Bush's Exhibit A for Torture

As I wrote for NiemanWatchdog.org in October, the White House has failed to document a single plot that was disrupted based on information gleaned from torture.

And, although most of the news media have allowed Bush to get away with his unsubstantiated narrative until now, the CIA's possibly illegal destruction of videotapes of Zubaida's interrogation is prompting new scrutiny of the matter.

Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus write on the front page of The Washington Post this morning: "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.

"The question of whether Abu Zubaida -- whose real name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein -- was an unstable source who provided limited intelligence under gentle questioning, or a hardened terrorist who cracked under extremely harsh measures, goes to the heart of the current Washington debate over coercive interrogations and torture. . . .

"FBI officials, including agents who questioned him after his capture or reviewed documents seized from his home, have concluded that even though he knew some al-Qaeda players, he provided interrogators with increasingly dubious information as the CIA's harsh treatment intensified in late 2002.

"In legal papers prepared for a military hearing, Abu Zubaida himself has asserted that he told his interrogators whatever they wanted to hear to make the treatment stop."

Eggen and Pincus write that "FBI agents witnessed the use of some harsh tactics on Abu Zubaida, including keeping him naked in his cell, subjecting him to extreme cold and bombarding him with loud rock music.

"'They said, "You've got to be kidding me," ' said [Retired FBI agent Daniel] Coleman, recalling accounts from FBI employees who were there. ' "This guy's a Muslim. That's not going to win his confidence. Are you trying to get information out of him or just belittle him?"' . . .

"Coleman, a 31-year FBI veteran, joined other former law enforcement colleagues in expressing skepticism about Abu Zubaida's importance. Abu Zubaida, he said in an interview, was a 'safehouse keeper' with mental problems who claimed to know more about al-Qaeda and its inner workings than he really did."

And as for all that plot-thwarting, life saving intelligence Zubaida coughed up?

"Much of the threat information provided by Abu Zubaida, Coleman said, 'was crap.'"