On April 29, 2009, President Barack Obama “acknowledged for the first time that the harsh interrogation techniques he has banned might have yielded useful information, but that he was nonetheless willing to rule them out on moral grounds. It was a nuanced performance as Obama walked viewers of his prime-time news conference through a policy […]
4/24/2009
British citizens Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed, and Jamal Al-Harit were noncombatants who were arrested in Afghanistan, then transferred to Guantanamo, where they were tortured. After their release in March 2004, they were repatriated to “the U.K., and from there sued a number of high government officials, including Secretary [of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld and […]
4/24/2009
Former FBI Agent Ali Soufan spoke about the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques on captured al Qaeda operatives: ” ‘I’ve kept my mouth shut about all this for seven years,’ Soufan says. But now, with the declassification of Justice memos and the public assertions by [former Vice President Dick] Cheney and others that ‘enhanced’ […]
4/22/2009
In a New York Times op-ed on April 22, 2009, Ali Soufan, the FBI interrogator of al Qaeda operations chief Abu Zubaydah, wrote: “One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh [enhanced interrogation] techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles […]
4/22/2009
In a New York Times op-ed on April 22, 2009, Ali Soufan, the FBI interrogator of al Qaeda operations chief Abu Zubaydah, wrote: “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 […]
4/21/2009
“The putative intelligence gains made by the abusive interrogation techniques were easily outweighed by the damage they caused to the United States’ moral standing, according to Admiral Dennis Blair, then the director of national intelligence, who wrote in April [21] 2009, ‘These techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done […]
4/18/2009
“Reports suggest that senior [CIA] officials overestimated the information available from at least one detainee, [al Qaeda logistics manager] Abu Zubaydah, and ordered coercive techniques against the advice of their own interrogators. FBI interrogators using traditional rapport-building approaches had already obtained crucial information from Zubaydah.” According to a New York Times article on April 18, […]
4/17/2009
Regarding the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques: “Michael Hayden, director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009, and Michael Mukasey, attorney general from 2007 to 2009, have written [in The Wall Street Journal on April 17, 2009], ‘As late as 2006…fully half of the government’s knowledge about the structure and activities of al Qaeda […]
4/16/2009
“…while President [Barack] Obama has ended the use of torture in the U.S., he has failed to investigate those in the Bush Administration who established the policy and practices of torture and those who carried them out. In a speech in April [16] 2009, President Obama stated that ‘[w]e have been through a dark and […]
4/16/2009
“…in April [16] 2009, the president [Barack Obama] declassified the memos on enhanced interrogation techniques and told CIA personnel that they would not be prosecuted for actions driven by the White House and Justice Department.” – John Kiriakou with Michael Ruby, The Reluctant Spy, Page 190 […]