Matthew Yglesias (December 18, 2007) - Abu Zubaydah (Foreign Policy)

Hard to believe the truth lies with Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus

Of course, everyone at Guantanamo, Abu Gahrib, Bagrahm, they are all harmless sclobs who did nothing and know absolutely nothing, isn't that the popular-front line?

Posted by Jozef | December 18, 2007 5:52 PM

also Matt

why do you state "Ron Suskind details how the Bush administration, having falsely claimed "

why not "Ron Suskind claimed" or even "Ron Suskind falsely claimed" ?

do you know if Suskind was correct or is this just wishful thinking/projection on your part?

Posted by Jozef | December 18, 2007 5:57 PM

Alfred McCoy of University of Wisconsin Madison argues convincingly that Kiriakou (who appeared out of nowhere) is part of a CIA home front propaganda operation. Kiriakou's line: "I think water boarding is torture and I have moral qualms about it - but it is effective - and I'm glad we're having this 'national conversation.'" Sounds like a pro-torture concern troll to me.

http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/content.aspx?audioID=16461

Posted by AJ | December 18, 2007 5:58 PM

Hard to understand why the 9/11 Commission believed the CIA version if the FBI version were somehow correct. But, you know, the Left only believes the 9/11 Commission when it is convenient to do so.

And it is very easy to understand why the FBI would claim the opposite of the CIA - those agencies don't like each other.

Posted by Al | December 18, 2007 6:01 PM

Alfred McCoy of University of Wisconsin Madison"
"argues convincingly"

What does this wingnut denizen of Madison WI know that allows him to argue so convincingly? Intimately familiar with who is really a terorist or is he just another Move-On al-quaida supporter?

He has not convinced me, but I am not a Public Radio listener (nor do I listen to Rush, etc.)

As for it being easy for the FBI to claim the opposite of the CIA, it is easy for the stooges of Terrorism to claim the opposite of whatever the Bush administration and out national security services are saying.

Posted by Jozef | December 18, 2007 6:08 PM

Moreover, it's always funny to see anyone citing Ron Suskind for anything, given that his first book about the Bush Administration (Price of Loyalty) was debunked by its own source.

Suskind has all the credibility of the New Republic. Not that anyone on the Left cares anything about whether Suskind is credible - they happily cite non-credible sources so long as those sources say something bad about Bush.

Posted by Al | December 18, 2007 6:17 PM

Completely discounting claims of known liars and people with extremely and unusually good motivation to lie is always good policy. Sure, liars and people in position to gain a lot from lying and lose a hell of a lot from not lying might sometimes tell the truth, but it's really not worth your time to investigate their claims until there's some sort of corroborating evidence from untainted sources.

In other words, there's not much to really discuss here.

Posted by R Johnston | December 18, 2007 6:27 PM

Just to repeat -- MY, I'm very very disappointed in you. You could even consider doubting the purity and honesty of the Bush Administration? This is just so cruel and partisan!

Posted by Al | December 18, 2007 6:32 PM

Hard to believe the truth lies with Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus

What, you don't believe that Daniel Coleman said what they say he said? Or that they are wrong about the position staked out by George Tenet? This article is little more than a recounting of quotes of both sides. Hard to see where the falsification is happening, unless you think the FBI is not an organization with enough credibility to report on at all. Even then, that's a judgement that can be left to the reader.

is he just another Move-On al-quaida supporter? ... the stooges of Terrorism ...

Oh. You're one of those.

Posted by eesh | December 18, 2007 6:42 PM

Look, the FBI has played ball on all sorts of loopy parts of the grand "war on terra". They're the ones who nabbed the oh-so-dangerous Miami Seven, whose trial ended with one not guilty verdict and six hung-juries for the other six. And they are responsible for pulling in the Fort Dix Six. One of these very scary guys months before the well-publicized arrest called a Philly police officer and told him that he'd been approached by someone [i.e., the government informant] "who was pressuring him to obtain a map of Fort Dix, and that he feared the incident was terrorist-related."

