“Don’t you realize that if you try to humiliate him, you’re just reinforcing what he expects us to do and what he’s trained to resist?” [1 word redacted] had no idea at that point that Boris’s plans would warp into what later became known as EITs.
“You’ll see,” said Boris. “It’s human nature to react to these things. You’ll soon see how quickly he folds. Human beings always want to make life better for themselves. You’ll see.”
“He’s not a prostitute or a common criminal,” [1 word redacted] replied. “His life getting better involves us all being killed or converting to his brand of Islam. This won’t work.”
“You’ll see,” Boris responded. He had a condescending look on his face, as if he couldn’t be bothered with speaking to such simpletons.
“Have you ever questioned an Islamic terrorist before?” [1 word redacted] asked him.
“No.”
“Have you ever conducted any interrogations?”
“No,” he said again, “but I know human nature.” [1 word redacted] was taken aback by his response. [1 word redacted] couldn’t believe that someone with no interrogation or terrorism experience had been sent by the CIA on this mission.
[1 word redacted] spoke to [1 word redacted] and Frank privately and asked, “Is this a joke? What’s going on? The guy has no experience. This is ridiculous.”
“Give him a chance,” [1 word redacted] said. “His ideas might work.” Frank told [1 word redacted] that Boris was very well known in his field: psychology. He added that [1 word redacted] had no choice but to go along with his methods.
“He is in charge,” Frank added.
[1 word redacted] then said, “You know what, [1 word redacted], he’s meant to be an expert. Let’s just give this guy a chance.” [1 word redacted] seemed to hope that Boris’s technique would work. [3 words redacted] had no choice. The CIA was in charge and [1 word redacted] orders were to assist the CIA officers.
[3 words redacted] went into Abu Zubaydah’s hospital room. [36 words redacted]
[98 words redacted]
Abu Zubaydah was taken out of the hospital and brought back to [1 word redacted] original location. It had been transformed in [1 word redacted] absence. An actual cell had been built for him, monitored by hidden cameras and microphones. It took [1 word redacted] a long time to fall asleep that night. [1 word redacted] stared at the ceiling, struggling to understand why a contractor with no interrogation or Islamic terrorism experience was running our nation’s high-value detainee interrogation program. It didn’t make sense.
Boris’s first action was to order Abu Zubaydah to be stripped naked. Nudity would humiliate him, Boris said, and he’d quickly become compliant in order to get his clothes back. [27 words redacted]
Ed went into the cell, [15 words redacted]
[6 words redacted]
[18 words redacted]
Boris announced that loud music would be blasted into Abu Zubaydah’s cell. The nudity would continue as well. The music, Boris said, would become so unbearable that Abu Zubaydah would start speaking to end the noise. The same track of rock music was blasted into the cell, over and over, for a whole day. Those of us listening in the monitoring room soon got sick of the music, and we could only imagine what Abu Zubaydah was going through. Boris sent Ed into the cell. [9 words redacted]
[9 words redacted] Ed walked out.
A [3 words redacted] that Boris had requested arrived. Boris told [1 word redacted] that the reason the loud music had failed [9 words redacted]. He had intended to use the [3 words redacted] all along—he was just using the loud music [8 words redacted]. It was about three feet tall, and [1 word redacted] thought that perhaps it must be something special. But when it was switched on, [16 words redacted]. “This will make him talk?” [1 word redacted] asked [1 word redacted]. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
[1 word redacted] said, “They could have just turned on the air-conditioning, [5 words redacted].” This went on for [3 words redacted] days, [29 words redacted]
Boris then said that what was needed to make Abu Zubaydah talk was sleep deprivation. [3 words redacted] questioned whether sleep deprivation would actually harm Abu Zubaydah and render him less useful to [1 word redacted]. The CIA officers on the ground were in agreement with [1 word redacted] about the risk of such an approach, and they requested guidance from Langley.
The message came back that Boris could deprive Abu Zubaydah of sleep, but for no more than twenty-four hours. Boris was jubilant, and said that after the sleep deprivation, Abu Zubaydah’s will would be broken and he would automatically give up all the information he knew.
The sleep deprivation lasted for twenty-four hours. But like the nudity, the loud noise, and the white noise, it didn’t work. [10 words redacted] And Ed would walk out. [9 words redacted]
Every moment that [3 words redacted] had previously spent with Abu Zubaydah, from [3 words redacted] with him, [1 word redacted] had gained intelligence from him. Slowly but surely he had cooperated, giving information that saved lives. Now [1 word redacted] had to sit and watch for days as nothing was gained through techniques that no reputable interrogator would even think of using.
[1 word redacted] tried reasoning with the CIA officers present in the hope that they would appeal to their headquarters. Terrorists are trained to resist torture. As shocking as Boris’s methods might be to us, the training terrorists receive in training camps prepares them for much worse—the sort of torture they would expect if caught by dictatorships, for example. Being attacked by dogs, being sodomized, and having family members raped in front of them are some of the things they are physically and mentally prepared to endure. And Abu Zubaydah was not an ordinary terrorist trainee. He was the external emir of Khaldan; he had
After the failure of sleep deprivation, [1 word redacted] began having doubts about Boris. He contrasted [1 word redacted] previous successes with the dearth of information under Boris’s regime. He began to realize that [1 word redacted] evaluation of Abu Zubaydah—as a major terrorist facilitator, but not the number three in al-Qaeda —was correct, as was [1 word redacted] warning that Boris’s experiments wouldn’t work on a terrorist like this one.
Other CTC officials and local CIA officers also began to develop doubts, and their original openness to trying Boris’s techniques was replaced by growing skepticism. They had limited or no interrogation experience and didn’t know anything about Abu Zubaydah, so at first didn’t know better. Boris had seemed to know what he was talking about.
But then they saw that Boris’s experiments were evolving into a risky situation with possible legal ramifications. They also began to realize that while Boris came across as being full of confidence, in reality he was just experimenting. His experience was limited to the classroom. He’d never been involved in an actual interrogation of a terrorist before. [1 word redacted] led the effort to put [3 words redacted] back in control of the interrogation.
Boris dismissed any questions about what he was doing. He tried to rally his supporters and explain away his failure by saying that in fact a twenty-four-hour period of sleep deprivation wasn’t enough. “A minimum of forty- eight hours is really needed for sleep deprivation to be successful,” he announced.
Shortly after the initial CTC contingent had arrived with Boris, a team of CIA analysts, mostly young, had followed. They were unfortunately very receptive to the arguments Boris made, as they believed that Abu Zubaydah was the number three or four in al-Qaeda and therefore wasn’t cooperating. Almost all of them admired Boris and seemed convinced that [1 word redacted] were failing with Abu Zubaydah. Some of the young analysts believed that talk was boring and that [1 word redacted] needed to be tough. Boris sent a request to CIA headquarters asking for permission to try a longer period of sleep deprivation.
CIA headquarters wasn’t being challenged only by [1 word redacted] vocal minority at the location. After a few days [4 words redacted], there were inquiries from other parts of the U.S. intelligence community asking why, all of sudden, [2 words redacted] was being transmitted. The result of all this push-back and questioning was that CIA headquarters authorized [3 words redacted] to reengage with Abu Zubaydah. Although Boris was not called off the case, this was an admission that his experiments weren’t working; it was also breaking Boris’s cardinal rule that only one person would deal with Abu Zubaydah—his “god.” Boris was unhappy, but he had no choice—for once CIA
