[Narrator] The cruel ironies of the Dilawar story echoed an ongoing debate in the halls of Congress about detainee abuse, national security, and the rule of law.
For one senator, John McCain, a former prisoner of war,
the matter of detainee abuse was both political and personal.
[John McCain, North Vietnam, 1968] I would just like to tell my wife I'm going to get well, I love her, and I hope to see her soon. And I'd appreciate it if you'd tell her that. That's all.
[LT. CMDR. JOHN McCAIN]
[Jack Cloonan, FBI Special Agent 1977-2002] If this man, after 6-1/2 or 7 years of torture, says that it's not efficient, it's inhumane, and it breeds contempt for the United States, he can stand up and be a moral voice on this issue.
[Senator John McCain] We sent them to fight for us in Afghanistan and Iraq. We placed extraordinary pressure on them to extract intelligence from detainees. But then we threw out the rules that our soldiers had trained on, and replaced them with a confusing and constantly changing array of standards.
And when things went wrong, we blamed them. And we punished them. I believe we have to do better than that.
I strongly urge you to do justice to your men and women in uniform.
Give them clear standards of conduct that reflect the ideals they risk their lives for.
[Narrator] On October 5, 2005, as increasing numbers of detainee abuse cases came to trial.
Senator John McCain proposed the Detainee Treatment Act.
The bill sought a total U.S. ban on torture.
As well as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
And it sparked a national debate. One in which the Devil was in the details.
[Senator John McCain] Is it still permissible to use a wet towel and dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation?
[Lt. General Randall M. Schmidt, Author of "Schmidt Report"] The use of the wet towel, dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation was one of the techniques requested by the JTF in their laundry list given up. It was never approved. It has never been a technique approved.
[Professor Alfred McCoy, author A Question of Torture] One of the techniques that made the transition from the regime of the physical to the psychological -- in fact the only one -- was waterboarding. Because in the medieval era, under the Inquisition, it was done because of its horrible, physical aspects.
It was done to purge and punish the heretic. You force water down the throat of the victim.
The victim thinks that he's drowning. It's horrible. Your body tells you that you're dying.
[CIA AGENTS ARRIVE AT BAGRAM]
Right after 9/11, the CIA got approval from the White House for waterboarding.
[Narrator] An early test case involved the interrogation of Ibn Sheikh al Libi, a man suspected of being the Emir of an al Qaeda training camp.
Initially, the FBI was in charge of his interrogation. But the Administration was impatient with the slow results of the FBI's law enforcement techniques.
So they turned al Libi over to the CIA.
[Jack Cloonan, FBI Special Agent 1977-2002] He is secured. He was either duct-taped or hooded. And he was going to be put into a box -- a plywood box for his own protection [makes disbelief sound] -- for transfer to the airport.
[Professor Alfred McCoy, author A Question of Torture] They throw him on an aircraft,
and they rendered him through extraordinary rendition, to Egypt.
They later subjected him to two weeks of brutal torture,
involving all of these techniques, including waterboarding.
And they got information from al Libi stating that Saddam Hussein's regime ...
had trained al Qaeda in chemical and biological warfare.
[Scott Horton, Attorney] One of the things we know about torture is that someone who is tortured will tell his interrogator what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.
[Khmer Rouge Waterboarding Slab]
[Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell] The moment al Libi was waterboarded, he started blurting things out.
Well, rather than questioning what he was saying, and going into it in detail to see if what he was saying could be corroborated,
they immediately stopped and ran off to report what al Libi had said. And ended the torture.
And bang -- it gets up to the highest decision-makers --
and all of a sudden Colin Powell is told, "Hey, you don't have to worry about your doubts anymore,
because we've just gotten confirmation that there were contacts between al Qaeda and Baghdad.
[Narrator] In February, 2003, then Secretary of State Colin Powell ...
went before the United Nations to make the case for the war in Iraq.
[Colin Powell, Secretary of State] I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al Qaeda.
Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story.
