In My Time - Dick Cheney [189]
IN MARCH 2002, PAKISTANI forces raided an al Qaeda safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, and captured a terrorist named Abu Zubaydah. A lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, Zubaydah was the highest-ranking al Qaeda member we had captured to date. He had been badly wounded in the firefight that led to his capture, and the CIA officers who had been aiding the Pakistani operation arranged a special flight to bring a doctor from the United States to provide emergency care for him.
Although defiant, Zubaydah provided useful information very early on, disclosing, for example, that the mastermind behind 9/11 had been Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or KSM. He also provided KSM’s code name, Muktar. But then he stopped answering questions, and the CIA, convinced he had information that could potentially save thousands of lives, approached the Justice Department and the White House about what they might do to go further in interrogating him and other high-value detainees. The CIA developed a list of enhanced interrogation techniques that were based on the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape Program used to prepare our military men and women in case they should be captured, detained, or interrogated. Before using the techniques on any terrorists, the CIA wanted the Justice Department to review them and determine that they complied with the law, including international treaty obligations such as the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Out of that review process, which took several months, came legal opinions advising that the techniques were lawful. The program was approved by the president and the National Security Council.
The techniques worked. Abu Zubaydah gave up information about Ramzi bin al Shibh, who had assisted the 9/11 hijackers, and on the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, bin al Shibh was captured after a shootout in Pakistan. At the time of his apprehension, he was plotting to use commercial airliners in suicide attacks on Heathrow Airport and other structures in London.
Information from Abu Zubaydah and bin al Shibh led in turn to the capture of KSM, who after being questioned with enhanced techniques became a fount of information. A CIA report, declassified at my request, notes that KSM was the “preeminent source on al-Qa’ida.” According to the 2004 report, KSM had become key in the U.S. government’s understanding of al Qaeda plots and personalities:
Debriefings since his detention have yielded . . . reports that have shed light on the plots, capabilities, the identity and location of al-Qa’ida operatives and affiliated terrorist organizations and networks. He has provided information on al-Qa’ida’s strategic doctrine, probable targets, the impact of striking each target set, and likely methods of attacks inside the United States.
In one instance KSM provided information that led us to a terrorist cell in Karachi, Pakistan. The members of the cell were being groomed by a terrorist named Hambali, al Qaeda’s point person for Southeast Asia, for operations against the United States, probably to fly a hijacked plane into the tallest building on the West Coast.
Despite the invaluable intelligence we were obtaining through the program of enhanced interrogation, in 2005 there was a move on Capitol Hill, led by Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, to end it and require that all U.S. government interrogations be conducted under the rules of the U.S. Army Field Manual. As one of the CIA interrogators explained to me, the Field Manual is adequate for interrogating run-of-the-mill enemy soldiers. “If one guy doesn’t want to talk to you, you can say, fine, and move on to the next, until you get to one who will talk.” But a detainee such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is different. He wasn’t talking, but there was no one comparable to move on to. For the safety of the nation we needed him to talk, and that happened after we put him through the