CHAPTER 39
Though hundreds of thousands of vacationers and business travelers passed through Orlando International Airport every year, there was something unsettling about the man who had just arrived from London on Virgin Atlantic Flight 15. As he approached immigration control, Muhammed al-Qahtani presented a Saudi passport. When questioned by customs agents he revealed that he did not have a return ticket or a hotel reservation, and he refused to give the identity of the individual he said was picking him up. Though he carried nearly twenty-eight hundred dollars in cash, he had no credit cards. Qahtani did not seem the type to visit Disney World.
“He gave me the creeps,” a suspicious Immigration and Naturalization official later testified to the 9/11 Commission, saying that he had the bearing of “a hit man.”1 Before long Qahtani felt he had entertained enough questioning about his travel plans. He withdrew his application for entry and caught the next flight back to London, then to Dubai, on August 4, 2001. He left the INS agent with an ominous three words: “I’ll be back.”2
That December, as winter closed in on the mountain passes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Qahtani made his way to the al-Qaida nest in Tora Bora. As U.S. and Northern Alliance forces stepped up their pummeling of the cave complexes, its murderous denizens, including Qahtani, fled to Pakistan’s tribal areas. But along with some two dozen other terrorist suspects, he was captured by Pakistani forces, who handed him over to our military on the Afghanistan side of the border.
As he was questioned by American military interrogators and intelligence officials, Qahtani claimed he had traveled to Afghanistan to “practice falconry”—a fiction that he was later forced to abandon when he couldn’t provide any details about the sport.3Military interrogators judged him to be a high threat to our troops there and a possible threat for more terrorist attacks in the United States. Suspected of ties to senior al-Qaida figures, Qahtani was designated detainee number 063 and transported to Guantánamo Bay in February 2002.
At Guantánamo, the pieces began to fall together. Qahtani, investigators learned, had trained at the al-Faruq training camp near Kandahar “for the purpose of participating in jihad, which he deemed a religious obligation.”4 He was trained to fire small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. Intelligence officials then discovered Qahtani’s failed attempt to enter the United States at the Orlando airport shortly before 9/11. They learned that the man who had been waiting to meet him there was Muhammed Attah, ringleader of the 9/11 attacks.5 Investigators also uncovered that Qahtani had placed several phone calls with a calling card associated with Muhammed Attah, to another Saudi, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, a financier of the attacks.6 Hawsawi had dropped Qahtani off at the airport in Dubai.7
American intelligence officials came to believe Qahtani had been trained to become a weapon himself—as the fifth and final “muscle” hijacker on United Flight 93.8 Through the courage and heroism of the passengers who attacked the hijackers onboard—and possibly in part because that team of terrorists was one man short—Flight 93 crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, rather than its likely objective of the White House or the U.S. Capitol building. Had the immigration officer not been sharp enough to dissuade Qahtani from entering the United States just weeks before, the Flight 93 hijacking might have succeeded in finding its target.
Qahtani’s story is a vivid example of the complex moral questions that we faced in developing interrogation policies for prisoners in U.S. custody. A senior al-Qaida operative implicated in the worst terrorist attack in history was in DoD custody. Qahtani potentially possessed a treasure trove of intelligence information, including perhaps facts about future attacks planned against Americans. But like many senior al-Qaida officials, he was proving resistant to questioning. The issue ultimately made its way to my office.
By the late fall of 2002, the first anniversary of 9/11 had come and gone without another act of terrorism on American soil—a fact that in itself was a marvel, and in my view a result of President Bush’s effort to go on offense against the enemy. Still intelligence sources around the world were warning of new attacks. Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s top deputy, released a tape recording in which he pledged to “continue targeting the keys of the American economy.”9 Al-Qaida terrorists launched attacks in Tunisia and Pakistan over the summer. In September, FBI agents outside of Buffalo, New York, arrested a group of Yemeni Americans, soon called the Lackawanna Six, who were later convicted of providing material support to al-Qaida. In October, bombs tore through nightclubs in Bali, killing 202 and injuring hundreds more. In the Washington, D.C., area, the so-called D.C. snipers terrorized the region; for three weeks no one knew whether or not their attacks were connected in some way to overseas terror groups. The system, in the parlance of the intelligence community, was “blinking red.” But little intelligence was being obtained from military detainees.
The Defense Department was neither organized nor trained to elicit information from terror suspects. During the decade of lean defense budgets in the 1990s our government had not only cut combat forces, it also had furloughed military interrogators and experts in human intelligence. Because of the urgency and importance of obtaining information from detainees to help us prevent future 9/11s, the task was to develop interrogation guidelines, clarify rules and regulations, and improve our human intelligence-gathering capabilities to fit the unconventional and protracted first war of the twenty first century.
