Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was America's first big trophy in the war on terror: a senior al Qaida operative captured amid the fighting in Afghanistan. What is less known is that al-Libi, who ran al Qaida training camps, quickly became the subject of a bitter feud between the FBI and the CIA over how to interrogate terror suspects.
At the time of al-Libi's capture on Nov. 11, 2001, the questioning of detainees was still the FBI's province. For years the bureau's "bin Laden team" had sought to win suspects over with a carrots-and-no-sticks approach: favors in exchange for cooperation. One terrorist, in return for talking, even wrangled a heart transplant for his child.
With al-Libi, too, the initial approach was to read him his rights like any arrestee, one former member of the FBI team told Newsweek. "He was basically cooperating with us." But this was after Sept. 11; President Bush had declared war on al Qaida, and in a series of covert directives, he had authorized the CIA to set up secret interrogation facilities and to use new, harsher methods. The CIA, says the FBI source, was "fighting with us tooth and nail."
The handling of al-Libi touched off a long-running battle over interrogation tactics inside the administration. It is a struggle that continued right up until the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April - and it extended into the White House, with Condoleezza Rice's National Security Council pitted against lawyers for the White House counsel and the vice president.
Indeed, one reason the prison abuse scandal won't go away - two months after gruesome photos were published worldwide - is that a long paper trail of memos and directives from inside the administration has emerged, often leaked by those who disagreed with rougher means of questioning.
http://www.dailyherald.com/news_story.asp?intid=3815472
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