Fact vs. Myth: The CIA Waterboarding Interrogations

By Mike Griffith, Staff Writer

Left-wing blogs are aflame with numerous distortions and falsehoods about the CIA’s waterboarding interrogations.  Most of those distortions and myths have also appeared here on the VT website.  What follows is a point-by-point rebuttal to those myths.

MYTH: The planned attack on Los Angeles was not prevented by waterboarding, and no other crucial intelligence was gained from waterboarding either.

FACT: This myth is refuted by the interrogation memos.  I quote from the memos:

       * "Before the CIA used enhanced techniques . . . KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, ‘Soon you will find out.’ "

       * "Interrogations have led to specific, actionable intelligence, as well as a general increase in the amount of intelligence regarding al Qaeda and its affiliates."

       * [The interrogations] "led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the ‘Second Wave,’ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles" and "information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the ‘Second Wave.’ "

Also, two former CIA directors and a former Director of National Intelligence have stated that waterboarding interrogations provided crucial intelligence:

       * Michael Hayden, Bush’s last CIA director, and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently wrote, "As late as 2006, fully half of the government’s knowledge about the structure and activities of Al Qaeda came from those interrogations."

       * Former CIA Director George Tenet has said, "I know that this program has saved lives. I know we’ve disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than [what] the FBI, the [CIA], and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."

       * Former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has said, "We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened." 

MYTH: Waterboarding could not have prevented the planned attack on Los Angeles because the attack was discovered months before harsh methods began to be used. 

FACT: For one thing, as shown above, the released CIA interrogation memos state that waterboarding enabled us to prevent the planned attack on Los Angeles. 

The claim about the timing is based on former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan’s widely circulated article in the New York Times.  Therein Soufan says,

       "I questioned him [Zubaydah] from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August."

       "As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May." ("My Tortured Decision," New York Times, April 23, 2009)

But the Department of Justice’s report on the FBI’s role in the interrogations notes that harsh methods began to be used "within days" of Zubaydah’s capture in Pakistan in late March 2002 (Department of Justice Report: A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq, May 2008, pp. 67-69).

The story that Soufan has told to Newsweek seems to contradict his claim in the New York Times that harsh methods weren’t used until August 2002:

       "The arguments at the CIA safe house were loud and intense in the spring of 2002. Inside, a high-value terror suspect, Abu Zubaydah, was handcuffed to a gurney. . . .  Agency operatives were aiming to crack him with rough and unorthodox interrogation tactics–including stripping him nude, turning down the temperature and bombarding him with loud music. But one impassioned young FBI agent wanted nothing to do with it. He tried to stop them. . . .

       "As Soufan tells the story, he challenged a CIA official at the scene about the agency’s legal authority to do what it was doing. ‘We’re the United States of America, and we don’t do that kind of thing,’ he recalls shouting at one point. But the CIA official, whom Soufan refuses to name because the agent’s identity is still classified, brushed aside Soufan’s concerns. He told him in April 2002 that the aggressive techniques already had gotten approval from the ‘highest levels’ in Washington, says Soufan. The official even waved a document in front of Soufan, saying the approvals ‘are coming from Gonzales,’ a reference to Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel and later the attorney general." ("We Could Have Done This the Right Way," Newsweek, April 25, 2009)

So Soufan himself has told Newsweek that "rough and unorthodox interrogation tactics" and "aggressive techniques" were already approved and being used in April 2002.  It’s difficult to pin down Soufan on this issue because at times he draws a distinction between waterboarding and other harsh methods.  But it is clear that he himself has acknowledged that harsh methods were used several months before August 2002, contrary to his statements in his New York Times editorial.

In addition, Newsweek has acknowledged that Soufan’s story has been challenged by CIA officials:

       "CIA officials dispute Soufan’s argument that harsh methods weren’t productive. They say that early on, Zubaydah stopped talking-and that after the FBI agents left the scene, the enhanced interrogations produced important information that led to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a key 9/11 plotter." 

Newsweek also reports that a CIA spokesman wrote in an e-mail to the magazine that: "The Aug. 1, 2002, memo from the Department of Justice wasn’t the first piece of legal guidance for the [interrogation] program."

Robert L. Grenier, the former chief of the CIA’s Islamabad station, disputes Soufan’s story.  He says the only thing of any value that Zubaydah revealed before he was waterboarded was the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) was the 9/11 mastermind.

