The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [216]
“Let’s go to Hamdan anyway,” I said. “I want to see what’s going on.”
We went straight to the interrogation room and asked the CIA interrogators inside to come out. One was a good friend whom I had worked alongside in the past, and we exchanged pleasantries. “Listen,” I told him, “we’ve flown all the way from Washington to speak to Hamdan. We can do it together if you want, but this guy is important to us.”
He readily agreed, but his colleague, a retired CIA officer working for the agency as a contractor, objected. When he wouldn’t listen to reasoning, we took the matter to Matt, the CIA chief [2 words redacted]. We explained the situation and why we wanted to speak to Hamdan, and he sided with us and offered to help however he could. The CIA contractor argued back, but Matt had seniority.
“This is becoming a bad pattern with the CIA,” George said to me, as we walked from Matt’s office to the interrogation room. He had recently interviewed Abu Zubaydah’s partner Ibn al-Shaykh al-Liby. Liby had been captured by Pakistani officials toward the end of November 2001 while trying to flee Afghanistan. He was handed over to the U.S. military and taken to Bagram Airfield, in Afghanistan’s Parvan province. George and another of our team members, Russell Fincher, interrogated him in multiple sessions, and Liby cooperated, giving intelligence that included details of a threat against the U.S. Embassy in Yemen. [13 words redacted]
During one session, Fred, the CIA officer who had caused problems in Jordan during the millennium investigation and had sent the faulty cables that had to be withdrawn, stormed into the room and began shouting at Liby, working hard [13 words redacted] “I don’t care what you’ve said about plots in Yemen. I want to know about plots [2 words redacted].”
George and Russell couldn’t believe it. Did Fred really think that thwarting attacks against the U.S. Embassy wasn’t important? Why was he disrupting the interrogation? Liby’s face also registered confusion. “What’s going on?” he asked, looking to George for guidance.
“If you don’t tell me about what you are planning [2 words redacted],” Fred told Liby, “I’m going to bring your mother here and fuck her in front of you.”
This was too much for Liby, and he turned away and refused to say another word to anyone. He was the internal emir of Khaldan and, in his mind, an important person; he wasn’t going to take such abuse. The interrogation stopped for the day.
The general in charge of Bagram was furious when he heard what had happened and banned Fred from the airfield. Fred, however, filed his own report, and shortly afterwards, the CIA secretly came and rendered Liby to a third country (the name is still classified). There, after being tortured, he described the “links” between al-Qaeda and Saddam, which was a complete fabrication.
According to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report on prewar intelligence on Iraq: “Postwar findings support the . . . February 2002 assessment that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Liby was likely intentionally misleading his debriefers when he said that Iraq provided two al-Qa’ida associates with chemical and biological weapons . . . training in 2000. . . . Al-Liby told debriefers that he fabricated information while in U.S. custody to receive better treatment and in response to threats of being transferred to a foreign intelligence service which he believed would torture him. . . . He said that later, while he was being debriefed . . . he fabricated more information in response to physical abuse and threats of torture.”
Later, Liby was sent to Libya, where he died under suspicious circumstances. According to reports, he hanged himself. In some countries, it’s not uncommon for prisoners to “commit suicide” in suspicious circumstances. One prisoner I heard about allegedly did so by shooting himself in the back of the head . .