Waterboarding ‘probably saved lives’

Ex-CIA officer says technique worked, but he now considers it torture

A former CIA officer who participated in the capture and questioning of the first al-Qaeda terrorist suspect to be waterboarded said yesterday that the harsh technique provided an intelligence breakthrough that "probably saved lives," but that he now regards the tactic as torture.

Zayn Abidin Muhammed Hussein abu Zubaida, the first high-ranking al-Qaeda member captured after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, broke in less than a minute after he was subjected to the technique and began providing interrogators with information that led to the disruption of several planned attacks, said John Kiriakou, who served as a CIA interrogator in Pakistan.

Abu Zubaida was one of two detainees whose interrogation was captured in video recordings that the CIA later destroyed. The recent disclosure of the tapes' destruction ignited a recent furor on Capitol Hill and allegations that the agency tried to hide evidence of illegal torture.

"It was like flipping a switch," said Kiriakou, the first former CIA employee directly involved in the questioning of "high-value" al-Qaeda detainees to speak publicly.

In an interview, Kiriakou said he did not witness Abu Zubaida's waterboarding but was part of the interrogation team that questioned him in a hospital in Pakistan for weeks after his capture in that country in the spring of 2002.

He described Abu Zubaida as ideologically zealous, defiant and uncooperative — until the day in mid-summer when his captors strapped him to a board, wrapped his nose and mouth in cellophane and forced water into his throat in a technique that simulates drowning.

35 seconds before breakdown
The waterboarding lasted about 35 seconds before Abu Zubaida broke down, according to Kiriakou, who said he was given a detailed description of the incident by fellow team members. The next day, Abu Zubaida told his captors he would tell them whatever they wanted, Kiriakou said.

"He said that Allah had come to him in his cell and told him to cooperate, because it would make things easier for his brothers," Kiriakou said.

Kiriakou's remarks came a day before top CIA officials are to appear before a closed congressional hearing to account for the decision to destroy recordings of the interrogations of Abu Zubaida and another senior captive, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Last Thursday, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden announced that the recordings were destroyed in 2005 to protect the identities of CIA employees who appear on them.

The recordings were destroyed despite orders from judges that required the government to preserve records related to its interrogation programs. The lawsuits were filed by captives at the Guantanamo Bay military prison who were contesting their detentions.

Also yesterday, the House intelligence committee's chairman, Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), and ranking Republican Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) announced that the panel is launching its own investigation into the tapes' destruction. Reyes and Hoekstra said in a statement that Hayden's assertion that the committee had been "properly notified" of the destruction "does not appear to be true."

The Justice Department and the CIA inspector general's office also have begun a preliminary inquiry into the tapes' destruction. Members of the bipartisan commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks have said they were repeatedly told that the CIA did not have videotapes of interrogations.

Agency officials have said they briefed intelligence committee leaders from both parties over the course of two years on interrogation techniques. Officials said the briefings included mention of the tapes, but none of the lawmakers asked to view them.

U.S. intelligence officials confirmed that Kiriakou was a CIA employee involved in the capture and questioning of Abu Zubaida. Kiriakou, a 14-year veteran of the CIA who worked in both the analysis and operations divisions, left the agency in 2004 and works as a consultant for a private Washington-based firm.

After the hospital interviews bore no fruit, Abu Zubaida was flown to a secret CIA prison, where the interrogation duties fell to a team trained in aggressive tactics, including waterboarding. Shortly before the transfer, Kiriakou said he left Pakistan for Washington, where he said he continued to monitor the interrogation through classified cables and private communications with colleagues.

Kiriakou said he did not know that the interrogations were videotaped, although there often were closed-circuit video systems in the rooms where questioning took place. He said he also had no knowledge of the decision to destroy videotapes of the interrogations. Officials said there are hundreds of hours of recordings, but most are of Abu Zubaida alone in his cell recovering from his injuries.

Interrogation circumstances unclear
The circumstances surrounding Abu Zubaida's interrogation and treatment are still murky and fiercely disputed. FBI agents have opposed the use of coercive techniques as counterproductive and unreliable; intelligence officials have defended the tactics as valuable.

President Bush and others have portrayed Abu Zubaida as a crucial and highly placed terrorist, but some intelligence and law enforcement sources have said he did little more than help with logistics for al-Qaeda leaders and their associates.

In documents prepared for a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, where he is still held, Abu Zubaida asserted that he was tortured by the CIA, and that he told his questioners whatever they wanted to hear to make the torture stop.

At the time the tapes were destroyed, several federal judges had issued court orders requiring the CIA and other government agencies to preserve records related to the interrogation and detention of alleged terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks. Some attorneys are seeking new orders for preserving the records.

