yawn On Dec 21, 8:20 am, Florida Cracker 532 <[email protected]> wrote: > [ torture just doesn't work. Delving into two high-profile cases, the > author exposes the tactical costs of prisoner abuse. ] > Tortured Reasoninghttp://www.truthout.org/122008Z > George W. Bush defended harsh interrogations by pointing to > intelligence breakthroughs, but a surprising number of > counterterrorist officials say that, apart from being wrong, torture > just doesn't work. Delving into two high-profile cases, the author > exposes the tactical costs of prisoner abuse. > > By the last days of March 2002, more than six months after 9/11, > President George W. Bush's promise "to hunt down and to find those > folks who committed this act" was starting to sound a little hollow. > True, Afghanistan had been invaded and the Taliban toppled from > power. > But Osama bin Laden had vanished from the caves of Tora Bora, and > none > of his key al-Qaeda lieutenants were in U.S. captivity. Intelligence > about what the terrorists might be planning next was almost > nonexistent. "The panic in the executive branch was palpable," > recalls > Mike Scheuer, the former C.I.A. official who set up and ran the > agency's Alec Station, the unit devoted to tracking bin Laden. > > Early in the morning of March 28, in the moonlit police-barracks > yard in Faisalabad, Pakistan, hopes were high that this worrisome > intelligence deficit was about to be corrected. Some 300 armed > personnel waited in silence: 10 three-man teams of Americans, drawn > equally from the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., together with much greater > numbers from Pakistan's police force and Inter-services Intelligence > (ISI). In order to maximize their chances of surprise, they planned > to > hit 10 addresses simultaneously. One of them, they believed, was a > safe house containing a man whose name had been familiar to U.S. > analysts for years: Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Hussein, a 30-year-old > Saudi Arabian better known as Abu Zubaydah. "I'd followed him for a > decade," Scheuer says. "If there was one guy you could call a 'hub,' > he was it." > > The plan called for the police to go in first, followed by the > Americans and ISI men, whose job would be to gather laptops, > documents, and other physical evidence. A few moments before three > a.m., the crackle of gunfire erupted. Abu Zubaydah had been shot and > wounded, but was alive and in custody. As those who had planned it > had > hoped, his capture was to prove an epochal event - but in ways they > had not envisaged. > > Four months after Abu Zubaydah's capture, two lawyers from the > Department of Justice, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, delivered their > notorious memo on torture, which stated that coercive treatment that > fell short of causing suffering equivalent to the pain of organ > failure or death was not legally torture, an analysis that - as far > as > the U.S. government was concerned - sanctioned the abusive treatment > of detainees at the C.I.A.'s secret prisons and at Guantánamo Bay. > But, as Jane Mayer writes in her recent book, The Dark Side > (Doubleday), Abu Zubaydah had been subjected to coercive > interrogation > techniques well before that, becoming the first U.S. prisoner in the > Global War on Terror to undergo waterboarding. > > The case of Abu Zubaydah is a suitable place to begin answering > some pressing but little-considered questions. Putting aside all > legal > and ethical issues (not to mention the P.R. ramifications), does such > treatment - categorized unhesitatingly by the International Committee > of the Red Cross as torture - actually work, in the sense of > providing > reliable, actionable intelligence? Is it superior to other > interrogation methods, and if they had the choice, free of moral > qualms or the fear of prosecution, would interrogators use it freely? > > President Bush has said it works extremely well, insisting it has > been a vital weapon in America's counterterrorist arsenal. Vice > President Dick Cheney and C.I.A. director Michael Hayden have made > similar assertions. In fact, time and again, Bush has been given > opportunities to distance his administration from the use of coercive > methods but has stood steadfastly by their use. His most detailed > exposition came in a White House announcement on September 6, 2006, > when he said such tactics had led to the capture of top al-Qaeda > operatives and had thwarted a number of planned attacks, including > plots to strike U.S. Marines in Djibouti, fly planes into office > towers in London, and detonate a radioactive "dirty" bomb in America. > "Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes > that al-Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching > another > attack against the American homeland. By giving us information about > terrorist plans we could not get anywhere else, this program has > saved > innocent lives." > > Really? In