The Black Banners

by Soufan, Ali H.

  At another point during the forty-eight hours, at Boris’s instruction, a piece of paper and a crayon were put in front of Abu Zubaydah in the hope that he would write down “intelligence.” He didn’t. [1 word redacted] couldn’t believe that those responsible for running the program believed that this would work, and would be so careless with an important intelligence asset.

  During this whole time, [1 word redacted] were detailing the situation on the ground and registering [1 word redacted] protests at what was happening in classified memos to our FBI headquarters through Langley, though [1 word redacted] didn’t know whether the memos were actually reaching FBI headquarters. The information [1 word redacted] had obtained through the use of [1 word redacted] techniques, and the lack of information when the newly imposed techniques were used, was clear in the daily stream of cables—[1 word redacted] and the CTC’s—to Langley. Everything, down to the crayon attempt, was reported. But it didn’t make a difference. Boris had authorization from the top, and there was nothing any of [1 word redacted] could do or say. He was allowed his forty-eight hours.

  When the second round of Boris’s experiments failed, once again CIA headquarters reluctantly told [1 word redacted] that [1 word redacted] could go back in to interrogate Abu Zubaydah. [1 word redacted] terms were again that Boris’s experiments were stopped; otherwise, [1 word redacted] refused to go in.

  [1 word redacted] gave Abu Zubaydah back his clothes, [1 word redacted] switched off the music, and [1 word redacted] let him sleep. [23 words redacted]

  [1 word redacted] found it harder to reengage him this time. Boris’s techniques had affected him. [7 words redacted], but eventually [1 word redacted] succeeded, and he reengaged. [1 word redacted] went through photos with him, along with his diary, phone book, and the rest of his personal effects. [24 words redacted]

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  [1 word redacted] followed up on Padilla’s dirty bomb idea [112 words redacted]

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  Every terrorist [1 word redacted] questioned is different. Sometimes humor is needed to establish rapport. As [1 word redacted] job is to get intelligence from them, [1 word redacted] use whatever legal tools [1 word redacted] can to put them at ease and gain their cooperation. It was odious to sit and laugh with a committed terrorist.

  I would think of John O’Neill, my former boss and mentor, who was murdered in the World Trade Center. I would think of Lenny Hatton. Lenny was on his way to work on the morning of 9/11 when he saw the first tower on fire. Instead of continuing to the FBI office, he went to the scene to help. And when the second tower was struck, Lenny ran into the collapsing building to help firemen and other rescuers lead people to safety. He led people out and returned for more. He was killed in the tower. I also thought of the seventeen U.S. sailors killed on the USS Cole. [7 words redacted] But [1 word redacted] had to do it. To save lives and get intelligence, [1 word redacted]’d smile as much as needed.

  While there were jokes, [64 words redacted]

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  As [1 word redacted] continued to succeed with Abu Zuabydah, Boris and the CIA analysts were also now pushing an explanation as to why the forty-eight hours had failed. As one of them said, “Forty-eight hours isn’t enough sleep deprivation,” and “the body only breaks after forty-eight hours.” One day at the safe house [1 word redacted] saw a big [1 word redacted] leaning against a wall. [29 words redacted] as the next stage in his force continuum once he took over.

  The CIA officers told [1 word redacted] that Boris expected the approval to come. [8 words redacted], a clear indication that people at CIA headquarters supported the plan. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” [1 word redacted] told the CIA official. He shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, We have no choice.

  [16 words redacted] told the CIA official [1 word redacted] wanted to try it. [61 words redacted]“This is insane,” [1 word redacted] told him, and walked off. He nodded in agreement, with a discouraged look on his face.

  [1 word redacted] realized that CIA headquarters was not going to stop Boris’s experiments. [1 word redacted] protests were being ignored. Boris was being given a blank check by the White House and CIA headquarters, and was being urged on by CIA analysts on the ground. Their lack of expertise and fear of the unknown would just lead them to authorize crazier and more abusive things that wouldn’t work. The experiments would become more and more cruel, thus reducing the chances of getting reliable intelligence from Abu Zubaydah in the future. For the first time, [1 word redacted] began to wonder whether the real intent of the people back in Washington was to collect intelligence.

  What [1 word redacted] had seen Boris try until now struck [1 word redacted] as borderline torture. [1 word redacted] had stayed on because [1 word redacted] had hoped in [1 word redacted] heart that someone in Washington would put a stop to the madness and allow [1 word redacted] to continue to interrogate Abu Zubaydah. Until now [1 word redacted] hadn’t wanted to give up the chance of getting useful intelligence from him again. But each time Boris tried crazier things, [1 word redacted] got more upset, and began to worry about the people running the program.

  On seeing [2 words redacted], [1 word redacted] realized that my hopes of Boris’s being removed were in vain. The person or persons running the program were not sane. [3 words redacted] the interrogation was stepping over the line from borderline torture. Way over the line.

