How to Keep an Ex-Terrorist Talking - NY Times [View All]

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How to Keep an Ex-Terrorist Talking By BENJAMIN WEISER

The informer was growing terrified about the prospect of testifying against Al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden, he feared, would get to him or his family. Allah, he suspected, was already punishing him; his father was sick and his infant child had died. “Anything I touch, I don’t feel happy,” he said.

But the United States prosecutors and F.B.I. agents who had been hiding him in witness protection since his defection from Al Qaeda reassured him over and over: Think positive. He was probably the safest man in America. Allah would surely support his decision to turn on his fellow terrorists.

Their soothing counsel veered into theology and philosophy and even psychiatry. “Jamal, just look at it this way,” one official explained. “We’re part of the giant therapy group that you’re now going to be involved with, O.K.?”

That exchange in 2000 — disclosed in transcripts that have been filed publicly for the first time — was part of two years’ worth of videotaped talks between federal authorities and Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, a former payroll manager for Osama bin Laden who became the first and most important Qaeda member to cooperate with the government as it began investigating the organization.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/nyregion/09qaeda.html?th&emc=th