May 3, 2011
By SCOTT SHANE and CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — Did brutal interrogations produce the crucial intelligence that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden?
As intelligence officials disclosed the trail of evidence that led to the compound in Pakistan where Bin Laden was hiding, a chorus of Bush administration officials claimed vindication for their policy of “enhanced interrogation techniques” like waterboarding.
Among them was John Yoo, a former Justice Department official who wrote secret legal memorandums justifying brutal interrogations. “President Obama can take credit, rightfully, for the success today,” Mr. Yoo wrote Monday in National Review, “but he owes it to the tough decisions taken by the Bush administration.”
But a closer look at prisoner interrogations suggests that the harsh techniques played a small role at most in identifying Bin Laden’s trusted courier and exposing his hide-out. One detainee who apparently was subjected to some tough treatment provided a crucial description of the courier, according to current and former officials briefed on the interrogations. But two prisoners who underwent some of the harshest treatment — including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times — repeatedly misled their interrogators about the courier’s identity.
The discussion of what led to Bin Laden’s demise has revived a national debate about torture that raged during the Bush years. The former president and many conservatives argued for years that force was necessary to persuade Qaeda operatives to talk. Human rights advocates, and Mr. Obama as he campaigned for office, said the tactics were torture, betraying American principles for little or nothing of value.
Glenn L. Carle, a retired C.I.A. officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002, said in a phone interview Tuesday, that coercive techniques “didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information.” He said that while some of his colleagues defended the measures, “everyone was deeply concerned and most felt it was un-American and did not work.”
Obama administration officials, intent on celebrating Monday’s successful raid, have tried to avoid reigniting a partisan battle over torture.
“The bottom line is this: If we had some kind of smoking-gun intelligence from waterboarding in 2003, we would have taken out Osama bin Laden in 2003,” said Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council. “It took years of collection and analysis from many different sources to develop the case that enabled us to identify this compound, and reach a judgment that Bin Laden was likely to be living there.”
From the moment the first Qaeda suspects were captured, interrogators at both the military’s prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the C.I.A.’s secret prisons were focused on identifying Qaeda members who served as couriers.
“We knew that it was likely that if we were ever to get Osama bin Laden, it would be because we somehow came upon somebody closely associated with him that he trusted,” said Charles D. Stimson, the top Pentagon official on detainee affairs from 2004 to 2007.
In 2002 and 2003, interrogators first heard about a Qaeda courier who used the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, but his name was just one tidbit in heaps of uncorroborated claims.
After the capture in March 2003 of Mr. Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he was subjected to the most harrowing set of the so-called enhanced measures, which included slamming prisoners into walls, shackling them in stress positions and keeping them awake for as long as 180 hours. Like two other prisoners, he was subjected to waterboarding.
According to an American official familiar with his interrogation, Mr. Mohammed was first asked about Mr. Kuwaiti in the fall of 2003, months after the waterboarding. He acknowledged having known him but said the courier was “retired” and of little significance.
In 2004, however, a Qaeda operative named Hassan Ghul, captured in Iraq, gave a different account of Mr. Kuwaiti, according to the American official. Mr. Ghul told interrogators that Mr. Kuwaiti was a trusted courier who was close to Bin Laden, as well as to Mr. Mohammed and to Abu Faraj al-Libi, who had become the operational chief of Al Qaeda after Mr. Mohammed’s capture.
Mr. Kuwaiti, Mr. Ghul added, had not been seen in some time — which analysts thought was a possible indication that the courier was hiding out with Bin Laden.
The details of Mr. Ghul’s treatment are unclear, though the C.I.A. says he was not waterboarded. The C.I.A. asked the Justice Department to authorize other harsh methods for use on him, but it is unclear which were used. One official recalled that Mr. Ghul was “quite cooperative,” saying that rough treatment, if any, would have been brief.
Armed with Mr. Ghul’s account of the courier’s significance, interrogators asked Mr. Mohammed again about Mr. Kuwaiti. He stuck to his story, according to the official.
After Mr. Libi was captured in May 2005 and turned over to the C.I.A., he too was asked. He denied knowing Mr. Kuwaiti and gave a different name for Bin Laden’s courier, whom he called Maulawi Jan. C.I.A. analysts would never find such a person and eventually concluded that the name was Mr. Libi’s invention, the official recalled.
Again, the C.I.A. has said Mr. Libi was not waterboarded, and details of his treatment are not known. But anticipating his interrogation, the agency pressured the Justice Department days after his capture for a new set of legal memorandums justifying the most brutal methods.
Because Mr. Mohammed and Mr. Libi had both steered interrogators away from Mr. Kuwaiti, C.I.A. officials concluded that they must be protecting him for an important reason.
“Think about circles of information — there’s an inner circle they would protect with their lives,” said an American official who was briefed on the C.I.A. analysis. “The crown jewels of Al Qaeda were the whereabouts of Bin Laden and his operational security.”
The accumulating intelligence about Mr. Kuwaiti persuaded C.I.A. officials to stay on his trail, leading to the discovery of his real name — which American officials have not disclosed — and whereabouts. He in turn unwittingly led the agency to Bin Laden’s lair, where Mr. Kuwaiti and his brother were among those who died in Monday’s raid.