[Professor Alfred McCoy, author A Question of Torture] A year later, the CIA branded al Libi a fabricator, and rescinded all of the intelligence reports with that information in it. So, in other words, you will get information, but you'll get false information.
[Scott Horton, Attorney] I think Colin Powell said ...
that was the most embarrassing day of his entire life.
[Rear Admiral John Hutson (ret) Judge Advocate General] All the experts say that torturing people ...
is not the best way to get information.
Breaking down the barriers between you and them,
gaining their confidence is the best way to get it.
It takes some experience. It takes some talent. It takes some patience.
And then they might actually tell you something that is worthwhile. And then if you want to prosecute them and execute them, go ahead.
[Jack Cloonan, Counterterrorism Task Force] If you want to be able to build a rapport with somebody, you are their salvation, because their life as they know it is over.
[Jack Cloonan, Counterterrorism Task Force]
"Is there something I can do for your kids? You concerned about them? Do you want them educated? I'll get them educated. What do you want? Tell me what you want. Script for me your exit strategy." "How do you extricate yourself from this terrible situation that, by the way, you put yourself in?" "Now, you can't go back home, can you? No. So let's make peace with that. Let me help you find the strategy to give you a life."
And that's the way it worked! The amount of information that they were able to provide us, pre-9/11, to me it was extremely valuable. Who else was going to tell us about how you joined al Qaeda?
Even more notable are the support service which the CIA and it minions continue to provide Bin Laden. Here the evidence is fragmentary but persistent and finally overwhelming. According to CBS News, "the night before the September 11 terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan ... Bin Laden was spirited into a military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment. (Barry Peterson, "Hospital Worker: I Saw Osama," CBS News, January 29, 2002: http://www.cbsnews.com ) Before we criticize Pakistan, though, we should realize that the ISI in this case was probably acting on U.S. instructions, as it generally does.
LE FIGARO: BIN LADEN TREATED AT AMERICAN HOSPITAL, JULY 2001
On October 31, 2001, Le Figaro, the leading French conservative newspaper, published a front page story about medical treatment received by Bin Laden in Dubai in the summer before 9/11. This remarkable revelation came in an article by Alexandra Richard entitled "La CIA a rencontre Ben Laden a Dubai. en juillet," (The CIA met Bin Laden in Dubai in July). At around the same time, similar facts were reported by Agence France Presse and Radio France International, the French external broadcasting service. The AFP dispatch read in part:
Bin Laden Underwent Treatment in July at Dubai American Hospital
Osama bin Laden underwent treatment in July at the American Hospital in Dubai where he met a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official, French daily Le Figaro and Radio France International reported. Quoting "a witness, a professional partner of the administrative management of the hospital," they said the man suspected by the United States of being behind the September 11 terrorist attacks had arrived in Dubai on July 4 by air from Quetta, Pakistan. He was immediately taken to the hospital for kidney treatment. He left the establishment on July 14, Le Figaro said.
During his stay, the daily said, the local CIA representative was seen going into bin Laden's room and "a few days later, the CIA man boasted to some friends of having visited the Saudi-born millionaire."
