Soufan’s Narrative
Ali Soufan didn’t get to read his entire prepared statement in today’s SJC hearing. But his prepared statement adds some more nuance to the narrative of how CIA started to torture Abu Zubaydah. (Except where linked, the details below come from Soufan’s testimony.)
March 28, 2002: Abu Zubaydah caught.
March 31, 2002: AZ flown to Thailand.
Early April, 2002: Soufan and his partner arrive in Thailand and start interrogating AZ with the help of CIA officers stationed in Thailand.
Immediately after Abu Zubaydah was captured, a fellow FBI agent and I were flown to meet him at an undisclosed location. We were both very familiar with Abu Zubaydah and have successfully interrogated al-Qaeda terrorists. We started interrogating him, supported by CIA officials who were stationed at the location, and within the first hour of the interrogation, using the Informed Interrogation Approach, we gained important actionable intelligence.
The information was so important that, as I later learned from open sources, it went to CIA Director George Tennet who was so impressed that he initially ordered us to be congratulated.
Several days later (early April): Upon learning that the FBI was having success with AZ, Tenet sends CIA CTC team to Thailand.
That was apparently quickly withdrawn as soon as Mr. Tennet was told that it was FBI agents, who were responsible. He then immediately ordered a CIA CTC interrogation team to leave DC and head to the location to take over from us.
During his capture Abu Zubaydah had been injured. After seeing the extent of his injuries, the CIA medical team supporting us decided they were not equipped to treat him and we had to take him to a hospital or he would die. At the hospital, we continued our questioning as much as possible, while taking into account his medical condition and the need to know all information he might have on existing threats.
We were once again very successful and elicited information regarding the role of KSM as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and lots of other information that remains classified. (It is important to remember that before this we had no idea of KSM’s role in 9/11 or his importance in the al Qaeda leadership structure.) All this happened before the CTC team arrived.
"Within a few days" (early April): CIA CTC team arrives and takes the lead, with FBI continuing to assist. CIA starts with clothing and sleep deprivation. (Note, AZ’s ICRC narrative starts when he wakes up naked, so if all sources are telling the truth, he doesn’t remember the early interrogations with the FBI and so his entire narrative lacks about a week. He describes later being shackled to the bed, which the CTC claimed was their means of depriving sleep. He says the sleep deprivation lasted two to three weeks.)
A few days after we started questioning Abu Zubaydah, the CTC interrogation team finally arrived from DC with a contractor who was instructing them on how they should conduct the interrogations, and we were removed. Immediately, on the instructions of the contractor, harsh techniques were introduced, starting with nudity. (The harsher techniques mentioned in the memos were not introduced or even discussed at this point.)
April 2002: CIA OGC lawyers begin conversations with John Bellinger and John Yoo/Jay Bybee on proposed interrogation plan for Abu Zubaydah. Bellinger briefed Condi, Hadley, and Gonzales, as well as Ashcroft and Chertoff.
Early to mid April 2002: Soufan and his partner resume control of interrogation. (After two to three weeks of sleep deprivation, AZ describes briefly being given his clothing back.)
The new techniques did not produce results as Abu Zubaydah shut down and stopped talking. At that time nudity and low-level sleep deprivation (between 24 and 48 hours) was being used. After a few days of getting no information, and after repeated inquiries from DC asking why all of sudden no information was being transmitted (when before there had been a steady stream), we again were given control of the interrogation.
We then returned to using the Informed Interrogation Approach. Within a few hours, Abu Zubaydah again started talking and gave us important actionable intelligence.
This included the details of Jose Padilla, the so-called "dirty bomber." To remind you of how important this information was viewed at the time, the then-Attorney General, John Ashcroft, held a press conference from Moscow to discuss the news. Other important actionable intelligence was also gained that remains classified.
Mid to late April: CTC regains control of interrogation, introduces noise and temperature manipulation. (Note, AZ describes this as happening at the same time as the sleep deprivation.)
After a few days, the contractor attempted to once again try his untested theory and he started to re-implementing the harsh techniques. He moved this time further along the force continuum, introducing loud noise and then temperature manipulation.
Throughout this time, my fellow FBI agent and I, along with a top CIA interrogator who was working with us, protested, but we were overruled. I should also note that another colleague, an operational psychologist for the CIA, had left the location because he objected to what was being done.
Late April: Soufan and his partner resume control of the interrogation. (AZ describes a period of mixed interrogation where clothes were given back as a reward.)
Again, however, the technique wasn’t working and Abu Zubaydah wasn’t revealing any information, so we were once again brought back in to interrogate him. We found it harder to reengage him this time, because of how the techniques had affected him, but eventually, we succeeded, and he re-engaged again.
