March 29, 2002. [1 word redacted] was in the middle of packing [1 word redacted] suitcase in [1 word redacted] New York City apartment, preparing to take a long-awaited vacation and spend Easter with family in Pennsylvania, when [1 word redacted] cell phone, house phone, and pager all rang consecutively. It was [1 word redacted] assistant special agent in charge, Kenny Maxwell, calling from the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York, ordering [1 word redacted] to travel to a private airstrip at Dulles Airport, outside Washington, DC, for a special mission. Abu Zubaydah, America’s first high-value detainee since 9/11, had been captured the night before. [1 word redacted] was to help interrogate him.
The FBI had been looking for Abu Zubaydah for a while. He was originally wanted for his connection both to Ahmed Ressam’s attempt to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve 1999 and to the millennium plot in Jordan. Abu Zubaydah’s name had come up with increasing frequency in intelligence reports after the millennium plot. While he was not a member of al-Qaeda, his role as external emir of Khaldan was of considerable importance. Senior al-Qaeda members, such as Khallad, regularly turned to Abu Zubaydah for help with passports and travel. In turn, al-Qaeda guaranteed Abu Zubaydah’s protection elsewhere in Afghanistan, and he often stayed in their guesthouses. He was one of the most important cogs in the shadowy network that we were struggling to disrupt.
[1 word redacted] emptied [1 word redacted] suitcase and packed a duffel bag. Ten minutes later [1 word redacted] was in a cab heading to LaGuardia Airport. In Washington, acting FBI deputy assistant director Charles Frahm met [1 word redacted] to drive [1 word redacted] to Dulles. With him was [2 words redacted], [1 word redacted] former colleague from the New York office, who had just been assigned to headquarters.
On the way to Dulles, Frahm, who at the time was seconded, or assigned, to the CIA, told [1 word redacted] that Abu Zubaydah had been captured the night before in a gunfight in Faisalabad, Pakistan. He had been tracked down after the FBI helped trace one of his calls to an apartment building after monitoring his communications. The FBI worked with the CIA and Pakistani [2 words redacted] to raid the building.
After the gun battle, the occupants of the apartment surrendered or were overwhelmed and subdued. All were taken in for questioning. Abu Zubaydah was not recognizable at first. He had been shot in the thigh, groin, and stomach while trying to escape by jumping from the roof of one apartment building to another, and his wounds were serious. In addition, he had altered his appearance in an effort to conceal his identity. Before, he had looked like a businessman, with a carefully trimmed beard, glasses, and relatively short hair. Now his beard had been shaved off and his hair had grown long and straggly; he was taken for a low-level terrorist. Soon, however, the FBI and CIA teams on the ground saw through his disguise, and he was separated from the other prisoners. A decision was made by the CIA to fly him to another country—its name is classified—where he would be interrogated at a secure location.
The FBI case agent responsible for the monitoring of Abu Zubaydah was Craig Donnachie. [1 word redacted] knew Craig well. He was assigned to the JTTF in New York and was knowledgeable about Abu Zubaydah. [1 word redacted] had worked together on previous I-49 cases, and initially FBI headquarters had decided that Craig and [1 word redacted] would be partners on this mission. In the car, however, Frahm told [1 word redacted] that Craig wouldn’t be joining [1 word redacted], as they couldn’t get in contact with him. (It turned out that he was on a train back to New York to spend Easter with his family.) Instead, [2 words redacted] would come.
Frahm told [1 word redacted] that [1 word redacted] orders were to assist the CIA team, and that [1 word redacted] were being brought in to help because of [1 word redacted] knowledge of Abu Zubaydah. He told [1 word redacted], more than once, that it was to be a CIA-led intelligence-gathering operation and that [1 word redacted] were there to support them as needed. [2 words redacted] not to read the Miranda warning or worry about the admissibility of evidence in court. [2 words redacted] to stay as long as the CIA needed [1 word redacted].
At Dulles [2 words redacted] joined by two medical personnel contracted by the agency, a doctor and an anesthesiologist, who were to help care for Abu Zubaydah. As the anesthesiologist had never worked with the CIA before, an agency officer took him into a telephone booth at the terminal to explain, and have him sign, a confidentiality agreement. Also with them was a cadet who had been pulled out of the new CIA officers’ class and assigned to the mission because he had training as a medic. He was to assist the doctor and the anesthesiologist in that capacity. [1 word redacted] boarded a plane chartered by the CIA and took off. After a lengthy journey [1 word redacted] arrived at [1 word redacted] destination.
[2 words redacted] met by officers from the local CIA station who took [1 word redacted] to a small plane. [1 word redacted] flew to the safe house where Abu Zubaydah would be held. Local CIA officers warmly welcomed [1 word redacted]. As Abu Zubaydah was to be arriving shortly, [1 word redacted] set about cleaning and preparing the facility for his arrival, setting up a makeshift hospital room for him. [1 word redacted] also tried to make the place hygienic for the rest of [1 word redacted] to use. It was a very primitive location. One day [1 word redacted] walked into the bathroom and saw a [1 word redacted] curled up in the corner, head raised and hissing at [1 word redacted] ran out and called a guard who was assigned to provide perimeter security. He found a V-shaped branch on the ground and caught the snake, then took it out of the bathroom. This was not an uncommon problem.
[1 word redacted] had been told that the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, tasked with conducting interrogations on behalf of the agency, had decided not to send a team to join [1 word redacted]. They didn’t believe it was actually Abu Zubaydah who had been captured. Others in the CIA did, which is why he was flown to a CIA safe house, and why [1 word redacted] were flown to meet him. ([1 word redacted] later discovered that the CTC team was supposed to have been on the plane with [1 word redacted].) The CTC was now being run by Alvin, the chief of operations who had made mistakes in Amman during the millennium investigation.
[1 word redacted] later found out that the CTC’s confusion stemmed from our anonymous source in Afghanistan, who had told them that the man captured was not Abu Zubaydah. They had shown the source a picture of the captured man. While usually reliable, the source was not skilled at identifying people in photos. Photographs were foreign to him, as he had grown up under the Taliban, of whose members there were no pictures. And he certainly couldn’t recognize a beardless Abu Zubaydah. Confident in the source, the CTC didn’t want to waste their time by coming. [1 word redacted], and others at the CIA, trusted the positive identification of Abu Zubaydah by the arresting team on the ground in Faisalabad.
Given the CTC’s absence, [1 word redacted] assumed [1 word redacted] would be supporting the local CIA team in interrogating Abu Zubaydah, as Frahm had made it clear that it was a CIA operation. [1 word redacted] were there to support them and not to take control. As soon as Abu Zubaydah arrived and was set up, [1 word redacted] went to the CIA chief of base and asked when they were planning to start interviewing him. He was surprised at my question. “Who? Us?” he asked. “I don’t know anything about this guy, and neither do my guys. But I understand you FBI guys know something about him, so why don’t you do the interviews? We’re all working for Uncle Sam.”
[2 words redacted] walked into the makeshift hospital room we had helped set up a few hours earlier. Abu Zubaydah was lying in the center on a gurney. His face was covered by a bag, a normal procedure when transporting terrorists. He was barely moving. Parts of his body were bandaged up, and elsewhere he had cuts and bruises. He was in critical condition. His wrists were handcuffed to the gurney.
[2 words redacted] the bag from his head. His eyes flickered as they adjusted to the light. They darted around the room and at us, taking everything in. [1 word redacted] studied his face. One of his eyes was a cloudy green from an infection. He had cuts and dried blood on his face. His hair was long, curly, and messy. [1 word redacted] understood why the source hadn’t recognized him. [1 word redacted] judged that he was around [1 word redacted] age, thirty-two.
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[1 word redacted] were speaking in Arabic, and he apparently assumed that [1 word redacted] were either Arab or Israeli intelligence agents. His image of FBI officials was of white-skinned tough guys, not native Arabic speakers. [3 words redacted] took out our FBI credentials and showed them to him. Again his face registered surprise.
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As the information related to an attack in the works was naturally time sensitive, [1 word redacted] took a quick break from Abu Zubaydah and put everything he told [1 word redacted] into a cable while the medical team attended to his wounds and evaluated his condition. All cable traffic from the safe house went through CIA channels to headquarters in Langley. There the information was quickly verified, and the director of the CIA, George Tenet, was briefed. The attack was thwarted based on the information [1 word redacted] gained.
People seated around the table at the meeting in which Tenet was briefed later told [1 word redacted] that he registered obvious surprise [3 words redacted] Abu Zubaydah was cooperating. The CIA had commissioned a report in December 2001 from two psychologists who argued that an approach that used cruelty and humiliation to subdue terrorists would be needed to make high-value detainees talk, and that the process took time.
Tenet instructed his aides to send his congratulations to the [1 word redacted] CIA officers doing the interrogation. There was an uncomfortable silence in the room. The briefers told him that it was actually [1 word redacted] FBI agents who had gained the information. He was furious and angrily slammed his hand on the table. “Why isn’t the CTC running the interrogation?” he demanded. He was told that they hadn’t believed that it was Abu Zubaydah who’d been captured. “Get them there now and have them take over,” he ordered.
After filing [1 word redacted] report, [1 word redacted] returned to Abu Zubaydah. [1 word redacted] took his fingerprints and a DNA sample—standard procedure—and recorded his voice, because of the CTC’s initial conclusion that the suspect really wasn’t Abu Zubaydah. The voice sample would be sent to other sources for verification.
[1 word redacted] knew a great deal about Abu Zubaydah before his capture, and during [1 word redacted] interrogation [5 words redacted]. A Palestinian, Abu Zubaydah was born in 1971 in Saudi Arabia, where his father held a teaching position. He grew up as a typical middle-class Palestinian expat there, and he even went on a high school trip to the United States. He also studied in India and married an Indian woman. He said that she was obsessed with “sex, sex, too much sex,” and he ended the marriage when he left India. Later he was swayed, like so many other top mujahideen, by the fiery speeches on jihad of another Palestinian, Abdullah Azzam, and resolved to wage war on the Russians. He traveled to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet-backed Najibullah regime (1989–1992).
During a battle, he was hit in the head by shrapnel. The shrapnel wiped out his memory. He didn’t even know who he was. He was rushed to a hospital for treatment, and it was judged too dangerous to remove the shrapnel. To this day, he has a hole in his head.
After treatment, he was taken for therapy to a guesthouse in Peshawar. He was shown his passport. As was standard for mujahideen, it had been stored with an emir at a safe house while Abu Zubaydah had been fighting on the front. To help him with his therapy, everyone in the guesthouse would tell him, “Your name is Abu Zubaydah.” This is why he was one of the few terrorists who operated under his actual name rather than an alias.
