The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Gordian Torture Knot

Like you, Emily, I was particularly interested to read Ali Soufan’s OpEd column in the Times today about the ongoing debates over the torture memos. Two things leapt out at me. First, the quote you already cited about traditional interrogation methods being as effective as water boarding. Second, and just as troubling, was this: Soufan contends that the CIA’s use of these techniques actually made it less likely that it could work with the FBI to stop another attack. As Soufan put it:

One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the CIA and FBI, similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.

If this is true, it’s ironic, since as you noted, Emily, some have argued that Soufan himself might have been able to prevent the 9/11 attacks, had the CIA not prevented him. The whole torture question strikes me as the inverse Gordian knot, those “intractable problems” that are solved with a “bold stroke,” as per the myth of Alexander the Great. Torture looked like the bold stroke, but if you accept Soufan’s points—as I’m inclined to—it just tangled us up in more knots.

Soufan Speaks

In the debate raging over whether the Bush administration's torture practices produced valuable intelligence, the voice I'm most interested in, so far, is that of Ali Soufan. He is the FBI detective whom the CIA may have blocked from stopping 9/11, one of the few Arab speakers in the bureau, the guy who was getting Salim Hamdan to talk, according to Jonathan Mahler's book, The Challenge—and then had to relinquish Hamdan in frustration when the government decided to prosecute him. He's an intelligence officer who was close to but not part of the CIA interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

Today Soufan tells us, in a New York Times op-ed, that torturing Abu Zubaydah got us nada. Soufan writes:

There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions—all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

And then he takes apart specific claims for intelligence gains, much as Tim did about the supposed busting of the Liberty Tower plot in L.A., by showing that the timelines don't work. The key information was gleaned by traditional methods before the torture began, or at least before it was approved in the DoJ memos. What now, Marc Thiessen and Dick Cheney? Ball in your court.