May 2, 2002: The US "un-signs" the International Criminal Court treaty.
May 8, 2002: Jose Padilla taken into custody based on material warrant signed by Michael Mukasey and based on testimony from Abu Zubaydah.
Mid-May 2002: CIA OGC lawyers meet with Ashcroft, Condi, Hadley, Bellinger, and Gonzales to discuss alternative interrogation methods, including waterboarding.
Mid-May 2002: CTC requests the ability to use the small box confinement. (AZ says the confinement boxes were used two and a half to three months after he was captured, so around Mid-May to June.)
Once again the contractor insisted on stepping up the notches of his experiment, and this time he requested the authorization to place Abu Zubaydah in a confinement box, as the next stage in the force continuum. While everything I saw to this point were nowhere near the severity later listed in the memos, the evolution of the contractor’s theory, along with what I had seen till then, struck me as "borderline torture."
As the Department of Justice IG report released last year states, I protested to my superiors in the FBI and refused to be a part of what was happening. The Director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, a man I deeply respect, agreed passing the message that "we don’t do that," and I was pulled out.
Mid-May 2002: Soufan leaves Thailand.
Mid to late May 2002: Small box confinement and walling used, per AZ.
Early June: Soufan’s partner leaves Thailand.
July 10, 2002: Date of first interrogation report from Abu Zubaydah cited in 9/11 Report.
July 13, 2002: CIA OGC (Rizzo?) meets with Bellinger, Yoo, Chertoff, Daniel Levin, and Gonzales for overview of interrogation plan.
July 17, 2002: Tenet met with Condi, who advised CIA could proceed with torture, subject to a determination of legality by OLC.
July?: Waterboarding and other combined techniques.
Late July 2002: Bybee discusses SERE with Yoo and Ashcroft.
July 24, 2002: Bybee advised CIA that Ashcroft concluded proposed techniques were legal.
July 26, 2002: Bybee tells CIA waterboarding is legal. CIA begins to waterboard Abu Zubaydah.
August 1, 2002: "Bybee Memo" (written by John Yoo) describes torture as that which is equivalent to :the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."
Thanks very much. Invaluable.
Funny how the fury (my own) doesn’t go away. Getting used to this stuff is completely out of the question.
I’m with you! I just get revolted, disgusted and livid every time anything new or even new clarity is exposed in this sordid mess.
It’s just horrific and I want prosecutions!!
I’ll NEVER feel differently or even better or become desensitized to this.
Good or bad, THESE ARE PEOPLE, someone’s son, brother, husband, LOVED ONE. They’re humans. This is barbaric and inhuman.
I heard that this morning and I want to highlight it here. Every single person who says “ticking time bomb” should be forced to write this 100 times on the nearest chalkboard until they get it into their thick skulls that rapport building techniques work and work quickly.
Scary fast, isn’t it? These people know more about how humans are put together than I would have believed possible.
Impressive fast. These guys know how to do their job well, which is what makes President Level so especially despicable — he fucked that up on purpose to achieve his own ends. Graham can blow all the smoke he wants, but the “scared-shitless” defense doesn’t hold any water at all.
The point about torturing requiring recovery time of the detainee in order to continue to interrogate, was one of the best responses irt the ticking time bomb. Torture wastes time when time is crucial. Soufan also made the point that torture strengthens resolve to give false information when in a ticking time bomb scenario.
Wish we could ask him what he viewed in terms of combined techniques.
Also, if you read the NYT story on “Deuce Martinez” they spell out that they kept the questioning interrogators separate from the torturers, so during and after the torture there wasn’t even someone there to get info. They said sometimes it was even a couple of days or so after the torture that the interrogator showed up to question.
Yep. I also really appreciated Soufan’s remark about how time consuming torture is as an information gathering technique. He specifically referred to having to wait 180 hours for someone to get sleep deprived. That’s hardly ticking time bomb appropriate.
Marcy should be over at the MSNBC studio’s getting ready to be interviewed by Rachel, Matthews, Ed, or Olbermann. What is she doing here?
I’ll be watching!
Marci, you would look good next to Kieth.
I so wanted to hear what Soufan had to say in the moment when Graham kept cutting him off. And then Whitehouse cut him off.
I wanted to hear from someone who has been there and was so clear in his understanding of what works and does not work in our best interest…which is to stand by our agreements.
When Soufan was trying to get in a word edge wise he sounded so passionate so clear so committed
So did I. And I can’t stop thinking about it. Clearly it was critical.