In the guesthouse, as part of his therapy to try and piece together his past, Abu Zubaydah began keeping a diary that detailed his life, emotions, and what people were telling him. He split information into categories, such as what he knew about himself and what people told him about himself, and listed them under different names [6 words redacted] to distinguish one set from the other. When the diary was found, some analysts incorrectly interpreted the use of the different names as the symptom of multiple-personality disorder.
Even after Abu Zubaydah’s therapy was completed and he had left the guesthouse, he kept writing in his diary. [1 word redacted] later evaluated it, and it both provided us with new information and confirmed information he had given [1 word redacted]. The diary, for example, contained details of how, days before 9/11, he began preparing for counterattacks by the United States, working with al-Qaeda to buy weapons and prepare defensive lines in Afghanistan. Another entry, from 2002, details how he personally planned to wage jihad against the United States by instigating racial wars, and by attacking gas stations and fuel trucks and starting timed fires. He went into greater detail later in [1 word redacted] interrogation.
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Even before he told [1 word redacted] this, [1 word redacted] knew from previous investigations that Abu Zubaydah [11 words redacted]. But especially given that he reiterated this to [1 word redacted]—and [1 word redacted] dutifully wrote it up and sent it in cables to Langley—it was very surprising to see him publicly described by Bush administration officials as being a senior al-Qaeda member, and even the terrorist group’s number three or four in command.
Bush administration officials kept insisting that Abu Zubaydah was a member of al-Qaeda, and they inflated his importance, not only publicly but in classified memos. A now declassified May 30, 2005, memo from the principal deputy assistant attorney general of the Justice Department, Steven G. Bradbury, to John A. Rizzo, then the senior deputy general counsel of the CIA, states that, according to what the Justice Department had been told by the CIA, prior to his capture Abu Zubaydah was “one of Usama Bin Laden’s key lieutenants,” al-Qaeda’s third or fourth highest-ranking member, and that he had been involved “in every major terrorist operation carried out by al-Qaeda.” (This memo and other, related memos, issued from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, have since come to be known as the “OLC Memos.”) None of this was true; nor should it have ever been believed. It was not until the Obama administration was in office that U.S. officials stopped calling him a senior al-Qaeda member.
When Abu Zubaydah was much later interviewed by the Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF) in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he was shown a picture of Abu Hafs al-Masri. He put his hand on the photo, slid it back to the interrogator, and said: “Now this is the number three in al-Qaeda.” [40 words redacted]
As [1 word redacted] interrogated Abu Zubaydah, [1 word redacted] were simultaneously fighting to keep him alive. He was in terrible shape. The bullet that had hit him in his left thigh had shattered coins in his pocket. Some of this freak shrapnel entered his abdomen. [1 word redacted] had to take breaks during the interrogation as the medics opened his wounds and cleaned them to prevent infection. He couldn’t eat, drink, or even clean up after himself. As [1 word redacted] interrogated him, [1 word redacted] placed blocks of ice on his lips to give him some liquid, and [1 word redacted] cleaned him up after he soiled himself.
Abu Zubaydah knew that his situation was dire. [56 words redacted] were in a strange situation: [1 word redacted] were fighting to keep alive a terrorist dedicated to killing Americans. But [1 word redacted] needed to get information from him, and he was of no use to [1 word redacted] dead.
That first evening, after Abu Zubaydah fell asleep and [1 word redacted] filed our cables to Langley, everyone went to a nearby hotel to sleep. [1 word redacted] decided to stay at the safe house with Abu Zubaydah in case he woke up and had something to say. [1 word redacted] set up in a cot in the room next door to him. [1 word redacted] spent much of the night reviewing what [1 word redacted] knew about Abu Zubaydah and other terrorists who were in his network, along with the information he had given [1 word redacted] that day, in preparation for the next day’s interrogation.
As [1 word redacted] was drawing up an interrogation plan, at around 3:00 AM, the CIA medic tending to Abu Zubaydah came to my room. “Hey, Ali, how important is this guy?” he casually asked. He knew nothing about Abu Zubaydah and was only at the location because of his medical skills.
“He’s pretty important,” [1 word redacted] replied.
“Does he know a lot of stuff?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“Well, if you want anything from him you’d better go and interview him now.”
“Why? What are you talking about?”
“In the morning I don’t think he’ll be alive. He’s septic.” All this the medic said in a matter-of-fact tone.
[1 word redacted] called the hotel where [1 word redacted], the medical team, and some local CIA officials were staying and woke them up. When they arrived twenty minutes later [1 word redacted] repeated what the medic had told [1 word redacted]. The doctor evaluated Abu Zubaydah and concurred: “If we don’t do something, he will be dead by morning.”
[1 word redacted] first problem was that [1 word redacted] didn’t have the necessary medical equipment at the safe house to treat Abu Zubaydah. A proper hospital was [1 word redacted] only chance of keeping him alive. The second problem was that [1 word redacted] were FBI agents and CIA officers; [1 word redacted] presence in this country was supposed to be a secret. If that information slipped out, it would alert other terrorists to where Abu Zubaydah was being held, and it would probably cause problems for our host country, too.
The CIA chief of base cabled Langley, explaining our situation and asking for guidance. A cable came straight back: “Death is not an option.” That was clearance to do whatever it took to keep Abu Zubaydah alive. His [1 word redacted] cooperation and clear intelligence value saved his life. [1 word redacted] challenge was how to get him to a local hospital without attracting notice.
The chief of security at the local station, Allen, came up with a plan: [1 word redacted] would [61 words redacted]
On the way to the hospital Abu Zubaydah’s condition deteriorated even further. [1 word redacted], Allen, and [1 word redacted] sat in the back of the ambulance with him and watched the doctors fight to keep him breathing. The anesthesiologist performed a tracheotomy by cutting a hole in his neck and putting a tube through it. [1 word redacted] took turns physically pumping air through the tube into his lungs. He was still alive as we pulled up outside the hospital. [1 word redacted] were nervous as [1 word redacted] pushed him through the hospital entrance on a stretcher. [1 word redacted] didn’t know if [1 word redacted] cover story would be accepted, and there was a good chance that Abu Zubaydah would die at any moment. People stared, no doubt trying to understand why all these soldiers were wheeling an injured and handcuffed fellow soldier through. [1 word redacted] spoke to the hospital staff, and Abu Zubaydah was rushed into the operating room. Minutes later, the doctors began surgery.
[1 word redacted] sat in the waiting room, watching television to pass the time. What if he dies? [1 word redacted] thought. If he’s alive, what should [1 word redacted] discuss next? These thoughts were only interrupted when a doctor came out and told [1 word redacted] that the operation had been a success.
A doctor from Johns Hopkins had been flown in by the CIA to evaluate Abu Zubaydah’s condition. He consulted with the surgeons, wrote a report, and left. [3 words redacted] stayed in Abu Zubaydah’s hospital room, waiting for him to regain consciousness. [1 word redacted] repeatedly asked the doctors and nurses tending to him and changing his bandages how long they thought it would be before he came to. Eventually he opened his eyes.
Abu Zubaydah later told [1 word redacted] that when he first opened his eyes, he saw that he was surrounded by women who were all covered up—nurses wearing uniforms and surgical masks—and thought perhaps that he was in heaven. The vision evaporated when he saw [3 words redacted] in [1 word redacted] military uniforms looking over him. He smiled as he said this.
As soon as he opened his eyes and it was clear he was lucid, [1 word redacted] gave him a stern lecture. “Don’t you try to make a scene,” [1 word redacted] warned him. “You just play along. [1 word redacted] doing this to save your life. If you play any games, you’re only endangering yourself.” Without delay, [3 words redacted] started asking him questions. [23 words redacted]
At the safe house [1 word redacted] had focused primarily on plots he was involved in [5 words redacted]. [1 word redacted] first priority was to stop any plots in the works. In the hospital [1 word redacted] goal in the first session was to get more details on pending threats and to see what information he could give [1 word redacted] on bin Laden and al-Qaeda’s senior leadership. That’s where [1 word redacted] steered the conversation.
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After Abu Zubaydah described that interaction, [97 words redacted]
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[39 words redacted] asked [1 word redacted] to get me a picture of him, to double-check that Abu Zubaydah was talking about the same person.
[1 word redacted] didn’t have any of [1 word redacted] FBI photo-books with [1 word redacted], because [1 word redacted] were only meant to be supporting the CIA and hadn’t brought [1 word redacted] own interrogation materials. So [1 word redacted] downloaded on his Sony device, similar to a Palm Pilot, the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list. The list, published for the first time after the attacks of September 11, 2001, contained the names of twenty-two terrorists indicted by grand juries for terrorist crimes. [13 words redacted]
[1 word redacted] repeatedly tapped on his device to zoom in and handed it to [1 word redacted] as it was still loading. [22 words redacted]
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[7 words redacted] recalled a video [1 word redacted] had found after 9/11 of bin Laden describing the plot and bragging about his expertise in putting it together. A couple of times in the clip, he looks at an individual who is either videotaping or next to the person videotaping, and gestures toward him, saying, “Mokhtar.” He even gives him some credit for the attacks.
Later in the same video clip, talking about a dream someone had had about 9/11, bin Laden says: “And in the same dream he saw Mokhtar teaching them karate.” At the end of the tape, al-Qaeda members surround a U.S. helicopter that had been shot down in the Ghazni province of Afghanistan. The terrorists are taking pictures of the wreckage, and some can be heard saying, “Hey, Mokhtar, come see this.” From this [1 word redacted] knew that Mokhtar was important; but [1 word redacted] didn’t know who he was. It was tremendously frustrating for the U.S. intelligence community. Mokhtar can mean “mayor,” and it can also mean “the chosen.” Either way, it is a name that denotes respect.
At the same time, the intelligence community had been hearing chatter traffic about “the man whose brain flew away”—Le moch tar in Arabic. Some analysts thought that the phrase stood for bin Laden, but my suspicion, based on the chatter traffic, was that it was another way for operatives to refer to Mokhtar, deepening his cover. Now, from Abu Zubaydah, [1 word redacted] finally had an answer to the riddle. KSM was Mokhtar! [1 word redacted] had no idea.
KSM was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for his role in the Bojinka plot with his nephew Ramzi Yousef. The U.S. intelligence community until now had had no idea that KSM was even a member of al-Qaeda (he was believed to be an independent terrorist), let alone the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. [1 word redacted] had to be careful, as [1 word redacted] didn’t want Abu Zubaydah to know that this was a big breakthrough for [1 word redacted]. A key to a successful interrogation is to never let the suspect know that he is giving you information you didn’t know. That only lessens the chances of his giving you more information, as he realizes he’s said too much. But [1 word redacted] also had to let [1 word redacted] know what had happened.