Why would the FBI so vociferously fight back against the CIA over this, when they are more than happy to propel plenty of "war on terra" on plenty of other matters?

Posted by Afferent Input | December 18, 2007 6:51 PM

Suskind's book came out almost two years ago, and I haven't seen any kind of denial of his version of the Zubaydah till Kiriakou, who wasn't there, made his statement.

Posted by Jim | December 18, 2007 7:09 PM

After seeing the FBI botch up 25 years of terror investigations from their law enforcement mentality and their primitive methods and analysis, I side with the CIA as being more on the ball in dealing with enemy combatants.

I agree with the minority on the 9/11 Commission that the FBI is so bad at this that counterintelligence, as well as scientific labwork (massive lab scandals and lack of scientific method and professionals), and responsibility for cyberterror when they cannot get a working IT system at the FBI after a billion was spent on a succession of failures.

For counterterror, the FBI should be removed from that and the domestic job given to a highly professional MI-5 or DST group whose backgrounds are utterly different from the lawyers, accountants, and the Chief's favorite young cop that form the FBI "special agent corps".

Overseas, and that includes GITMO, the FBI should butt out tomorrow as they have a putrid record against solving terrorist acts or capturing terrorists outside our borders. And, as Afferent Input notes, some of their domestic "evildoer" stings appear laughable and amateurish.

The "ex-special agent" Coleman's theory that Zubaydah is seriously disturbed with 3 separate mental identities based on "his reading of the man's notes" and having never met him face to face - belies everyone else's conclusion that Zubay was a trusted senior operative with heavy responsibilities and trusted with IDs and plans of other senior leaders. And appears to indicate another FBI idiot speculating and pulling shit out of his ass - "I see the DC snipers. They are two angry white men in their 40s, likely single, with a history of job failure and perhaps multiple personalities. They are in a white van."

Posted by Chris Ford | December 18, 2007 8:05 PM

"Hard to understand why the 9/11 Commission believed the CIA version if the FBI version were somehow correct."

The Commission didn't.

The CIA was, it seems, less than completely forthcoming with the 9/11 Commission. It didn't provide the Commission with the tapes of Abu Zubaydah's interrogations. As far as I can tell from the Commission's report, the CIA did not reveal that Zubaydah had been tortured. So it seems like the CIA did succeed in deceiving the 9/11 Commission.

However, the CIA did not deceive the 9/11 Commission about the issues under discussion here. The 9/11 Commission report does NOT claim that the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah produced any information that saved American lives. Nor does it claim that Zubaydah provided any useful information after he was tortured. (Both FBI and CIA sources agree that he provided some information prior to being tortured.) These are matters outside the scope of the Report.

Posted by Kenneth Almquist | December 18, 2007 8:13 PM

Heck, I'm trying to square the Eggen/Pincus version, which MY endorses, with the Suskind version, which MY also endorses. See, in particular, this bit:

"There is little dispute, according to officials from both agencies, that Abu Zubaida provided some valuable intelligence before CIA interrogators began to rough him up, including information that helped identify Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla. Footnotes in the 9/11 Commission report attribute information about a variety of al-Qaeda personnel and activities to interrogations of Abu Zubaida beginning in April 2002 and lasting through February 2004."

Little dispute, except from little people like Suskind and MY.

Posted by Thomas | December 18, 2007 8:14 PM

Nor does it claim that Zubaydah provided any useful information after he was tortured.

But this is, of course, completely false. Even if Kenneth Almquist has simply read the linked article, he would have known it was false:

"According to the 9/11 Commission, which had access to FBI and CIA summaries of the interrogation, after August 2002 -- when the harsh questioning is said to have begun -- Abu Zubaida identified Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri as a productive recruiter for al-Qaeda. Nashiri was subsequently captured..."

Posted by Al | December 18, 2007 8:24 PM

You know what, I don't care about whether the poor sod had any useful information, though I'd put the probability that he did at less than 1%. I just hope Joseph, Al, Chris, Thomas and all other supporters of torture die horribly painful fire deaths. Soon.

Did I mention that it should be excruciatingly painful?