Ok another thing to highlight… Evidently gathering intelligence, even in the scary scary wake of 9-11, was just another turf battle to Tenet. Disgusting. So much for the “we were so scared we would do anything to prevent another attack” argument. They weren’t too scared to try to steal someone else’s success…
Your timelines are so illuminating, ew. Thank you.
I bet that the information Soufan got without torture is exactly what Cheney is clinging to when he gets all misty-eyed about the efficacy of torture.
Mid to Late April:
To test a theory = EXPERIMENTATION
Experimenting – using punishment – on a prisoner. A wounded one at that.
The “Mengelization” of US policy.
The ABAB research design. Whereby you prove that condition A is one way, B changes that, A back to the same results, B changing again.
Classic ABAB design proves torture does not work!
Besides, all of it breaks the law!
I find it fascinating that Soufan keeps referring to it as an “experiment.”
This is key.
What exactly are the war crimes tribunal proceedings related to experimentation on prisoners? Paging legal beagles. (I’ll look this up too.)
They actually used the word experimentation in the hearing today. (as you point out in several posts after I read this one….)
“Senator Graham, there’s a Dr. Mengele calling on line 2, did you want to take that?”
Yes. I thought so. If you or anyone can get me the transcript or quotes on that, I would be very, very thankful.
sfpsych at gmail dot com
You tell ‘em sister. Ever since the word came out on the possible fiddling with the anti-assasination EO, which also prohibited human experimentation, I’ve pushed the fact that what they wanted to do was just that, engage in human interrogation experimentation. And with the CIA analysis on innocent people from as far back as 2002, and with someone like el-Masri included in the black sites program too (and now we find out from Andy Worthington some Libyans who had nothing to do with al-Qaeda) it makes you wonder if they didn’t want some baselines for their human interrogation experiments. If we have someone we know is innocent and play around with seeing what we can get from them using these techniques, it helps us analyze what we are getting from the guilty
That might reach a bit far afield on the original motivation issue (I think keeping the innocent was originally motivated by knowledge that having them at all was a crime and no one wanted the fallout of releasing them and having that crime laid bare) but I just betcha a pro-torture psych wouldn’t be squeamish over also keeping records on how the known “innocents” responded – after all, it would be *important* field info.
I found it very interesting that Soufan had actually gone undercover with Al Qaida. It enhanced his credibility as a witness on the interrogation of Al Qaida suspects.
Soufan’s testimony also brought home to me how duplicitous the Cheney defense of EITs that Al Zubaidah gave up valuable information “after EITs were used.”
Soufan did say that his interrogation relies to some extent on deception. Given that he also has done undercover work, I’m wondering if Soufan’s earliest interactions with Zubaydah involved Soufan masquerading as one of the healthcare workers or as a fellow patient. Also, it’s likely Zubaydah would have been on pretty strong painkillers, so any or all of those explanations could contribute to his not recalling the first interviews.
In State of War by James Risen, he quotes a source that was in the room with Bush and Tenet while discussing the health of Zubaydah when Bush asked “Who authorized putting him on pain medication“. It was at this moment that we all learned that Bush wanted the gloves off while dealing with Zubaydah.
It has also been reported by Gerald Posner that the narcotics that were administered were very quick acting and were turned on and off during the questioning by the FBI and the CIA.
I had not known that Soufan had been undercover with al Qaeda. I had read somewhere-maybe in Posner’s book- that he was lead to believe initially that he was in safe house and they were hiding him from the Americans. Maybe Soufan was in on this ruse.
One point on Zubaydah that has always haunted me is the Western credit cards that he had on him when he was captured. There were two. According to Risen’s reporting, the Saudi Intelligence seiged the records from the two banks involved and the records were never turned over to the US government. Because of our oil interests with the Saudis, President Bush never pushed the Saudi government to turn over the record. I see this as complicity in the crime.
Finally on a point that I have not seen much discussion in the past but it jumped out at me when you look at the timeline provided by Soufan and in EW’s diary. Obviously, Soufan also thought it important. Our government begins the harsh treatment/torture of Zubaydah in mid and late April. On May 2, we announce that we are pulling out from the ICC after a bitter fight and much compromise where we had joined in 2000 when Clinton was in office. Much like the scary quote from Lindsey Graham on not telling Democrats about torture if indeed you thought it was a crime, I see this as an admission by the administration that they were afraid of the ICC for this very reason. Timelines can be amazing thorns in the side if used correctly as only Marcy knows so well.
And these statements are great with the timeline:
Soufan writes:
the torture “contractor”. Who was this? Who hired or recommended ‘contractors”
to think that lower level military folks are doing time for Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz etc for what took place in Abu Gharib.
who ordered these torture “contractors”
Was the contractor James Mitchell? Whoever he was, why couldn’t he be named at the hearing?