Military interrogators at Guantánamo first used traditional interrogation methods honed in conventional conflicts and designed for use with POWs protected by the Third Geneva Convention. Since the privileges of Geneva POW status did not apply to unlawful combatants such as war on terrorism detainees, interrogators had more flexibility.
Army Field Manual 34–52 prescribed guidelines and broad doctrines governing interrogation but did not prescribe specific techniques. It gave broad latitude for interrogators in some areas—arguably too much—while little in others. The American military’s approach for decades was to try to build trust with enemy prisoners. Military interrogators were trained in a combination of rapport-building techniques through which the prisoners might eventually choose of their own free will to provide useful information. By early 2002, however, it became clear that rapport-building techniques were not succeeding with key al-Qaida terrorists. “We saw firsthand in Afghanistan how ineffective schoolhouse methods were in getting prisoners to talk,” two military interrogators concluded.10 Some of the detainees had clearly undergone interrogation-resistance training. Al-Qaida fighters by and large scoffed at the efforts of Americans to promote rapport, except if they could use those efforts for deception.
Al-Qaida operatives also knew that the barbaric methods they employed—burning victims with cigarettes, electrocution, and cutting off people’s heads with knives—were not employed by the United States. Thus, there was little incentive for detained terrorists to provide useful information to us, and every reason for them to stonewall and delay.
But delay held risks for us in the post-9/11 environment. The American intelligence community’s ability to collect reliable information through interrogations of captured enemies could be the difference between success and failure in preventing more attacks and defeating our Islamist extremist enemies. Interrogations led to some of the most impressive successes in the war on terror, including: the capture of Saddam Hussein; the capture of two dozen terrorists in Germany who were plotting an attack against Ramstein Air Base; and the death of the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A revelation by a single detainee could be the key to preventing multiple attacks against the United States and our allies.
On October 11, 2002, the interrogators assigned to Joint Task Force 170 at Guantánamo Bay sent up, through every level in their chain of command, a request to use some techniques they believed were lawful and humane but which would go beyond the Army Field Manual. Their focus was on one individual in particular—Muhammed al-Qahtani.
Qahtani was more than simply brawn. He appeared to have known about the planning of the 9/11 operation. He was familiar with the inner workings and high-level personalities of al-Qaida. He was also a determined liar. Like many al-Qaida members and Taliban personnel captured early in the conflict, he pretended to be an inoffensive bad-luck guy indiscriminately swept up by U.S. forces in the fog of war. But an innocent bystander he was not. Qahtani aspired to the glory of jihad against America, and it was possible he held the key to saving a great many American lives from future jihadist operations. U.S. military commanders at Guantánamo had a responsibility to try to gather that information.
For months, FBI agents made no headway using law enforcement interview methods with Qahtani. According to a DoJ inspector general report, the FBI agents exceeded their own traditional rules and policy guidelines by isolating and threatening him.11
The military interrogators and their commanding officer, Major General Michael Dunlavey, put together a list of techniques they thought might be effective in inducing Qahtani to cooperate. Their request moved up the chain of command to the four-star SOUTHCOM combatant commander, Army General James T. Hill. On October 25, 2002, General Hill forwarded the request to General Myers.
“[D]espite our best efforts,” Hill wrote, “some detainees have tenaciously resisted our current interrogation methods.”12 He requested consideration of interrogation methods that went beyond the Army Field Manual, but which might still be implemented in ways that were legal and humane. A combatant commander with initiative, General Hill wanted to provide his interrogators with all the tools that were lawful and appropriate. Hill was leaning forward. He wasn’t to be faulted for that. He flagged the fact that there were complexities here, and accordingly he was seeking clarification up his chain of command.
The additional techniques proposed by the Guantánamo interrogators fell into three categories. The techniques ranged from yelling in Category I, to deprivation of light and sound and other measures that would cause a temporary sense of isolation and disorientation in Category II. One technique included changing the detainee’s regular hot meals to standard MREs (meals ready to eat).13 I found it strange that serving detainees the same meals our soldiers ate could be called an enhanced interrogation procedure. Category III involved more aggressive and controversial techniques, which SOUTHCOM proposed only for Muhammed al-Qahtani. The techniques included making the detainee believe that he, or a family member, might suffer death or severe pain if he failed to cooperate, exposure to cold, and the “[u]se of mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger, and light pushing.”14 Category III also included the “[u]se of a wet towel and dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation.”15 This latter practice became known as waterboarding. Each of the Category II and III techniques proposed by SOUTHCOM would require explicit review and permission at senior military levels before they were employed by the interrogators.