  That’s it, [1 word redacted] said to myself. [1 word redacted] picked up the secure phone and phoned FBI headquarters. This was the first time [1 word redacted] had called headquarters directly. All [1 word redacted] previous messages had gone through the standard channels, which was via e-mails sent through the CIA that were meant to be delivered to the FBI liaison, Chuck Frahm, at CIA headquarters. The situation demanded communication outside the regular channels, and [1 word redacted] worried that [1 word redacted] previous complaints hadn’t made it to the director.

  [1 word redacted] asked the operator at FBI headquarters in Washington to put [1 word redacted] through to the assistant director, Pat D’Amuro. [1 word redacted] considered him a friend, and [1 word redacted] respected him as a principled public servant and had no doubt he would be outraged by what was happening. [1 word redacted] was right.

  [1 word redacted] explained to Pat what had happened over the past weeks, and what it looked like they were going to do next with [2 words redacted]. [1 word redacted] finished by telling him: “I can no longer remain here. Either I leave or I’ll arrest him.” Beyond the immorality and un-American nature of these techniques, [1 word redacted] couldn’t stand by as [1 word redacted] abused someone instead of gaining intelligence that would save American lives.

  Pat told me that [3 words redacted] should immediately leave the location and go to a nearby city to wait for instructions. He was going to consult with the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, on how best to proceed. Frank, the CTC polygrapher, joined us. As [1 word redacted] walked around the city, Frank told [1 word redacted], “Hiring that guy was the worst thing I have done.” There was regret and shame in his voice.

  [1 word redacted] visited the local CIA station. [1 word redacted] had built a great relationship with all the officers. For the most part, they were on the same page as [1 word redacted]. The COS made it clear to [3 words redacted] that he was apprehensive about what was happening.

  A day later the message came back from Mueller: “We don’t do t
hat.” Pat ordered [1 word redacted] to leave the location immediately and return to the United States. [1 word redacted] packed up and flew back to New York.

  [1 word redacted] didn’t. When he reported through his chain of command and said he was going to leave, he was told to hold off leaving untilfurther instruction. [1 word redacted] reported through his usual channel—to headquarters. [3 words redacted] had different chains of command. [1 word redacted] was afield agent and reported through the New York chain of command. [1 word redacted] wasn’t an operational agent at the time. He was an assigned supervisory agent in headquarters in Washington, and reported through those channels. Other people in headquarters didn’t agree with Pat’s order and saw a need for [1 word redacted] continuing involvement at the site. They allowed [1 word redacted] to stay. [1 word redacted] said: “Look, [1 word redacted], things might change, and they might realize we should be in charge. And if I leave, do you trust these fucking idiots to run the program? Every time they go in, Abu Zubaydah stops talking. We need someone to do the job. What do you think?”

  “[1 word redacted], I can’t stay here any longer,” [1 word redacted] told him. “This is out of control, un-American, and downright dangerous. The director agreed that we don’t do this, and Pat ordered us to leave. I’m leaving. But you do what you want.”

  “I’m going to stay.”

  “Be careful,” [1 word redacted] told him, and said good-bye.

  A few weeks later [1 word redacted] returned to Washington for a meeting on Abu Zubaydah. It was only then that Pat found out that [1 word redacted] had stayed. (Pat was based in Washington, and [1 word redacted] returned to New York and so didn’t see him, and no one else briefed him on [1 word redacted]’s decision.) Pat was furious that [1 word redacted] had not followed his orders, and to this day he hasn’t forgiven him. He ordered [1 word redacted] not to return to the location. The FBI would not be party to the harsh techniques.

  While others in headquarters disagreed with Pat and felt [1 word redacted] needed to be part of the CTC program, Robert Mueller sided with Pat and [1 word redacted]. He understood that things had already gone too far, and that those pushing these techniques were not prepared to turn back. And he had the final say. [1 word redacted] stayed in Washington. That was the end of the FBI’s involvement in Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation.

  After [1 word redacted] left, Boris had to keep introducing harsher and harsher methods, because Abu Zubaydah and other terrorists were trained to resist them. In a democracy such as ours, there is a glass ceiling on harsh techniques that the interrogator cannot breach, so a detainee can eventually call the interrogator’s bluff. And that’s what Abu Zubaydah did.

  This is why the EIT proponents later had to order Abu Zubaydah to be waterboarded again, and again, and again—at least eighty-three times, reportedly. The techniques were in many ways a self-fulfilling prophecy, ensuring that harsher and harsher ones were introduced.

  Cruel interrogation techniques not only serve to reinforce what a terrorist has been prepared to expect if captured; they give him a greater sense of control and predictability about his experience, and strengthen his resistance. By contrast, the interrogation strategy that [3 words redacted] employed—engaging and outwitting the terrorist—confuses him and leads him to cooperate. The art of interview and interrogation is a science, a behavioral science, and [1 word redacted] were successful precisely because we had it down to a science.

  Evidence gained from torture is unreliable. There is no way to know whether the detainee is being truthful, or just speaking to either mitigate his discomfort or to deliberately provide false information. Indeed, as KSM, who was subjected to the enhanced techniques, later told the Red Cross: “During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop.”

