[Richard]

THE TORTURE BUSINESS
CIA Outsourced Development of Interrogation Plan
Der Spiegel
(cont'd)

CIA SECRET PRISON IN THAILAND, APRIL 2002

Only a few days after his arrest, Zubaydah, a Palestinian born in Saudi Arabia, was flown to a CIA secret prison in Thailand, accompanied by FBI agents. One of the FBI men, Ali Soufan, a native of Lebanon and a Muslim who speaks fluent Arabic, moved to the United States in 1987. In 2000, he was involved in an investigation of al-Qaeda's role in the attack on the USS Cole, an American destroyer, in Yemen.

Soufan, in his early 30s at the time, was an advocate of the traditional FBI strategy known as "rapport building," which is based on the notion that an interrogation can only produce the desired results once a rapport has been developed with the prisoner. Soufan dressed the fresh gunshot wounds Zubaydah had received during the arrest. He told Zubaydah that he even knew the nickname he had been given by his mother.

For seven years, Soufan remained silent about his role in the interrogation in Thailand. But last week he decided to give an exclusive interview to Newsweek because "I was in the middle of this, and it's not true that these [aggressive] techniques were effective."

Soufan showed Zubaydah photos of al-Qaida members. When he saw a photo of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the prisoner identified him as the man who had planned and organized the Sept. 11 attacks. Later the Bush administration -- with no justification whatsoever -- would celebrate this piece of information from the FBI interrogation as a significant breakthrough and evidence of the effectiveness of its new interrogation techniques.

A few days later, CIA agents arrived in Thailand. They had brought along James Mitchell, the architect of the new interrogation methods. Suddenly the tone changed dramatically. Mitchell gave orders to intensify Zubaydah's treatment if he did not respond to questions.

One day Soufan, seeing that the prisoner was naked, threw him a towel. Later on, he and Mitchell argued heatedly over the prisoner's treatment. "We're the United States of America, and we don't do that kind of thing," Soufan recalls shouting at Mitchell. He also asked Mitchell who had authorized him to use the aggressive methods. Mitchell responded that he had received approval from the "highest levels" in Washington. All this happened in April 2002, four months before the Bush administration issued its first torture memorandum to legally justify the interrogation techniques.

The FBI finally broke with the CIA on the day Soufan discovered a wooden box that looked like a coffin. Was it meant to be used for a mock burial? Soufan called his superior in Washington. The then FBI Director Robert Mueller decided that his staff would no longer take part in these interrogations and ordered Soufan and the rest of the FBI- team to return to Washington. Mitchell and the CIA had free rein from then on.

Zubaydah later told Red Cross staff that he had been repeatedly locked into the box, where he had had difficulty breathing. He said he had also been thrown against a wall repeatedly, prevented from sleeping, doused in ice-cold water and subjected to extremely loud music. He was waterboarded 83 times.

"I was told during this period," he said years later, "that I was one of the first to receive these interrogation techniques, so no rules applied. It felt like they were experimenting and trying out techniques to be used later on other people."

Zubaydah was Mitchell's laboratory experiment. The psychologist allegedly told FBI agents who were present that Zubaydah had to be kept in a cage like a dog, and that it was indeed like an experiment. If dogs were subjected to electroshocks, Mitchell said, they too would give up in the end.

For a short time, the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah were the most well documented of all interrogations. The CIA once had 92 videotapes of the interrogations, which included waterboarding. But 90 of the videos were destroyed in November 2005. This Wednesday, however, FBI agent Soufan is scheduled to testify before the US Senate Judiciary Committee.

SPOKANE, WASHINGTON, APRIL 2009

Business is still going well for Mitchell Jessen & Associates. The company now has 120 employees, and most of them have security clearances at levels normally reserved for government employees. Many former members of the SERE program now work for the company, which now occupies two floors of an office building in downtown Spokane, including the top floor. It is bugproof and equipped with special, high-security doors -- a standard the CIA requires from its civilian contractors.

Abu Zubaydah's attorney, Brent Mickum, plans to file a civil suit against Mitchell and Jessen, unless US President Barack Obama chooses to file criminal charges against the contractors.

When questioned by journalists recently, Mitchell said that he would be happy to talk about these issues, but that a confidentiality agreement he had signed prevents him from doing so.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...624432,00.html