Posted by LarryM | December 18, 2007 8:44 PM

Wow, the paid shills are earning their dough with this pushback. Nice try Sparky(s), maybe next time.

When pressed about the "solid information" that Ali McGoober provided, Kiriakou could only mutter something about being pretty sure that it was overseas and happened after he was gone. But he's pretty sure it's solid.

Posted by ed | December 18, 2007 8:46 PM

I have never known MY to be wrong when the comments section reveals this much squealing from the right.

Posted by Steve | December 18, 2007 8:54 PM

Whether the torture provided useful info is ridiculously irrelevant. I wonder if Yukio Asano tried to use that as a defense.

Posted by miguel | December 18, 2007 9:19 PM

Er, Thomas. The whole point of the Times article was that Zubaydah supposedly provided good information "BEFORE CIA interrogators began to rough him up" (including KSM's location) -- and then, as the article says at length, started providing a shower of totally misleading garbage AFTER the torture began and he was willing to say absolutely anything to stop them from continuing to torture him. Which agrees with Suskind's account, disagrees with Kiriakou's and Bush's -- and meshes perfectly with the common-sense argument that people being tortured will spew huge amounts of fake "information" simply to (briefly) stop being tortured, which as experienced interrogators say is one of the biggest reasons why torture stinks as an interrogation tchnique.

As for the 9-11 Commission's statement that Zubaydah provided some useful information during the period when (we now know) he was being tortured: the Commission's chairmen, Kean and Hamilton, have of course been raising screaming public hell during the last few weeks about the fact that the CIA deliberately concealed the existence of the interrogation tapes from them -- which naturally raises the little question of what else the CIA may have lied about to the Commission. (Of course, who knows how many al-Qaida agents may have been on the 9-11 Commission? The Enemy is EVERYWHERE -- and Chris Ford would be the first to note the probable presence of liberal pro-Moslem-terrorist Jews on the Commission.)

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | December 18, 2007 9:28 PM

Holy fuck, the trolls come in with barrels blazing and fingers on the refresh button. I agree that the FBI tends to hate the CIA and vice versa, so neither side can be trusted. Chris Ford, I can never keep track. I thought the CIA was full of Clinton era appointee traitors. Now they're the super-competent spy agency. What will they be next week? Does it depend on what their stand on torture is?

Posted by Gus | December 18, 2007 10:36 PM

I bet if we waterboard Jose Rodriguez and George Tenent we will get to the bottom of this. Clearly, it is in the national security interest to find out if Abu Z was feeding us tall tales, and when his CIA torturers understood he ws lying to them.

Fill up the tub, Jose and George won't mind a litle bit of dunking, given their commitment to keeping us safe from terrorists.

Posted by mrs. ibrahim al-jafaari | December 18, 2007 11:04 PM

mrs. ibrahim al-jafaari:

Yes, indeed! Though just to be sure, let's also verify their claims by doing a little "harsh interrogation" on everyone else in the Bush Administration. After all, cross-checking accounts against each other is the best means of screening out "false-positive" confessions from torture.

And given all the shenanigans regarding those tapes, let's do the whole think on live-TV, thereby allowing everyone who wishes to make videotape backups. Betcha the ratings would be phenomenal---especially overseas.

Since the current writers' strike may lasting a very long time, they do say that everyone's looking for "reality show" primetime replacements.

Posted by RKU | December 18, 2007 11:20 PM

I bet if we waterboard Jose Rodriguez and George Tenent we will get to the bottom of this.

Now, now; let's not go imitating the retarded right-wing torture apologists out there. We all know torture won't get to the bottom of anything.

It would, however, be really, really funny. Which is, of course, the real reason those folks authorized it in the first place. Nothing wrong with us getting some giggles now at their expense.

Posted by R Johnston | December 18, 2007 11:38 PM

Wow, the paid shills are earning their dough with this pushback.

If I thought this filth was getting paid it would make me feel 1000% better about my country.