It should also be mentioned that the other FBI interrogator who observed the CIA’s harsh interrogations of Zubaydah did not agree with Soufan’s objections to them.  This agent, named "Gibson" in the DOJ report, told DOJ investigators that he saw nothing wrong with the CIA’s methods:

       "Gibson stated after he returned to the United States he told D’Amuro that he did not have a moral objection to being present for the CIA techniques because the CIA was acting professionally and Gibson himself had undergone comparable harsh interrogation techniques as part of U.S. Army Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training." (Department of Justice Report: A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq, May 2008, p. 69)

The interrogation memos note that after "enhanced" methods, i.e., harsh methods, were used on Zubaydah and KSM, they became "pivotal sources" of information on Al Qaeda:

       ". . . since the use of enhanced techniques, ‘KSM and Zubaydah have been pivotal sources because of their ability and willingness to provide their analysis and speculations about the capabilities, methodologies, and mindsets of terrorists.’"

MYTH: Waterboarding is torture.

FACT: Waterboarding is a non-lethal, non-injurious interrogation method.  It causes no physical damage and does not cause death.  Moreover, we imposed strict guidelines on how the terrorists could be waterboarded: limits were placed on how long each waterboarding application could last, how many times waterboarding could be done in a day and month, etc., etc.  Furthermore, the three terrorists who were waterboarded were advised ahead of time that they would not die as a result of the procedure.

We have waterboarded thousands of our own pilots and special operations personnel as part of their interrogation-resistance training.

MYTH: The waterboarding done in our military training is different from the waterboarding that was done to the three terrorists.

FACT: The only difference was that the terrorists were waterboarded more often because it took longer to get them to talk.  Some of the military and intel people who have undergone waterboarding in their training report that they were waterboarded multiple times–until they gave up the information that they were told to try to withhold.

MYTH: The CIA violated the waterboarding guidelines that it claimed it was following, as evidenced by the fact that KSM was waterboarded 183 times.

FACT: The CIA did not violate the guidelines.  Most of the waterboarding applications were only about 10 seconds in length.  The maximum duration per application was 40 seconds, and the memos state that this maximum was "rarely" reached ("this maximum has rarely been reached"). 

Let’s read the waterboarding guidelines as found in the released memos:

       "You have informed us that the waterboard may be approved for use with a given detainee only during, at most, one single 30-day period, and that during that period, the waterboard technique may be used on no more than five days. We further understand that in any 24-hour period, interrogators may use no more than two "sessions" of the waterboard on the subject – and that no session may last more than two hours. Moreover, during any session, the number of individual applications of water lasting 10 seconds or longer may not exceed six. The maximum length of any application of water is 40 seconds (you have informed us that this maximum has rarely been reached). Finally the total cumulative time of all applications of whatever length in a 24-hour period may not exceed 12 minutes."

Marc Thiessen refutes the claim that KSM’s waterboarding violated these guidelines:

       "And apparently yes, 183 is the number of times he was waterboarded across those five sessions, always for less than 40 seconds at a time and apparently usually for less than 10 seconds each (more on that in a moment). But calling that being waterboarded 183 times probably suggests incorrectly to many readers that on 183 occasions he was taken from his cell and subjected to a session of waterboarding.

       "Blogger Marcy Wheeler first pointed out the high numbers, including 183 for KSM, and she and others on the left seem to be having trouble with the math. The guidance for the employment of waterboarding restricts its use to one 30-day period, in which it can be applied on no more than five individual days. No more than two sessions are allowed in a 24-hour period, and each session may last at most two hours. Within a session, there may be at most six applications of water lasting 10 seconds or longer. No water application may last longer than 40 seconds. The total water application time may be no more than 12 minutes in a 24-hour period.

       "Wheeler and others are claiming that the 183 tally blows through the above limits, as even two sessions a day, times five days, times up to six 10-second applications per session, totals a maximum of 60 applications of water. And if KSM was in fact only subjected to one session per day on each of the five days he was waterboarded, then he should have maxed out at 30. But Wheeler and such simply aren’t reading the guidelines correctly. The limits of six applications of water is for applications lasting 10 seconds or longer. There is no limit on shorter applications, except for the cumulative 12-minutes of water per 24-hour period, toward which each short application would also apply.

       "So it’s more than possible to have 183 applications of water while still adhering to the guidelines, with applications under 10 seconds making up the great majority of the 183. (http://corner.nationalreview.com/pos…NhZmNiNTYxYTY=)

MYTH: The "effectiveness" of waterboarding is not the issue.  The ends do not justify the means.

FACT: This is a subjective judgment that is not shared by a majority of our fellow Americans, according to every recent poll that has been done on the matter. 

And if the effectiveness of waterboarding is irrelevant, why are liberals being so dishonest about it?  It’s readily apparent that the vast majority of liberal bloggers who are screaming about the released interrogation memos either haven’t read them or are being misleadingly selective in their portrayals of them.

Whether the ends justify the means depends on the means.  According to opinion polls, most people agree that using a non-lethal, non-injurious interrogation method like waterboarding on three terrorists to save thousands of lives, to prevent attacks, to capture more terrorists, and to gain more intel about Al Qaeda is a clear case of the ends justifying the means.