Yes, though that remains officially classified, so Soufan can’t say it.
If Bush and/or Cheney were scared of what Abu Zubaydah and others might reveal, fucking up the interrogation might have been quite intentional.
The Nazi doctors conducted some quite horrific experiments on their victims. Many of them were sentenced to death and executed.
Here’s a link on experimentation based on The Nuremberg Code:
1. Voluntary Consent – NOT DONE!
4. Avoid all physical and mental suffering – NOT DONE!
7. Protect the subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, death – NO EVIDENCE THIS WAS DONE!
8. Probably conducted by psychologist(s) – who did not have requisite skill or care!
9. Subject at liberty to bring experiment to an end! (as in SERE training?) EPIC FAIL!
10. Scientist must be prepared to terminate experiment at any stage if likely to result in injury, disability, death. UMMMMM….. BAD, BAD, BAD!
Ok, psychologist(s) NAILED!!!!
I thought it was stated that the initial psychologist left in disgust and was replaced by a CIA psychologist.
This does not apply to the psychologist who left in disgust!
This applies to the “contractors” – we know their names. They were not CIA; they were “contractors.” Who did the experiments. He kept using the world “experiment.”
That is highly significant!
The confinement boxes — one other missed opportunity in this morning’s hearing. Graham asked Luban whether it would be torture to introduce a spider into the cell of a prisoner known to have a spider phobia. Why oh why didn’t Luban or someone else catch that? I was shouting at my monitor — “Not his cell, you liar. A confinement box, a coffin, where the prisoner can’t move his arms or hands. How would you like to spend a few hours in a coffin with your worst nightmare? A bug? A snake? A rat?”
Especially when naked.
That confinement box technique was what was used to get Al Libi to give the false testimony that Iraq had trained Al Qaeda in WMD’s, wasn’t it? Speaking of training, I wonder who originated the confinement box technique, and who trained whom.
Room 101. Whatever you fear most, you will meet it there.
I guess that Mitchell, like Mukasey, was a certain kind of Orwell fan.
I wonder whether anyone has checked the stability of Orwell’s grave recently.
Nuremberg, from the indictment, under Crimes Against Humanity:
More Marcy upstairs Ya, I know, she is busy today!
I have correction/clarification to Marcy’s timeline.
A close reading of the whole ICRC report is necessary to clear this up. One thing is obvious. AZ thought he was in Afghanistan, but he was actually in Thailand. The ICRC introduces AZ’s commentary with this:
Elsewhere in the report, this location is described as AZ third place of detention.
AZ’s ICRC testimony seems to be that he was captured in Pakistan. Held somewhere before going to the hospital and then this narrative starts. That matches pretty well with Soufan’s narrative (questioning at undisclosed location, hospitalization, then torture site) when you realize that AZ had no way of knowing where he was.
One of these things is not like the other. Can we then conclude he must have been kept inside a climate-controlled environment?
Absolutely. That’s a key part of the torture regime.
Leaving aside whether torture works or doesn’t work I’d like Dead eye Dick to explain why they needed to torture if they were already getting intelligence by not torturing as Soufon stated?
I see no evidence that the good cop, bad cop routine worked. Indeed, the “bad cops” were so bad, they destroyed the ability of the good cop to do further work.
Plus, the most important information was divulged before the bad cops even showed up!
Your theory does not work in this case. Not at all.
Note that Soufan and partner began their interrogation at the same time as AZ was being treated for his wounds, i.e. he was being treated humanely, and with care. They established themselves as the ‘good cops.’ So this narrative shows that the ‘good cop/bad cop’ routine worked.
If Soufan had not established rapprt prior to the torture experiments I wonder whether AZ would have warmed up to him?
This sounds so much like Cheney’s doing: ordering Tenet to immediately begin using AZ as an experimental subject for Jessen & Mitchell’s program, when actionable intelligence had already been obtained from the subject, then claim that ‘torture works’.
Further note that it was the torture that more important to Cheny/Tenet, not gaining actionable intelligence, or why would the CIA have been ordered to stop Soufan in order to begin torture?
I propose that this is yet further proof that the point was never to gain actionable intelligence, whether via rapport-building or torture. This timeline shows that the purpose was to produce ‘forced confessions’ as phony intelligence pretexts for scaring the American public into supporting the PNAC war plans for dominance of the oil-producing regions.
