where the GOP (with exceptions) considers it patriotic to support the use of torture. We have plenty of authoritarian cheerleaders who have no problem taking Bush and Tenet at their word. Even Jane Mayer (among other journalists) considers the torture a good faith overreaction during a time of panic. Her argument is that the administration should have stopped using torture after the initial panic subsided.
Scott Shane reporting on a key interrogator of al Qaeda bigshots:
The very fact that Mr. Martinez, a career narcotics analyst who did not speak the terrorists’ native languages and had no interrogation experience, would end up as a crucial player captures the ad-hoc nature of the program. Officials acknowledge that it was cobbled together under enormous pressure in 2002 by an agency nearly devoid of expertise in detention and interrogation.
Inside a 9/11 Mastermind’s InterrogationOne of the agents doing interrogation before the CIA took over was FBI agent Ali Soufan. Here is what author Lawrence Wright had to say about him:
AMY DAVIDSON: The question your article asks is whether the C.I.A. stopped an F.B.I. agent from preventing 9/11. Let’s start with the F.B.I. agent. Who was he, and why was he remarkable?LAWRENCE WRIGHT: On 9/11, Ali Soufan, an Arab-American F.B.I. agent, was one of only eight agents in the F.B.I. who spoke Arabic, and the only one in New York City. He was absolutely invaluable to the bureau because of his skills, his innate talent, and his relentless nature. At the age of twenty-nine, he was appointed the chief agent in charge of investigating the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, in the harbor of Aden, Yemen, which killed seventeen American soldiers in October of 2000.
That was an Al Qaeda attack as well?As it turned out—Soufan’s investigation proved that it was.
What could he have done to stop Osama bin Laden from attacking the World Trade Center?People who were involved in the planning of the Cole bombing were connected to the people who planned 9/11. There was a meeting in Malaysia in January, 2000, where at least two of the 9/11 hijackers and the mastermind behind the Cole bombing, a man named Khallad, met with other Al Qaeda operatives. After that meeting, two of the hijackers flew to the United States and settled in San Diego. The C.I.A. knew about the meeting; the agency had had it monitored by Malaysia’s secret service, Special Branch, which took surveillance photos and sent them to the C.I.A. So the agency had in its file pictures of Khallad and of people who turned out to be among the hijackers. Had the C.I.A. told Soufan what it knew about the meeting, he might have uncovered the plot.
The C.I.A. knew that Soufan had an interest in this information?Yes. He specifically asked the C.I.A. three times for information about the Cole bombers and their meetings in Malaysia and Southeast Asia—information that the C.I.A. had and knew was relevant to his Cole investigation but did not turn over to him.
Missed Opportunities, Q & A with Lawrence Wright It appears the CIA officials who kept this information from him were some of the leading advocates of torture after 9/11.
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