May 16, 2009
FORMER vice president Dick Cheney and others have sought to justify the torture of suspected terrorists by claiming it was necessary to obtain actionable intelligence, did not conflict with US and international law, and was needed to safeguard national security. These claims were shredded Wednesday in testimony before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee by Philip Zelikow, former State Department counselor in the Bush administration, and Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who successfully interrogated a key Al Qaeda captive without resort to physical abuse.
These two insiders left no doubt that the Bush administration's "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment of detainees, practices forbidden in the US Army Field Manual, violated international law and US statutes while doing more harm than good in the struggle against Al Qaeda terrorists.Neither witness called for prosecuting the interrogators. But they offered devastating criticisms of the practice. Soufan explained how counterproductive violent interrogations were, and Zelikow recounted arguments inside the Bush administration about the legality and wisdom of the techniques.
Soufan described his successful use of the nonviolent Informed Interrogation Approach prescribed in the Army Field Manual to elicit intelligence from the Al Qaeda captive Abu Zubaydah. But when a CIA team led by an agency contractor arrived, Zubaydah was subjected to harsh treatment - and stopped talking. After Soufan was allowed to resume his own approach, the terrorist once more revealed crucial information about Al Qaeda.
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