MYTH: The abuse of the three terrorists who were waterboarded is part of an overall pattern of abuse in American interrogation operations at Guantanamo and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

FACT: An independent review of our interrogation operations concluded in 2006 reached a very different conclusion.  William Mcswain is one of the attorneys who took part in that investigation.  He’s in a unique position to comment on this matter, because he not only participated in the investigation but also underwent waterboarding as part of his military training.  He says the following on this matter in an editorial published today in the Wall Street Journal:

       ". . . military interrogation is not akin to a friendly chat across a conference table — nor is it designed to gather evidence in a criminal trial, as an FBI interview might be. There is a fundamental distinction between law enforcement and military interrogations that we ignore at our peril.

       "Second-guessers can also fail to appreciate the increased importance of interrogation (and human intelligence in general) in the post 9/11 world. We face an enemy that wears no uniform, blends in with civilian populations, and operates in the shadows. This has made eliciting information from captured terrorists vital to the effort of finding other terrorists. As interrogation has become more important, drawing out useful information has become more difficult — because hardened terrorists are often trained to resist traditional U.S. interrogation methods.

       "Fortunately, aggressive interrogation techniques like those outlined in the memos to the CIA are effective. As the memos explain, high-value detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind of 9/11, and Abu Zubaydah, one of Osama bin Laden’s key lieutenants, provided no actionable intelligence when facing traditional U.S. methods. It is doubtful that any high-level al Qaeda operative would ever provide useful intelligence in response to traditional methods.

       "Yet KSM and Zubaydah provided critical information after being waterboarded — information that, among other things, helped to prevent a ‘Second Wave’ attack in Los Angeles, according to the memos. Similarly, the 2005 report by Vice Adm. Albert Church on Defense Department interrogation policies, the ‘Church Report’ — of which I served as the executive editor — documented the success of aggressive techniques against high-value detainees like Mohamed al Kahtani, 9/11’s ‘20th hijacker.’

       "The aggressive techniques in the CIA memos are also undeniably safe, having been adopted from Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) training used with our own troops.

       "I have personally been waterboarded, put into stress positions, sleep deprived, slapped in the face. While none of this was enjoyable, I am none the worse for wear.

       "While such techniques are used in U.S. military training, some apparently consider them too brutal, too abusive, too inhumane — in short, too much like ‘torture’ — to be used on fanatics like KSM who are bent on the mass murder of innocent American civilians. And if legal advisers such as Steven G. Bradbury, Jay S. Bybee and John Yoo are to be prosecuted for having sanctioned their use under careful controls, who’s next? Every commander who ever implemented a SERE course?

       "Many critics also play the Abu Ghraib ‘trump card’: The abuses of prisoners at that facility in Iraq allegedly ‘prove’ the Bush administration’s supposed policy of abuse, first codified in its legal memos. This ignores all relevant evidence.

       "As the Church Report concluded, after a thorough review of all Defense Department interrogation policies, the pictured abuses at Abu Ghraib bore no resemblance to approved policies at any level, in any theater. The 2004 Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations — whose four members included two former secretaries of defense under President Jimmy Carter — also stated that ‘no approved procedures called for or allowed the kinds of abuse that in fact occurred. There is no evidence of a policy of abuse promulgated by senior officials or military authorities.’

       "Similarly, the critics like to default to Guantanamo as a symbol of the kind of abuse that Mr. Bush’s antiterror policies allowed. Yet, at the time of the Church Report, there had been more than 24,000 interrogation sessions at Guantanamo and only three cases of substantiated interrogation-related abuse. All of them consisted of minor assaults in which military interrogators had exceeded the bounds of approved interrogation policy. Notably, the Church Report found that detainees at Guantanamo were more likely to have been injured playing recreational sports than in confrontations with interrogators or guards." ("Misconceptions About the Interrogation Memos," Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2009; see link below)

Sources for Further Study:

The Memos Prove We Didn’t Torture

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124018665408933455.html

The Coercive Interrogation of Abu Zubaydah to Prevent a Second Wave Attack

http://www.floppingaces.net/2009/04/26/the-coercive-interrogation-of-abu-zubaydah-to-prevent-a-second-wave-attack/

Liberals, the CIA Interrogations, and Questions About Patriotism and Motives  http://forums.hannity.com/showpost.php?p=53406391&postcount=1

Waterboarding: The Ultimate Mind Game

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25088

Misconceptions About the Interrogation Memos

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124078817411057411.html

The CIA’s Questioning Worked

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/20/AR2009042002818.html

The Inverted Conscience of Barack Obama

http://www.redstate.com/dan_mclaughlin/2009/04/27/the-inverted-conscience-of-barack-obama/

Torture in the Dock

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/35426189.html

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