CNSNews.com CIA Confirms: Waterboarding 9/11 Mastermind Led to Info that Aborted 9/11-Style Attack on Los Angeles
Earlier this week, former Vice President Dick Cheney slammed the Obama administration for failing to release memos that prove that enhanced interrogation techniques produced positive results: they had led to information that helped the CIA uncover terrorist plots, Cheney said.
Today, the CIA confirmed that waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – the man who masterminded the 9/11 attacks – led to information that aborted a “9/11-style attack on Los Angeles.”
The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) — including the use of waterboarding — caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.
Before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.”
According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack — which KSM called the “Second Wave”– planned “ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.”
KSM initially refused to cooperate with the CIA. After he was waterboarded several times (as much as 183 times in one month according to some) he talked, however.
If true – and there is no reason to suspect that the CIA is lying – this is important information. It should certainly be part of the debate about enhanced interrogation techniques and about whether or not the CIA was right to use them on some high profile prisoners.
Having said that, what matters to most of those who oppose these techniques is the act itself, not the possible positive results they produce. Preventing this attack was obviously a good thing, but I have to wonder whether they could not have convinced KSM to talk without subjecting him to waterboarding. Where there no other ways?
And if not, should the CIA go ahead and do it? Does a nation lose its soul when it allows waterboarding, which I consider to be torture – especially if repeated so often? These are legitimate questions.
An un-named CIA official confirmed to them…yeah, right.
The trouble is, key figures from the second wave were arrested even before KSM was, and the “second wave was only in its most preliminary stagesput when KSM put it on hold immediately after 9/11, with no targets even selected. So there was in fact, by KSM’s own testimony, nothing to prevent.
Oops. Credibility Nil.
Damn, Cernig. Beat me to it.
Also, the possibility of launching a “9/11-style attack” died on 9/11. After that, the conventional wisdom that you keep your head down and your mouth shut during a hijacking went out the window.
In the link below, the Bush administration claimed to break up that plot in 2002. KSM wasn’t captured and subsequently waterboarded until March of 2003.
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070523.html
I think it all hinges on the presence of evidence of an imminent threat. If the lives of thousands – or tens of thousands – are at great stake, the failure to act is potentially more damaging than not. If 50,000 died because KSM wasn’t waterboarded, then the price of outrage would have been too high.
From what I have been able to discover, there is no evidence that any such scenario has yet emerged in the real world. The “ticking bomb” scenario remains in the exclusively realm of TV and movies. It certainly does not constitute justification for waterboarding someone 183 times over the course of a month.
In times of true emergency when confronted with an existential threat, laws can and must be broken. But that is extremely rare AND when it does occur, we don’t pretend that the laws weren’t broken. Instead, we acknowledge that the law was broken and we require that the law-breakers specifically present their justification or “affirmative defense”. If in fact those who waterboarded KSM and others believe that they have an affirmative defense, they should be required to offer it, no?
My objections to a punitive system for accountability are that it would be corrupted and hijacked by politics. But I do concede the legitimacy of concerns that should be addressed in some way. Perhaps some kind of truth commission might be the only option, provided that it was established in a way that had stringent limits on how the information obtained could be used (blanket criminal and civil immunity for those that testify fully and truthfully) and very strong requirements for bipartisanship (50/50 split, not circus trials or star chambers or transparent charade of bipartisanship like the 9/11 commission and the Iraq Study Group turned out to be).
I would additionally add to Jason’s comments that it took 183 times and a month to get anything out of him. If the threat were really that imminent, people would already be dead.
That might seem like evidence that even harsher tactics are needed, but like Jason said, this isn’t TV. 24 isn’t real. Most attacks that have been stopped (the ones we know of anyway) seem to have been in the planning stages. Nothing like what you see on TV, where the next attack is happening in half an hour.
I’d also note that real world intelligence is a lot better than TV ever is. Nobody talks about it, but in 24-land, they have the worst intelligence community I’ve ever seen. In seven years, not once have they ever seen it coming. In the real world, the people would have probably staged a revolution by now due to that incompetence.
Don’t be foolish. This guy does not view Americans as human. He views Americans as immoral heathens. This is why he joined his group. Do not think you could have reasoned with him. You’d have better luck reasoning with a terminator.
Bob, it’s been done. Maybe not at the highest levels, but it has been done. And it wasn’t reasoning, but gaining rapport with your captive. It lead to the killing of the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.