researching this article, I spoke to numerous > counterterrorist officials from agencies on both sides of the > Atlantic. Their conclusion is unanimous: not only have coercive > methods failed to generate significant and actionable intelligence, > they have also caused the squandering of resources on a massive scale > through false leads, chimerical plots, and unnecessary safety alerts > - > with Abu Zubaydah's case one of the most glaring examples. > > Here, they say, far from exposing a deadly plot, all torture did > was lead to more torture of his supposed accomplices while also > providing some misleading "information" that boosted the > administration's argument for invading Iraq. > > Everything that was to go wrong with the interrogation of Abu > Zubaydah flowed from a first, fatal misjudgment. Although his name > had > long been familiar to the C.I.A., that did not make him an > operational > terrorist planner or, as Bush put it in September 2006, "a senior > terrorist leader and a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden." > Instead, > Scheuer says, he was "the main cog in the way they organized," a > point > of contact for Islamists from many parts of the globe seeking combat > training in the Afghan camps. However, only a tiny percentage would > ever be tapped for recruitment by al-Qaeda. > > According to Scheuer, Abu Zubaydah "never swore bayat [al-Qaeda's > oath of allegiance] to bin Laden," and the enemy he focused on was > Israel, not the U.S. After Abu Zubaydah's capture, Dan Coleman, an > F.B.I. counterterrorist veteran, had the job of combing through Abu > Zubaydah's journals and other documents seized from his Faisalabad > safe house. He confirms Scheuer's assessment. "Abu Zubaydah was like > a > receptionist, like the guy at the front desk here," says Coleman, > gesturing toward the desk clerk in the lobby of the Virginia hotel > where we have met. "He takes their papers, he sends them out. It's an > important position, but he's not recruiting or planning." It was also > significant that he was not well versed in al-Qaeda's tight internal- > security methods: "That was why his name had been cropping up for > years." > > Declassified reports of legal interviews with Abu Zubaydah at his > current residence, Guantánamo Bay, suggest that he lacked the > capacity > to do much more. In the early 1990s, fighting in the Afghan civil war > that followed the Soviet withdrawal, he was injured so badly that he > could not speak for almost two years. "I tried to become al-Qaeda," > Abu Zubaydah told his lawyer, Brent Mickum, "but they said, 'No, you > are illiterate and can't even remember how to shoot.'" Coleman found > Abu Zubaydah's diary to be startlingly useless. "There's nothing in > there that refers to anything outside his head, not even when he saw > something on the news, not about any al-Qaeda attack, not even 9/11," > he says. "All it does is reveal someone in torment. Based on what I > saw of his personality, he could not be what they say he was." > > In May 2008, a report by Glenn Fine, the Department of Justice > inspector general, stated that, as he recovered in the hospital from > the bullet wounds sustained when he was captured, Abu Zubaydah began > to cooperate with two F.B.I. agents. It was a promising start, but > "within a few days," wrote Fine, he was handed over to the C.I.A., > whose agents soon reported that he was providing only "throw-away > information" and that, according to Fine, they "needed to diminish > his > capacity to resist." His new interrogators continued to question him > by very different means at so-called black-site prisons in Thailand > and Eastern Europe. They were determined to prove he was much more > important than the innkeeper of a safe house. > > Bush discussed Abu Zubaydah's treatment in his 2006 announcement. > "As his questioning proceeded, it became clear that he had received > training on how to resist interrogation. And so the C.I.A. used an > alternative set of procedures..... The procedures were tough, and > they > were safe, and lawful, and necessary." Soon, Bush went on, Abu > Zubaydah "began to provide information on key al-Qaeda operatives, > including information that helped us find and capture more of those > responsible for the attacks on September 11." Among them, Bush said, > were Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, and his > fellow conspirator Ramzi Binalshibh. In fact, Binalshibh was not > arrested for another six months and K.S.M. not for another year. In > K.S.M.'s case, the lead came from an informant motivated by a $25 > million reward. > > As for K.S.M. himself, who (as Jane Mayer writes) was > waterboarded, reportedly hung for hours on end from his wrists, > beaten, and subjected to other agonies for weeks, Bush said he > provided "many details of other plots to kill innocent Americans." > K.S.M. was certainly knowledgeable. It would be surprising if he gave > up nothing of value. But according to