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Who Killed Daniel Pearl by Bernard Henri Levy. Levy claims to have attempted to retrace the last days of Daniel Pearl, to identify the people with whom Daniel Pearl had contact and the circumstances of his death.
I cannot judge how accurate that book is or whether his report is true. Levy points out that the kidnapping of Levy, based on Levy's evidence, was very well organized and that it most likely was a series of cells that accomplished the kidnapping, held him hostage and finally killed him. Levy, if I recall correctly, suggests that each cell accomplished its specific task and then the next one took over. Contact between the various cells, in Levy's estimation was extremely limited to the extent that it existed.
As I recall (and it has been some time since I read the book) there was sort of a mastermind who organized the cells, but just how that worked I cannot clearly tell you.
Based on Robert Baer's statements and the Levy book, it would seem that a single terrorist would have a no, or very limited knowledge of the activities of other terrorists. If that is true, then it would be doubtful that by torturing one terrorist, you could prevent the acts of other terrorists.
Of course, the Bush administration would argue that Khalid Sheik Mohammed was very high up in the terrorist organization and knew all the plans. But, based on the Levy book, I doubt that. I suspect that the use of cells and compartmentalization of information and planning is a strategy to foil the value of informants or spies in general and the effectiveness of torture.
I hope that agents that we use to collect intelligence in other countries are not repositories of knowledge about our own defenses and do not have broad knowledge of our strategies. In other words, I would hope that agents sent to sensitive situations do not have knowledge that could be useful to interrogators should they be taken prisoner.
For me, this point destroys the idea that if you just torture a terrorist enough, you can find out all the plots being dreamed up at a certain time. You might get some information about brainstorming or random ideas exchanged among terrorists. But if your own side is not smart enough to pretty much imagine the kind of information you would get that is of that nature, you need to hire new people.
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