Destruction in violation of judge’s order?
In one case, attorneys for Yemeni national Mohmoad Abdah alleged in a motion filed Sunday that the CIA may have violated an order issued in June 2005 by U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. in Washington. Kennedy told the government to "preserve and maintain all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

Because Abu Zubaida had provided information that led to the capture of several Guantanamo Bay detainees, defense attorneys argue that any recordings of his interrogation should have been preserved.

"The revelation that the CIA destroyed these videotapes raises grave concerns about the government's compliance with the preservation order entered by this Court," wrote Abdah's lawyers, David H. Remes and Marc D. Falkoff.

Kiriakou, whose account first appeared in a story on ABC News's Web site, said he decided to go public to correct what he says are misperceptions about the role played by CIA employees in the early months of the government's anti-terrorism efforts.

"It's easy to point to intelligence failures and perceived intelligence failures, but the public has to understand how hard people are working to make them safe," he said.

Kiriakou said he first spoke to Abu Zubaida in a Pakistani military hospital. Abu Zubaida was recovering from wounds he suffered in the gun battle that led to his capture.

Talkative after coma
After he came out of a coma, Abu Zubaida was initially talkative, holding long conversations with Kiriakou from his hospital bed. The two discussed personal matters that ranged from religion to Abu Zubaida's private regret about having never married or fathered children.

Kiriakou said he repeatedly counseled Abu Zubaida to provide details about al-Qaeda's infrastructure, leadership and plans. Abu Zubaida refused and eventually became more defiant.

He was later flown to a secret CIA prison, where he was subjected to harsher methods, including waterboarding, Kiriakou said. Kiriakou said he made a final appeal to Abu Zubaida shortly before the waterboarding began.

"You have one more opportunity to cooperate. My guys are telling me that you're being a jerk," Kiriakou recalled telling Abu Zubaida. His reply, according to Kiriakou: "They're being jerks, too."

Kiriakou said he now has mixed feelings about the use of waterboarding. He said that he thinks the technique provided a crucial break to the CIA and probably helped prevent attacks, but that he is now convinced that waterboarding is torture, and "Americans are better than that."

"Maybe that's inconsistent, but that's how I feel," he said. "It was an ugly little episode that was perhaps necessary at that time. But we've moved beyond that."

Staff writers Walter Pincus and Michael Abramowitz and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22192375/

Abu Zubaydah

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Abu Zubaydah (born 12 March 1971) (Arabic: ابو زبيدة) was, according to American authorities, a high-ranking member of al-Qaida and close associate of Osama bin Laden, though there are doubts of his power and connections due to the fact that most information came from interrogations where Zubaydah may have exaggerated his and al-Qaida's role in international terror. He is currently in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Zubaydah's name is often transliterated as Abu Zubaidah, Abu Zubeida, or Abu Zoubeida. Born Zein al-Abideen Mohamed Hussein (Arabic: زين العابدين محمد حسين), he is also known by over thirty-five aliases.

Capture and detention

In 2002, U.S. intelligence located Abu Zubaydah by tracing his phone calls. He was captured March 28, 2002, in a safehouse located in a two story apartment in Faisalabad, Pakistan. He was shot three times in a firefight, including a wound to the groin and a wound to the thigh. He was treated by the CIA for these wounds and then transferred to the CIA prison system and relocated to Thailand. ^[3]. Several other detainees who face charges before military commissions were captured at the same time as Abu Zubaydah. His capture with Abdul Zahir, is one of the factors in favour of his continued detention.^[4]

While in U.S. custody, he gave a great deal of information about the 9/11 attack plot, although the veracity of some of his statements has been called into question.^[5] Such information was used by the Canadian government in seeking to uphold the 'security certificate' of Mohamed Harkat.

Criticisms of U.S. intelligence and interrogation techniques used on Zubaydah

Zubaydah's detention, interrogation and importance have been the subject of debate and criticism. President Bush dedicated a whole section of a national speech to Zubaydah's capture and interrogation and revealed the extent to which American intelligence sources considered him a valuable source. Critics have questioned Zubaydah's importance, arguing that he was insane or that the interrogation techniques amounted to torture and that the confessions were lies to avoid further discomfort. They also contend that even if his confessions were accurate, their importance has been over-stated or they were not acted upon because they endanger US relationships with various Mid-east rulers, particularly the Saudis.

Interrogation compared to torture

Critics have claimed that several of his interrogation sessions may have bordered on torture, the intent being to pressure Abu Zubaydah into fingering other suspects.

