Sunday's Washington Post has a great article by Peter Finn and Joby Warrick about the first high-value captive waterboarded by the CIA: Abu Zubaida. The title of the article really says it all: Detainee's Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots - Waterboarding, Rough Interrogation of Abu Zubaida Produced False Leads, Officials Say
This is not shocking, but it is confirmation of what all of the experts on torture have said all along: torture doesn't work. And now the full stories and hard evidence of the idiotic and criminal activities carried out by the Jack Bauer wannabes of the Bush administration is finally coming out.
The article is stunningly depressing. Abu Zubaida - whose given name was Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein - was certainly a jihadist, and possibly connected to some anti-American plots. In short, he may have been quite a bad guy. His name turned up a lot in Al Qaeda communication traffic apparently because he served as "a kind of travel agent for those seeking" jihadist training, and the CIA identified him as an important person to capture and interrogate.
So what happened once they got him? He was tortured, of course. Waterboarded.
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.
Apparently the information he gave up to the CIA early in his interrogations wasn't thought to be sufficient.
Frustrated, the Bush administration ratcheted up the pressure -- for the first time approving the use of increasingly harsh interrogations, including waterboarding.
And by using those techniques, any hope of prosecuting him went out the window - because under any civilized system of laws - and our system of laws certainly claims to be civilized - evidence that is obtained through torture is generally not admissible in a court of law.
But it's even worse than simply losing a potential prosecution. Torture almost never produces reliable intelligence (this is among the MANY reasons that the US Army forbids it as an aspect of interrogation). Torture is designed primarily to harm, to break, to humiliate and dehumanize the subject. It achieves that goal quite well. When tortured, many people do what ever they can to try to stop the misery. And once the Bush administration started torturing Abu Zabaida, he started talking. A lot.
Abu Zubaida's revelations triggered a series of alerts and sent hundreds of CIA and FBI investigators scurrying in pursuit of phantoms. The interrogations led directly to the arrest of Jose Padilla, the man Abu Zubaida identified as heading an effort to explode a radiological "dirty bomb" in an American city. Padilla was held in a naval brig for 3 1/2 years on the allegation but was never charged in any such plot. Every other lead ultimately dissolved into smoke and shadow, according to high-ranking former U.S. officials with access to classified reports.
"We spent millions of dollars chasing false alarms," one former intelligence official said.
So there we go - millions wasted, a possible genuine prosecution thwarted, our national reputation hopelessly tattered in the eyes of the world. Heckuva job! Ugh... I've got to take a shower now. For those who can stomach it, go read the whole article.