I did not believe it would be appropriate for anyone in Defense Department custody to be waterboarded or stripped and subjected to cold temperatures, and I rejected those techniques.16 Military interrogators were not trained to do those things. There were important military traditions of restraint that I intended to preserve. I was deeply uncomfortable with nudity and any techniques that had a tinge of sexual humiliation. As I remarked in meetings when the treatment of detainees was discussed, I believed the American people would not approve of anything of that sort. When the SOUTHCOM interrogators suggested removal of comfort items or clothing, I read that not as referring to nudity but as part of a set of measures to make a recalcitrant interrogation subject feel disconnected from familiar items that gave him comfort and stability, such as particular books or favored items of apparel. Changes in sleeping and other ordinary daily scheduling could also cause a captured terrorist combatant to let down his guard.
General Hill’s October 25 request for additional techniques went through several weeks of policy and legal review at various levels, both civilian and military, before it arrived on my desk. On November 27, Jim Haynes, the Department’s general counsel, sent a memo to me with his recommendations. “I have discussed this with the Deputy [Paul Wolfowitz], Doug Feith and General Myers,” Haynes wrote, adding: “I believe that all join in my recommendation that, as a matter of policy, you authorize the Commander of USSOUTHCOM to employ, in his discretion, only Categories I and II and the fourth technique listed in Category III (‘Use of mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger, and light pushing’).” Haynes concluded, “Our Armed Forces are trained to a standard of interrogation that reflects a tradition of restraint.”17 He recommended against other Category III proposals put forward by SOUTHCOM, including creating fear of death or severe pain, exposure to cold, and waterboarding.
I agreed and approved the recommendations. At the bottom of the Haynes memo I scrawled a note that referred to the Category II technique that could require a detainee under certain circumstances to stand for four hours while interrogators questioned him.
“However, I stand for 8–10 hours a day,” I wrote. “Why is standing limited to 4 hours?”18 My offhand comment was a statement of fact. I used a stand-up desk and spent much of the day on my feet. The note received enormous attention when detainee abuse became a major public issue. It was a mistake to make that personal observation to my general counsel. It certainly was not a signal to the Department that it would be okay to stretch the rules, as some have suggested.19
Pentagon lawyers had determined that the interrogation methods I approved in that memo were both legal and humane. I believed then—and I believe today—that they were. However, the application of any interrogation technique requires care and the supervision of experts. Any technique that is legal and humane on its own could conceivably be applied in ways that are not legal and not humane if, for example, it is done repeatedly, over long periods of time or used in an inappropriate combination with other techniques. That is why detailed interrogation plans have to be approved at the appropriate levels of military command. Plan specifics were devised, as they should have been, by experienced interrogators and their commanders at Gitmo, not by officials in Washington far removed from day-to-day management of the interrogation operations.
Moreover, I understood that the techniques I authorized were intended for use only with one key individual. General Hill advised that Muhammed al-Qahtani had information that could save American lives. He and others in the chain of command believed additional techniques were warranted. Any proposals to use these methods on others would have to come back up the chain of command for review.*
Many claims have been made about the usefulness of various interrogation strategies and methods. In the case of Qahtani, the reports from the interrogators say the approved techniques yielded important information. Qahtani ultimately acknowledged that he was an al-Qaida member and had met with bin Laden. He admitted he knew the 9/11 terrorists and was sent to the United States by Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, the chief planner of the attacks.20 Qahtani acknowledged he knew Richard Reid, the terrorist who plotted to blow up an airliner with explosives in his shoes, and also knew Jose Padilla, who was thought to have plans to bomb apartment buildings in Chicago.21 Qahtani provided useful information about al-Qaida’s planning for 9/11, its methods of cross-border infiltration, and information about bin Laden’s bodyguards. Much of the information from Qahtani’s interrogations remains classified, but the Schlesinger and Brown panel concluded that the interrogation was critical in “gaining important and time-urgent information.”22 One military report by two general officers found that Qahtani “ultimately provided extremely valuable intelligence.”23
Qahtani’s interrogation did not lead, as some critics have alleged, to the abuse at Abu Ghraib, or anywhere else for that matter. “We found no link between approved interrogation techniques and detainee abuse,” Vice Admiral Albert Church concluded from his independent investigation of detainee operations.* He noted that “the Office of the Secretary of Defense was a moderating force that cut back on the number and types of techniques under consideration.”25 The Church report stated of Guantánamo Bay:
[D]etainees were more likely to suffer injury from playing soccer or volleyball during recreational periods than they were from interactions with interrogators or guards. . . . In our view, the extremely low rate of abuse at GTMO is largely due to strong command oversight, effective leadership, and adequate training on detainee handling and treatment.26
At the time, my approval of Haynes’ December 2002 cover memo, in response to SOUTHCOM’s request for additional interrogation techniques for Qahtani, was uncontroversial. My decision to accept the DoD general counsel’s recommendations, approving some interrogation strategies sought by General Hill but rejecting others, was done with the concurrence of senior Defense Department officials, both military and civilian.