[1 word redacted] realized from the tone of the conversation that something was going on, but as he didn’t speak fluent Arabic—he only knew a few words—he didn’t know the details. [1 word redacted] turned to him and said: “[1 word redacted], what’s up? You showed me the wrong picture.” As I handed him his electronic device, [1 word redacted] pointed at the picture of KSM on his screen. As [1 word redacted] took the device, [6 words redacted] in an effort to maintain the pace of the interrogation.
[58 words redacted] It worked.
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During this exchange [1 word redacted] walked out of the room with Allen, who had been observing the interrogation. [1 word redacted] had grown close to Allen since [1 word redacted] had arrived, and [1 word redacted] liked him. His expertise was not in Middle Eastern terrorists, so the photo of KSM meant nothing to him. [1 word redacted] took him outside to explain what had just happened.
[1 word redacted] pressed on with Abu Zubaydah. [11 words redacted] Again [1 word redacted] was going with my instinct. [1 word redacted] didn’t know that they were friends, but [1 word redacted] guessed that, given Abu Zubaydah’s knowledge of KSM’s role in 9/11, they must be—and again [1 word redacted] wanted to make Abu Zubaydah think that [1 word redacted] knew all about their relationship.
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When [1 word redacted] finished talking with Abu Zubaydah [2 words redacted], [1 word redacted] said, “Now let’s go back to [1 word redacted].” This time, [1 word redacted] zoomed in on the correct picture, and [5 words redacted]. He gave [1 word redacted] more details on plots [1 word redacted] was involved in, [11 words redacted]. The information led to the thwarting of the attack.
Abu Zubaydah’s [6 words redacted] was celebrated as a major breakthrough in Washington.
[1 word redacted] did not have a secure line at the hospital, so [1 word redacted] waited few days until [1 word redacted] was back at the safe house to call Kenny Maxwell, head of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, under whose remit KSM fell. The JTTF was also spearheading major parts of the 9/11 investigation, so this information was an important part of the puzzle they were piecing together. I was eager to find out what they thought of the news, and wanted any ideas they could send [1 word redacted] way.
“Kenny, what do you think of the news?”
“What news?” He sounded puzzled.
“Kenny,” [1 word redacted] said slowly, “do you know who did 9/11?”
“Who?”
“The guy Frank Pellegrino is working on,” [1 word redacted] told him. Frank was the FBI case agent for KSM.
“Who?” Kenny asked again.
“The guy from Manila Air,” [1 word redacted] told him, using another name for the Bojinka plot.
“You’re shitting me.” Kenny was stunned. “He isn’t even a member of al-Qaeda,” he added.
“Think again,” [1 word redacted] said. [1 word redacted] couldn’t believe that the JTTF hadn’t been given the news. [1 word redacted] told Kenny to get the information [1 word redacted] had sent to Langley so that JTTF agents like Frank could act on it and send [1 word redacted] any questions they had.
When [1 word redacted] eventually returned to New York, [1 word redacted] found out that little of the information [1 word redacted] had cabled daily had ever reached the JTTF.
Over the next few days in the hospital [1 word redacted] interrogated Abu Zubaydah every moment [1 word redacted] could, [18 words redacted]. [1 word redacted] paused [1 word redacted] when he had to sleep or when doctors treated him. At times he underwent tests. When he needed an MRI and his body was found to be too big for the machine, [3 words redacted] had to squeeze him into the hole.
One conversation [1 word redacted] had with Abu Zubaydah [56 words redacted]
After 9/11, with the news that America was preparing to invade Afghanistan, and as the Northern Alliance pushed forward against Taliban positions, [44 words redacted]
[48 words redacted] intended to ask him about it later, but we had more important things to focus on first.
During the times in the hospital when Abu Zubaydah slept, [1 word redacted] went through his phone book, diary, and other personal effects, removed from the apartment building upon his capture in Faisalabad. The items had been found in his briefcase. It all helped give [1 word redacted] a fuller understanding of his links to the terrorist network across the world, and helped [1 word redacted] prepare for [1 word redacted] interrogation sessions. Also found was a videotape in which he urged everyone to rally behind bin Laden as the leader of the mujahideen in Afghanistan. In the video, Abu Zubaydah says: “We and the sheikh are one. We have been working together for almost ten years, but we were hoping to keep this work secret… hidden.” [16 words redacted]
[82 words redacted] While he was an important facilitator, he did not attract recruits or have his own following.
Abu Zubaydah went on to explain [86 words redacted]
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[6 words redacted] Mozzam Begg, the Pakistani from the UK. Begg had trained in camps in Afghanistan. [26 words redacted]. [1 word redacted] was familiar with Begg from counterterrorism operations in the UK: how he had been picked up in Britain in the summer of 2001 by MI5 and SO12, his store raided, his belongings searched. [1 word redacted] mentally reviewed the case: SO13 had not been briefed on the raid and was not prepared to build a terrorism case against him. Upon his release, Begg had fled to Kabul.
[49 words redacted] Begg today is a free man in Britain.
This period of cooperation with Abu Zubaydah [5 words redacted] in the hospital and [1 word redacted] when the CTC finally arrived in the country from Washington, DC. The CIA group included their chief operational psychologist, [3 words redacted]; an interrogator, Ed; and a polygrapher, Frank. There were other CIA personnel: analysts, support staff, security personnel. With them was a psychologist, Boris—a contractor hired by the CIA.
At first [1 word redacted] was pleased when the CTC group arrived. Although [1 word redacted] was meeting Frank for the first time, [1 word redacted] knew [1 word redacted] and Ed well. [34 words redacted], and found [1 word redacted] had similar views on issues back then. Ed and [1 word redacted] had worked together a few times. [1 word redacted] had first met in [1 word redacted] investigating the USS Cole bombing, and [1 word redacted] partnered a few times in interrogations [2 words redacted]. [1 word redacted] respected him. With the two of them present, [1 word redacted] assumed that [1 word redacted] would all work together as [1 word redacted] had done [3 words redacted] elsewhere, and that it would be a smooth operation.
While Abu Zubaydah was in the hospital, [3 words redacted], along with local CIA officers, stayed in a nearby hotel. When [1 word redacted] and the CTC team arrived at the hotel, [1 word redacted] asked [1 word redacted] and [1 word redacted] to join them for a meeting. After greeting [1 word redacted] and exchanging pleasantries, [1 word redacted] said to [1 word redacted], “Washington wants to do something new with the interrogation.” He introduced [1 word redacted] to Boris, who he said had developed the new method of interrogation.
“Why is a [1 word redacted] needed?” [1 word redacted] asked [1 word redacted]. “[9 words redacted], but so far it’s been a series of successful interrogations.”
[1 word redacted] was visibly annoyed. “I’ve interviewed terrorists before. It’s a process. This guy is cooperating, [9 words redacted]?”
“I know,” [1 word redacted] said, “but Washington feels that Abu Zubaydah knows much more than he’s telling you, and Boris here has a method that will get that information quickly.”
“What’s your method?” [1 word redacted] asked Boris, turning to him. He said that he would force Abu Zubaydah into submission. His idea was to make Abu Zubaydah see his interrogator as a god who controls his suffering. [1 word redacted] would be taken away from Abu Zubaydah: [6 words redacted] his clothes. If he cooperated he would be given these things back, and if he failed to cooperate, harsher and harsher techniques would be used. “Pretty quickly you’ll see Abu Zubaydah buckle and become compliant,” Boris declared.
“For my technique to work,” he said, “we need to send the message to Abu Zubaydah that until now he had the chance to cooperate, but he blew it. He has to understand that we know he was playing games, and that the game is now over.” He finished by telling [1 word redacted]: “[2 words redacted] will only see Abu Zubaydah one final time. You will tell him that your ‘boss’ will take over. He alone will speak to Abu Zubaydah. He will determine when Abu Zubaydah [3 words redacted], and whether he lives or dies. After that you will never see him again.” Boris added that the boss would be the CTC interrogator, Ed.
As Boris explained his plan, [3 words redacted] looked at each other in surprise. “Why is this necessary,” [1 word redacted] asked, turning to [1 word redacted] and Frank, “given that Abu Zubaydah is cooperating [8 words redacted]?”
Boris interrupted. “You may have gotten results, [14 words redacted], while my method is more effective. He’ll become fully compliant without us having to do any work.”
[1 word redacted] had heard enough. Boris clearly didn’t understand the nature of ideologically motivated Islamic terrorists like Abu Zubaydah. “These things won’t work on people committed to dying for their cause,” [1 word redacted] warned him. “People like Abu Zubaydah are prepared to blow themselves up and die. People like him are prepared to be tortured and severely beaten. They expect to be sodomized and to have family members raped in front of them! Do you really think stripping him naked and taking away his chair will make him cooperate? Do you know who you’re dealing with?”
“This is science,” was Boris’s response. He seemed shocked to have someone challenging him. Former colleagues of his later told me that he always viewed himself as the smartest person in any room and disliked anyone who questioned him. But [1 word redacted] wasn’t finished.
“So why are you going down a path that can jeopardize the endgame?”
“We don’t need to go down the path,” Boris replied. “It’s easy. He’ll fold quickly.”
“Don’t you realize that if you try to humiliate him, you’re just reinforcing what he expects us to do and what he’s trained to resist?” [1 word redacted] had no idea at that point that Boris’s plans would warp into what later became known as EITs.
“You’ll see,” said Boris. “It’s human nature to react to these things. You’ll soon see how quickly he folds. Human beings always want to make life better for themselves. You’ll see.”
“He’s not a prostitute or a common criminal,” [1 word redacted] replied. “His life getting better involves us all being killed or converting to his brand of Islam. This won’t work.”
“You’ll see,” Boris responded. He had a condescending look on his face, as if he couldn’t be bothered with speaking to such simpletons.
“Have you ever questioned an Islamic terrorist before?” [1 word redacted] asked him.
“No.”
“Have you ever conducted any interrogations?”
“No,” he said again, “but I know human nature.” [1 word redacted] was taken aback by his response. [1 word redacted] couldn’t believe that someone with no interrogation or terrorism experience had been sent by the CIA on this mission.
[1 word redacted] spoke to [1 word redacted] and Frank privately and asked, “Is this a joke? What’s going on? The guy has no experience. This is ridiculous.”
“Give him a chance,” [1 word redacted] said. “His ideas might work.” Frank told [1 word redacted] that Boris was very well known in his field: psychology. He added that [1 word redacted] had no choice but to go along with his methods.
“He is in charge,” Frank added.
[1 word redacted] then said, “You know what, [1 word redacted], he’s meant to be an expert. Let’s just give this guy a chance.” [1 word redacted] seemed to hope that Boris’s technique would work. [3 words redacted] had no choice. The CIA was in charge and [1 word redacted] orders were to assist the CIA officers.