In December 2005, ABC news reported that "sources directly involved in setting up the CIA secret prison system" conveyed that "After treatment there for gunshot wounds, [Zubaydah] was whisked by the CIA to Thailand where he was housed in a small, disused warehouse on an active airbase. Once healthy, he was slapped, grabbed, made to stand long hours in a cold cell, and finally handcuffed and strapped feet up to a water board until after 0.31 seconds he begged for mercy and began to cooperate."^[3]

Writing for Salon.com, Sidney Blumenthal described the results of this alleged torture: "But the decision was made to 'torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.' He was 'waterboarded,' simulating drowning, forced to listen to the Howard Stern show, and watch the movie Private Parts over and over again. Zubaydah babbled about terrorist threats to shopping malls, nuclear power plants, supermarkets, and about al-Qaida plans to build a nuclear device. The administration sounded alerts on every unconfirmed threat. In May 2002, New York City was put on high alert over Zubaydah's torture-incited ravings that the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty were targets. Cheney went on 'Larry King Live' to defend the alerts: 'We now have a large number of people in custody, detainees, and periodically as we go through this process we learn more about the possibility of future attacks.

Saudi royal family connections

According to Gerald Posner, Abu Zubaydah named several suspects that were never apprehended.[26] In particular, Posner notes that Zubaydah fingered three Saudi princes (including the King's nephew) and Pakistan's air force chief as his main contacts.[27] "Moreover, Zubaydah told American investigators that two of those he named -- and for which he provided their private telephone numbers -- had advance knowledge about the 9/11 attacks."[28] When the CIA contacted Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to inquire about the men, both countries responded within a week that they had investigated the matter and that the charges were false. Within months, all four died in what Posner indicates are suspicious circumstances. One CIA official told Posner, "It's interesting that we can't talk to most of the people that Zubaydah named because they all died after he told us about them.... But it does make a lot of us wonder what these people might have known about 9/11 and failed to tell us."[29]

 Saudi and Kuwaiti bank records not searched

When Zubaydah was captured, he was carrying two bank cards (similar to American ATM cards), one from a bank in Kuwait and the other from a bank in Saudi Arabia. According to James Risen:

The discovery of Abu Zubaydah's cards provided some of the most tantalizing physical evidence ever uncovered related to al Qaeda. The cards had the potential to help investigators understand the financial structure behind al Qaeda, and perhaps even the 9/11 plot itself.... The cards had the potential to be keys that could unlock some of al Qaeda's darkest secrets. The cards "could give us entrée right into who was funding al Qaeda, no link analysis needed," said one American source. "You could track money right from the financiers to a top al Qaeda figure." But something very odd happened .... There is little evidence that an aggressive investigation of the cards was ever conducted. Two American sources familiar with the matter say that they don't believe the government's top experts on terrorism financing have ever thoroughly probed the transactions in Abu Zubaydah's accounts or vigorously pursued the origins of the funds. It is not clear whether an investigation of the cards simply fell through the cracks, or whether they were ignored because no one wanted to know the answers about connections between al Qaeda and important figures in the Middle East -- particularly in Saudi Arabia.^[30]

One of Risen's sources chalks up the failure to investigate the cards to incompetence rather than foul play: "The cards were sent back to Washington and were never fully exploited. I think nobody ever looked at them because of incompetence." When American investigators finally did get around to looking into the cards, they worked with "a Muslim financier with a questionable past, and with connections to the Afghan Taliban, al Qaeda, and Saudi intelligence." He reported back that "Saudi intelligence officials had seized all of the records related to the card from the Saudi financial institution in question; the records then disappeared. There was no longer any way to trace the money that had gone into the account. The timing of the reported seizure of records by Saudi intelligence closely coincided with the timing of Abu Zubaydah's capture...." (p. 177).

   I believe former CIA agent John Kiriakou echos the sentiments of many Americans when he said that at the time of 9/11 none of us thought any thing about torturing al-queda operatives to get Bin Ladin or to stop future attacks but now we realize that torturing people is not right and is not the American way, quote "It was an ugly little episode that was perhaps necessary at that time. But we've moved beyond that.", un-quote. May I suggest a future protocol in the apprehension and detention of future terrorists; a) Armed resistance to arrest is an admission of guilt, therefore blow their brains out eliminating any possibility of torture, such as waterboarding, b) seize all computers and bank accounts found in the terrorists possession and "follow the money" and the "browsing history" to wherever it leads, even to high ranking foreign and American officials, c) if the terrorists surrender without a fight, then bring them to trial swiftly and lock them up forever until and if they give us creditable intelligence with the possibility of having their life sentence commuted (the same way we get information out of all criminals, plea bargaining not torture).  That's a few ways to move beyond torture in the fight against international terrorists.

tags: waterboarding  abu zubaydah  cia torture  cia  war on terror  justice  law  military  rumble  us  war  

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