If there were full public knowledge of the extent to which the political leadership of the CIA (in any administration) is driven by ego, frustration, and base level politicking, we'd have eliminated it a long time ago. That, at least, is the conclusion of anyone who has lived through the George W. Bush/Richard Cheney leadership of that agency. The FBI, the CIA's bureaucratic kin and frequent rival, has looked at the CIA's handling (and waterboarding) of Abu Zubaida and said "crap."
Al-Qaeda captive Abu Zubaida, whose interrogation videotapes were destroyed by the CIA, remains the subject of a dispute between FBI and CIA officials over his significance as a terrorism suspect and whether his most important revelations came from traditional interrogations or from torture.
While CIA officials have described him as an important insider whose disclosures under intense pressure saved lives, some FBI agents and analysts say he is largely a loudmouthed and mentally troubled hotelier whose credibility dropped as the CIA subjected him to a simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding and to other "enhanced interrogation" measures.
A retired FBI agent, Daniel Coleman, who was involved in some aspects of the Abu Zubaida investigation, is quoted at length today in the Washington Post today. Coleman followed the imprisonment and interrogation of Zubaida and now the controversy about his treatment.
Coleman said reports of Abu Zubaida's statements during his early, traditional interrogation were "consistent with who he was and what he would possibly know." He and other officials said that materials seized from Abu Zubaida's house and other locations, including names, telephone numbers and computer laptops, provided crucial information about al-Qaeda and its network.
But, Coleman and other law enforcement officials said, CIA officials concluded to the contrary that Abu Zubaida was a major player, and they saw any lack of information as evidence that he was resisting interrogation. Much of the threat information provided by Abu Zubaida, Coleman said, "was crap."
"There's an agency mind-set that there was always some sort of golden apple out there, but there just isn't, especially with guys like him," Coleman said.
These were the days, remember, when it was becoming very clear that President Bush had substituted invasion of Iraq for any definitive action against bin Laden. No relevant targets were being hit, no successes available to report. Everyone that US intelligence picked up who had any discernible relation to bin Laden or "Islamic terrorists" was a major card in that deck of most-wanted.
Having Zubaida in custody was a poke in the eye of "America's enemies." Yup. Ego. Frustration. And base-level politicking -- the basest. Extraordinary rendition, waterboarding, and any other forms of inhuman behavior follow these quite naturally.
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