Hooray for Guantanamo and Torture!

[PanzerJaeger]

More details emerge. So, looks as though the courrier's pseudonym was obtained via normal interrogation from a source that may or may not have been in Guantanamo. Unclear. Gitmo interrogators raised the pseudonym to two high-value detainees and were told the name was meaningless, from which they concluded it must be important.

Prisoners in American custody told stories of a trusted courier. When the Americans ran the man’s pseudonym past two top-level detainees — the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed; and Al Qaeda’s operational chief, Abu Faraj al-Libi — the men claimed never to have heard his name. That raised suspicions among interrogators that the two detainees were lying and that the courier probably was an important figure.

So high-value detainees who may or may not have been tortured lied when questioned. And that's the invaluable Gitmo contribution. Do tell. The relevant fact is that we were able to talk to them, not that we held them in Cuba or that torture worked wonders. Gumshoe vs. Torquemada: Gumshoe wins!

You're drawing quite a lot of conclusions from not a lot of information. Here is the full text about the role of the program from your own article:

Years before the Sept. 11 attacks transformed Bin Laden into the world’s most feared terrorist, the C.I.A. had begun compiling a detailed dossier about the major players inside his global terror network.

It wasn’t until after 2002, when the agency began rounding up Qaeda operatives — and subjecting them to hours of brutal interrogation sessions in secret overseas prisons — that they finally began filling in the gaps about the foot soldiers, couriers and money men Bin Laden relied on.

Prisoners in American custody told stories of a trusted courier. When the Americans ran the man’s pseudonym past two top-level detainees — the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed; and Al Qaeda’s operational chief, Abu Faraj al-Libi — the men claimed never to have heard his name. That raised suspicions among interrogators that the two detainees were lying and that the courier probably was an important figure.

Anyway, we may never know for certain whether KSM blirted out the nom de guerre during an intense session of waterboarding or whether it was sometime after. The fact that it was in one of the CIA's secret prisons leads one to certain conclusions, of course. They didn't set up secret prisons just for the hell of it.

What we do know is that KSM was far more pliable after waterboarding, so it may not make much difference.

Consider the Justice Department memo of May 30, 2005. It notes that "the CIA believes 'the intelligence acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al Qaeda has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since 11 September 2001.' . . . In particular, the CIA believes that it would have been unable to obtain critical information from numerous detainees, including [Khalid Sheik Mohammed] and Abu Zubaydah, without these enhanced techniques." The memo continues: "Before the CIA used enhanced techniques . . . KSM resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, 'Soon you will find out.' " Once the techniques were applied, "interrogations have led to specific, actionable intelligence, as well as a general increase in the amount of intelligence regarding al Qaeda and its affiliates."

Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques "led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the 'Second Wave,' 'to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into' a building in Los Angeles." KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. The memo explains that "information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the 'Second Wave.' " In other words, without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York.

The memo notes that "[i]nterrogations of [Abu] Zubaydah -- again, once enhanced techniques were employed -- furnished detailed information regarding al Qaeda's 'organizational structure, key operatives, and modus operandi' and identified KSM as the mastermind of the September 11 attacks." This information helped the intelligence community plan the operation that captured KSM. It went on: "Zubaydah and KSM also supplied important information about al-Zarqawi and his network" in Iraq, which helped our operations against al-Qaeda in that country.

Was the nom de guerre a part of that specific, actionable intelligence regarding al Qaeda and its affiliates? It seems likely, as he apparently wasn't giving up much of anything before.

In any event, I think Rumsfeld and other officials are on the right track in trying to put a stop to this before it starts, and that certain conservative commentators need to shut up. Clinton's rendition program, Bush's enhanced interrogation, Obama's targeted assassinations, etc. are all part of a package of unseemly practices that a president has at his disposal that should never see the light of day. Nearly every Cold War president and beyond has presided over nasty practices in the name of national security that the public at large would not have been able stomach. That fact that this program was uncovered was a huge failure on the CIA's part and the resulting public debate was extremely damaging. For better or for worse it is over now, and the reigniting of the debate has no upside. Let sleeping dogs lie.

[Azi Tohak]

Nearly every Cold War president and beyond has presided over nasty practices in the name of national security that the public at large would not have been able stomach.

Well said PJ. I would expand it to every leader of a group of people ever have had some kind of tools that would not be acceptable to you and me.

