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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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September 10th, 2006 - At a Secret
Interrogation, Dispute Flared Over Tactics |
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At a Secret Interrogation,
Dispute Flared Over Tactics By David Johnston New York Times September 10, 2006 Washington, Sept. 9 - Abu
Zubaydah, the first Osama bin Laden henchman captured by the United States
after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was bloodied and feverish when
a C.I.A. security team delivered him to a secret safe house in Thailand for
interrogation in the early spring of 2002. Bullet fragments had ripped
through his abdomen and groin during a firefight in Pakistan several days
earlier when he had been captured. The events that unfolded at
the safe house over the next few weeks proved to be fateful for the Bush
administration. Within days, Mr. Zubaydah was being subjected to coercive
interrogation techniques - he was stripped, held in an icy room and jarred by
earsplittingly loud music - the genesis of practices later adopted by some
within the military, and widely used by the Central Intelligence Agency in
handling prominent terrorism suspects at secret overseas prisons. President Bush pointedly
cited the capture and interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah in his speech last
Wednesday announcing the transfer of Mr. Zubaydah and 13 others to the
American detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. And he used it to call for
ratification of the tough techniques employed in the questioning. But rather than the smooth
process depicted by Mr. Bush, interviews with nearly a dozen current and
former law enforcement and intelligence officials briefed on the process
show, the interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah was fraught with sharp disputes,
debates about the legality and utility of harsh interrogation methods, and a
rupture between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the C.I.A. that has
yet to heal. Some of those interviewed
offered sharply contrasting accounts, but all said that the disagreements
were intense. More than four years later, these disputes are foreshadowing
the debate that Mr. Bush’s new proposals are meeting in Congress, as
lawmakers wrangle about what rules should apply as terrorism suspects are
captured, questioned and, possibly, tried before military tribunals. A reconstruction of Mr.
Zubaydah’s initial days of detention and interrogation, based on accounts by
former and current law enforcement and intelligence officials in a series of
recent interviews, provides the first detailed account of his treatment and the
disputes and uncertainties that surrounded it. The basic chronology of how
the capture and interrogation unfolded was described consistently by sources
from a number of government agencies. The officials spoke on the
condition that they not be identified because many aspects of the handling of
Mr. Zubaydah remain classified and because some of the officials may be
witnesses in future prosecutions involving Mr. Zubaydah. This week, President Bush
said that he had not and never would approve the use of torture. The C.I.A.
declined to discuss the specifics of the case on the record. At F.B.I.
headquarters, officials refused to publicly discuss the interrogation of Mr.
Zubaydah, citing what they said were “operational sensitivities.” Some of the officials who
were interviewed for this article were briefed on the events as they
occurred. Others were provided with accounts of the interrogation later. Before his capture, Mr.
Zubaydah was regarded as a top bin Laden logistics chief who funneled
recruits to training bases in Afghanistan and served as a communications link
between Al Qaeda’s leadership and extremists in other countries. As interrogators dug into
his activities, however, they scaled back their assessment somewhat, viewing
him more as the terror network’s personnel director and hotelier who ran a
string of guest houses in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Zubaydah’s whereabouts
in Pakistan had been determined in part through intercepted Internet
communications, but for days after his capture his identity was in doubt. He
had surgically altered his appearance and was using an alias. But when agents
used a nickname for Mr. Zubaydah, he acknowledged his true identity, which
was confirmed through analysis of his voice, facial structure and DNA tests. By all accounts, Mr.
Zubaydah’s condition was rapidly deteriorating when he arrived in Thailand.
Soon after his capture, Mr. Zubaydah nearly died of his infected wounds. At
one point, he was covertly rushed to a hospital after C.I.A. medical officers
warned that he might not survive if he did not receive more extensive medical
treatment. According to accounts from
five former and current government officials who were briefed on the case,
F.B.I. agents - accompanied by intelligence officers - initially questioned
him using standard interview techniques. They bathed Mr. Zubaydah, changed
his bandages, gave him water, urged improved medical care, and spoke with him
in Arabic and English, languages in which he is fluent. To convince him they knew
details of his activities, the agents brought a box of blank audiotapes which
they said contained recordings of his phone conversations, but were actually
empty. As the F.B.I. worked with C.I.A. officers who were present, Mr.
