I have been using the show 24 in two previous posts as a
medium for engaging the question of torture. The story line of 24’s season 7 involved the, law abiding
but not up for the task, FBI and the decommissioned CTU (counter terrorism
unit) that throughout the season proves to be indispensible and is thus
partially revived. The FBI is
shown holding the moral high ground, but that is its depicted weakness. In not being willing to adapt its
morals it was, in essence, guilty of sacrificing innocent people to thugs.
Fox present a popular storyline. Their material for interagency conflict around handling counterintelligence has origins. I do believe that there are
alternatives to this story. And the following account that I'll share can be corroborated in multiple sources; I will primarily use, University of Wisconsin’s professor of history,
Alfred McCoy’s synthesis of the material here. I recommend his book “A Question of
Torture: CIA Interrogation, From
the Cold War to the War on Terror” for a non-sensational dealing with this
subject matter. The primary actors in this account involve the FBI, the CIA and head of an Al Qaeda training camp, Ibn al-Sheikh
al-Libi.
In November 2001 Pakistan turned over Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi,
head of an Al Qaeda training camp in Khalden, Afghanistan, to the US forces in
Kabul. The FBI was the agency in
charge of interrogating Al Qaeda arrests.
Veteran FBI agent Jack Cloonan, on a secure line from New York to field
agents in Kabul, says “Do yourself a favor, read the guy his rights. It may be old fashioned, but this will
come out if we don’t. It may take
ten years, but it will hurt you, and the bureau’s reputation, if you don’t. Have it stand as a shining example of
what we feel is right.”
The FBI operatives go to work using their standard
procedures of building rapport with the convict in their interrogations. And Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi “starts
talking about [shoe-bomber Richard] Reid and Moussaoui. They’re getting good stuff, and
everyone’s getting the raw 302’s [interview summaries]—the agency, the
military, the director. But for
some reason, the CIA chief of station in Kabul is taking issue with our
approach.” A bureaucratic
battle erupted between the CIA and the FBI over this prized captive. Complaints from CIA in Kabul were sent
to Cofer Black at Langley, which sent CIA director Tenet to the White House,
where the CIA won control of al-Libi.
Cloonan recalled that the “CIA officers come in, start shackling al-Libi
up and gag him”. An FBI
agent on the scene says a CIA officer tells Libi “You’re going to Cairo, you
know. Before you get there I’m
going to find your mother and [expletives]”.
Al-Libi was flown to Egypt through a CIA program some call
“extraordinary rendition”. Where
one US official involved says, “We don’t kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they
can kick the [expletive] out of them.”
Here is the report from a declassified CIA cable on one of al-Libi’s interrogation sessions in Egypt. The
report says: “According to al-Libi,
the foreign government service, ‘stated that the next topic was al-Qa'ida's
connections with Iraq. . . . This was a subject about which he said he knew
nothing and had difficulty even coming up with a story." Al-Libi indicated
that his interrogators did not like his responses and then "placed him in
a small box approximately 50cm X 50cm." He claimed he was held in the box
for approximately 17 hours. When he was let out of the box, al-Libi claims that
he was given a last opportunity to "tell the truth." When al-Libi did
not satisfy the interrogator, al-Libi claimed that "he was knocked over
with an arm thrust across his chest and he fell on his back." Al-Libi told
CIA debriefers that he then "was punched for 15 minutes." -- sourced
to CIA operational cable February 5, 2004.
Al-Libi told debriefers that “after the beating,” he was
again asked about the connection with Iraq and this time he came up with a
story that three al-Qa’ida members went to Iraq to learn about nuclear
weapons. Al-Libi said that he used
the names of real individuals associated with al-Qa’ida so that he could
remember the details fo his fabricated story and make it more believable to the
foreign intelligence service.
Al-Libi noted that “this pleased his [foreign] interrogators, who
directed that Al-Libi be taken back to a big room, vice the 50 square
centimeter box and given food.”
On October 7th, 2002, President Bush in a speech building the case that Saddam Hussein’s regime poses an imminent threat to US national security based on Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi's alleged testimony, stated, “We’ve learned that Iraq has
trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases.”
Four months later,
on February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell (who I greatly
respect) made the same claim in his speech to the UN Security Council, in an
attempt to gain support for invading Iraq. “I can trace the story of a senior
terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these [chemical and
biological] weapons to al-Qaeda,” Powell said, adding, “Fortunately, this
operative is now detained, and he has told his story.” As a Newsweek report in 2007
explained, Powell did not identify al-Libi by name, but CIA officials — and a
Senate Intelligence Committee report — later confirmed that he was referring to
al-Libi. Both Al-Libi’s story and
the connections between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein have been proven false. Powell later called the speech a "blot" on his record remiss that he was not given all available intelligence and analysis. The linking of Al-Qaeda and Iraq through al-Libi's story is what is referred to as the “intelligence failure” leading up to the Iraq war.
Cloonan’s longtime
FBI colleague in counterterrorism, Dan Coleman, was disgusted when he
heard about Libi’s false confession. “It was ridiculous for interrogators to
think Libi would have known anything about Iraq,” he said. “I could have told
them that. He ran a training camp. He wouldn’t have
had anything to do with
Iraq. Administration officials were always pushing us to come up with links,
but there weren’t any. The reason they got bad information is that they beat it
out of him. You never get good information from someone that way.
On Meet the
Press on Sept. 16, 2001, in response to the devastating attacks five days
earlier, then vice President Dick Cheney stated, "We'll have to work sort
of the dark side, if you will.... A lot of what needs to be done here will have
to be done quietly...."
In coding to the actualization of Cheney's predictions, Cofer Black, then
director of the CIA’s counter- terrorism unit, testified before Congress in
early 2002, stating, “There was a before- 9/11 and an after-9/11 . . . .After 9/11 the
gloves came off.” Cofer Black was
involved in making sure Al-Libi’s interrogation be transferred from the FBI to
the CIA.
This interagency dispute
between the FBI and CIA about how to negotiate counterterrorism puts different
ideologies on display. To me this account illustrates different ideological
presuppositions and the reality that what we truly believe comes out under
pressure. Rather, than the notion that what we believe can be temporarily suspended given certain circumstances.
The decision to
“take off the gloves” with Al-Libi or to “read this guy his rights”, I submit,
was less about an unavoidable necessity (we didn’t have any other choice)
and more about particular beliefs about what is necessary. And these preexisting beliefs (stated, unstated, realized or unconscious) reveal
the story that captures our imaginations and guides us in making our decisions both
in times of peace and pressure.
Two weeks ago Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi was found dead in a Lybian prison. I rarely hear these stories of things done "quietly". I know I have to admit that when I hear someone say the gloves are going to come off, I feel a bit reassured that somehow at least everything is being done that can be done. But I am starting to evaluate this feeling of reassurance and I am beginning to question what things shape my beliefs and my imagination. Under pressure, who I am I, and whose ideology am I and will I put on display?
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