Before a day had passed, the torture debate had flared. The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, told Fox News that the success of the hunt for Bin Laden was due to waterboarding. The next morning, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said just as flatly that “none of it came as a result of harsh interrogation practices.”
David Rohde contributed reporting from New York.
Showing posts with label Bin Ladan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bin Ladan. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
New U.S. Account Says Bin Laden Was Unarmed During Raid
NYtimes
May 3, 2011
By MARK LANDLER and HELENE COOPER
WASHINGTON — Osama bin Laden was not carrying a weapon when he was killed by American troops in a fortified house in Pakistan, the White House said Tuesday, as it revised its initial account of the nighttime raid.
Members of a Navy Seals team burst in on Bin Laden in the compound where he was hiding and shot him in a room on an upper floor, after a fierce gun battle with other operatives of Al Qaeda on the first floor.
Bin Laden’s wife, who was with him in the room, “rushed the U.S. assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed,” said the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, reading from the brief account, which was provided by the Defense Department. “Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed.”
Mr. Carney said that Bin Laden’s lack of a weapon did not mean he was ready to surrender, and he and other officials reiterated that this was a violent scene, that there was heavy fire from others in the house, and that the commandos did not know whether the occupants were wearing suicide belts or other explosives.
Still, the account diverged in some ways from one given Monday by the president’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan. He had said Bin Laden was “engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in,” adding, “whether or not he got off any rounds, I frankly don’t know.”
Mr. Brennan also said then that Bin Laden used his wife as a “human shield.” But officials now say that the death of another woman in the crossfire on another floor led them to draw that false conclusion.
White House officials said the discrepancies resulted from their haste to provide details about a chaotic, fast-moving military operation to an intensely interested American public. As more of the assault team’s 79 members were debriefed, and their accounts were crosschecked with those of other team members, there were bound to be changes in the account, these officials said.
But the episode also reveals the pressures as the White House, intent on telling a dramatic story about a successful operation, sought to manage a 24-hour news media ravenous for immediate and vivid details. Even as Mr. Brennan was giving his account on Monday, other officials began clarifying parts of the story for reporters.
On Tuesday, one issue officials were wrestling with was whether to release a photo of Bin Laden’s body.
Several experts on the rules of engagement in combat said that in a raid on a target as dangerous as Bin Laden, the Navy Seals team would be justified to open fire at the slightest commotion when they burst into a room.
“If he were surrendering, or knocked out and unconscious on the ground, that would raise serious questions," said John B. Bellinger III, legal counsel at the National Security Council and State Department in the Bush administration.
“But this is a guy who’s extremely dangerous,” he said. “If he’s nodding at someone in the hall, or rushing to the bookcase or you think he’s wearing a suicide vest, you’re on solid ground to kill him.”
Other experts noted that the members of the Navy Seals faced difficult conditions, moving through dim rooms under gunfire, and needing to make a split-second judgment about whether Bin Laden posed a threat.
“They say he was unarmed now, but did the Seals know he was unarmed?” said Scott L. Silliman, an expert on wartime legal doctrine at Duke University Law School. “It was in the dark. They were wearing goggles.”
At the United Nations, questions arose about the killing. The organization’s senior human rights official, Navi Pillay, called for more details.
While noting that Bin Laden was a dangerous man, she said any operation against him should have been done legally.
During Monday’s briefing, Mr. Brennan said President Obama put a premium on protecting the commandos in the operation, saying that “we were not going to give Bin Laden or any of his cohorts the opportunity to carry out lethal fire on our forces.”
None were harmed, though there was a tense moment when one of the two helicopters suffered a mechanical failure and was destroyed by the commandos.
Despite expecting Bin Laden to put up a fight, Mr. Brennan said the assault team had made contingency plans for capturing, rather than killing him. “If we had the opportunity to take Bin Laden alive, if he didn’t present any threat, the individuals involved were able and prepared to do that,” he said.
Still, Mr. Brennan was eager to draw larger lessons from what he said was Bin Laden’s use of his wife as a shield.
“Here is Bin Laden, who has been calling for these attacks, living in this million-dollar-plus compound, living in an area that is far removed from the front, hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield,” he said. “I think it really just speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years.”
Leon E. Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said in an interview with NBC News on Tuesday that the troops’ orders were to kill Bin Laden. “But it was also, as part of their rules of engagement, if he suddenly put up his hands and offered to be captured, then they would have the opportunity, obviously, to capture him,” he said.
Some of the confusion in the accounts of the raid stemmed from the difference in time zones. Bin Laden had actually been killed early Monday by Pakistan time, not late on Sunday as had been initially reported.
Meanwhile, the White House continued to grapple with the question of whether to release the photo of the dead Bin Laden, or other documentary evidence. Administration officials said that they are trying to determine whether the visceral desire among Americans — and some skeptics — to see proof outweighs the potential that such images might further inflame Bin Laden’s disciples.
The photo, taken after Bin Laden was killed, clearly identifies the Qaeda leader, according to one official who has viewed it. “It looks like him, covered in blood with a hole in his head,” the official said.
