Interrogation Success

Jesse | Aug 30, 2009

In How a Detainee Became An Asset, The Washington Post provided objective information on the success achieved using enhanced interrogation techniques in the case of Khalid Sheik Mohammed. This captured terrorist was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was involved in many other terrorist attacks, was close to Osama bin Laden, and had a wealth of information on Al Qaeda. He also admitted personally murdering an American journalist, saying, “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl.”

The initial interrogations of Mohammed were relatively benign; he provided little more than information he knew was already known, and he also provided false information. Once enhanced interrogation techniques were employed, particularly sleep deprivation and waterboarding, he opened up and provided voluminous amounts of accurate, highly valuable intelligence.

The Post obtained its information from recently-released CIA Inspector General reports and other sources. Excerpts from the report:

After enduring the CIA’s harshest interrogation methods and spending more than a year in the agency’s secret prisons, Khalid Sheik Mohammed stood before U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called “terrorist tutorials.” …

“KSM, an accomplished resistor, provided only a few intelligence reports prior to the use of the waterboard, and analysis of that information revealed that much of it was outdated, inaccurate or incomplete,” according to newly unclassified portions of a 2004 report by the CIA’s then-inspector general released Monday by the Justice Department.

The debate over the effectiveness of subjecting detainees to psychological and physical pressure is in some ways irresolvable, because it is impossible to know whether less coercive methods would have achieved the same result. But for defenders of waterboarding, the evidence is clear: Mohammed cooperated, and to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the inspector general’s report and other documents released this week indicate.

Over a few weeks, he was subjected to an escalating series of coercive methods, culminating in 7 1/2 days of sleep deprivation, while diapered and shackled, and 183 instances of waterboarding. After the month-long torment, he was never waterboarded again. …

One former U.S. official with detailed knowledge of how the interrogations were carried out said Mohammed, like several other detainees, seemed to have decided that it was okay to stop resisting after he had endured a certain amount of pressure.

“Once the harsher techniques were used on [detainees], they could be viewed as having done their duty to Islam or their cause, and their religious principles would ask no more of them,” said the former official, who requested anonymity because the events are still classified. “After that point, they became compliant. Obviously, there was also an interest in being able to later say, ‘I was tortured into cooperating.'” …

Mohammed told interrogators that after the Sept. 11 attacks, his “overriding priority” was to strike the United States, but that he “realized that a follow-on attack would be difficult because of security measures.” Most of the plots, as a result, were “opportunistic and limited,” according to the summary. …

Mohammed was an unparalleled source in deciphering al-Qaeda’s strategic doctrine, key operatives and likely targets, the summary said, including describing in “considerable detail the traits and profiles” that al-Qaeda sought in Western operatives and how the terrorist organization might conduct surveillance in the United States.

As the report indicates, and as the CIA Inspector General acknowledged, it isn’t possible to know how less-intense interrogation would have worked, especially over a longer period of time. However, intelligence of value, and especially actionable intelligence, is almost always very time-sensitive. When a captured enemy combatant initially provides little or no useful information, especially when it’s known beforehand that he has needed information, the intensity of the interrogation must be increased.

Charges of “torture” have become a staple in the unending attacks on the Bush Administration. The CIA is also under attack by American politicians, and there’s a hue and cry from the left to prosecute officials of the former administration for a wide variety of offenses, real or imagined. This banana-republic behavior ill serves the country and sets a dangerous precedent of wreaking vengeance on the opposition every time the government changes hands. Perhaps worse, our national intelligence capabilities may be so damaged by this effort as to be of far less value in contributing to our defense.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed no doubt endured significant stress and discomfort during his interrogations. Today, however, he lives in good health and comfort in prison at Guantanamo, lacking nothing but his freedom. The 3,000 people he murdered on 9/11, not to mention others he murdered, are still dead, and their families and friends still suffer the daily trauma of staggering loss. It’s hard to work up much sympathy for this despicable mass murderer.

(This article was also posted at Opinion Forum.)