohammed provided details about the Hambali-Southeast Asia Qaeda network.

Mr. Mohammed must have likewise assumed that his interrogators already had the details about Al Qaeda’s organizational structure that he gave them. When I testified in the trial of Salim Hamdan, who had been Osama bin Laden’s personal driver, I provided many unclassified details about Al Qaeda’s structure and operations, none of which came from Mr. Mohammed.

Some of the information that is cited in the memos — the revelation that Mr. Mohammed had been the mastermind of 9/11, for example, and the uncovering of Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber — was gained from another terrorism suspect, Abu Zubaydah, by “informed interrogation,” conducted by an F.B.I. colleague and me. The arrest of Walid bin Attash, one of Osama bin Laden’s most trusted messengers, which was also cited in the 2005 C.I.A. memo, was thanks to a quick-witted foreign law enforcement officer, and had nothing to do with harsh interrogation of anyone. The examples go on and on. [....]

The author of this NYT op-ed piece served as an F.B.I. special agent from 1997 to 2005.

Pelosi's Tell

Nancy Pelosi, like everyone, has a tell: her left eyelid twitches when she's weaving her particular tangled webs.

I'd love to point out that the matter hardly matters, but the matter matters. It's the transparency thing, the consistency thing.

I don't doubt that, as a ranking member of the Intelligence Committee back in 2002-3, she regularly encountered much top secret information swirling round regarding terrorism intel and attended meetings during which she was briefed on torture policy. I don't doubt that trying to juggle what should be public now versus what we thought needed secrecy then -- is no easy task.

I'd love to say it is a simple matter of telling the truth, but it is not. In our favorite version of the world, of course, it would be. Still, the question she is being asked -- did she know about the use of waterboarding? -- shouldn't require the invention of yet more revisionist history. While not simple, it's not complicated either.

I support President Obama, and, as an extension, the Democratic Party, in large part because he seems to "get" that the U.S. citizenry has been treated like mental midgets for a long time, and that it is time to exercise all those little grey cells atrophied by studied disuse.

In other words: I can handle the details, even without a spin. I can figure out how information flows, and how its flow is sometimes impeded by extraordinary circumstances. But it is up to me and my various moral codes to decide what Pelosi's apparent knowledge of the actual use of waterboarding requires of her.

It does not require the twitching of an eye.

A small part of me is glad that she is such a terrible liar.

UPDATE: 14 May 2009

Under fire from Republicans for what she knew about harsh questioning of terror detainees, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday acknowledged that she had learned in 2003 that the C.I.A. had subjected suspects to waterboarding, but she asserted that the agency had misled Congress about its techniques.

At a tense press conference, Ms. Pelosi said for the first time that a staff member alerted her in February 2003 that top lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee had been briefed on the use of tough interrogation methods on terror suspects.

But she said the fact that she did not speak out at the time due to secrecy rules did not make her complicit in any abuse of detainees. She accused the C.I.A. and Bush administration of lying to Congress about what was actually transpiring with the detainees.

“I am saying that the C.I.A. was misleading the Congress and at the same time the administration was misleading the Congress on weapons of mass destruction,” Ms. Pelosi said.

Ms. Pelosi said she was told at that briefing that waterboarding, one of the most controversial of the harsh techniques employed, was not being used.

The C.I.A., reacting to Ms. Pelosi’s remarks, said that agency records declassified last week and cited by congressional Republicans show that Ms. Pelosi had taken part in a September 2002 briefing on interrogation techniques was “true to the language in the Agency’s records.”

A tempest in a teapot, but only if, in her transparency, she can refrain from shrill tits and grating tats.