I think it started earlier, probably even before 9/11. But the beginnings of the experiment may have been serendipitous. JPRA was used to contracting out their ex-employees as experts in interrogation. Mitchell and Jessen wanted to jump in the game, and had supporters at JPRA supporting them, possibly on the outside, too. Either CTC got wind of this, or were aware all along, and someone decided to see if the “learned helplessness” paradigm of SERE style torture would work better, or as an adjunct to the old KUBARK-DDD torture. Zubaydah (and possibly al-Libi, and certainly later, Al Qahtani) were the experimental subjects. It wasn’t to get info, but to see how much and how long it could take to break these men down. Once broken, they were perfect candidates to get false confessions for the desired link to Saddam. By then, it had all come together, except some in the intel bureaucracy were upset about the SERE techniques. But the latter were too afraid to buck the tops at DoD and WH (and also, it seems, DoJ).
In the hearing, did anyone address what reason was given at the time for the CIA interrogation team being brought in the first time, after Soufan? That seems to be getting glossed over, but to me it seem key. The FBI guys were succeeding; so why make the change? We have the reason why CIA was pulled off and FBI was put back on for a second pass (CIA team was not producing results), but what was Soufan told about why they made the first changeover from FBI to CIA?
I don’t know, but from the narrative above, it sounds like it was all about turf. Tenet was going to congratulate the interrogators until he found out they were FBI, not CIA. At that point, he withholds his congratulations and sends out his CIA team.
Of course, the other possibility is that PapaDick didn’t want a real interrogation, he needed something else… so he could send his hard place into Iraq ; )
If Tenet was responding to pressure from Cheney to stop the flow of the true information that the FBI was gathering, and replace it with a stream of planted information from the CIA team, then that would be both consistent with C’s other fixing-the-intelligence activities and incredibly damning. The only piece that doesn’t fit there, is why was Soufan later permitted a second chance?
If AZ did cooperate initially, he’d have a bit of a reason for glossing over that aspect. Both vis a vis his treatment and since he is now at a facility that commingles other actual al-Qaeda or actual very bad guys who worked with al-Qaeda. He wouldn’t really want to start off with: These real nice guys took care of me and I gave them good info as a result.
OTOH, it’s equally credible that his recollections are all garbled, but I always trend towards keeping the self-interest issue on the list of possible factors.
The CIA CTC psychologist who left in disgust is most likely Scott Shumate, chief operational psychologist then for CTC, as reported by Jane Mayer. Shumate likes to brag that he was present at interrogation of famous “terrorists”. The contractor is surely Mitchell, but who came with him (his sponsor or handler), was that Shumate, or was it retired Air Force SERE psychologist, Dr. David Mitchell (who we know was there in April 2002).
Moreover, it was al-Libi who gave up Zubaydah’s name (both had been running training camps). But DIA and some CIA knew al-Libi’s intel was dubious as early as February 2002 (al-Libi was being buried in a box in Egypt, just as later Zubaydah would be threatened by the same thing). They knew or should have suspected Zubaydah was not as “big” as they thought.
I thought I heard someone refer to “the experiment” at today’s hearing, and certainly Zubaydah told the Red Cross that they heard or he suspected the CIA was trying things out on him.
Sounds like he was the primary victim of JPRA/SERE’s reverse-engineering. Shockingly, Soufan (who is no hero in my book, just not as cruel or sadistic as the other interrogators) was more than fine with subjecting Zubaydah to shackling and sleep deprivation and isolation… typical KUBARK treatment). But the “learned helplessness” bizarreness of the new SERE-style treatment was too much for him, other FBI, and even other CIA. (Shumate left in disgust.) But no one tried to stop the experiment. (Okay, Soufan and others “protested.”) Moreover, and no one asked Soufan this, and if anyone here gets the opportunity, please ask!, but it’s likely they all knew it was an experiment, and moreover, one that had the blessings of top layers of DoD/SecDef and WH. That’s why Mueller pulled back his FBI men, but made no other effort to intervene.
Most likely, al Libi was another experiment, but maybe not. We don’t know enough details, and now, shockingly (yet again), Newsweek is reporting (H/T Andy Worthington)
Your comment is very helpful, Jeff. Thanks for all the extra info.
He really was an important witness re: Zubaydah. I did some comments earlier on the circular pattern of getting AZ, al-Faruq, al-Libi etc. to cross identify each other as “high level al-Qaeda”
If you go look at thee original OLC memo (one of Bradbury’s May 2005 goes even further in a very creepy way, but looking at the August 2002 memo)it is a condition precedent for the torture to be legal that the person be a high value al-Qaeda operative.
