Role of torture revisited in bin Laden narrative

[Judi Lynn]

Source: New York Times

Role of torture revisited in bin Laden narrative
Two Democratic senators rebut former CIA official's defense of enhanced interrogation

By SCOTT SHANE
New York Times
updated 1 hour 44 minutes ago

WASHINGTON — Joining in the latest round of an old dispute, the Democratic senators who lead the intelligence and armed services committees took issue on Monday with claims from Bush administration officials that the Central Intelligence Agency’s coercive interrogation methods produced information that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden a year ago.

The statement from Senators Dianne Feinstein of California, chairwoman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, and Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, called the notion that the so-called enhanced interrogation methods helped the C.I.A. find Bin Laden by identifying his courier “misguided and misinformed.”

“Instead, the C.I.A. learned of the existence of the courier, his true name and location through means unrelated to the C.I.A. detention and interrogation program,” the statement said, without elaborating. The senators said their conclusions were based on a three-year study of the agency’s interrogation program by the intelligence committee staff that is nearing completion but remains secret.

Did spies or 'Pakistani Blackwater' shield bin Laden?

The statement took issue with claims about the value of waterboarding and other brutal interrogation methods from the former attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey; the former C.I.A. director, Michael V. Hayden; and the former director of the agency’s clandestine service, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. Mr. Rodriguez revived the long-running controversy with his defense of coercive interrogations in a new memoir, “Hard Measures,” and an appearance Sunday night on the CBS News program “60 Minutes.”


Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47240908/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/

[eridani]

1. More from Jose Rodriguez

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/268-35/11293-torture-hindered-hunt-for-bin-laden
While some may celebrate the one-year anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden, perhaps time would be better served evaluating why it came nine years too late. The sad truth is that bin Laden should have been dead twice in the first two years after 9/11.

The first opportunity was missed in the mountains of Tora Bora early in the war in Afghanistan, when former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted that local Afghan forces kill bin Laden rather than allowing our own elite fighters to do so when they had him in their sights. It was also Rumsfeld's decision not to seal off the border with Pakistan, declaring victory too early because of his arrogance (a theme that would be repeated in Iraq), thus allowing bin Laden to escape.

The second opportunity was missed when the Bush administration approved the CIA's waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind of 9/11 and former al Qaeda operations officer. Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA officer who ran the agency's torture program, now insists in his new book, Hard Measures, that torture led to the identification of an al Qaeda courier and the killing of Osama bin Laden. The truth, however, is that KSM lied to his interrogators and told them that Abu Ahmed, the nom de guerre of bin Laden's courier, had retired when in fact he was still active. That lie cost us almost a decade in the hunt for bin Laden. As al Qaeda's chief of operations, KSM certainly knew that Abu Ahmed could prove to be the key piece to finding the former al Qaeda leader, but he did exactly what professional interrogators have been saying people do when faced with coercion - they lie or give limited and misleading information. In the end, it turned out Abu Ahmed was one of the vital pieces of intelligence that led to bin Laden's demise.