complaints hadn’t made it to the director.
[1 word redacted] asked the operator at FBI headquarters in Washington to put [1 word redacted] through to the assistant director, Pat D’Amuro. [1 word redacted] considered him a friend, and [1 word redacted] respected him as a principled public servant and had no doubt he would be outraged by what was happening. [1 word redacted] was right.
[1 word redacted] explained to Pat what had happened over the past weeks, and what it looked like they were going to do next with [2 words redacted]. [1 word redacted] finished by telling him: “I can no longer remain here. Either I leave or I’ll arrest him.” Beyond the immorality and un-American nature of these techniques, [1 word redacted] couldn’t stand by as [1 word redacted] abused someone instead of gaining intelligence that would save American lives.
Pat told me that [3 words redacted] should immediately leave the location and go to a nearby city to wait for instructions. He was going to consult with the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, on how best to proceed. Frank, the CTC polygrapher, joined us. As [1 word redacted] walked around the city, Frank told [1 word redacted], “Hiring that guy was the worst thing I have done.” There was regret and shame in his voice.
[1 word redacted] visited the local CIA station. [1 word redacted] had built a great relationship with all the officers. For the most part, they were on the same page as [1 word redacted]. The COS made it clear to [3 words redacted] that he was apprehensive about what was happening.
A day later the message came back from Mueller: “We don’t do that.” Pat ordered [1 word redacted] to leave the location immediately and return to the United States. [1 word redacted] packed up and flew back to New York.
[1 word redacted] didn’t. When he reported through his chain of command and said he was going to leave, he was told to hold off leaving untilfurther instruction. [1 word redacted] reported through his usual channel—to headquarters. [3 words redacted] had different chains of command. [1 word redacted] was afield agent and reported through the New York chain of command. [1 word redacted] wasn’t an operational agent at the time. He was an assigned supervisory agent in headquarters in Washington, and reported through those channels. Other people in headquarters didn’t agree with Pat’s order and saw a need for [1 word redacted] continuing involvement at the site. They allowed [1 word redacted] to stay. [1 word redacted] said: “Look, [1 word redacted], things might change, and they might realize we should be in charge. And if I leave, do you trust these fucking idiots to run the program? Every time they go in, Abu Zubaydah stops talking. We need someone to do the job. What do you think?”
“[1 word redacted], I can’t stay here any longer,” [1 word redacted] told him. “This is out of control, un- American, and downright dangerous. The director agreed that we don’t do this, and Pat ordered us to leave. I’m leaving. But you do what you want.”
“I’m going to stay.”
“Be careful,” [1 word redacted] told him, and said good-bye.
A few weeks later [1 word redacted] returned to Washington for a meeting on Abu Zubaydah. It was only then that Pat found out that [1 word redacted] had stayed. (Pat was based in Washington, and [1 word redacted] returned to New York and so didn’t see him, and no one else briefed him on [1 word redacted]’s decision.) Pat was furious that [1 word redacted] had not followed his orders, and to this day he hasn’t forgiven him. He ordered [1 word redacted] not to return to the location. The FBI would not be party to the harsh techniques.
While others in headquarters disagreed with Pat and felt [1 word redacted] needed to be part of the CTC program, Robert Mueller sided with Pat and [1 word redacted]. He understood that things had already gone too far, and that those pushing these techniques were not prepared to turn back. And he had the final say. [1 word redacted] stayed in Washington. That was the end of the FBI’s involvement in Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation.
After [1 word redacted] left, Boris had to keep introducing harsher and harsher methods, because Abu Zubaydah and other terrorists were trained to resist them. In a democracy such as ours, there is a glass ceiling on harsh techniques that the interrogator cannot breach, so a detainee can eventually call the interrogator’s bluff. And that’s what Abu Zubaydah did.
This is why the EIT proponents later had to order Abu Zubaydah to be waterboarded again, and again, and again—at least eighty-three times, reportedly. The techniques were in many ways a self-fulfilling prophecy, ensuring that harsher and harsher ones were introduced.
Cruel interrogation techniques not only serve to reinforce what a terrorist has been prepared to expect if captured; they give him a greater sense of control and predictability about his experience, and strengthen his resistance. By contrast, the interrogation strategy that [3 words redacted] employed—engaging and outwitting the terrorist—confuses him and leads him to cooperate. The art of interview and interrogation is a science, a behavioral science, and [1 word redacted] were successful precisely because we had it down to a science.
Evidence gained from torture is unreliable. There is no way to know whether the detainee is being truthful, or just speaking to either mitigate his discomfort or to deliberately provide false information. Indeed, as KSM, who was subjected to the enhanced techniques, later told the Red Cross: “During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop.”
Boris’s methods were aiming at compliance rather than cooperation. In compliance you get someone to say what he thinks you’ll be happy hearing, not necessarily the truth. A good example of this is the case of Ibn al- Shaykh al-Liby, Abu Zubaydah’s partner at Khaldan. Liby later confessed that he “decided he would fabricate any information the interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government].” For the same reason, after undergoing waterboarding, Abu Zubaydah “confessed” to being the number three in al-Qaeda, which was a lie and a dead end for the investigators. A 2006 investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) found that the CIA relied heavily on information from Liby to assess connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda. This information played a crucial role in making the Bush administration’s case for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, outlined in Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN weeks before the invasion.
In contrast, the Informed Interrogation Approach yields information that is accurate, actionable, and useful in our legal process. A major problem with Boris’s techniques is that they ignore the endgame. After getting intelligence from terrorists, at some point we have to prosecute them. We can’t hold people indefinitely. Whether it is one year later or ten years later, eventually a trial becomes necessary; otherwise they’ll have to be released. But information gained from torture is inadmissible in court. Even in military commissions—courts run and staffed by military officers, with rules and requirements different from those of regular courts—it is problematic.
[1 word redacted] had a conversation with Ed about this, and [1 word redacted] asked him, “What’s the endgame with Abu Zubaydah after using these techniques?”
“I guess they intend that he’ll go to a military commission.”
“Military commissions may have a lower standard of evidence than regular courts,” [1 word redacted] replied, “but we both know that they’re not kangaroo courts.”
Ed and [1 word redacted] were familiar with the operation in Guantanamo Bay, and the preparation used in other cases for military commissions. Already, in early 2002, military lawyers were telling investigators to be careful with evidence, and to keep notes. There was also the discovery process; and anything [1 word redacted] had [1 word redacted] were required to share with the defense. It was clear to [1 word redacted] that even in a military commission, evidence gained from harsh techniques wouldn’t be admissible. Ed agreed.
Coercive interrogations are also slow. [1 word redacted] were spent on each unsuccessful technique, with nothing to show for it. [1 word redacted] were, in effect, playing right into the hands of the enemy. The Manchester Manual instructs captured terrorists to hold off answering questions for forty-eight hours, so that their comrades can change safe houses and phone numbers, even flee the country. There is always the possibility of a “ticking time bomb” scenario hanging over any interrogation of a terrorist, which is why wasting minutes or hours, let alone whole days, is completely unacceptable.
A July 29, 2009, report by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) stated that Boris’s techniques “were not expected or intended to produce immediate results. Rather, the goal of the CIA interrogation program was to condition the detainee gradually in order to break down his resistance to interrogation.” I wonder if the person who wrote the word “gradually” had any idea of the urgency of counterterrorist operations.
I later learned that Boris’s path from being an independent contractor with no interrogation or Islamic