[PanzerJaeger]

Well said PJ. I would expand it to every leader of a group of people ever have had some kind of tools that would not be acceptable to you and me.

Azi Tohak. I haven't seen that screen name around these parts in quite a while.


The administration's response to this issue is very interesting. Instead of outright denial, they seem to have chosen obfuscation, even bordering on grudging acceptance, which is telling in itself.

Today, White House Press Secratery Jay Carney was asked directly about whether enhanced interrogation contributed to the capture and his non-answer was surprisingly cryptic.

REPORTER: Can you say if there's been any change in President Obama's opposition to so-called enhanced interrogation techniques?

MR. CARNEY: No change whatsoever.

REPORTER: Were any results of such techniques used in helping to track down bin Laden?

MR. CARNEY: Mark, the fact is that no single piece of
information led to the successful mission that occurred on Sunday, and multiple detainees provided insights into the networks of people who might have been close to bin Laden.

But reporting from detainees was just a slice of the information that has been gathered by incredibly diligent professionals over the years in the intelligence community.

And it simply strains credulity to suggest that a piece of information
that may or may not have been gathered in — eight years ago somehow directly led to a successful mission on Sunday. That's just not the case.

REPORTER: I wasn't suggesting it.

MR. CARNEY: OK. Others have.

NPR notes on the Carney statement and also a similar non-answer from Senator Feinstein:

Read closely, what Carney says is actually not a full-throated denial that intelligence obtained from harsh interrogations could have played a role. Rather, he says there were many pieces of intelligence that contributed.

His goal seemed to be to downplay the singular importance of any information that might have been obtained through waterboarding.

Note that Feinstein, like Carney, doesn't definitively shoot down the idea that intelligence derived from waterboarding contributed to running down Obama.

Further, former CIA Director Leon Panetta was asked about the role of enhanced interrogation and gave a similarly obscure answer.

On the role of interrogation:
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Can you confirm that it was as a result of water boarding that we learned what we needed to learn to go after Bin Laden?
LEON PANETTA: Brian, in the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information and that was true here… It's a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got… I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees. But I'm also saying that, you know, the debate about whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always going to be an open question.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: So finer point, one final time, enhanced interrogation techniques -- which has always been kind of a handy euphemism in these post-9/11 years -- that includes water boarding?
LEON PANETTA: That's correct.

It seems as though the administration, which has so vehemently stressed its anti-enhanced interrogation stance in the past, would take these several opportunities to categorically deny the role of enhanced interrogations in the capture of bin Laden.

Again, though, this is a debate that doesn't need to happen. There is little doubt that enhanced interrogation did yield actionable intelligence that directly stopped terrorist attacks in America and contributed to the capture/killing of many al Qaeda members. However, the revelation of the program in the media drastically changed its cost/benefit analysis, making it untenable. Further, the intelligence deficit immediately after 9/11 that necessitated the program is no more as the United States has developed a sophisticated and effective intelligence network in the region.

As tempting as it is for conservatives to go on a victory lap over these revelations, such a course of action is damaging to the nation's reputation and its political discourse. For better or for worse, the program is over and not likely to be resuscitated or necessitated again any time soon. The idealists are very correct in their belief that these practices are not what America stands for and the realists are very correct in their belief that the same practices are sometimes necessary. That is why it is best to keep such cognitively dissonant presidential directives out of the press.



Edit: On another note entirely, this story caught my attention.

US President Barack Obama gets precious few opportunities to announce a victory. So it's no wonder he chose grand words on Sunday night as the TV crews' spotlights shone upon him and he informed the nation about the deadly strike against Osama bin Laden. "Justice has been done," he said.

It may be that this sentence comes back to haunt him in the years to come. What is just about killing a feared terrorist in his home in the middle of Pakistan? For the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, and for patriotic Americans who saw their grand nation challenged by a band of criminals, the answer might be simple. But international law experts, who have been grappling with the question of the legal status of the US-led war on terror for years, find Obama's pithy words on Sunday night more problematic.

The Guantanamo story was huge, and the American public was subjected to years of whinging in the press about how it was the 'WORST HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE EVAR!!1' However, President Obama's targeted killings of people, including many civilians, in a nation we are not at war with is seemingly just as legally dubious and the results to the people involved are arguably far worse. One wonders why this story didn't ignite the passion that the Gitmo one did.

