Interrogator: CIA Gave Us Bum Rap

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Interrogator: CIA Gave Us Bum Rap
Associated Press | February 18, 2008

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Interrogators got intelligence from detainees that helped U.S. troops in Afghanistan attack Taliban fighters last summer - and they did it through casual questioning and not torture, the military's chief interrogator here said.

In a rare interview with The Associated Press, veteran interrogator Paul Rester complained that his profession has gotten a bad reputation due to accounts of waterboarding and other rough interrogation tactics used by the CIA at "black sites."

Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees, however, allege their clients have been subjected to temperature extremes, sleep deprivation and threats at this U.S. military base in southeast Cuba.

Wearing a blue-striped business shirt without a tie and looking more like a harried executive than a top interrogator, Rester groused that his line of work is "a business that is fundamentally thankless."

He sat hunched over a table in a snack room inside the building where the top commanders keep their offices. In an attempt to keep personnel from blabbing about intelligence-gathering, a poster showed a picture of a hooded gunman and the words: "Keep talking. We're listening" - today's version of the World War II-era admonishment that "Loose lips sink ships."


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,162321,00.html