a former senior C.I.A. > official, > who read all the interrogation reports on K.S.M., "90 percent of it > was total fucking bullshit." A former Pentagon analyst adds: "K.S.M. > produced no actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how > stupid we were." > > It is, perhaps, a little late, more than six years after > detainees > began to be interrogated at Guantánamo Bay and at the C.I.A.'s black- > site prisons, to be asking whether torture works. Yet according to > numerous C.I.A. and F.B.I. officials interviewed for this article, at > the time this question really mattered, in the months after 9/11, no > one seriously addressed it. Those who advocated a policy that would > lead America to deploy methods it had always previously abhorred > simply assumed they would be worthwhile. Non-governmental advocates > of > torture, such as the Harvard legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, have > emphasized the "ticking bomb" scenario: the hypothetical circumstance > when only torture will make the captured terrorist reveal where he - > or his colleagues - has planted the timed nuclear device. Inside the > C.I.A., says a retired senior officer who was privy to the agency's > internal debate, there was hardly any argument about the value of > coercive methods: "Nobody in intelligence believes in the ticking > bomb. It's just a way of framing the debate for public consumption. > That is not an intelligence reality." > > There is, alas, no shortage of evidence from earlier times that > torture produces bad intelligence. "It is incredible what people say > under the compulsion of torture," wrote the German Jesuit Friedrich > von Spee in 1631, "and how many lies they will tell about themselves > and about others; in the end, whatever the torturers want to be true, > is true." > > The unreliability of intelligence acquired by torture was taken > as > a given in the early years of the C.I.A., whose 1963 kubark > interrogation manual stated: "Intense pain is quite likely to produce > false confessions, concocted as a means of escaping from distress. A > time-consuming delay results, while investigation is conducted and > the > admissions are proven untrue. During this respite the interrogatee > can > pull himself together. He may even use the time to think up new, more > complex 'admissions' that take still longer to disprove." > > A 1957 study by Albert Biderman, an Air Force sociologist, > described how brainwashing had been achieved by depriving prisoners > of > sleep, exposing them to cold, and forcing them into agonizing "stress > positions" for long periods. In July 2008, The New York Times > reported > that Biderman's work formed the basis of a 2002 interrogators' > training class at Guantánamo Bay. That the methods it described had > once been used to generate Communist propaganda had apparently been > forgotten. > > Experience derived from 1990s terrorism cases also casts doubt on > torture's value. For example, in March 1993, F.B.I. agents flew to > Cairo to take charge of an Egyptian named Mahmud Abouhalima, who > would > be convicted for having bombed the World Trade Center a month > earlier. > Abouhalima had already been tortured by Egyptian intelligence agents > for 10 days, and had the wounds to prove it. As U.S. investigators > should have swiftly realized, his statements in Egypt were worthless, > among them claims that the bombing was sponsored by Iranian > businessmen, although, apparently, their sworn enemy, Iraq, had also > played a part. > > In the fall of 2001, publications such as Newsweek, The > Washington > Post, and The Wall Street Journal ran articles suggesting torture > might be essential to prevent further attacks. All cited the case of > Abdul Hakim Murad, a Pakistani terrorist in possession of explosives > arrested in the Philippines in January 1995, who was later convicted > in New York. According to Dershowitz, his coerced confessions about > the "Bojinka" plot, to blow up 11 airliners over the Pacific, > supported the claim that "torture sometimes does work and can > sometimes prevent major disasters." > > Murad was certainly tortured. At his trial in 1996, transcripts > of > his interrogation by the Philippines National Police contained pauses > and gasps, which his lawyer claimed were the result of his enduring a > procedure much like waterboarding. But did it really pay intelligence > dividends? With Murad's arrest, the plot was blown. As Professor > Stephanie Athey of Lasell College noted in a 2007 article, > Dershowitz's claim that the torture prevented a major disaster is > false. A computer seized in Murad's apartment held details of the > flights he planned to attack, detonator-timer settings, and photos of > some of his co-conspirators, together with their aliases, so enabling > their subsequent arrest. It was this, Mike Scheuer says, not Murad's > interrogation, that provided more useful intelligence. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