  Boris’s methods were aiming at compliance rather than cooperation. In compliance you get someone to say what he thinks you’ll be happy hearing, not necessarily the truth. A good example of this is the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Liby, Abu Zubaydah’s partner at Khaldan. Liby later confessed that he “decided he would fabricate any information the interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government].” For the same reason, after undergoing waterboarding, Abu Zubaydah “confessed” to being the number three in al-Qaeda, which was a lie and a dead end for the investigators. A 2006 investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) found that the CIA relied heavily on information from Liby to assess connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda. This information played a crucial role in making the Bush administration’s case for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, outlined in Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN weeks before the invasion.

  In contrast, the Informed Interrogation Approach yields information that is accurate, actionable, and useful in our legal process. A major problem with Boris’s techniques is that they ignore the endgame. After getting intelligence from terrorists, at some point we have to prosecute them. We can’t hold people indefinitely. Whether it is one year later or ten years later, eventually a trial becomes necessary; otherwise they’ll have to be released. But information gained from torture is inadmissible in court. Even in military commissions—courts run and staffed by military officers, with rules and requirements different from those of regular courts—it is problematic.

  [1 word redacted] had a conversation with Ed about this, and [1 word redacted] asked him, “What’s the endgame with Abu Zubaydah after using these techniques?”

  “I guess they intend that he’ll go to a military commission.”

  “Military commissions may have a lower standard of evidence than regular courts,” [1 word redacted] replied, “but we both know that they’re not kangaroo courts.”

  Ed and [1 word redacted] were familiar with the operation in Guantánamo Bay, and the preparation used in other cases for military commissions. Already, in early 2002, military lawyers were telling investigators to be careful with evidence, and to keep notes. There was also the discovery process; and anything [1 word redacted] had [1 word redacted] were required to share with the defense. It was clear to [1 word redacted] that even in a military commission, evidence gained from harsh techniques wouldn’t be admissible. Ed agreed.

  Coercive interrogations are also slow. [1 word redacted] were spent on each unsuccessful technique, with nothing to show for it. [1 word redacted] were, in effect, playing right into the hands of the enemy. The Manchester Manual instructs captured terrorists to hold off answering questions for forty-eight hours, so that their comrades can change safe houses and phone numbers, even flee the country. There is always the possibility of a “ticking time bomb” scenario hanging over any interrogation of a terrorist, which is why wasting minutes or hours, let alone whole days, is completely unacceptable.

  A July 29, 2009, report by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) stated that Boris’s techniques “were not expected or intended to produce immediate results. Rather, the goal of the CIA interrogation program was to condition the detainee gradually in order to break down his resistance to interrogation.” I wonder if the person who wrote the word “gradually” had any idea of the urgency of counterterrorist operations.

  I later learned that Boris’s path from being an independent contractor with no interrogation or Islamic extremism experience to running one of the most crucial fronts in our battle against al-Qaeda—our interrogation program of high-value detainees—had its origins on September 17, 2001. On that day, President Bush gave the CIA the authority, in an authorization known as a memorandum of notification, to capture, detain, and interrogate terrorism suspects.

  In previous decades, the CIA had primarily operated as an intelligence collection agency. It was the FBI, along with military outfits such as the NCIS, the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, and the U.S. Air Force Office of Special
Investigations, that had interrogated suspects. John Helgerson’s 2004 report on detention and interrogation activities explains in detail that the post-9/11 CIA detention program “began with almost no foundation, as the Agency had discontinued virtually all involvement in interrogations after encountering difficult issues with early interrogation programs in Central America and the Near East.”

  In their July 29, 2009 report, OPR investigators wrote that CIA acting general counsel John Rizzo had told them that throughout most of its history the CIA had not detained subjects or conducted interrogations. Before 9/11, CIA personnel debriefed sources (these portions were censored and do not appear in the report), but the agency was not authorized to detain or interrogate individuals. Consequently, the CIA had no institutional experience or expertise in that area. (Rizzo was incorrect. Before 9/11, the CIA’s polygraph division, formerly known as the interrogation branch, was responsible for interrogations abroad. After 9/11, this responsibility was taken out of their hands and given to the CTC.)

  Because of this lack of institutional experience, when President Bush ordered the CIA to institute the detention program, they needed to find someone to run it. Brought to their attention—it’s not yet publicly known by whom—were two contractors, Boris and another psychologist. Helgerson writes: “In late 2001, CIA had tasked an independent contractor psychologist [Boris] . . . to research and write a paper on Al-Qaida’s resistance to interrogation techniques.” Boris collaborated with a Department of Defense psychologist, and “subsequently, the two psychologists developed a list of new and more aggressive EITs that they recommended for use in interrogations.” (Military personnel who knew the two contractors described Boris as extremely arrogant, and his partner—whom I never met—as someone with a terrible temper. Arrogance and anger—a dangerous combination.)