[3 words redacted] went into Abu Zubaydah’s hospital room. [36 words redacted]
[98 words redacted]
Abu Zubaydah was taken out of the hospital and brought back to [1 word redacted] original location. It had been transformed in [1 word redacted] absence. An actual cell had been built for him, monitored by hidden cameras and microphones. It took [1 word redacted] a long time to fall asleep that night. [1 word redacted] stared at the ceiling, struggling to understand why a contractor with no interrogation or Islamic terrorism experience was running our nation’s high-value detainee interrogation program. It didn’t make sense.
Boris’s first action was to order Abu Zubaydah to be stripped naked. Nudity would humiliate him, Boris said, and he’d quickly become compliant in order to get his clothes back. [27 words redacted]
Ed went into the cell, [15 words redacted]
[6 words redacted]
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Boris announced that loud music would be blasted into Abu Zubaydah’s cell. The nudity would continue as well. The music, Boris said, would become so unbearable that Abu Zubaydah would start speaking to end the noise. The same track of rock music was blasted into the cell, over and over, for a whole day. Those of us listening in the monitoring room soon got sick of the music, and we could only imagine what Abu Zubaydah was going through. Boris sent Ed into the cell. [9 words redacted]
[9 words redacted] Ed walked out.
A [3 words redacted] that Boris had requested arrived. Boris told [1 word redacted] that the reason the loud music had failed [9 words redacted]. He had intended to use the [3 words redacted] all along—he was just using the loud music [8 words redacted]. It was about three feet tall, and [1 word redacted] thought that perhaps it must be something special. But when it was switched on, [16 words redacted]. “This will make him talk?” [1 word redacted] asked [1 word redacted]. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
[1 word redacted] said, “They could have just turned on the air-conditioning, [5 words redacted].” This went on for [3 words redacted] days, [29 words redacted]
Boris then said that what was needed to make Abu Zubaydah talk was sleep deprivation. [3 words redacted] questioned whether sleep deprivation would actually harm Abu Zubaydah and render him less useful to [1 word redacted]. The CIA officers on the ground were in agreement with [1 word redacted] about the risk of such an approach, and they requested guidance from Langley.
The message came back that Boris could deprive Abu Zubaydah of sleep, but for no more than twenty-four hours. Boris was jubilant, and said that after the sleep deprivation, Abu Zubaydah’s will would be broken and he would automatically give up all the information he knew.
The sleep deprivation lasted for twenty-four hours. But like the nudity, the loud noise, and the white noise, it didn’t work. [10 words redacted] And Ed would walk out. [9 words redacted]
Every moment that [3 words redacted] had previously spent with Abu Zubaydah, from [3 words redacted] with him, [1 word redacted] had gained intelligence from him. Slowly but surely he had cooperated, giving information that saved lives. Now [1 word redacted] had to sit and watch for days as nothing was gained through techniques that no reputable interrogator would even think of using.
[1 word redacted] tried reasoning with the CIA officers present in the hope that they would appeal to their headquarters. Terrorists are trained to resist torture. As shocking as Boris’s methods might be to us, the training terrorists receive in training camps prepares them for much worse—the sort of torture they would expect if caught by dictatorships, for example. Being attacked by dogs, being sodomized, and having family members raped in front of them are some of the things they are physically and mentally prepared to endure. And Abu Zubaydah was not an ordinary terrorist trainee. He was the external emir of Khaldan; he had supervised the training process there. Sleep deprivation and nudity would be unlikely to work on a regular terrorist, let alone someone of Abu Zubaydah’s stature and experience.
After the failure of sleep deprivation, [1 word redacted] began having doubts about Boris. He contrasted [1 word redacted] previous successes with the dearth of information under Boris’s regime. He began to realize that [1 word redacted] evaluation of Abu Zubaydah—as a major terrorist facilitator, but not the number three in al-Qaeda—was correct, as was [1 word redacted] warning that Boris’s experiments wouldn’t work on a terrorist like this one.
Other CTC officials and local CIA officers also began to develop doubts, and their original openness to trying Boris’s techniques was replaced by growing skepticism. They had limited or no interrogation experience and didn’t know anything about Abu Zubaydah, so at first didn’t know better. Boris had seemed to know what he was talking about.
But then they saw that Boris’s experiments were evolving into a risky situation with possible legal ramifications. They also began to realize that while Boris came across as being full of confidence, in reality he was just experimenting. His experience was limited to the classroom. He’d never been involved in an actual interrogation of a terrorist before. [1 word redacted] led the effort to put [3 words redacted] back in control of the interrogation.
Boris dismissed any questions about what he was doing. He tried to rally his supporters and explain away his failure by saying that in fact a twenty-four-hour period of sleep deprivation wasn’t enough. “A minimum of forty-eight hours is really needed for sleep deprivation to be successful,” he announced.
Shortly after the initial CTC contingent had arrived with Boris, a team of CIA analysts, mostly young, had followed. They were unfortunately very receptive to the arguments Boris made, as they believed that Abu Zubaydah was the number three or four in al-Qaeda and therefore wasn’t cooperating. Almost all of them admired Boris and seemed convinced that [1 word redacted] were failing with Abu Zubaydah. Some of the young analysts believed that talk was boring and that [1 word redacted] needed to be tough. Boris sent a request to CIA headquarters asking for permission to try a longer period of sleep deprivation.
CIA headquarters wasn’t being challenged only by [1 word redacted] vocal minority at the location. After a few days [4 words redacted], there were inquiries from other parts of the U.S. intelligence community asking why, all of sudden, [2 words redacted] was being transmitted. The result of all this push-back and questioning was that CIA headquarters authorized [3 words redacted] to reengage with Abu Zubaydah. Although Boris was not called off the case, this was an admission that his experiments weren’t working; it was also breaking Boris’s cardinal rule that only one person would deal with Abu Zubaydah—his “god.” Boris was unhappy, but he had no choice—for once CIA headquarters was taking [1 word redacted] side.
Before speaking to Abu Zubayah, [1 word redacted] had a condition that [1 word redacted] made clear to [1 word redacted]. “We won’t go in while he’s naked, or while Boris is playing any of his games.” He told [1 word redacted] to do whatever [1 word redacted] wanted. [28 words redacted]. [1 word redacted] knew that given his cultural and religious taboos regarding nudity, [1 word redacted] action was appreciated. [8 words redacted]
[19 words redacted] While [1 word redacted] understood and agreed with his sentiments, [1 word redacted] couldn’t tell him. Abu Zubaydah would then know that [1 word redacted] side was dysfunctional, and he would clam up altogether, even with [1 word redacted].
[57 words redacted]
Frank, the CTC polygrapher, worked with [3 words redacted] when [1 word redacted] went back in. He was a trained interrogator and shared [1 word redacted] views. [1 word redacted] took turns with Abu Zubaydah.
Frank’s technique in working with Abu Zubaydah was to focus on convincing him that it was in his interest to cooperate. He would tell him, [25 words redacted]
[71 words redacted]
When one of the [3 words redacted] was in the interrogation room, the others were in an adjacent room watching on a closed circuit television (CCTV) screen. Boris and CIA analysts monitoring and supporting the interrogations were in the room, too, and [1 word redacted] quickly learned that Boris hated Frank. This was presumably because Frank was an actual interrogator, and by word and action made it clear that he disagreed with Boris and supported [1 word redacted] approach to interrogation.
When Frank was in with Abu Zubaydah, Boris often made sarcastic remarks about Frank to the others in the room: “He’s boring the hell out of him,” he might say, or “You know what Abu Zubaydah is saying right now? He’s saying, ‘Just shoot me.’ ” Some of the young analysts would laugh at anything Boris said. [3 words redacted] had no idea what he said about [1 word redacted] when [1 word redacted] were out of the room, but [1 word redacted] could guess.
Ignoring Boris, [1 word redacted] picked up with Abu Zubaydah where [1 word redacted] had left off in the hospital. [39 words redacted]
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[41 words redacted]. [1 word redacted] cabled this information straight to Langley, recommending that an international alert be put out for the two. This was done.
A message came back from the CIA station [2 words redacted] that they had passport pictures of two individuals fitting those descriptions. A sharp CIA officer there had made the connection. The Pakistanis had detained the two as they tried to leave Pakistan, suspicious that their passports were fraudulent. The passports were sent to the [1 word redacted] and American embassies, respectively, to check whether they were legitimate.
The U.S. Embassy responded that the American passport, [4 words redacted], was legitimate, as indeed it was. The [1 word redacted] said their passport, under the name Binyam Mohamed, was fraudulent—so much for Abu Zubaydah’s estimate. As a result the Pakistanis had released Padilla and held Mohamed for further questioning.
The two passport photos were scanned and sent to [1 word redacted], and [16 words redacted]
[7 words redacted] that [1 word redacted] had their pictures.
[17 words redacted] An international search for Padilla began.
In the meantime, [33 words redacted]
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Abu Zubaydah also said he planned to attack gas stations across the country and a major bridge in New York. [7 words redacted]
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[23 words redacted] it was the Brooklyn Bridge.
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Continuing with the combination of interpersonal, cognitive, and emotional interrogation strategies that had already yielded so much, [1 word redacted] requested, and were granted, permission from Langley to use three classified wiretapped conversations involving Abu Zubaydah. [41 words redacted]
[1 word redacted] started by asking questions that [1 word redacted] knew the answers to, based on the recorded tapes. [10 words redacted]
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[1 word redacted] fluency in Arabic was a definite plus [5 words redacted] as [6 words redacted] and [1 word redacted] did not need a translator; nor could Abu Zubaydah deny or lie about the context. But there were many tricks [1 word redacted] used to outwit Abu Zubaydah that didn’t require Arabic.
Professional interrogators know that one of the central points of influence on a detainee is the impression he has of the evidence against him. The interrogator has to do his or her homework and become an expert in every detail known to the intelligence community about the detainee. The interrogator then uses that knowledge to impress upon the detainee that everything about him is known and that any lie will be easily detected.
In contrast, attempting to “break” detainees into compliance without knowing anything about them or the level of their involvement can have disastrous consequences. Interrogators will not know whether information they are given is accurate, pointless, or false.
The interrogator also uses the fear that the detainee feels as a result of his capture and isolation from his support base. People crave human contact, and this is especially true in some cultures. The interrogator turns this knowledge to advantage by becoming the one person the detainee can talk to and who listens to what he has to say. He uses this to encourage the detainee to open up.
Acting in a nonthreatening way isn’t what the terrorist expects from a U.S. interrogator. This adds to the detainee’s confusion and makes him more likely to cooperate. Our approach also utilizes the need the detainee feels to maintain a position of respect and value to the interrogator. Because the interrogator is the one person speaking to and listening to the detainee, a relationship is built—and the detainee doesn’t want to jeopardize it. This was very much the case with [1 word redacted] and Abu Zubaydah, and [1 word redacted] were able to capitalize on it.
