These are some entries from my timeline and they basically confirm what this article says and then some. You can read more here:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&startpos=0&complete_911_timeline__war_on_terrorism__outside_iraq=complete_911_timeline_destruction_of_cia_tapes#alate2001egyptsovietsMid-April 2002: FBI Rapport Building Techniques Get Immediate Results with Zubaida, but CIA Stops Their Use
After being flown to a secret CIA prison in Thailand around mid-April 2002, Al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida is attended to by a mix of FBI and CIA agents. A CIA interrogation team is expected but has not yet arrived, so FBI agents who have been nursing his wounds are initially leading his questioning using its typical rapport-building techniques. (Vanity Fair, 7/17/2007) To help get him to talk, the agents bring in a box of audiotapes and claim they contain recordings of his phone conversations. He begins to confess. Just how useful his information will later be sharply disputed. The New York Times will note that officials aligned with the FBI tend to think the FBI’s techniques were effective while officials aligned with the CIA tend to think the CIA’s techniques were more effective. (New York Times, 9/10/2006) But in 2007, Vanity Fair will conclude a 10 month investigation comprising 70 interviews, and conclude that the FBI techniques were effective. After being shown a series of photographs of al-Qaeda leaders, he confirms that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) is known by the alias “Mukhtar,” a vital fact US intelligence discovered shortly before 9/11 (see August 28, 2001). He confesses that KSM planned the 9/11 plot, which US intelligence did not yet know. He also lays out the details of the plot. Vanity Fair will later comment, “America learned the truth of how 9/11 was organized because a detainee had come to trust his captors after they treated him humanely.” Zubaida also confesses to a plot against a US ally and reveals the name of Jose Padilla, an alleged al-Qaeda operative living in the US (see Mid-April 2002). CIA Director George Tenet reportedly blows up that the FBI and not the CIA obtained the information and he demands that the CIA team get there immediately. But once the CIA team arrives, they immediately put a stop to the rapport building techniques and instead begin implementing a controversial “psychic demolition” using legally questionable interrogation techniques. Zubaida immediately stops cooperating (see Mid-April 2002). (Vanity Fair, 7/17/2007) FBI agents appeal to their superiors but are told that the CIA is now in charge. (New York Times, 9/10/2006) In 2007, former CIA officer John Kiriakou will make the opposite claim, that FBI techniques were slow and ineffective and CIA techniques were immediately effective. However, Kiriakou led the team that captured Zubaida in Pakistan and does not appear to have traveled with him to Thailand (see December 10, 2007). (ABC News, 12/10/2007; ABC News, 12/10/2007)
Mid-April-May 2002: FBI Is Appalled by CIA Interrogation of Zubaida; Withdraws Its Personnel
Around mid-April 2002, the CIA begins using aggressive interrogation techniques on al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida. A new CIA team led by psychologist James Elmer Mitchell arrives and takes control of Zubaida’s interrogation from the FBI (see Mid-April 2002). This team soon begins using techniques commonly described as torture, such as waterboarding. Journalist James Risen will write in a 2006 book, “The assertions that the CIA’s tactics stopped short of torture were undercut by the fact that the FBI decided that the tactics were so severe that the bureau wanted no part of them, and FBI agents were ordered to stay away from the CIA-run interrogations. FBI agents did briefly see Abu Zubaida in custody, and at least one agent came away convinced that Zubaida was being tortured, according to an FBI source.” (Risen, 2006, pp. 32) Newsweek will similarly report in 2007 that Zubaida’s interrogation “sparked an internal battle within the US intelligence community after FBI agents angrily protested the aggressive methods that were used. In addition to waterboarding, Zubaida was subjected to sleep deprivation and bombarded with blaring rock music by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. One agent was so offended he threatened to arrest the CIA interrogators, according to two former government officials directly familiar with the dispute.” (Newsweek, 12/12/2007) The FBI completely withdraws its personnel, wanting to avoid legal entanglements with the dubious methods. The CIA then is able to use even more aggressive methods on Zubaida (see Mid-May 2002 and After). (New York Times, 9/10/2006)
Mid-April 2002: New CIA Team Arriving to Interrogate Zubaida Uses Completely Untried and Dubious Techniques