There’s not real proof that either al-Libi or AZ were, though, except that circular set of identifications. Al-Faruq is supposedly dead now (that story has weird elements too) and the kid who told us that AZ was NOT al-Qaeda (Noor al-Deen) has been disappeared for a long time. Get al-Libi to say that AZ wasn’t al-Qaeda on the record and watch some of the legal house of cards fall, but with him gone you only have the statements of the dead from the original record on why the CIA decided to treat AZ as qualifying for the torture program.
Exactly. You got it. Whatever Al Qaeda was (or is), it was to the benefit of the U.S. to build the threat as large as they could. This could help cover-up the terrible job done around 9/11, build an enemy for the desired attack on Iraq.
In other words, if this all be true, or most of it, the interrogations were essentially a black op.
From that POV, insofaras the FBI techniques were more likely to produce reliable/true information than the CIA techniques, they posed a threat to that black op.
Maybe. On other hand, one wonders how reliable the info Soufan got really was. Everyone mentions his getting the dirt on the “dirty bomb” Padilla story (and Padilla was picked up a few months later), but that story did not pan out.
I don’t think FBI was part of the black op, and most likely they were shouldered aside, or utilized for the good cop of the Mutt and Jeff technique, something to which, obviously, they were NOT averse. But they definitely did not like the learned helplessness stuff. But to wait seven years to get their story out in public in this kind of arena is way too long for my taste.
I’m not sure if Soufan merely got the identification that Padilla was an American involved with training in the terrorist camps…or if he was involved in the “dirty bomb”. Remember that the “good information” on Padilla was presented at his trial…and much of that did include testimony and evidence regarding his trining in Afghanistan. The “dirty bomb” stuff was dropped.
I would guess that this information came AFTER Abu Zubaydah was tortured. In fact AZ has stated that he told all sorts of lies to his interrogators after being tortured, including telling them that bin Laden had a nuclear bomb. Perhaps it was simply too incredible to believe that Al Qaida had a real nuke, so that became a dirty bomb.
It may have had more than one purpose, could actually have been intended to build “the other” as the casus belli for Iraq, but it also could have been an attempt to deal with the perceived threat of al Qaeda in a manner used during the Vietnam War.
See Doug Valentine’s series, particularly Part 2: Phoenix and the Anatomy of Terror. As more details emerge, the more the program of rendition and torture appears to be a re-born Phoenix Program, intended to terrorize the terrorists.
While an article in der Spiegel has been noted as a solid profile of Mitchell and Jessen, I still don’t see anyone checking deeply into the background of these two people. We need more info — specifically, were either of these guys former CIA and possibly involved in Vietnam? Could they have been former Phoenix Program members?
In a Jane Mayer New Yorker piece she quoted someone as saying they were using Phoenix Program as model in Afghanistan/Iraq.
Re Mitchell and Jessen, I can’t give sources, but let’s say that they had been at JPRA/SERE since the early 90s. They were mentored by someone there and brought into teaching the interrogation techniques. JPRA has a rotten, corrupt culture, with a number of officers leaving military and coming back as contractors for big bucks. Look up Tate, Inc, one of the main contracting companies for this kind of thing.
My hunch is that Mitchell/Jessen and Associates grew out of this kind of culture. Since JPRA has a lot of ops with Special Forces and CIA (rescue of operatives, training re capture), CIA and JPRA are very cozy, and a perfect breeding ground for this kind of operation. I don’t know who initiated it, or how exactly it came together. Let me also say that some in FBI (or formerly) are also familiar with this milieu, in a money making kind of way.
That’s all I can say for now. I’ll write something more substantive on this soon.
If there were 704 program “advisers” in 1970, there’s a good chance at least half of these people are still alive and walking around — which might mean far less dilution than the generations of programs imply (Phoenix > SOA > JPRA/SERE).
Assume that these so-called advisers were 30 years of age in 1970; we’re looking for men about 69 years old, give or take five years depending on their stature within the program.
I sent Marcy links over a week ago to studies that had researchers with the last names Mitchell and Jessen but the first names were different. They were in areas of research which would apply to torture but not their areas of expertise. (Example of one of the studies: Thermal Physiology – this was the study that brought my attention to induced hypothermia as treatment for cardiac arrest.)
If interested, I’ll try and find the link and repost.
Could you post or cc: me by email with that info? rayne_today [at] yahoo
Spent a big chunk of time surfing docs from Vietnam looking for names, have only run into one oddity, wondering if I needed to look under different names.
[edit: btw, Jessen’s name has appeared as John “Bruce” Jessen in at least one other outlet’s reporting, including the quote marks; to my mind, this suggests an assigned op name.]
“both had been running training camps”
Supposedly al-Libi ran the Khalden training camp and Zubaydah helped him out with that by running a guest house for it.
