FBI Special Agent: "For Seven Years I Have Remained Silent"

  by Damozel | Ali Soufan, an F.B.I. supervisory special agent from 1997 to 2005, says in a "must read" New York Times op-ed:

FOR seven years I have remained silent about the false claims magnifying the effectiveness of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. I have spoken only in closed government hearings, as these matters were classified. But the release last week of four Justice Department memos on interrogations allows me to shed light on the story, and on some of the lessons to be learned.

One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working...

It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence....

There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process....

It was the right decision to release these memos, as we need the truth to come out. This should not be a partisan matter, because it is in our national security interest to regain our position as the world’s foremost defenders of human rights. Just as important, releasing these memos enables us to begin the tricky process of finally bringing these terrorists to justice.

The debate after the release of these memos has centered on whether C.I.A. officials should be prosecuted for their role in harsh interrogation techniques. That would be a mistake. Almost all the agency officials I worked with on these issues were good people who felt as I did about the use of enhanced techniques: it is un-American, ineffective and harmful to our national security...

My C.I.A. colleagues who balked at the techniques, on the other hand, were instructed to continue. (It’s worth noting that when reading between the lines of the newly released memos, it seems clear that it was contractors, not C.I.A. officers, who requested the use of these techniques.) (More....; emphasis added)

Melissa McEwen remarks:

[T[hose would be the same contractors who the Bush administration used to fill in the gaps (and avoid a draft), making Cheney's friends at Blackwater and Halliburton subsidiaries and other private mercenary corps rich beyond their wildest dreams, the same contractors about whom, in 2006, Bush couldn't say if they were controlled by any recognizable law while operating in Iraq.

At some point, I hope there's a reckoning for the influence private military contractors were allowed to have on our national policy during the Bush administration. I hope, but I suspect there won't be.

In fact, I suspect that outsourcing the really ugly stuff was the point all along.

Jane Hamsher says:

[U]ntil there's a formal investigation, we'll never know whether the President of the United States lied to the American public in the September 2006 speech when he said that the use of torture had produced actionable intelligence. Because people who were there are now calling George Bush a bold-faced liar.

Paul Kelley says that whether torture produced actionable intelligence is irrelevant and not a question we should be considering:

I remember the day back in late 2001 or early 2002 when I watched Alan Dershowitz on CNN tell the audience that torture might be acceptable under some circumstances. I felt like Alice when she stepped through the looking glass. America was stepping across a bright red line, into the darkness. It broke my heart....

Torture is immoral and unspeakable under any circumstances. It's efficacy shouldn't even be considered. Why am I such an absolutist about this? Because once we torture we lose our soul. There is nothing left to fight for after that, no brutality that will not be considered or implemented. We are either civilized, enlightened human beings or we are not.

Ron Beasley points out that we prosecuted the Japanese for waterboarding after WWII.  "If it was illegal then it is illegal now."

Marcy Wheeler asks:

Soufan's on-the-record refutation of the very cornerstone of the Bybee Memo--and with it the entire torture regime--dismantles the legal rationale for that regime....So who lied to Bybee about what facts the CIA had in its possession? (emphasis added)

Larisa Alexandrovna says:

Every expert from the CIA to the FBI will tell you that torture does not produce actionable intelligence and that career professionals do not want to engage in it. For Soufan to feel the need to speak out and write this indicates the level of stupid our national discourse has gotten to.  There is a reason CIA officers and FBI agents are redacted or given a different identity in government documents: safety. Sufan stepping out from behind the veil and telling the nation about his experience could not have been an easy choice for him. So what will the torture apologists say now?

Yet in all of this, the key question remains unanswered. Why did we torture people? The Bush administration knew torture did not work. They knew that torture provided no actionable intel. Why do it then? What was the objective in this policy?  (emphasis added)

Andrew Sullivan answers:

If someone withheld information, or someone ignored that information in providing the factual basis for Bybee's torture green light, then we have very clear proof that someone high up wanted to torture Zubaydah regardless. We also know that some have testified this was designed to prove a Saddam-Qaeda link (which did not exist). To put this in plain English: We had a president determined to torture a prisoner to get false evidence on which to justify a war. (emphasis added)

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