Posted by Ed Marshall | December 18, 2007 11:39 PM

O/T, but if no one's seen it yet, this is quite the striking headline & story from McClatchy DC:

Inside a GOP effort to rig the 2002 New Hampshire elections
By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Tuesday, December 18, 2007

WASHINGTON — A former GOP political operative who ran an illegal election-day scheme to jam the phone lines of New Hampshire Democrats during the state's tight 2002 U.S. Senate election said in a new book and an interview that he believes the scandal reaches higher into the Republican Party.

Allen Raymond of Bethesda, Md., whose book Simon & Schuster will publish next month, also accused the Republican Party of trying to hang all the blame for a scandal on him as part of an "old-school cover-up."

Raymond's book, "How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative," offers a raw, inside glimpse of the phone scandal as it unraveled and of a ruthless world in which political operatives seek to win at all costs.

McClatchy obtained an advance copy of the book.

The 2002 New Hampshire Senate race, in which GOP Rep. John Sununu edged Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen by 19,000 votes, was among several targeted by Republicans seeking to win control of the U.S. Senate.

Raymond said those who've tried to make him the fall guy for the New Hampshire scheme failed to recognize that e-mails, phone records and other evidence documented the complicity of a top state GOP official and the Republican National Committee's northeast regional director...

...As for his three months in a Pennsylvania prison, he wrote: "After 10 full years inside the GOP, 90 days among honest criminals wasn't really any great ordeal."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/23357.html

Posted by El Cid | December 18, 2007 11:39 PM

it's always funny to see anyone citing Ron Suskind

This from Al, the gold standard on veracity. It is to laugh.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 19, 2007 12:11 AM

Bruce, that's monumentally dishonest. Read MY's post on Suskind, which includes the relevant bit from Suskind's book. The point of the story as told by Suskind/MY is that Zubaydah knew nothing and was a minor figure, and that the CIA told Bush that, and then Bush publicly claimed that Zubaydah was important and so the CIA had to waterboard him to get him to make up stuff. As Suskind puts it, "Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for wives and children and the like." How does that fit with the claim that "Abu Zubaida provided some valuable intelligence before CIA interrogators began to rough him up, including information that helped identify Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla. Footnotes in the 9/11 Commission report attribute information about a variety of al-Qaeda personnel and activities to interrogations of Abu Zubaida beginning in April 2002 and lasting through February 2004."

It doesn't. If nothing else, this is a nice debunking of Suskind, and a caution not to rely too much on MY's judgment.

Posted by Thomas | December 19, 2007 1:49 AM

Thomas, cut the nonsense. Suskind's account differs from the Post's on whether Zubaydah provided good intelligence BEFORE the torture started. It agrees completely with the Post's account on the point that he provided garbage AFTER the torture began -- which is the point on which both accounts differ from those of Kiriakou and Bush, and is (obviously) the point that both and I and Yglesias were talking about from the start (did the torture "accomplish anything useful"?)

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | December 19, 2007 2:04 AM

As for which side is lying -- the CIA or the FBI -- the fact that the CIA lied through its teeth to the 9-11 Commission as to whether tapes of the interrogation sessions existed is, as I said, rather suggestive.

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | December 19, 2007 2:13 AM

It doesn't matter in either case. Torture is unconstitutional, against international law and, most importantly, wrong.

Posted by Thomas | December 19, 2007 2:19 AM

Glad we agree on that -- but it's also very important to keep in mind WHY it's wrong, and the fact that it's strategically stupid is a very big part of why it's also immoral. Unless we recognize that fact, we will have no good defense against arguments such as the one that one of Kevin Drum's pro-torture commentators recently gave him ( http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_12/012712.php ) -- which is the argument that a hell of a lot of people in this country embrace, and which cannot be dismissed simply as sadism.

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | December 19, 2007 2:28 AM

In my opinion, neither story is believable. I've never believed that Zubaydah turned out to be unimportant or too cuckoo to take seriously - a classic Cheney style lie. On the other hand, Kiriakou's claim that torturing Zubaydah proved so effective for obtaining reliable information is cartoonish - a Bush style lie.

