Ethics

Torture Failed With "Major" Terrorist

By Ed Brayton

The Washington Post has an article about the waterboarding and abuse of Abu Zubaida, who was allegedly a high-ranking Al Qaeda leader. The torture of the man produced nothing useful at all:

When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.

The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on March 31, 2009 (boomark / email).