As [3 words redacted] were in the middle of writing our report on Padilla, Abu Zubaydah’s plan to fill American apartment buildings with bombs, and the other intelligence he had given [1 word redacted], Boris walked into our room with a big smile. He came up to [1 word redacted], shook [1 word redacted] hand, and said, “I had you all wrong. It was great.”
[3 words redacted] looked at each other in surprise. [1 word redacted] success had undermined his entire approach and had shown that our technique was the effective one. All [1 word redacted] could say in response was: “There is a lot of work to do here.” [1 word redacted] suspected that [1 word redacted] had told Boris to come to [1 word redacted] to try to repair the relationship. At that point [1 word redacted] was still higher up than Boris, as he was a CTC employee and Boris was just a contractor.
Based on the intelligence [1 word redacted] got, on May 17, 2002, FBI headquarters sent out threat warnings to American apartment building owners generally, and extra security was added to the Brooklyn Bridge. At the same time, the international manhunt launched for Padilla was closing in on him. The Pakistanis knew that he had headed to Egypt. From there [1 word redacted] discovered that he had gone to Switzerland. He was tracked to Zurich, where he boarded a plane for Chicago. A contingent of Swiss officials followed him onto the plane. FBI agents based in New York headed to Chicago to pick him up.
The New York office was given the Padilla case because of his al-Qaeda connection. Kenny Maxwell and the JTTF were in charge, and on a secure line [1 word redacted] spoke to Kenny about Padilla. Kenny told [1 word redacted] that they planned to arrest him as soon as he landed. He sounded annoyed with this decision. His preference, he said, was to instead monitor Padilla and see who met up with him in Chicago.
[1 word redacted] fully agreed with Kenny. [1 word redacted] found it strange that Padilla was heading to Chicago. He was raised in Florida and lived in New York. “What is the Chicago connection?” [1 word redacted] asked.
“That’s what I’d like to find out,” Kenny agreed. He said that headquarters had decided to pick up Padilla on arrival out of fear of losing the tail. They didn’t want to take any risks and thought it was safest to just arrest him. [1 word redacted] understood their concerns.
As Padilla stepped off the plane at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, FBI agents pulled him aside, executing a material witness warrant issued by the Southern District of New York. He was searched and was found to have ten thousand dollars with him, along with a cell phone and a personal telephone book. (Padilla is in a U.S. jail today, while Binyam Mohamed is a free man in Britain.)
The material witness warrant was issued based on an affidavit sworn to by Joe Ennis—Alabama Joe. While the “Ennis affidavit” remains classified, parts of it have been quoted in unclassified court documents: “on or about April 23rdCS-1 ([2 words redacted]) was shown two photographs.” The affidavit states that [2 words redacted] identified the men in the pictures as being Padilla and Binyam Mohamed. Both the Ennis affidavit and the material witness warrant were signed by the then chief judge of the Southern District, Michael Mukasey, who went on to become President George W. Bush’s third attorney general.
After Padilla was apprehended, John Ashcroft, Bush’s first attorney general, held a press conference on the arrest in Moscow, where he was traveling at the time. He described Padilla as a “known terrorist” who was pursuing an “unfolding terrorist plot” to launch a dirty bomb in an American city. This wasn’t true; the former attorney general was misinformed. While Padilla was a committed terrorist set on trying to harm America, he was a brain transplant away from making a dirty bomb, and there was no unfolding plot. Padilla was the plot. Later, when [1 word redacted] returned to New York, [1 word redacted] was shocked to see Padilla on the cover of magazines labeled as “the dirty bomber.”
What Ashcroft said just didn’t fit with the information [1 word redacted] had cabled to Langley. The exaggeration of Padilla’s expertise and ability unnecessarily instilled fear in the American people. Ashcroft’s statement was not only inaccurate, it also made us look foolish in the eyes of al-Qaeda and others who knew their real intentions. The message was that it was easy to fool the United States.
While [1 word redacted] continued to question Abu Zubaydah, CIA officials at the location whom [1 word redacted] had grown close to told [1 word redacted] that Boris and his backers in Washington were agitating for him to retake control. They were still pushing for a longer period of sleep deprivation, having settled on the argument that the only reason his experiments on Abu Zubaydah had failed was because sleep deprivation hadn’t gone on for long enough. In the meantime Boris tried interfering with [1 word redacted] interrogation a few times.
One morning [3 words redacted] walked into Abu Zubaydah’s cell for a session, and [1 word redacted] shivered. The room was very cold. [10 words redacted] It was clear that the room temperature had been deliberately lowered. Boris was trying temperature manipulation, even though [1 word redacted] were in control of the interrogation and had been assured that his experiments would be stopped.
[1 word redacted] walked out and told Boris that Abu Zubaydah was cold. “Are you playing with the temperature?” [1 word redacted] asked directly.
“No, I’m not.”
“Go check.” [1 word redacted] told him, “The room is very cold.” Boris [8 words redacted] to play his [23 words redacted]—and went through the motions of checking the temperature and Abu Zubaydah’s pulse. Boris then walked out, past [3 words redacted], and announced to the team of CIA analysts, “Everything’s fine.” There was a hint of sarcasm in his tone, as though he thought [3 words redacted] had been making things up.
[1 word redacted] wasn’t going to play games with Boris. “Just turn it up right now,” [1 word redacted] said. [1 word redacted] checked with the local CIA officers; none of them were aware of Boris’s having received permission for temperature manipulation. [1 word redacted] told Boris as much, and he walked off, muttering, and said he’d turn the temperature up.
[1 word redacted] made some tea [44 words redacted]
[7 words redacted]. [1 word redacted] knew he was playing a game. [6 words redacted]; nor could the chill in the room [6 words redacted].
[8 words redacted]
[17 words redacted] Nor did the CIA support staff watching through the cameras have any idea.
[1 word redacted] smiled, because [1 word redacted] knew. [44 words redacted]
Mahmoud el-Meligi was a famous Egyptian actor. Not many people know Egyptian actors, so the name meant nothing to [1 word redacted] or the others. But [1 word redacted] recognized the name and [60 words redacted]
[1 word redacted] poured [1 word redacted] a cup of tea and walked back into Abu Zubaydah’s cell. [21 words redacted]
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[99 words redacted] [1 word redacted] all laughed.
Boris wasn’t the only person at the location giving [1 word redacted] difficulties. He was in many ways just the front man for powerful backers in Washington. By this time, the Department of Justice was giving verbal permission to Langley to use the coercive interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah. The powers behind Boris in Washington had lots of other minions at the location as well. Every day, the contingent of wisecracking CIA analysts who sided with Boris challenged what [1 word redacted] were doing and lectured [1 word redacted] about how [1 word redacted] were failing to get Abu Zubaydah to cooperate fully. In their minds, Abu Zubaydah was a senior member of al-Qaeda. Based on this assumption, they believed that he should be able to give detailed information on the leadership, down to bin Laden’s hiding places. Therefore, to them, the information [1 word redacted] were getting from Abu Zubaydah wasn’t significant enough, and Boris and his tech-niques were necessary.
To people who knew what they were talking about, the insistence that Abu Zubaydah was the number three or four in al-Qaeda was flatly ridiculous, as were the claims that he wasn’t cooperating. But the analysts kept writing reports that Abu Zubaydah was the number three or four in al-Qaeda, and they managed to get that announced to the American people.
One young CIA analyst, to “prove” to [3 words redacted] that Abu Zubaydah was the number three in al-Qaeda, took to lecturing [1 word redacted] about Abu Zubaydah’s role in the millennium plot in Jordan. [1 word redacted] listened to what he had to say. He had all his facts wrong. As politely as [1 word redacted] could, [1 word redacted] told him: “Listen, you’ve got the millennium plot all wrong, and maybe that’s why you’ve got the wrong idea about Abu Zubaydah.” [1 word redacted] began to list his mistakes.
As [1 word redacted] corrected him, he got increasingly annoyed, his face registering a who-the-hell-are-you look. “How do you know you’re right?” he demanded. “I’ve read all the briefing notes.”
[46 words redacted]
Even on the smallest of things, the CIA analysts would challenge [1 word redacted], to demonstrate their expertise and point out [1 word redacted] “failings.” During one interrogation session, [14 words redacted]. The CIA analysts told [1 word redacted] afterward that Abu Zubaydah was tricking [1 word redacted], and that the [7 words redacted]. Evidence, they said, that Abu Zubaydah wasn’t cooperating.
[1 word redacted] had [1 word redacted] gone through Abu Zubaydah’s personal effects upon his capture. Among the documents was a letter from the [5 words redacted], which clearly indicated that they were [1 word redacted]. Since the document was in Arabic and the CIA analysts couldn’t read it, [1 word redacted] patiently explained to them what the document said.
“You’re wrong,” one of the analysts responded. “Our translators in CTC did not say what you’re saying.”
“Go back and ask them to review it again,” [1 word redacted] told them. For the next few days, even more tension than usual existed between [1 word redacted] and the CIA analysts.
A few days later, their supervisor, Jen, came up to [1 word redacted] and gave [1 word redacted] a hug. [1 word redacted] was shocked. What was this about? “They were [1 word redacted]. I’m sorry, you were right. The linguists back at Langley had it wrong,” she said.
That apology was a rare one, and for the most part the analysts were skeptical of anything [3 words redacted] said. There were one or two exceptions, but their voices were drowned out. The analysts felt they knew it all and had no need for [1 word redacted]. They’d read the briefs. That was enough. But because they had no experience with terrorists beyond reading some memos about them, they really didn’t understand the broader terrorist network. [1 word redacted] put it this way: “These guys read a lot of Tom Clancy novels, but they have no idea about how things work in the real world.”
[6 words redacted] my personal conclusion regarding [1 word redacted] problems with the people running the CIA interrogation program; later, it was confirmed by John L. Helgerson, the inspector general of the CIA. Helgerson investigated the program at the urging of CIA professionals who spoke out against the mistakes being made. His report, published in 2004 and declassified a few years later, details the lack of experience among the CIA people running the program. The report states: “According to a number of those interviewed for this Review, the Agency’s intelligence on Al-Qa’ida was limited prior to the initiation of the CTC Interrogation Program. The Agency lacked adequate linguists or subject matter experts and had very little knowledge of what particular Al-Qa’ida leaders—who later became detainees—knew. This lack of knowledge led analysts to speculate about what a detainee ‘should know,’ [which] information the analyst could objectively demonstrate the detainee did know.”