I have posted a blog, based on my comments on this thread, related to the War Crime of Experimentation on a prisoner, without consent, in addition to torture, giving links to all of my comments here and advice (with a link) to EW for full coverage of today’s hearing, together with info on her award and a link to contribute to the fund to keep Marcy on the case!
Did the hearing in any way address the issue of the dead?
No. However, it wasn’t intended to. Whitehouse was on KO tonight and it was clear that there were 3 things on his list of things to establish:
1) the OLC memos were based on lies (i.e., the traditional methods weren’t working so they had to go to EITs, but in fact the traditional methods worked very well and very rapidly)
2) that administration lawyers who weren’t part of the scheme, objected to it and were shut down rather than sincerely debated
3) that the OLC opinions are so poor that the lawyers who wrote them deserved to be sanctioned
It was clear to me watching this morning, and seeing Whitehouse again on KO, that he is carefully building a case, piece by piece and today was just the beginning.
Thanks, phred. I ask because I think — without wishing to in any way diminish the importance of bringing torture into the limelight — that there is a chance that the current torture focus may be serving, in part, to distract from an up-and-coming dead-detainees issue which may yet prove far more dangerous for those involved.
Man, Graham must have a real death wish for the GOP to be parading this thing around like he did today.
Oh I’m sure once we can move the debate off the ridiculous ticking time bomb meme and onto the torture of innocent people and worse the deaths-by-torture that occurred, that even Graham will lose the ability to wag his finger at witnesses he doesn’t like. But I’m more convinced than ever that Whitehouse is piecing together a case like the careful prosecutor he is. I have no doubt (ok, that’s too strong, how ’bout I’m guardedly optimistic ; ) he’ll get there, but it is important to lay out a clear path along the way.
just had a modest earthquake in Oakland.
Thanks and congratulations to Marcy!
but… what about the witches. Graham said you could use the rough stuff to find witches and warlocks. 500 years of experience says so. Did Ali Soufan find any witches?
This is why Marcy got a prestigious award:
I thought this happened in early 2001 (before 9/11), but it was early 2002! My thought was that the Bush Regime was hashing out their scheme well before 9/11, but since the unsigning of the ICC actually happened in early 2002, it still makes sense, because the Bush Regime knew they were already committing war crimes and wanted to make sure our soldiers and these criminal contractors were protected.
This whole thing is unbelievable. Say what you want about President Obama, but we’ve learned an awful lot about the Regime since he took office! We have years to go too.
And thanks Marcy for all you do! Man, you’ve got a big brain girl. We are so lucky that you’re sharing it with us.
In fairness, the Neocons were always blatantly against the ICC, it wasn’t just post 9-11
Marcy’s post after this one is very poignant and I think if you can, it should be passed along:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake……democrats/
Lindsey Graham reveals the strategy of the Bush Regime to refuse to tell the Democrats what they were doing, because crimes were being committed.
Thanks Marcy! We love your work! All fire pups need to donate to the Marcy Wheeler Investigative Blogging Fund. Donate today for matching funds. Marcy’s invaluable and crucial work must continue. Let this be your part in the struggle for restoration of America’s badly tarnished reputation.
But beyond torture, Soufan is important because of his detailed knowledge of what went on at the FBI and CIA prior to 9/11 that had allowed these attacks to take place.
His information is so explosive that all mention of him was virtually stripped out of the 9/11 Commission report and even the DOJ IG report, when in fact he was lead investigator on the Cole bombing and knew more than anyone outside of FBI Agent Steve Bongardt, his assistant on this investigation, on what occurred that had prevented the FBI from stopping these attacks.
He is noted just once in the DOJ IG report as the NY FBI Agent that spoke fluent Arabic who flew out to talk to the FBI/CIA joint source in February 2001, to show the source the passport photo he had been given by the Yemen authorities of Walid Bin Attash, Khallad, the master mind of the Cole bombing. All of the CIA people involved including the CIA Bin Laden unit, the Yemen CIA station, and even the CIA handler for the joint source kept secret the fact that on January 4, 2001, just one month before, Khallad had been positively identified by this same FBI/CIA source from a photo taken of him at the Kuala Lumpur meeting in January 2000, actually planning the Cole bombing with Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.
It was at this point in time when the criminal actions at the CIA started in earnest to keep all information on this Kuala Lumpur meeting secret from the FBI Cole criminal investigators and to also keep secret the names of the people who had attended this meeting. This information that all three known al Qaeda terrorists Khallad, Mihdhar and Hazmi were at this meeting planning the Cole bombing was kept secret from the FBI Cole investigators until after the attacks on 9/11. Since the planning for the Cole bombing and the attacks on 9/11 took place at this same meeting, keeping this information secret from the FBI in a wide ranging criminal conspiracy led directly to the al Qaeda terrorists carrying out the successful attacks on 9/11.
