Raw Story: Torturing Detainee May Have Produced False Terror Alerts

[Hissyspit]

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Was_Abu_Zubaydah_tortured_before_Bybee_0424.html

Torturing detainee may have produced false terror alerts
Muriel Kane
Published: Friday April 24, 2009

As the nation struggles to make sense of a wave of new revelations regarding the "harsh interrogation techniques" brought to bear on detainees by the CIA, two very different narratives are shaping up to describe the treatment of captured al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah in April and May of 2002.

On one hand, there is what might be called the "official" version, as presented in a timeline released by the Senate Intelligence Committee and summarized by the Washington Post. According to this version, Abu Zubaydah was subjected only to traditional interrogation methods until an August 1 memo from Justice Department lawyer Jay Bybee gave a green light for the use of waterboarding and other aggressive techniques.

On the other, there is a far more incriminating narrative that has been pieced together by various observers over the last several years. In this version, harsher methods were being applied to Abu Zubaydah as early as mid-April, and by mid-May he had been subjected to virtually every aggressive technique short of waterboarding.

This second version appears to be supported by a number of external facts. One is that in 2005, the CIA destroyed all videotapes of Abu Zubaydah's interrogation from prior to August 1, even though taping had begun in April.

There were also two peculiar episodes of heightened security alerts in the US in April and May, which were said at the time to have been based on information obtained from Abu Zubaydah. These vague and ultimately implausible threats gave a strong impression that Abu Zubaydah might have been inventing al Qaeda plots simply to satisfy his interrogators.

- snip -

According to a lengthy article published in Vanity Fair in July 2007, by mid-April the CIA had begun implementing a plan to extract information from Abu Zubaydah by breaking down his personality. This plan was designed by two psychologists, James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jensen, who had no prior experience with interrogation. Both had come out of the military's SERE program, which had been designed to train US personnel to resist attempts to break them if they were captured by enemies.

- snip -

The timing of the alert was extremely convenient for the Bush administration, which had been stung a week earlier by reports that it had received what should have been ample warnings of 9/11, including the August 6, 2001 daily intelligence briefing titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US."

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[The Magistrate]

1. There Will Be a Lot Of 'No Shit, Sherlock!' Moments Like This, Ma'am....

[TahitiNut]

5. (Long time no see.) Ubetcha, my friend.

Folks are finally "looking behind that curtain" if only sporadically. Some of us have been peeking for a long time.


(Good to see you 'recovered,' sir.) :rofl:
:fistbump:

[NightWatcher]

2. I thought those alerts were for the benefit of the administration

everytime things were looking bad for them- BOOM, terror warnings

[bullimiami]

4. and this is part of how they manufactured those alerts.

torture, obtain false confessions, use results to your advantage.

[Echo In Light]

6. There's no denying that. No way it was "coincidental."

[WeDidIt]

3. Who wants to bet the torture schedules increased during October, 2004?

Ya think?

[Supersedeas]

7. fear, fear, FEAR....terra, terra, TERRA