The report goes on to state: “When a detainee did not respond to a question posed to him, the assumption at Headquarters was that the detainee was holding back and knew more; consequently, Headquarters recommended resumption of EITs.” It was a case of the blind leading the blind. It was because of this lack of knowledge in the CIA that Boris was introduced, because they didn’t understand that Abu Zubaydah was cooperating, and that he wasn’t “twelve feet tall”—a term my friends in the FBI used to refer to the insistence, on the part of Boris’s backers in Washington, that Abu Zubaydah was a senior al-Qaeda member. It was another reference to Braveheart; in one scene, William Wallace, the Scottish revolutionary leader played by Mel Gibson, appears before the Scottish army and announces: “Sons of Scotland, I am William Wallace.” A young soldier, having never met William Wallace before and having only heard stories about him, tells him that he can’t be Wallace, because “William Wallace is seven feet tall.” Wallace replies: “Yes, I’ve heard. Kills men by the hundreds. And if HE were here, he’d consume the English with fireballs from his eyes, and bolts of lightning from his arse.”
The CIA analysts at the location, however, were representative of the views of their masters back at Langley, and soon an order came through that Boris was to be put back in charge. The line taken by experts was the same as before: Abu Zubaydah was not cooperating; he hadn’t given up the information that the number three in al-Qaeda would know, and so Boris was allowed to experiment further.
While Boris in [1 word redacted] first meeting had confidently said that Abu Zubaydah would open up easily and quickly with one or two of his techniques, telling [1 word redacted], “It’s science,” by now his tone and explanations had changed. It was as if he had come to realize that working with terrorists in person was different from classroom theory. He began speaking about how his methods would be “part of a systematic approach to diminish his ability to resist.” He announced that Abu Zubaydah would be deprived of sleep for forty-eight hours now, and that they would reintroduce nudity and loud music at the same time. He had the approval from Langley. [3 words redacted] Abu Zubaydah was stripped naked, loud rock music was blasted into the cell, and he was forcibly kept awake.
[1 word redacted] had assumed that the madness of Boris’s experiments was over. He protested vigorously to his superiors in Langley but got no satisfactory response. Finally, he announced that he was leaving. He packed up his things. As he waited for a car to pick him up, [1 word redacted] sat with him. He told [1 word redacted], “We are almost crossing the line. There are the Geneva Conventions on torture. It’s not worth losing myself for this.” [1 word redacted] was referring to his morals and his license to practice. He returned to the United States.
The CTC polygrapher, Frank, repeatedly voiced his disapproval. Ed, the CTC interrogator who was playing Abu Zubaydah’s “god,” was also worried. Over the weeks that [1 word redacted] were together, Ed and [1 word redacted] had many conversations. [1 word redacted] asked him, “Is this all approved? You do know we could get into trouble for even witnessing it if there is no approval.”
“It has been approved,” Ed replied, “by Gonzalez.” Alberto Gonzalez, George W. Bush’s White House counsel, was the author of a controversial January 2002 memo questioning Geneva Convention protection for al-Qaeda detainees and other terrorists. He went on to serve as Bush’s second attorney general, resigning in 2007 amid allegations of perjury before Congress on a separate matter.
“Who the hell is Gonzalez?” [1 word redacted] asked, as [1 word redacted] had never heard of him before.
“They say he’s Bush’s lawyer,” Ed told [1 word redacted].
“So he’s not from the Department of Justice?”
“No, he’s from the White House.”
“That’s not enough. We need DOJ clearance for these types of things.”
“You’re right.”
A few days later Ed came to [1 word redacted] and said, “Our guys met with the DOJ lawyers and briefed them, and they said there’s no problem with what’s happening.” Ed had apparently demanded a written DOJ clearance from his CIA superiors. He showed [1 word redacted] the cable he had received. The identities of the DOJ lawyers were not mentioned in the cable, which just noted that the techniques had been verbally approved by the DOJ.
“I’d like to see something in writing from the DOJ,” [1 word redacted] told Ed. “I wouldn’t rely on their word.” There is a saying in government that if it’s not on paper it doesn’t exist: “One day the pendulum will swing the other way and someone will be blamed for this.”
Ed agreed. He told [1 word redacted]: “I’m keeping a record of every order they give me, because one day this is going to be a bad thing.”
As to why Boris himself insisted on reintroducing experiments that he had seen fail firsthand, perhaps the high fees the government was paying him had something to do with it. Reports later indicated that he was paid a thousand dollars a day.
During the period of forty-eight hours of sleep deprivation, Ed would go in and tell Abu Zubaydah, [19 words redacted] Ed would walk out.
Once, Ed went through Boris’s routine and told Abu Zubaydah, [37 words redacted]
[4 words redacted], we watched through the CCTV system as [8 words redacted]. He was simply exhausted from the sleep deprivation. [1 word redacted] would have laughed if there hadn’t been lives at stake.
At another point during the forty-eight hours, at Boris’s instruction, a piece of paper and a crayon were put in front of Abu Zubaydah in the hope that he would write down “intelligence.” He didn’t. [1 word redacted] couldn’t believe that those responsible for running the program believed that this would work, and would be so careless with an important intelligence asset.
During this whole time, [1 word redacted] were detailing the situation on the ground and registering [1 word redacted] protests at what was happening in classified memos to our FBI headquarters through Langley, though [1 word redacted] didn’t know whether the memos were actually reaching FBI headquarters. The information [1 word redacted] had obtained through the use of [1 word redacted] techniques, and the lack of information when the newly imposed techniques were used, was clear in the daily stream of cables—[1 word redacted] and the CTC’s—to Langley. Everything, down to the crayon attempt, was reported. But it didn’t make a difference. Boris had authorization from the top, and there was nothing any of [1 word redacted] could do or say. He was allowed his forty-eight hours.
When the second round of Boris’s experiments failed, once again CIA headquarters reluctantly told [1 word redacted] that [1 word redacted] could go back in to interrogate Abu Zubaydah. [1 word redacted] terms were again that Boris’s experiments were stopped; otherwise, [1 word redacted] refused to go in.
[1 word redacted] gave Abu Zubaydah back his clothes, [1 word redacted] switched off the music, and [1 word redacted] let him sleep. [23 words redacted]
[1 word redacted] found it harder to reengage him this time. Boris’s techniques had affected him. [7 words redacted], but eventually [1 word redacted] succeeded, and he reengaged. [1 word redacted] went through photos with him, along with his diary, phone book, and the rest of his personal effects. [24 words redacted]
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[1 word redacted] followed up on Padilla’s dirty bomb idea [112 words redacted]
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Every terrorist [1 word redacted] questioned is different. Sometimes humor is needed to establish rapport. As [1 word redacted] job is to get intelligence from them, [1 word redacted] use whatever legal tools [1 word redacted] can to put them at ease and gain their cooperation. It was odious to sit and laugh with a committed terrorist.
I would think of John O’Neill, my former boss and mentor, who was murdered in the World Trade Center. I would think of Lenny Hatton. Lenny was on his way to work on the morning of 9/11 when he saw the first tower on fire. Instead of continuing to the FBI office, he went to the scene to help. And when the second tower was struck, Lenny ran into the collapsing building to help firemen and other rescuers lead people to safety. He led people out and returned for more. He was killed in the tower. I also thought of the seventeen U.S. sailors killed on the USS Cole. [7 words redacted] But [1 word redacted] had to do it. To save lives and get intelligence, [1 word redacted]’d smile as much as needed.
While there were jokes, [64 words redacted]
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As [1 word redacted] continued to succeed with Abu Zuabydah, Boris and the CIA analysts were also now pushing an explanation as to why the forty-eight hours had failed. As one of them said, “Forty-eight hours isn’t enough sleep deprivation,” and “the body only breaks after forty-eight hours.” One day at the safe house [1 word redacted] saw a big [1 word redacted] leaning against a wall. [29 words redacted] as the next stage in his force continuum once he took over.
The CIA officers told [1 word redacted] that Boris expected the approval to come. [8 words redacted], a clear indication that people at CIA headquarters supported the plan. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” [1 word redacted] told the CIA official. He shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, We have no choice.
[16 words redacted] told the CIA official [1 word redacted] wanted to try it. [61 words redacted]“This is insane,” [1 word redacted] told him, and walked off. He nodded in agreement, with a discouraged look on his face.
[1 word redacted] realized that CIA headquarters was not going to stop Boris’s experiments. [1 word redacted] protests were being ignored. Boris was being given a blank check by the White House and CIA headquarters, and was being urged on by CIA analysts on the ground. Their lack of expertise and fear of the unknown would just lead them to authorize crazier and more abusive things that wouldn’t work. The experiments would become more and more cruel, thus reducing the chances of getting reliable intelligence from Abu Zubaydah in the future. For the first time, [1 word redacted] began to wonder whether the real intent of the people back in Washington was to collect intelligence.
What [1 word redacted] had seen Boris try until now struck [1 word redacted] as borderline torture. [1 word redacted] had stayed on because [1 word redacted] had hoped in [1 word redacted] heart that someone in Washington would put a stop to the madness and allow [1 word redacted] to continue to interrogate Abu Zubaydah. Until now [1 word redacted] hadn’t wanted to give up the chance of getting useful intelligence from him again. But each time Boris tried crazier things, [1 word redacted] got more upset, and began to worry about the people running the program.
On seeing [2 words redacted], [1 word redacted] realized that my hopes of Boris’s being removed were in vain. The person or persons running the program were not sane. [3 words redacted] the interrogation was stepping over the line from borderline torture. Way over the line.
That’s it, [1 word redacted] said to myself. [1 word redacted] picked up the secure phone and phoned FBI headquarters. This was the first time [1 word redacted] had called headquarters directly. All [1 word redacted] previous messages had gone through the standard channels, which was via e-mails sent through the CIA that were meant to be delivered to the FBI liaison, Chuck Frahm, at CIA headquarters. The situation demanded communication outside the regular channels, and [1 word redacted] worried that [1 word redacted] previous complaints hadn’t made it to the director.
[1 word redacted] asked the operator at FBI headquarters in Washington to put [1 word redacted] through to the assistant director, Pat D’Amuro. [1 word redacted] considered him a friend, and [1 word redacted] respected him as a principled public servant and had no doubt he would be outraged by what was happening. [1 word redacted] was right.
[1 word redacted] explained to Pat what had happened over the past weeks, and what it looked like they were going to do next with [2 words redacted]. [1 word redacted] finished by telling him: “I can no longer remain here. Either I leave or I’ll arrest him.” Beyond the immorality and un-American nature of these techniques, [1 word redacted] couldn’t stand by as [1 word redacted] abused someone instead of gaining intelligence that would save American lives.
Pat told me that [3 words redacted] should immediately leave the location and go to a nearby city to wait for instructions. He was going to consult with the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, on how best to proceed. Frank, the CTC polygrapher, joined us. As [1 word redacted] walked around the city, Frank told [1 word redacted], “Hiring that guy was the worst thing I have done.” There was regret and shame in his voice.
