Must Read Today About Ali Soufan

Here is a Blog Post I got from Twitter that you must read today. I posted about Ali Soufan, the FBI agent who interrogated and obtained the information legally and without torture from Abu Zubayda.

Here is some background information on him from another blogger and a link to a story in Newsweek that is wonderful.

They are both MUST READS.

Here is the link to TAPPED by Adam Serwer

Here is the link to the Newsweek story, "We Could Have Done This The Right Way"

Like I said both very interesting and both must reads. This is a man who protested the torture tactics and said they weren't needed and would only harm the prisoners and our Country. In 2002, he said that. BEFORE THE MEMOS WERE WRITTEN!!!! That can't be stated enough. They knew what they were doing was wrong.

FBI Interrogator Says Torture Doesn't Work

In a NY Times OP-Ed today former F.B.I. supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, tells what happened when he did the interrogation of one of the people who were later water boarded by the CIA contractors.

Note, CONTRACTORS... yes.. that is one reason why there will be no one at the CIA punished. No one there actually did anything wrong. We can be proud of our people, they actually refused to do anything wrong, because they knew it was wrong. So, Bush, Cheney, and the rest had to go find some of the Blackwater jerks to do the actual torture for them.

In the Op-Ed Soufan says he had all the information by the first of June, long before the Bush Administration started the water boarding. You can read the entire Op-Ed by clicking here.

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.

This is from the Op-Ed, no matter how you spin that, it looks pretty clear, they got what they needed from him BEFORE he was water boarded 83 times. Yeah, 83 times. You have to wonder too, if they didn't get the information they needed the first couple of times, why did they continue that many times. Did it just become fun for them??

We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives.

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.

Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.

Again, it is clear to see the Bush Administration lied about everything we were told, and no one questioned them on these things. Once again the media let us down.

I still think the best thing that can be done is for this information to get out, then it to be turned over to the UN and send all of them to the World Court at The Hague.

That will be the only way I think it would guarantee a fair trial. There is no way there will ever be a fair trial in the United States. Most Republicans seem to think what they did was right, and it seems there are a lot of Democrats who agree with it too.

There were certainly a majority of people who thought anything was fine in the days soon after 9-11-01, when everyone was afraid of another attack. Maybe that's why no one has pushed this until now. I say go for it and let the chips fall where they may. If there are Democratic heads that fall, then they will just have to fall too.

To me this is not a Democratic or Republican issue, this is an American issue. This goes to the core of our being. It is like the video I posted of Shepard Smith..
This is AmericaWe don't FUCKING TORTURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!