Word: fbi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Amid the politically charged debate over the techniques, Soufan's criticism carries special weight because it comes from someone intimately familiar with the little-understood art of extracting information from hard-as-nails jihadists. As a supervisory special agent from 1997 to 2005 - and one of the FBI's few Arabic speakers - Soufan was involved in a string of crucial investigations and interrogations, from the Millennium Bombing plot in Jordan to the U.S.S. Cole bombing in Yemen and a number of Gitmo interrogations. His greatest success was the interrogation of Abu Jandal, bin Laden's former bodyguard. After the 9/11...
...special agent who came in from the cold - and waded straight into the debate over the use of harsh interrogation techniques. Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent and perhaps the most successful U.S. interrogator of al-Qaeda operatives, says the use of those techniques was unnecessary and often counterproductive. Detainees, he says, provided vital intelligence under non-violent questioning, before they were put through "walling" and waterboarding...
...piece in the New York Times, Soufan says Abu Zubaydah gave up the information between March and June 2002, when he was being interrogated by Soufan, another FBI agent and some CIA officers. But that was not the result of harsh techniques, including waterboarding, which were not introduced until August. "We were getting a lot of useful material from [Abu Zubaydah], and we would have continued to get material from him," Soufan told TIME. "The rough tactics were not necessary...
Soufan says that view was shared by the CIA officials who worked with him on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and others. But then the harsh methods were introduced, he says, by CIA contractors and Soufan protested. He was backed by his bosses at the FBI and pulled out of the interrogations. This led to a rift between the Bureau and the CIA that has not fully healed. Yet Soufan says that if any CIA officials are prosecuted for the use of harsh techniques, he "will be the first person to defend them." The real blame, he says, lies with...
...those costs, we ought to know what we're getting. A thorough clearing of the air will help discredit the idea that we either torture terrorists or become victims. This false choice is played out on shows like 24, leaving people with the notion that had the FBI somehow caught one of the hijackers in the hours leading up to Sept. 11, torture would have led to the arrests of the 18 others before those planes took off. The truth is less sensational and more unsettling--but ultimately one that Americans should learn to accept. There are ticking time bombs...