[1 word redacted] visited the local CIA station. [1 word redacted] had built a great relationship with all the officers. For the most part, they were on the same page as [1 word redacted]. The COS made it clear to [3 words redacted] that he was apprehensive about what was happening.
A day later the message came back from Mueller: “We don’t do that.” Pat ordered [1 word redacted] to leave the location immediately and return to the United States. [1 word redacted] packed up and flew back to New York.
[1 word redacted] didn’t. When he reported through his chain of command and said he was going to leave, he was told to hold off leaving untilfurther instruction. [1 word redacted] reported through his usual channel—to headquarters. [3 words redacted] had different chains of command. [1 word redacted] was afield agent and reported through the New York chain of command. [1 word redacted] wasn’t an operational agent at the time. He was an assigned supervisory agent in headquarters in Washington, and reported through those channels. Other people in headquarters didn’t agree with Pat’s order and saw a need for [1 word redacted] continuing involvement at the site. They allowed [1 word redacted] to stay. [1 word redacted] said: “Look, [1 word redacted], things might change, and they might realize we should be in charge. And if I leave, do you trust these fucking idiots to run the program? Every time they go in, Abu Zubaydah stops talking. We need someone to do the job. What do you think?”
“[1 word redacted], I can’t stay here any longer,” [1 word redacted] told him. “This is out of control, un-American, and downright dangerous. The director agreed that we don’t do this, and Pat ordered us to leave. I’m leaving. But you do what you want.”
“I’m going to stay.”
“Be careful,” [1 word redacted] told him, and said good-bye.
A few weeks later [1 word redacted] returned to Washington for a meeting on Abu Zubaydah. It was only then that Pat found out that [1 word redacted] had stayed. (Pat was based in Washington, and [1 word redacted] returned to New York and so didn’t see him, and no one else briefed him on [1 word redacted]’s decision.) Pat was furious that [1 word redacted] had not followed his orders, and to this day he hasn’t forgiven him. He ordered [1 word redacted] not to return to the location. The FBI would not be party to the harsh techniques.
While others in headquarters disagreed with Pat and felt [1 word redacted] needed to be part of the CTC program, Robert Mueller sided with Pat and [1 word redacted]. He understood that things had already gone too far, and that those pushing these techniques were not prepared to turn back. And he had the final say. [1 word redacted] stayed in Washington. That was the end of the FBI’s involvement in Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation.
After [1 word redacted] left, Boris had to keep introducing harsher and harsher methods, because Abu Zubaydah and other terrorists were trained to resist them. In a democracy such as ours, there is a glass ceiling on harsh techniques that the interrogator cannot breach, so a detainee can eventually call the interrogator’s bluff. And that’s what Abu Zubaydah did.
This is why the EIT proponents later had to order Abu Zubaydah to be waterboarded again, and again, and again—at least eighty-three times, reportedly. The techniques were in many ways a self-fulfilling prophecy, ensuring that harsher and harsher ones were introduced.
Cruel interrogation techniques not only serve to reinforce what a terrorist has been prepared to expect if captured; they give him a greater sense of control and predictability about his experience, and strengthen his resistance. By contrast, the interrogation strategy that [3 words redacted] employed—engaging and outwitting the terrorist—confuses him and leads him to cooperate. The art of interview and interrogation is a science, a behavioral science, and [1 word redacted] were successful precisely because we had it down to a science.
Evidence gained from torture is unreliable. There is no way to know whether the detainee is being truthful, or just speaking to either mitigate his discomfort or to deliberately provide false information. Indeed, as KSM, who was subjected to the enhanced techniques, later told the Red Cross: “During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop.”
Boris’s methods were aiming at compliance rather than cooperation. In compliance you get someone to say what he thinks you’ll be happy hearing, not necessarily the truth. A good example of this is the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Liby, Abu Zubaydah’s partner at Khaldan. Liby later confessed that he “decided he would fabricate any information the interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government].” For the same reason, after undergoing waterboarding, Abu Zubaydah “confessed” to being the number three in al-Qaeda, which was a lie and a dead end for the investigators. A 2006 investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) found that the CIA relied heavily on information from Liby to assess connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda. This information played a crucial role in making the Bush administration’s case for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, outlined in Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN weeks before the invasion.
In contrast, the Informed Interrogation Approach yields information that is accurate, actionable, and useful in our legal process. A major problem with Boris’s techniques is that they ignore the endgame. After getting intelligence from terrorists, at some point we have to prosecute them. We can’t hold people indefinitely. Whether it is one year later or ten years later, eventually a trial becomes necessary; otherwise they’ll have to be released. But information gained from torture is inadmissible in court. Even in military commissions—courts run and staffed by military officers, with rules and requirements different from those of regular courts—it is problematic.
[1 word redacted] had a conversation with Ed about this, and [1 word redacted] asked him, “What’s the endgame with Abu Zubaydah after using these techniques?”
“I guess they intend that he’ll go to a military commission.”
“Military commissions may have a lower standard of evidence than regular courts,” [1 word redacted] replied, “but we both know that they’re not kangaroo courts.”
Ed and [1 word redacted] were familiar with the operation in Guantánamo Bay, and the preparation used in other cases for military commissions. Already, in early 2002, military lawyers were telling investigators to be careful with evidence, and to keep notes. There was also the discovery process; and anything [1 word redacted] had [1 word redacted] were required to share with the defense. It was clear to [1 word redacted] that even in a military commission, evidence gained from harsh techniques wouldn’t be admissible. Ed agreed.
Coercive interrogations are also slow. [1 word redacted] were spent on each unsuccessful technique, with nothing to show for it. [1 word redacted] were, in effect, playing right into the hands of the enemy. The Manchester Manual instructs captured terrorists to hold off answering questions for forty-eight hours, so that their comrades can change safe houses and phone numbers, even flee the country. There is always the possibility of a “ticking time bomb” scenario hanging over any interrogation of a terrorist, which is why wasting minutes or hours, let alone whole days, is completely unacceptable.
A July 29, 2009, report by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) stated that Boris’s techniques “were not expected or intended to produce immediate results. Rather, the goal of the CIA interrogation program was to condition the detainee gradually in order to break down his resistance to interrogation.” I wonder if the person who wrote the word “gradually” had any idea of the urgency of counterterrorist operations.
I later learned that Boris’s path from being an independent contractor with no interrogation or Islamic extremism experience to running one of the most crucial fronts in our battle against al-Qaeda—our interrogation program of high-value detainees—had its origins on September 17, 2001. On that day, President Bush gave the CIA the authority, in an authorization known as a memorandum of notification, to capture, detain, and interrogate terrorism suspects.
In previous decades, the CIA had primarily operated as an intelligence collection agency. It was the FBI, along with military outfits such as the NCIS, the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, and the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations, that had interrogated suspects. John Helgerson’s 2004 report on detention and interrogation activities explains in detail that the post-9/11 CIA detention program “began with almost no foundation, as the Agency had discontinued virtually all involvement in interrogations after encountering difficult issues with early interrogation programs in Central America and the Near East.”
In their July 29, 2009 report, OPR investigators wrote that CIA acting general counsel John Rizzo had told them that throughout most of its history the CIA had not detained subjects or conducted interrogations. Before 9/11, CIA personnel debriefed sources (these portions were censored and do not appear in the report), but the agency was not authorized to detain or interrogate individuals. Consequently, the CIA had no institutional experience or expertise in that area. (Rizzo was incorrect. Before 9/11, the CIA’s polygraph division, formerly known as the interrogation branch, was responsible for interrogations abroad. After 9/11, this responsibility was taken out of their hands and given to the CTC.)
Because of this lack of institutional experience, when President Bush ordered the CIA to institute the detention program, they needed to find someone to run it. Brought to their attention—it’s not yet publicly known by whom—were two contractors, Boris and another psychologist. Helgerson writes: “In late 2001, CIA had tasked an independent contractor psychologist [Boris]… to research and write a paper on Al-Qaida’s resistance to interrogation techniques.” Boris collaborated with a Department of Defense psychologist, and “subsequently, the two psychologists developed a list of new and more aggressive EITs that they recommended for use in interrogations.” (Military personnel who knew the two contractors described Boris as extremely arrogant, and his partner—whom I never met—as someone with a terrible temper. Arrogance and anger—a dangerous combination.)
I later found out from a Senate investigation that in December 2001, CIA officials had asked Boris and his partner to analyze al-Qaeda’s Manchester Manual. It was on the basis of the information in this manual that the two reportedly concluded that harsh techniques would be needed to break al-Qaeda detainees. This constituted a misreading of the Manchester Manual, and in fact Boris’s techniques played into what the manual instructed captured terrorists to do.
A few weeks after [1 word redacted] left the location, [1 word redacted] saw Pat D’Amuro. He told [1 word redacted] that Robert Mueller had had a conversation with George Tenet, during which Mueller had asked about the lack of intelligence coming from Abu Zubaydah. (This was after [3 words redacted] had left the location.) Tenet had replied, “Your guys really messed him up. We have to fix him all over again.” It was clear that after [1 word redacted] left, Boris’s experiments continued to fail. His backers were struggling to find a new excuse to explain away the failure.
In 2006, when President Bush gave a speech acknowledging the existence of the harsh interrogation program and listed its “successes,” I received a phone call from an assistant director of the FBI. “Did you see the president’s speech?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. I was overseas at the time, working on a project.
“Just remember, this is still classified. Just because the president is talking about it doesn’t mean that we can.”
I later read through the speech and understood the phone call. The president was just repeating false information put into classified CIA memos. (I believe that President Bush was misled and briefed incorrectly regarding the efficacy of the techniques.) From that speech, and from memos on the program that were later declassified, I learned that backers of the EITs in Washington went on to claim credit for having obtained the information about Padilla’s attempted operation and other intelligence from Abu Zubaydah. They also claimed credit for the news that KSM was Mokhtar, despite the fact that the CTC team wasn’t even at the location when [1 word redacted] learned that information.
The May 30 Bradbury memo states: “Interrogations of Zubaydah—again, once enhanced interrogation techniques were employed… identified KSM as the mastermind of the September 11 attacks.” Zubaydah, according to the memo, also “provided significant information on two operatives, [including] Jose Padilla [,] who planned to build and detonate a ‘dirty bomb’ in the Washington DC area.” And the apartment buildings and Brooklyn Bridge plots that [1 word redacted] got from Abu Zubaydah, the CIA claimed to have gotten from KSM a year later. Apparently they had no success of their own at any time, and so they had to use [1 word redacted].
There are many other errors. The May 30 Bradbury memo states that Padilla was arrested “on his arrival in Chicago in May 2003.” He was arrested in May 2002. Another declassified memo states that Ramzi Binalshibh was arrested in December 2002. He was arrested in September 2002. These incorrect dates led officials to erroneously state that Padilla was captured because of waterboarding that began in August 1, 2002. In reality, this would have been factually impossible.