Zubaydah soon began to provide intelligence insights into Al Qaeda. For the C.I.A., Mr. Zubaydah
was a test case for an evolving new role, conceived after Sept. 11, in which
the agency was to act as jailer and interrogator for terrorism suspects. According to accounts by
three former intelligence officials, the C.I.A. understood that the legal
foundation for its role had been spelled out in a sweeping classified
directive signed by Mr. Bush on Sept. 17, 2001. The directive, known as a
memorandum of notification, authorized the C.I.A. for the first time to
capture, detain and interrogate terrorism suspects, providing the foundation
for what became its secret prison system. That 2001 directive did not
spell out specific guidelines for interrogations, however, and senior C.I.A.
officials began in late 2001 and early 2002 to draw up a list of aggressive
interrogation procedures that might be used against terrorism suspects. They
consulted agency psychiatrists and foreign governments to identify effective
techniques beyond standard interview practices. After Mr. Zubaydah’s
capture, a C.I.A. interrogation team was dispatched from the agency’s
counterterrorism center to take the lead in his questioning, former law
enforcement and intelligence officials said, and F.B.I. agents were
withdrawn. The group included an agency consultant schooled in the harsher
interrogation procedures to which American special forces are subjected in
their training. Three former intelligence officials said the techniques had
been drawn up on the basis of legal guidance from the Justice Department, but
were not yet supported by a formal legal opinion. In Thailand, the new C.I.A.
team concluded that under standard questioning Mr. Zubaydah was revealing
only a small fraction of what he knew, and decided that more aggressive
techniques were warranted. At times, Mr. Zubaydah,
still weak from his wounds, was stripped and placed in a cell without a bunk
or blankets. He stood or lay on the bare floor, sometimes with
air-conditioning adjusted so that, one official said, Mr. Zubaydah seemed to
turn blue. At other times, the interrogators piped in deafening blasts of
music by groups like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Sometimes, the interrogator
would use simpler techniques, entering his cell to ask him to confess. “You know what I want,” the
interrogator would say to him, according to one official’s account, departing
leaving Mr. Zubaydah to brood over his answer. F.B.I. agents on the scene
angrily protested the more aggressive approach, arguing that persuasion
rather than coercion had succeeded. But leaders of the C.I.A. interrogation
team were convinced that tougher tactics were warranted and said that the
methods had been authorized by senior lawyers at the White House. The agents appealed to their
superiors but were told that the intelligence agency was in charge, the
officials said. One law enforcement official who was aware of events as they
occurred reacted with chagrin. “When you rough these guys up, all you do is
fulfill their fantasies about what to expect from us,” the official said. Mr. Bush on Wednesday
acknowledged the use of aggressive interview techniques, but only in the most
general terms. “We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save
innocent lives, but he stopped talking,” Mr. Bush said. He said the C.I.A.
had used “an alternative set of procedures’’ after it became clear that Mr. Zubaydah
“had received training on how to resist interrogation. “These procedures were
designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution and our treaty
obligations,’’ Mr. Bush said. “The Department of Justice reviewed the
authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful.’’ In his early interviews, Mr.
Zubaydah had revealed what turned out to be important information, identifying
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed - from a photo on a hand-held computer - as the chief
planner of the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Zubaydah also identified Jose Padilla,
an American citizen who has been charged with terrorism-related crimes. But Mr. Zubaydah dismissed
Mr. Padilla as a maladroit extremist whose hope to construct a dirty bomb,
using conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials, was
far-fetched. He told his questioners that Mr. Padilla was ignorant on the
subject of nuclear physics and believed he could separate plutonium from
nuclear material by rapidly swinging over his head a bucket filled with
fissionable material. Crucial aspects of what
happened during Mr. Zubaydah’s interrogation are sharply disputed. Some
former and current government officials briefed on the case, who were more
closely allied with law enforcement, said Mr. Zubaydah cooperated with F.B.I.
interviewers until the C.I.A. interrogation team arrived. They said that Mr.
Zubaydah’s resistance began after the agency interrogators began using more
stringent tactics. Other officials, more
closely tied to intelligence agencies, dismissed that account, saying that
the C.I.A. had supervised all interviews with Mr. Zubaydah, including those
in which F.B.I. agents asked questions. These officials said that he proved a
wily adversary. “He was lying, and things were going nowhere,” one official
briefed on the matter said of the early interviews. “It was clear that he had
information about an imminent attack and time was of the essence.” Several officials said the
belief that Mr. Zubaydah might have possessed critical information about a coming
terrorist operation figured significantly in the decision to employ tougher
tactics, even though it later became apparent he had no such knowledge. “As the president has made
clear, the fact of the matter is that Abu Zubaydah was defiant and evasive until
the approved procedures were used,” one government official said. “He soon
began to provide information on key Al Qaeda operators to help us find and
capture those responsible for the 9/11 attacks.” This official added, “When
you are concerned that a hard-core terrorist has information about an
imminent threat that could put innocent lives at risk, rapport-building and
stroking aren’t the top things on your agenda.” Douglas Jehl contributed
reporting. Copyright 2006 The New York
Times Company External link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/washington/10detain.html |