It was not until January 10, 2003, thirty-nine days After I had approved a limited number of the proposed techniques, that Haynes informed me that some military lawyers had expressed concern and suggested that Qahtani’s interrogation plan might be construed as mistreatment. As urgent as it was to obtain terrorism-related intelligence, I was not willing to allow the use of methods that could be reasonably challenged as improper. It made no sense to fight terrorists in a way that might raise questions about our respect for the law and that could ultimately undermine our efforts. When I learned of the concerns, I promptly suspended my prior approval of the additional interrogation techniques.27
I then instructed Haynes to assemble a team to review the interrogation guidelines. I wanted the team to include any and all of those military orcivilian personnel who were concerned about them or the interrogation plan: intelligence officials, defense policy experts, and lawyers from every military service. When I met with the group one weekend in February or March 2003, I told them that I wanted their honest views. They seemed to appreciate that they had been brought into the process, and gave me the clear impression that if they had any concerns, they were being resolved.
In April 2003 the review group we had impaneled reached its conclusions. Their report identified thirty-five techniques that they believed could be used legally for key al-Qaida members under proper interrogation plans.28 After reviewing their report, I authorized only twenty-four of the thirty-five techniques they had recommended. Each of the techniques I approved, I was told, had been unanimously supported by the members of the legal review team, as well as by each of the service secretaries and each of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff involved in the process.*
I was informed that several senior military officials participating in the review expressed concern that my decision was too restrictive, that we might be risking American lives by authorizing only limited interrogation methods and excluding other techniques. Some officials were especially dismayed by my suspension of the methods being employed in the Qahtani case, because they thought they were on the verge of an intelligence breakthrough. However, I wanted an approach that would reflect the best judgment of all of the relevant components of the Department of Defense, military and civilian. The techniques I approved After receiving the April 2003 conclusions did just that.
The subsequent politicized public debate about this subject has obscured a fact of great importance: None of the authorized interrogation methods—either those approved in December 2002 and used on one detainee until I rescinded them, or those that I later approved in April 2003—involved physical or mental pain. None were inhumane. None met any reasonable person’s definition of torture. From start to finish, my goal in interrogation matters was to balance the nation’s need for intelligence against considerations of military tradition and morale. Like all solutions that balance complex and weighty issues, Qahtani’s interrogation was imperfect and not without controversy, but as soon as concerns were raised, I addressed them immediately.
Some two and a half years later, I learned what had happened to Muhammed al-Qahtani during his interrogation.29 I was surprised and troubled. Some of what took place sounded to me as if the interrogation plan may have gone beyond the techniques I had approved. Apparently Qahtani was exposed to cold temperatures at some point, which I had rejected in my authorization. It appears he was stripped and humiliated. The combination and frequency of techniques interrogators had used with Qahtani called into question their appropriateness, at least in my mind. They may not have been in keeping with the intent of my January 2002 order that all detainees in the custody of the Defense Department were to be treated humanely.30
If Qahtani’s true identity had been known at the time of his capture, before he came into DoD custody, it is highly likely the CIA would have assumed responsibility for him, rather than DoD. The Defense Department’s detention operations often are confused with those undertaken by the CIA, but they were two separate sets of activities. At some point in the months After 9/11, the CIA established an interrogation program for high-level al-Qaida operatives captured around the world. Their highly classified program apparently began After Pakistani forces captured senior bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah in a March 2002 gun battle.31 Over the next year, the Agency successfully collected intelligence from Zubaydah and captured and interrogated other senior al-Qaida lieutenants, which eventually led to the capture of the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed.*
As a member of the National Security Council, I was made aware of the Agency’s interrogation program—but as I now understand it, it was not until well After it had been initiated, and well After the senior members of the congressional intelligence committees in Congress, including future Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and others had been briefed.† Along with my colleagues on the NSC I learned that the CIA had developed a series of enhanced techniques to achieve Zubaydah’s cooperation. The CIA’s program employed some of the interrogation methods that I had rejected for use in the Defense Department. We were told the Justice Department had determined that the interrogation techniques the CIA was using—up to and including waterboarding—were legal.
