I write a weekly column at Partisans and I wanted to share some of my thoughts from this week's column, entitled, Have the torture apologists no shame or decency? I call out people like Peter King and John Yoo, who both, less than 24 hours after the announcement of Bin Laden's death, went out and started giving false accounts of the intelligence trail that led to him. It's bad enough that they advocate so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," but making stuff up in order to take advantage of a moment of national triumph is, I think you'll agree, pretty shameful.
Excerpts and additional commentary below the fold, but first I'd like to give a shout-out to a few other diaries that covered several aspects of this already and that deserve a read. Joan McCarter did an especially nice job covering this. The following diaries debunked many of the lies in real time:
Republicans say torture led U.S. to bin Laden. Facts say otherwise.
Waterboarding did not reveal Osama bin Laden trail
KSM waterboarding led to disinformation, not bin Laden
Joan also wrote a nice diary about former military interrogator Matthew Alexander, who, unlike the torture advocates, bothered to, you know, get his facts straight:
Military interrogator: Torture 'slowed down' effort to find bin Laden
Th0rn also had a diary about Alexander:
Did Torture Help Track Down Osama Bin Laden? An Interrogator's Answer
Now on to my own thoughts.
First up was Rep. Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. On Monday, King was interviewed by Bill O'Reilly, who was surprised to learn from King that it was the waterboarding of KSM that gave the United States the critical piece of intelligence. Only problem? It wasn't true.
Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, bluntly declared in an interview with Bill O’Reilly on Monday, “We obtained that information [leading to Bin Laden] through waterboarding.” King also claimed that the critical piece of intelligence came from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
It is not clear whether King is an idiot or a liar, but what is clear is that his statements on “The O’Reilly Factor” were categorically false and directly contradicted the facts.
According to The New York Times, the trail to Bin Laden led through a man with the pseudonym Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Although he was known to American intelligence officials as far back as 2002, his significance was not understood until a captured Al Qaeda operative named Hassan Ghul identified Kuwaiti as Bin Laden’s courier.
Thus, contrary to King’s account of the intelligence trail, it was Ghul, not Mohammed, who provided the critical seed of information. And unlike Mohammed, who was waterboarded an astonishing 183 times, Ghul was never waterboarded. While it is not clear what other “enhanced interrogation techniques” may have been employed, Ghul was “quite cooperative” and “rough treatment, if [there was] any, was brief,” according to an official quoted by The Times.
Read the full article here.
Sadly, King's lie has been repeated in many quarters. John Yoo, the former Justice Department official, repeated the lie on Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal:
Sunday's success also vindicates the Bush administration, whose intelligence architecture marked the path to bin Laden's door. According to current and former administration officials, CIA interrogators gathered the initial information that ultimately led to bin Laden's death. The United States located al Qaeda's leader by learning the identity of a trusted courier from the tough interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, and his successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi.
But the parade of former Justice Department officials didn't stop there. On Friday, former attorney general Michael Mukasey also repeated the lie in The Journal:
Consider how the intelligence that led to bin Laden came to hand. It began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information—including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden.
The only thing more laughable than the idea that KSM gave up the name of the courier (a demonstrably false claim) is the idea that KSM "broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding." As pretty much any account of the facts will show, KSM, despite being waterboarded 183 times, continued to lie about the courier. Doesn't sound like KSM "broke like a dam" to me.
The other thing that is shocking is that The Wall Street Journal's own account of the intelligence trail backs up the account in The Times:
The key tip on the courier came from an al-Qaeda operative apprehended in Iraq in 2004, Hassan Gul. Mr. Gul pointed to a man known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. In the interrogations of Messrs. Mohammed and al-Libbi, the two Qaeda operative appeared to go to great lengths to hide any connection to the courier, which indicated to intelligence officials that Mr. al-Kuwaiti was a key player.
Yes, that's right, The Wall Street Journal printed not one, but two op-eds that gave an account directly contradicting the facts that The Journal itself had laid out.
So there you go. The lie is out there and it shows no signs of dying. Here's how I summarize this:
Claiming that torture was responsible — as King, Yoo, and others have done — when the facts say otherwise not only diminishes the hard work of so many people, but also tarnishes our values and denigrates the real heroes responsible for finding Bin Laden. It diverts attention from the truly impressive performance of the CIA operatives and Navy Seals who executed a harrowing mission to near perfection. And it belittles the president, who took a great political risk in ordering the operation in lieu of a bombing attack.
It speaks volumes that they could not even wait a full 24 hours before throwing cherished American values under the bus — again — in order to defend an untenable position and, in Yoo’s case, to defend their own shameful roles. If they insist on arguing a deeply immoral position, they ought to start by getting the facts right.
Read the full article here.