NYT: Torture revisited in bin Laden narrative

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NYT: Torture revisited in bin Laden narrative

May 1st, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

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.

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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.”

The dispute over the efficacy, legality and morality of the agency’s use of physical force in interrogations, mainly between 2002 and 2004, has grown familiar. It flared again after the raid on Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, when intelligence officials told The New York Times that the coercive methods had played a minor role, if any, in locating Bin Laden.

The issue has taken on a partisan coloring especially since President Obama condemned waterboarding as torture and banned coercive questioning in 2009. Some former officials of the Bush administration have sought to trace Mr. Obama’s biggest counterterrorism success, the Navy SEAL raid in which Bin Laden was shot to death, to the Bush-era interrogation program.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s study of the interrogation program has divided the committee, with Republicans declining to take part. No Republican joined the statement on Monday from Ms. Feinstein and Mr. Levin.

The statement rebutted various claims that critical information about Bin Laden’s courier came from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, who was subjected to waterboarding 183 times. Nor did such information come from another Qaeda figure, Abu Faraj al-Libi, who received some harsh treatment, though he was not waterboarded, the statement said.

In addition, the statement rejected claims that tough treatment drew valuable information about Bin Laden’s courier from a third detainee, unidentified in the statement. While the third detainee did provide useful information about the courier, he did so before he was subjected to the tough C.I.A. methods, the senators said.

For his part, Mr. Rodriguez was not backing down. Asked about the senators’ criticism, Mr. Rodriguez replied with his own statement Monday, declaring again that “information obtained from senior Al Qaida terrorists, who became compliant after receiving enhanced interrogation techniques, was key to the U.S. government learning of the existence of a courier who was Bin Laden’s lifeline.”

Mr. Hayden said Monday that when he became C.I.A. director and was first briefed on the Bin Laden hunt in 2007, “information from C.I.A. detainees formed an important part of the narrative.”

“Clearly other threads ultimately added to the final outcomes,” he added. “That’s just good intelligence.”

Mr. Mukasey could not be reached for comment. A C.I.A. spokeswoman declined to comment.

This article, “Role of torture revisited in bin Laden narrative,” first appeared in The New York Times.