Though the CIA utilized waterboarding and other techniques that I rejected in the Department of Defense, I saw no contradiction. Some techniques that might be appropriate for a very small number of high-value terrorists by a highly trained and professional group of CIA interrogators in a controlled environment were not appropriate for use by military personnel. It would have been unwise to blur the difference between two distinct institutions. Tight limits on interrogation, such as those contained in the Army Field Manual, are appropriate for the U.S. military. Tens of thousands of detainees passed through U.S military custody in Afghanistan and Iraq. Conversely, the CIA was dealing with a small number of key terrorist leaders believed to be senior al-Qaida operatives. CIA personnel were trained to use enhanced interrogation tactics in carefully monitored situations. We didn’t want young military personnel making decisions on interrogating high-level al-Qaida terrorists.33
It was for precisely this reason—the difference between the CIA interrogation program and the military’s detention operations at Guantánamo Bay and in Iraq and Afghanistan—that in the summer of 2006 I became a thorn in the administration’s side. By then the Washington Post had published the news, obtained by a leak, that the CIA was holding senior al-Qaida terrorists in secret prisons around the world.34 In response to the disclosures and the resulting press furor, the CIA and the President’s White House staff wanted to announce that the al-Qaida terrorists were being sent to Gitmo. I argued strongly against the proposed transfer.
There was some logic to the idea of the move. The CIA would be able to close the prisons it had operated in friendly countries abroad—countries that were less than enthusiastic that their cooperation might become public. Increasing pressure from the federal courts and evolving interpretations of international law also threatened the CIA program if it remained in the shadows, a legal limbo that understandably made many in intelligence agencies uncomfortable. And finally, the CIA had no better place to put them.
Still, I believed the Defense Department was in the worst possible position to deal with the public aspects of the CIA’s handling of high-value al-Qaida detainees. We had not been involved in their detention program and would not be able to defend it with the persuasiveness required. Further, the Defense Department was particularly ill suited to take on another burden After the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The military men and women at Guantánamo Bay already were being criticized in the media and in Congress for allegations of abuse (most of which were proven false). I was convinced the military would be damaged further by allegations of detainee mistreatment if the CIA program became conflated with the Department of Defense’s detention operations.
I asked Steve Cambone, the Defense Department’s undersecretary for intelligence, to be the bearer of the news the White House did not want to hear. It was one of many thankless tasks I assigned to Cambone. Steve had an air of reserved intelligence that, when combined with his physical height, could make him seem intimidating to those who did not know his ready wit and warm personal loyalty. But for a problem like this one, it wasn’t a bad thing to have a representative from DoD whom people took seriously. We argued that there needed to be clear lines between the CIA program and the Defense Department program. Critics would ignore the important differences if both the military and CIA detainees were located at Guantánamo.
But the momentum behind the decision was too strong to overcome, even for someone as persistent as Cambone. Though he held the line for months, by late summer it became clear the President favored the transfer. On September 6, 2006, Bush announced that fourteen high-value CIA detainees were on their way to Guantánamo Bay, where they would be confined on the military base run by the Defense Department. In the years that followed, the controversy over the treatment of the CIA detainees only escalated. So did confusion about the many differences between the legal authorities, standards, and operations of the CIA and the Defense Department.
If you ask most Americans how many detainees were waterboarded at Guantánamo, the likely answers range from three to hundreds. The correct answer is zero. When military interrogators at Guantánamo Bay sent up their chain of command a request to use waterboarding in late 2002, I rejected it. To my knowledge, no U.S. military personnel involved in interrogations waterboarded any detainees—not at Guantánamo Bay, or anywhere else in the world.
There is no doubt in my mind that I made the right decision when it came to rejecting the use of waterboarding by U.S. military personnel. Reasonable people can disagree whether it crosses the line into dubious territory.* It is one thing to argue against coercive interrogation techniques on moral grounds—that they are contrary to America’s values and therefore should never be employed. It is quite another to argue against those techniques on practical grounds—that they do not and will not work. While it may make a convenient plank for critics’ arguments against the CIA’s interrogation program, there are inconvenient facts to the contrary that must also be taken into account.*
The men and women of the CIA were given a challenging assignment to interrogate senior al-Qaida operatives. I saw the challenges up close when we discovered that the likely twentieth hijacker of the 9/11 attacks was in Defense Department custody. Administration lawyers fully vetted and approved the CIA’s program, giving them the green light to proceed. The men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency who elicited critical information from well-connected al-Qaida members, deserve our respect, not condemnation. They are patriots, not criminals.