[Lemur]

One wonders why this story didn't ignite the passion that the Gitmo one did.

Killing the enemy has never bothered people nearly so much as torturing captives, be they prisinors of war, civilians, rebels, enemy combatants or what-have-you. That's pretty basic stuff, and does not appear to require a great deal of explication.

[PanzerJaeger]

///

[PanzerJaeger]

More information is coming to light about the intelligence that led to the capture.

Much about the U.S. operation remained secret Monday. But U.S. officials provided new details about the chronology of events leading up to the raid, describing high-level meetings at the White House as well as daring operations on the ground.

A crucial break appears to have come on May 2, 2005, when Pakistani special forces arrested a senior al-Qaeda operative known as Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who had been designated bin Laden’s “official messenger” to others within the organization. Libbi was later turned over to the CIA and held at a “black site” prison where he was subjected to the harsh methods that the George W. Bush administration termed “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Libbi and other detainees pointed CIA interrogators to another messenger with close ties to the al-Qaeda leader. U.S. officials said they started only with the mystery courier’s nom de guerre, and that it took four years to uncover his actual identity, his approximate location in Pakistan and ultimately the compound where bin Laden was found.

Obama was first made aware of the potential breakthrough last September, as CIA analysts grasped the significance of the succession of clues. On March 14, Obama held the first of five National Security Council meetings in the span of a month devoted to the questions of whether and how to target the newly discovered site.

“We weren’t certain in August 2010 that bin Laden was there,” said the senior U.S. intelligence official. “Earlier this year, our confidence level grew much higher.”

That confidence grew in large part because analysts monitored the compound so closely that they came to know its daily rhythms and the identities of its residents. Analysts concluded it was built to hide “someone of significance,” and that a third family was living on the floors above the courier and his brother.

It remains unclear when bin Laden first arrived, but officials said that the compound was under near-constant scrutiny by the United States, and that it appears the al-Qaeda leader rarely — if ever — ventured outside.

Indeed, U.S. officials said the timing of the raid was not driven by worry that bin Laden was about to leave, but by the accumulation of confidence that their intelligence on his location was dead on.

Further:

After Qahtani was subjected to some of the humiliating interrogations at Guantanamo that later became public, he started to cooperate and, for a while, provided a wealth of information about al-Qaida, including references to the courier in question, the U.S. official said. An October 2008 Defense Department document about Qahtani, identifying him as Maad al Qahtani, recently released by WikiLeaks, detailed a long history of involvement with al-Qaida, including spending time at training camps and guest houses in Afghanistan and fleeing with bin Laden through the caves of Tora Bora in November 2001. (Qahtani later clammed up, repudiated what he had previously said and stopped cooperating.)

In addition, a senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC News investigative producer Robert Windrem that both Mohammed, who was repeatedly waterboarded by the CIA, and al Libi, who was aggressively interrogated but not waterboarded, provided the nom de guerre of the courier. Mohammed was among the “high-value detainees” subjected to specially approved “enhanced” interrogations at secret sites overseas, including CIA-run prisons in Poland, Romania, Thailand and elsewhere, according to U.S. officials.

But U.S. officials stressed that none of the detainees at that point offered up the real identity of the courier. “All we had was the nom de guerre,” said the U.S. official. To one counterterrorism expert who has sharply criticized the CIA’s interrogations, the failure of any of the high-value detainees to provide the identity of the courier raises fresh questions about the value of the information the agency was receiving from enhanced interrogations.

“They waterboarded KSM (Khaled Sheikh Mohammed) 183 times and he still didn’t give the guy up,” said one former U.S. counterterrorism official who asked not to be identified. “Come on. And you want to tell me that enhanced interrogation techniques worked?"

It is possible that neither Qahtani nor Mohammed knew the true identify of bin Laden’s trusted courier, although that would appear to contradict the U.S. official’s description of him as Mohammed’s “protégé.”

In the end, U.S. officials say, it took years of patient intelligence work -- including information gleaned from multiple detainees and other sources of intelligence -- to enable the CIA to figure out who the courier was.

“Four years ago, we uncovered his identify,” said a senior U.S. official. Two years later, the U.S. officials were able to trace the courier and his brother to the area in Pakistan where they finally found bin Laden.

[Ronin]

as for Guantanamo providing something positive after years and years of abusive methods..
all that needs to be said is even a broken clock is right twice a day.