Quoting "an authoritative source," Le Figaro and the radio station said the CIA representative had been recalled to Washington on July 15. Bin Laden has been sought by the United States for terrorism since the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. But his CIA links go back before that to the fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
Le Figaro said bin Laden was accompanied in Dubai by his personal physician and close collaborator, who could be the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as bodyguards and an Algerian nurse. He was admitted to the urology department of Doctor Terry Callaway, who specializes in kidney stones and male infertility. Telephoned several times, the doctor declined to answer questions. Several sources had reported that bin Laden had a serious kidney infection. He had a mobile dialysis machine sent to his Kandahar hideout in Afghanistan in the first half of 2000, according to "authoritative sources" quoted by Le Figaro and RFI. (AFP, Wednesday October 31, 2001, 2:04 PM)
The CIA was quick to deny these embarrassing facts reported by real investigative journalists, who apparently still exist in France. A spokeswoman at CIA Langley, VA headquarters described the Le Figaro article as "complete and utter nonsense. It's nonsense, it's absurd, it's ridiculous, it's not true." The CIA said it intended to protest to Le Figaro. The American Hospital in Dubai denied that Bin Laden had been a patient. (The Scotsman, November 1, 2001) But the French author Richard LaBeviere countered that Osama Bin Laden had been working for the CIA since 1979, a fact which was generally accepted in Europe. (October 31, 2001) Radio France International stuck to its guns and followed up on its story with further details about Bin Laden's CIA handler and case officer, Larry Mitchell: "The local representative of the CIA who visited Osama Bin Laden last July 12 at the American Hospital in Dubai is called Larry Mitchell. If his visiting card specifies that he is a "consular agent," everyone in Dubai knows, especially in the small expatriate community, that he is working under cover. To say it openly, Larry Mitchell belongs to the 'big house', otherwise known as the CIA. He himself does not hide it." RFI went on: " An expert in the Arab world and especially in the Arabian peninsula, Larry Mitchell is a colorful personality who livens up the somewhat drab evenings of the expatriates of Dubai. One of his friends likes to say that his natural exuberance often gets into classified matters. That is perhaps one of the reasons why he was called back to the United States last July 15. About twenty days after the September 11 attacks, in a statement dated October 5, the CIA dismissed as baseless rumors the story that the agency had had contacts with Bin Laden and his group in the past, especially at the time of the war against the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan. It happens that this communique of the CIA is in complete contradiction with the earlier official statements of several representatives of the U.S. administration itself." ( http://www.rfi.fr/1 novembre 2001)
It is thus clear that the CIA was providing vital support services to Bin Laden long after he had allegedly turned into the world's leading anti-American monster. The reality is that Bin Laden and al Qaeda have never stopped serving the CIA strategic agenda, whatever that happened to be. As Thierry Meyssan writes, "In reality, the CIA continued to have recourse to Osama Bin Laden's services against Russian influence as it had done against the Soviets. You don't change a winning team. The 'Arab Legion' of Al Qaeda was used, in 1999, to support the Kosovar rebels against the dictatorship in Belgrade. It was also operational in Chechenya, at least until November 2001, as was attested to by the New York Times. (Michael Wines, December 9, 2001) The alleged hostility of Bin Laden against the United States permitted Washington to deny responsibility for these dirty operations." (Meyssan 2002 106-7)
In a discussion of the impact of the anonymous Imperial Hubris CIA tract during the summer of 2004, the Washington Post provided a succinct summary of al Qaeda's strategic services to the CIA: "Al Qaeda' s camps were staffed by veteran fighters who trained insurgents who fought and trained others to fight, not only against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, but also against national armies in Indian Kashmir, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Eritrea, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Tajikistan, Egypt, Bosnia, western China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Macedonia, Kosovo, and the Philippines." (Review of Anonymous, Imperial Hubris, Washington Post, July 11, 2004) Notice that all these states were or are targets of U.S. destabilization. And even this list is far from complete; it leaves out Libya, for example.
The Iranian press also noted the strange affinities of al Qaeda for figures who were clearly still on the U.S. payroll. While panning the 9/11 commission report, the Teheran Times observed that none other than KSM, "Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, the reported mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was a longtime associate of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a leader of the Afghan Northern Alliance and current ally of the U.S.-backed Afghans president, Hamid Karzai." (Teheran Times, July 27, 2004)
-- 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley
What did buy-out mean? How did they communicate? Did they use Emaar-set satellite phones. Did Bin Laden use a body double?
So when we got all that information, we were able to do certain operations. Cumbersome though it may be, it still to me was the way to do it. And we don't have to apologize to anybody.
We don't know what revenge is coming down the road. And if I wanted to incite the faithful, I'd just take that one picture with the dog collar on, and just point to that. And look at the young brothers and say, "You're duty bound now to get revenge."