Steven Bradbury, 30 May 2005, p. 31:
28 This is not to say that the interrogation program has worked perfectly. According to the IG Report, the CIA, at least initially could not always distinguish detainees had information but were successfully resisting interrogation from those who did not actually have the information. See IG Report 83-85. On at least one accasion, this may have resulted in what might be deemed in retrospect to have been the unnecessary use of enhanced techniques. On that occasion, although the on-scene interrogation team judged Zubaydah to be compliant elements within CIA Headquarters still believed he was witholding information. [REDACTED] See id. at 84. At the direction of CIA Headquaters, interrogators therefore used the waterboard one more time on Zubaydah. [REDACTED] See id. at 84-85.
This is a disgusting revelation, even by today's standards. It means that CIA HQ pressed for the rougher treatment of a detainee against the recommendations of the torturers interrogators themselves.
Just think about that.
This newest detail fits in with what we already knew, that Bush himself was personally interested tormenting him in a vain attempt to extract everything he believed he knew:
Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports.
It seems to me that the idea of torture being a "top-down" process makes the most sense. After all, if it's one thing that the social sciences have taught us, it is much easier to do the unspeakable when one is simply "following orders."