White House officials say they are still deciding what to do, although one official said that they were leaning toward releasing the photo. Mr. Panetta told NBC News that he did not think “there was any question that ultimately a photograph would be presented to the public.”
Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington, and Neil MacFarquhar from New York.
May 3, 2011
By MARK LANDLER and HELENE COOPER
WASHINGTON — Osama bin Laden was not carrying a weapon when he was killed by American troops in a fortified house in Pakistan, the White House said Tuesday, as it revised its initial account of the nighttime raid.
Members of a Navy Seals team burst in on Bin Laden in the compound where he was hiding and shot him in a room on an upper floor, after a fierce gun battle with other operatives of Al Qaeda on the first floor.
Bin Laden’s wife, who was with him in the room, “rushed the U.S. assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed,” said the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, reading from the brief account, which was provided by the Defense Department. “Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed.”
Mr. Carney said that Bin Laden’s lack of a weapon did not mean he was ready to surrender, and he and other officials reiterated that this was a violent scene, that there was heavy fire from others in the house, and that the commandos did not know whether the occupants were wearing suicide belts or other explosives.
Still, the account diverged in some ways from one given Monday by the president’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan. He had said Bin Laden was “engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in,” adding, “whether or not he got off any rounds, I frankly don’t know.”
Mr. Brennan also said then that Bin Laden used his wife as a “human shield.” But officials now say that the death of another woman in the crossfire on another floor led them to draw that false conclusion.
White House officials said the discrepancies resulted from their haste to provide details about a chaotic, fast-moving military operation to an intensely interested American public. As more of the assault team’s 79 members were debriefed, and their accounts were crosschecked with those of other team members, there were bound to be changes in the account, these officials said.
But the episode also reveals the pressures as the White House, intent on telling a dramatic story about a successful operation, sought to manage a 24-hour news media ravenous for immediate and vivid details. Even as Mr. Brennan was giving his account on Monday, other officials began clarifying parts of the story for reporters.
On Tuesday, one issue officials were wrestling with was whether to release a photo of Bin Laden’s body.
Several experts on the rules of engagement in combat said that in a raid on a target as dangerous as Bin Laden, the Navy Seals team would be justified to open fire at the slightest commotion when they burst into a room.
“If he were surrendering, or knocked out and unconscious on the ground, that would raise serious questions," said John B. Bellinger III, legal counsel at the National Security Council and State Department in the Bush administration.
“But this is a guy who’s extremely dangerous,” he said. “If he’s nodding at someone in the hall, or rushing to the bookcase or you think he’s wearing a suicide vest, you’re on solid ground to kill him.”
Other experts noted that the members of the Navy Seals faced difficult conditions, moving through dim rooms under gunfire, and needing to make a split-second judgment about whether Bin Laden posed a threat.
“They say he was unarmed now, but did the Seals know he was unarmed?” said Scott L. Silliman, an expert on wartime legal doctrine at Duke University Law School. “It was in the dark. They were wearing goggles.”
At the United Nations, questions arose about the killing. The organization’s senior human rights official, Navi Pillay, called for more details.
While noting that Bin Laden was a dangerous man, she said any operation against him should have been done legally.
During Monday’s briefing, Mr. Brennan said President Obama put a premium on protecting the commandos in the operation, saying that “we were not going to give Bin Laden or any of his cohorts the opportunity to carry out lethal fire on our forces.”
None were harmed, though there was a tense moment when one of the two helicopters suffered a mechanical failure and was destroyed by the commandos.
Despite expecting Bin Laden to put up a fight, Mr. Brennan said the assault team had made contingency plans for capturing, rather than killing him. “If we had the opportunity to take Bin Laden alive, if he didn’t present any threat, the individuals involved were able and prepared to do that,” he said.
Still, Mr. Brennan was eager to draw larger lessons from what he said was Bin Laden’s use of his wife as a shield.
“Here is Bin Laden, who has been calling for these attacks, living in this million-dollar-plus compound, living in an area that is far removed from the front, hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield,” he said. “I think it really just speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years.”
Leon E. Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said in an interview with NBC News on Tuesday that the troops’ orders were to kill Bin Laden. “But it was also, as part of their rules of engagement, if he suddenly put up his hands and offered to be captured, then they would have the opportunity, obviously, to capture him,” he said.
Some of the confusion in the accounts of the raid stemmed from the difference in time zones. Bin Laden had actually been killed early Monday by Pakistan time, not late on Sunday as had been initially reported.
Meanwhile, the White House continued to grapple with the question of whether to release the photo of the dead Bin Laden, or other documentary evidence. Administration officials said that they are trying to determine whether the visceral desire among Americans — and some skeptics — to see proof outweighs the potential that such images might further inflame Bin Laden’s disciples.
The photo, taken after Bin Laden was killed, clearly identifies the Qaeda leader, according to one official who has viewed it. “It looks like him, covered in blood with a hole in his head,” the official said.
White House officials say they are still deciding what to do, although one official said that they were leaning toward releasing the photo. Mr. Panetta told NBC News that he did not think “there was any question that ultimately a photograph would be presented to the public.”
Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington, and Neil MacFarquhar from New York.
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