The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [250]
“Oh,” Shah replied, and, realizing the game was up, he confessed to everything.
Shah and most of his group pled guilty, but Sabir didn’t, so two years later, in 2007, I testified in court. That was the first time I had appeared before reporters—there had been many stories in the media full of speculation about who the undercover agent had been, and all of them had gotten it wrong.
We had done everything for the mission by the book, and the defense did little other than ask me to read the transcripts of my exchanges with Shah and Sabir.
Sabir was convicted.
Postscript
On April 16, 2009, the U.S. Justice Department declassified a series of memos on the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques program. This followed an announcement earlier in the month by Leon Panetta, the new CIA director, that the agency’s black sites had been shut down. “The CIA no longer operates detention facilities or black sites,” he had written to his staff. On October 29, 2009, David Iglesias, a navy prosecutor (and the actual person on whom Tom Cruise’s character in the film A Few Good Men is based), told me that in lectures to young Special Forces JAG officers, the military was teaching the “Ali Soufan Rule”—that intelligent interrogations are always more productive than coercive ones, and that interrogators need to remember the endgame.
The declassified Department of Justice memos dispassionately detailed the coercive interrogation methods approved by the Bush administration, including waterboarding, and also listed “successes” of the program as a justification for their continuation. Featured prominently in the memos was Abu Zubaydah, the first to go through the program.
Within hours of the memos’ release, I received calls from outraged friends in the intelligence and law enforcement communities. As one friend put it, “This is why the United States ripped up the Constitution in dealing with these terrorists? The memos are full of lies. I can’t believe they’ve got the cheek to claim these successes as theirs! Didn’t any of the lawyers even bother to check the dates?”
I felt the same disbelief and anger. It was apparent from the memos that the introduction of EITs was based on lies. The proof resides in my notes—locked, as noted earlier, in FBI vaults. It’s no surprise that those behind the EITs fought so hard to keep these memos classified. From the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah to the information leading to the capture of Ramzi Binalshibh to the arrest of Khallad, the memos are full of misrepresentations of facts.
I received nonstop inquiries from journalists and television shows asking me about the memos, as it was no secret that I had opposed the techniques—a previously declassified Department of Justice inspector general’s report had made that clear. From 2002 to 2009 I was limited to closed-door briefings in classified settings.
I didn’t, however, speak out immediately, as I didn’t want to reopen a period of my life that I had been happy to put behind me. I also thought it would be pretty clear that the claims in the memos were false. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, as the defenders of the EITs launched a media blitz campaign not only to defend the techniques but to argue for their reintroduction.
“As you always say, the oath you took to defend the American people against enemies foreign and domestic didn’t end when you left the FBI. Indeed, that’s why you agreed to be the government’s main witness in the trials at Guantánamo,” a former colleague reminded me, “and once again you have a duty to tell the truth. Otherwise there is a danger that the American people will become convinced the EITs were a success, and they’ll be reintroduced, and that will be disastrous.”
Some colleagues suggested specific journalists I might speak with, but my colleague and coauthor Daniel Freedman recommended that my first public comments be in my own words, on my terms, with no possibility of their being misconstrued. As I was weighing what to do, the New York Times contacted me and asked if I’d write an opinion piece, and