The FBI has been interrogating captured Al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida at a secret CIA prison in Thailand and learning valuable intelligence information (see Mid-April 2002). However, the prison is controlled by the CIA and the FBI are only in control until a team of CIA interrogators arrives, which apparently happens around mid-April 2002. The FBI has been using humane rapport building techniques, but the new CIA team immediately abandons this approach. The team is lead by psychologist James Elmer Mitchell, who runs a consulting business in Washington state with psychologist Bruce Jessen. Both worked in SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape), a classified US military training program which trains soldiers to endure being tortured by the enemy. Mitchell and Jessen reverse-engineered the techniques inflicted in the SERE training so they could be used on Zubaida and other detainees. (Vanity Fair, 7/17/2007) SERE trainees are subjected to “waterboarding (simulated drowning), sleep deprivation, isolation, exposure to temperature extremes, enclosure in tiny spaces, bombardment with agonizing sounds, and religious and sexual humiliation.” One European official knowledgeable about the SERE program will say of Mitchell and Jessen, “They were very arrogant, and pro-torture… They sought to render the detainees vulnerable—to break down all of their senses.” The use of these psychologists also helps to put a veneer of scientific respectability over the torture techniques favored by top officials. One former US intelligence community adviser will later say, “Clearly, some senior people felt they needed a theory to justify what they were doing. You can’t just say, ‘We want to do what Egypt’s doing.’ When the lawyers asked what their basis was, they could say, ‘We have PhD’s who have these theories.’” (New Yorker, 8/6/2007) But Mitchell and Jessen have no experience in conducting interrogations and have no proof that their techniques are effective. In fact, the SERE techniques are based on Communist interrogation techniques from the Korean War designed not to get valuable intelligence but to generate propaganda by getting US prisoners to make statements denouncing the US. Air Force Reserve colonel Steve Kleinman, an expert in human-intelligence operations, will later say he finds it astonishing the CIA “chose two clinical psychologists who had no intelligence background whatsoever, who had never conducted an interrogation… to do something that had never been proven in the real world.” FBI official Michael Rolince calls their techniques “voodoo science.” In 2006, a report by the best-known interrogation experts in the US will conclude that there is no evidence that reverse-engineered SERE tactics are effective in obtaining useful intelligence. But nonetheless, from this time forward Zubaida’s interrogations will be based on these techniques. (Vanity Fair, 7/17/2007)
Between Mid-April and Mid-May 2002: CIA Psychologist Opposed to Torture Techniques Planned for Zubaida Leaves in Disgust
Held in a secret CIA prison in Thailand, al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida is interrogated by a new team of CIA interrogators led by James Elmer Mitchell and Dr. R. Scott Shumate. Mitchell is a psychologist contracted to the CIA, while Shumate is the chief operational psychologist for the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center. Mitchell wants to use torture techniques based on reverse-engineering SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape), a class he has taught that trains US soldiers to resist torture by the enemy. But the techniques have never been tried before and studies will later determine they are not effective in obtaining good intelligence (see Mid-April 2002). Zubaida is resistant to Mitchell’s new aggressive techniques and refuses to talk. Mitchell concludes Zubaida will only talk when he was been rendered completely helpless and dependent, so the CIA begins building a coffin to bury Zubaida alive but not actually kill him. This creates an intense controversy over the legality of such a technique, and ultimately it appears it is never carried out. Both domestic and international law clearly prohibits death threats and simulated killings. However, a number of aggressive techniques have just been approved at the highest political level (see Mid-March 2002), so opponents to these techniques are mostly powerless. Shumate is so strongly opposed to these techniques that he leaves in disgust. He will later tell his associates that it was a mistake for the CIA to hire Mitchell. But with Shumate gone, Mitchell is now free to use more extreme methods, and the torture of Zubaida begins in earnest around the middle of May. (Vanity Fair, 7/17/2007) Around this time, the FBI also washes their hands of the controversial techniques and withdraws their personnel from the secret prison (see Mid-April-May 2002).
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