With the declassification of several memos, I had a chance to see the CIA’s “psychological assessment” of Abu Zubaydah. The assessment was used by Jay S. Bybee (then assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel) to write a memo for Rizzo on August 1, 2002, giving the CIA permission to use the enhanced interrogation techniques.
The Bybee memo states, referencing the psychological assessment: “According to this assessment, Zubaydah, though only 31, rose quickly from very low level mujahedin to third or fourth man in al Qaeda. He has served as Usama Bin Laden’s senior lieutenant. In that capacity, he has managed a network of training camps.… He also acted as al Qaeda’s coordinator of external contacts and foreign communications. Additionally, he has acted as al Qaeda’s counter-intelligence officer and has been trusted to find spies within the organization.… Zubaydah has been involved in every major terrorist operation carried out by al Qaeda.… Moreover he was one of the planners of the September 11 attacks.”
To this day, I don’t understand how anyone could write such a profile. Not only did we know this to be false before we captured Abu Zubaydah, but it was patently false from information obtained after we captured him. Yet this psychological assessment was cited for the next couple of years in internal government memos.
The psychological assessment also says that Abu Zubaydah wrote al-Qaeda’s manual on resistance techniques and that he is “a highly self directed individual who prizes his independence.” Apparently they didn’t even pay attention to their own rhetoric. Why would someone who “prizes his independence” (which is true) join an organization that requires blind obedience to a leader? And if he wrote al-Qaeda’s manual on resistance techniques, why would they think harsh techniques (which pale in comparison to what they expect) would work? It seems they just put down on paper whatever they could to show that Abu Zubadyah was “twelve feet tall.”
According to the CIA inspector general’s 2004 report by Helgerson, official CIA memos about Abu Zubaydah not only hid the successes [1 word redacted] had with him before [1 word redacted] left but even made it look as though [1 word redacted] had never been there: “To treat the severe wounds that Abu Zubaydah suffered upon his capture, the Agency provided him intensive medical care from the outset and deferred his questioning for several weeks pending his recovery. The Agency then assembled a team that interrogated Abu Zubaydah.” In fact, questioning wasn’t deferred at all, and it was successful.
What’s especially notable about the memos authorizing the techniques is their unquestioning acceptance of information from CIA officials. Bradbury acknowledged that “he relied entirely on the CIA’s representations as to the effectiveness of the EITs, and did not attempt to verify or question the information he was given.” He told the OPR: “It’s not my role, really, to do a factual investigation of that.” With such an attitude, the watchdog was little better than a lapdog.
It wasn’t only the Justice Department that really slipped up. A footnote to Bradbury’s comments to the OPR that his role was not to check the facts states that one official “urged AG Gonzalez and White House Counsel Fred Fielding to have a new CIA team review the program, but that the effectiveness reviews consistently relied on the originators of the program.” Is it fitting for the backers of EITs to be tasked with evaluating their own effectiveness? That would be a sure, and easy, way to guarantee the conclusion they wanted.
The Bybee memo, which authorized the techniques, states: “Our advice is based upon the following facts, which you have provided to us. We also understand that you do not have any facts in your possession contrary to the facts outlined here, and this opinion is limited to these facts. If these facts were to change, this advice would not necessarily apply.”
The “facts” granting authorization to use the harsh techniques were that Abu Zubaydah was not cooperating (he was) and that he was a senior al-Qaeda member (he wasn’t). While the authors of the memo may not have been aware of the truth, those providing the content for the memos, and those requesting the authorization to initiate Boris’s experiments, certainly were. Because the advocates of the harsh techniques were allowed to state these lies and claim [1 word redacted] successes as their own, Boris and his partner (under the guidance of their sponsors in Washington) were then granted control over all future high-value detainees captured. Abu Zubaydah was the first person on whom the techniques were used. It was in many ways a trial or test run for the techniques. And because people in Washington rewrote the results to show that they passed the “test case,” they could successfully argue that the techniques be used in the future. Boris and his partner were given control of other high-value detainees.
Back in FBI headquarters, the situation was clear. We gained information using a tried and tested and scientific approach, while what Boris was doing was un-American and ineffective. We were confident that the contractors and their crazy ideas would soon be abandoned. Little did we know that there was a wider effort to disseminate misinformation even to Justice Department officials.
I later learned—from the July 29, 2009, OPR report—that the CIA had initially requested that twelve EITs be used in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. They were as follows (the descriptions are from the report):
1. Attention grasp: The interrogator grasps the subject with both hands, with one hand on each side of the collar opening, in a controlled and quick motion, and draws the subject toward the interrogator.
2. Walling: The subject is pulled forward and then quickly and firmly pushed into a flexible false wall so that his shoulder blades hit the wall. His head and neck are supported with a rolled towel to prevent whiplash.
3. Facial hold: The interrogator holds the subject’s head immobile by placing an open palm on either side of the subject’s face, keeping fingertips well away from the eyes.
4. Facial or insult slap: With fingers slightly spread apart, the interrogator’s hand makes contact with the area between the tip of the subject’s chin and the bottom of the corresponding earlobe.
5. Cramped confinement: The subject is placed in a confined space, typically a small or large box, which is usually dark. Confinement in the smaller space lasts no more than two hours and in the larger space up to eighteen hours.
6. Insects: A harmless insect is placed in the confinement box with detainees.
7. Wall standing: The subject may stand about four to five feet from a wall with his feet spread approximately to his shoulder width. His arms are stretched out in front of him and his fingers rest on the wall to support all of his body weight. The subject is not allowed to reposition his hands or feet.
8. Stress positions: These positions may include having the detainee sit on the floor with his legs extended straight out in front of him with his arms raised above his head or kneeling on the floor while leaning back at a forty-five-degree angle.
9. Sleep deprivation: The subject is prevented from sleeping, not to exceed eleven days at a time. [Note: as initially proposed, sleep deprivation was to be induced by shackling the subject in a standing position, with his feet chained to a ring in the floor and his arms attached to a bar at head level, with very little room for movement.]
10. Use of diapers: The subject is forced to wear adult diapers and is denied access to toilet facilities for an extended period, in order to humiliate him.
11. Waterboard: The subject is restrained on a bench with his feet elevated above his head. His head is immobilized and an interrogator places a cloth over his mouth and nose while pouring water onto the cloth. Airflow is restricted for twenty to forty seconds; the technique produces the sensation of drowning and suffocation.
12. [When the document was released, this paragraph was redacted by the government.]
According to the OPR report, on July 24, a Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo, “telephoned Rizzo and told him that the attorney general had authorized him to say that the first six EITs (attention grasp, walling, facial hold, facial slap, cramped confinement, and wall standing [which is actually number seven]) were lawful and that they could proceed to use them on Abu Zubaydah.”
Only on August 1, 2002, at around 10:00 PM, did the Department of Justice give the agency its written legal approval that ten specific enhanced interrogation techniques would not violate the Geneva Convention torture prohibition and could be used on detainees. The memo was primarily the work of Jay Bybee and John Yoo. (There are actually two versions of the memo, classified and unclassified, and together they are referred to as the Bybee memos.) According to CIA records, the classified Bybee memo was faxed to the CIA at 10:30 PM on August 1, 2002.
After the Abu Zubaydah interrogation, Boris and his partner and supporters in Washington were fully in control of the program. Only after that did the CIA even start “training” its interrogators. According to the 2004 OIG report, only in “November 2002” did the CIA initiate “a pilot running of a two-week Interrogator Training Course designed to train, qualify, and certify individuals as Agency interrogators.” Of course, two weeks isn’t enough to make someone a qualified interrogator. What makes someone a qualified interrogator is not only months of training but knowledge of the detainee and of terrorism.
Enhanced interrogation techniques is a term I first heard long after [12 words redacted] there was no system to what Boris and his backers were doing. They appeared to be experimenting with techniques, with no clear plan. Not only was Abu Zubaydah the first terrorist they had ever interrogated, but he was the first Islamist radical they had ever met.
The techniques that [3 words redacted] described as “borderline torture”) were later declared by George Tenet, in guidelines issued on January 28, 2003, to be “Standard CIA Interrogation Techniques.” According to Tenet, “these guidelines complement internal Directorate of Operations guidance relating to the conduct of interrogations.” His guidelines state that the standard techniques “include, but are not limited to, all lawful forms of questioning employed by US Law Enforcement and military interrogation personnel. Among Standard Techniques are the use of isolation, sleep deprivation not to exceed 72 hours, reduced caloric intake (so long as the amount is calculated to maintain the general health of the detainee), deprivation of reading material, use of loud music or white noise (at a decibel level calculated to avoid damage to the detainee’s hearing), and the use of diapers for a limited period (generally not to exceed 72 hours)…”—the rest is redacted.
What failed with Abu Zubaydah was later declared “standard” by George Tenet. It seems that the lesson was not learned.
For the next six years, until documents regarding this period were declassified, I had to remain silent as lie after lie was told about Abu Zubaydah and the success of the techniques. One public defender of the techniques was a CIA official named John Kiriakou, who stated on national television that Abu Zubaydah was uncooperative until he was waterboarded for thirty-five seconds. Kiriakou said he witnessed this himself. “It was like flipping a switch,” Kiriakou said; after that, Abu Zubaydah spilled everything. Later Kiriakou admitted that he had given false information, and we learned that Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded eighty-three times—and that no new valuable information was gained from him. (Today Kiriakou works as a staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.)
In FBI headquarters, Boris, his partner, and their high-level backers in Washington were referred to as the “poster boys,” a reference to the FBI’s Most Wanted list, where we believed their methods would one day land them.
What happened at the secret location with Abu Zubaydah was originally taped by the CIA. The tapes were destroyed by the CIA before investigators could see them. Declassified internal CIA e-mails show senior CIA officials stating the urgency and importance of destroying the tapes. [44 words redacted]
One of the most damning condemnations of the CIA program came with the declassification of the CIA inspector general’s 2004 report. John Helgerson examined all the claims about the effectiveness of the techniques, and he had access to the CIA classified memos. He states that while regular interrogation (our approach) achieved many successes, “measuring the effectiveness of the EITs… is a more subjective process and not without some concern.” Moreover, he said he couldn’t verify that a single threat listed by the CIA as having been thwarted was imminent. Unfortunately, the report came two years too late.
In early 2008, in a conference room that is referred to as a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), I gave a classified briefing on Abu Zubaydah to staffers of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The staffers present were shocked. What I told them contradicted everything they had been told by Bush administration and CIA officials.
When the discussion turned to whether I could prove everything I was saying, I told them, “Remember, an FBI agent always keeps his notes.” Locked in a secure safe in the FBI New York office are my handwritten notes of everything that happened with Abu Zubaydah [4 words redacted].