Gerald Posner's very different account is too speculative and sounds exaggerated at points, but it makes a lot more sense than Suskind's or Kiriakou's baloney. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-posner/the-cias-destroyed-inter_b_75850.html

Posted by Gary Sugar | December 19, 2007 6:41 AM

Ed Marshall: If I thought this filth was getting paid it would make me feel 1000% better about my country.

I'm with Ed. The idea that monsters like Al and his coterie of lesser demons are volunteers is far more horrifying than them being paid. And I'm afraid the evidence suggests the former.

Posted by grh | December 19, 2007 7:57 AM

Indeed. Paid shills would be much the better alternative. You can work with greedy or desperate; dumb-as-a-post, on the other hand, is incurable and can't be harnessed for good.

Posted by R Johnston | December 19, 2007 8:26 AM

I have never known MY to be wrong when the comments section reveals this much squealing from the right.

Looks like someone at the CIA caught your post.

Posted by duffy | December 19, 2007 8:33 AM

I'm with Ed. The idea that monsters like Al and his coterie of lesser demons are volunteers is far more horrifying than them being paid. And I'm afraid the evidence suggests the former.

Paid makes more sense given their prevalence and consistency. Either that or they really are that pathetic.

Posted by ed | December 19, 2007 9:38 AM

Paid makes more sense given their prevalence and consistency. Either that or they really are that pathetic.

No, for most part they really are that pathetic -- Chris Ford, for instance is Cliff Clavin with a severe brain injury.

Al is an exception: while he has his pathetic moments, he is really quite dangerous. While I highly doubt he gets paid to do this, he certainly is or has been a conservative operative in other capacities. If we continue to drift toward authoritarianism, he'll be helping run things rather than just cheering it on from the sidelines.

Posted by grh | December 19, 2007 10:03 AM

Paid. That's what They do.

Posted by ed | December 19, 2007 10:36 AM

Bruce,

Yes, it is simply sadism. And we have plenty of answers to that sort of sadism, aside from denying that torture ever yields accurate information.

On another level, I agree with you. We live in a fucked up polity where a majority of people probably would support torture if it "really" worked. But, in responding to those critics, I don't think we can make the untentable (and, frankly, incredible) argument that torture never uncovers accurate, helpful information. The better argument (which also happens to be true) is a little more sophisticated (and has been made by Matthew on many occassions):

(1) Most of the information obtained through torture isn't accurate, and basing your intelligence upon a mix of mostly inaccurate information, combined with the occassional nugget of truth, is very bad policy;

(2) Other, less monsterous, methods of interogation yield more accurate information, with less inaccurate information. This actually is the oft ignored point, even among torture opponents. It's not as if the choice is between torture and no interoggation at all; and

(3) Historically torture has not been used as a means of gaining accurate information, but as a means of gaining false confessions and as a means of terror. There is no particular reason to believe that the United States is an exception to this general rule.

There are also, of course, a whole host of prudential and moral reasons to avoid torture even if it "works" in a meaningful sense.

Posted by LarryM | December 19, 2007 12:51 PM

A bit late to the discussion. I just finished reading "Fear Up Harsh" by Tony Lagouranis. He was an Army interrogator in Iraq. Very good descriptions of the "torture-lite" techniques used there. The book gives strong support to Larry's (and Matt's) three points. The distinction between interrogating and making people confess is very well articulated, which is not one that I think is discussed enough. Two really distinct things with completely different significance. If you are torturing to make someone confess, the concept of "actionable intelligence" is long gone. I can't say I am terribly surprised, but I am very bothered by the U.S. attitude toward torture.

On a different, if I can paid for shilling on websites, any know where I can sign up. I really want to work from home.

Posted by robj | December 19, 2007 1:50 PM

An aside: Is that a picture of Abu Zubaydah or Matt?

They look alike to me. Could be brothers (one Jewish, one Muslim - could happen.)

Really.

Heh, heh.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 20, 2007 12:25 AM

Chris Ford, for instance is Cliff Clavin with a severe brain injury.

Wow, is that perfect.

Posted by Ed Marshall | December 20, 2007 1:06 AM