But what is so horrific is that the CIA kept this information secret even when the CIA knew both Mihdhar and Hazmi were inside of the US on August 22-23, 2001, and knew these two al Qaeda terrorists were just about to take part in a massive attack that would kill thousands of Americans. The email from Tom Wilshire deputy chief of the CIA Bin Laden unit to his managers at the CTC on July 23, 2001 proves that not only did he know this but all of his CTC managers knew this. His email also confirms that when they forbid him from giving the information on the Kuala Lumpur meeting to the FBI, and allowed him to continue to hide the photograph of Khallad taken at the Kuala Lumpur meeting, a photo that directly connected Mihdhar and Hazmi to the planning of the Cole bombing, the CIA was all fully aware that their actions would result in allowing Wilshire and FBI HQ IOS agents he had been working with to shut down FBI Agent Steve Bongardt’s investigation of Mihdhar and Hazmi. The CIA must have known that by shutting down the only investigation that could have found Mihdhar and Hazmi in time to prevent this attack, that thousands of Americans would perish in the attacks that these terrorists were about to take part in. See web site http://www.eventson911.com for the US government’s own source documents that back up all of this information. GO FIGURE!
I take responsibility for introducing the ’good cop/bad cop’ idea, in comment 37 (immediately following, but not in reply to pmorlan). You are right, it was not ’good cop/bad cop’, and, as Jeff Kaye indicates, the torture was introduced, irrespective of the rapport established, or intel gained by the FBI, because the PTB wished to torture, to experiment with their methods of inducing learned helplessness.
I suppose the fact that sleep deprivation takes/wastes time, as in days, or weeks, points all the more to the complete fallacy of the ticking time bomb fantasy. This is one of the proofs learned by me today, in this discussion. As well as the fact that the sleep deprivation torture has the exact opposite effect, causing resistance to interrogation.
Thanks, all.
Boy are you honest! And I hereby give notice that I erred in commenting to @36 rather than you. My apologies for the mistake. Thank goodness no torture occurred.
Besides the excellent investigative blogging that occurs here, the level of honesty of the commenters helps to keep it ticking along at the furious pace at which it moves rather than being distracted by the stupid.
Content of this comment removed for racist overtones. – bmaz
When Maher Arar was held and tortured in Syria he was kept in an underground cell the size of a coffin for months. He said it was like being ”buried alive.”
Ask Graham: they’ve probably been using this ”technique” for 500 years too. Greatest hits and all. Top ten.
It didn’t ”work” on Arar. He was completely innocent. He had never been to Afghanistan. He was a software engineer and family man in Canada and the US. Under torture he told them what they wanted to hear. I remember the reports in Canada that characterized him as a terrorist. For months. Officials, Members of Parliament, Lawyers … it went on and on. Lies based on nothing.
Under torture at Gitmo, the child soldier Omar Khadr identified Arar as someone he had seen at a safe house in Afghanistan. From a black and white driver’s license photo. And Arar remains on the US no fly list. And Napolitano among others still repeats the lie that some of the 9/11 hijackers came through the Canadian border. The Canadian ambassador in Washington follows this up each time it reappears and still this lie will not die. I guess it’s a guilt/denial thing.
Meanwhile the Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that the Canadian government MUST repatriate Khadr from Gitmo. The Canadian government is appealing the ruling. Hearings on Khadr’s case have been started and stopped three times now? The defense team has reported ongoing and repeated prosecutorial misconduct.
All of these lies have so much power.
But, yes, we have only just begun and we shall see what time brings to light and thought.
Thanks and congratulations ew!
A friend just suggested something like that to me. The friend even wondered if the last names were as well?
Here’s one:
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=…..=firefox-a
It may take me a few to find the other I came across. BTW, you’ll find them in the appendix under contributing authors.
Yes, same person I saw, a Claus Jessen, cited as contributor to the paper in question:
The same person’s work,
was referred to in a number of other physiological studies.
Could be purely coincidental — or they could have seen his work and decided to offer Jessen another chance to “study” on humans.
Certainly would explain the videotapes; wouldn’t that also explain at least one description of the tapes as “clinical” in nature?
I’m going to be out of pocket much of the day, will try to follow up later this afternoon if you leave anything here or by email. Thanks much!
There is also a Mitchell listed.
Yes, I note that now, a D. Mitchell of South Africa.
Why am I less than happy about finding synchronicities between so-called psychologists involved in torture, and researchers in physiology from German and South Africa…ugh.
I’m hoping it’s just a fluke.