Democracy Now: The 9/11 Commission and Torture

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http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/7/the_9_11_commission_torture_how

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The 9/11 Commission & Torture: How Information Gained Through Waterboarding & Harsh Interrogations Form Major Part of 9/11 Commission Report

A new analysis by NBC News reveals that more than a quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Commission Report refer to controversial interrogation techniques. Yet, Commission staffers did not question the CIA about its techniques. They even ordered a second round of interrogations in early 2004 to get more information from the detainees.

Guests:

Philip Zelikow, served as executive director of the 9/11 Commission. He is now professor of history and director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

Robert Windrem, NBC News investigative reporter who co-authored the analysis of the 9/11 Commission Report

Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Rush Transcript
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NBC News: 9/11 Commission controversy
JUAN GONZALEZ: CIA Director Michael Hayden acknowledged Tuesday that the Agency had used the interrogation technique known as waterboarding on three individuals since the attacks of September 11th. Hayden also claimed the CIA has practiced what he called “enhanced interrogation techniques” on one-third of the around 100 prisoners he says have been detained. Hayden made the admission in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

MICHAEL HAYDEN: Let me make it very clear and to state so officially in front of this committee that waterboarding has been used on only three detainees. It was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It was used on Abu Zubaydah. And it was used on Nashiri. The CIA has not used waterboarding for almost five years. We used it against these three high-value detainees because of the circumstances of the time. Very critical to those circumstances was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were imminent.


JUAN GONZALEZ: All three men that Hayden admitted had been subjected to waterboarding are named in the final 9/11 Commission Report. The Commission relied on information obtained from a number of suspected al-Qaeda members in US captivity, only ten of whom are mentioned by name. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in particular, emerges in the report as the “principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.”

An NBC investigation released last week alleges that the Commission had long suspected the information used for its report was the product of harsh interrogations. The NBC analysis shows that more than a quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Commission Report refer to controversial interrogation techniques. Yet, Commission staffers did not question the CIA about its techniques. They even ordered a second round of interrogations in early 2004 to get more information from the detainees.

AMY GOODMAN: Philip Zelikow was the executive director of the 9/11 Commission. He is now professor of history and director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. He joins us from Charlottesville, Virginia. We’re also joined here in the firehouse studio in New York by Robert Windrem, NBC News investigative reporter who co-authored the analysis of the 9/11 Commission Report, and by Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. We welcome you all to Democracy Now!

Robert Windrem, why don’t you lay out what you discovered?

ROBERT WINDREM: Well, what we looked at, we started to take a look early on in this, not as part of the story that actually evolved, but we looked at what can you find out from the footnotes from the 9/11 Commission Report on the interrogations, because it is the single most detailed record of what can be found on the interrogations. Obviously, there’s no CIA reports on this, but since the Commission so deeply relied on it, we figured, well, let’s just go through it. And as we began to look, the detail began to emerge, the numbers began to emerge, and also the critical information, it became quite clear, had come from the interrogations. And so, we decided at that point, well, let’s just take—let’s just run through some Excel spreadsheets, see what we get. And ultimately, we came out with what Juan had said, about a quarter of the Commission’s footnotes rely in some way on the interrogation reports.

And the footnotes, by the way, are very specific. They give the individual who was interrogated, they talk what date, and also, if you can refer back to the text and in some cases within the footnote itself, what they provided. And so, it does show that the Commission absolutely needed this detail in order to proceed with its report, and also, after talking to a number of people both within the CIA and within the Commission, that there was no real discussion of interrogation techniques that were used in order to provide this. And, in fact, several people we talked to—three people we talked on the Commission staff, including Mr. Zelikow, said that, yes, they had guessed or suspected that harsh interrogation techniques were used, but they did not go forward because it was not part of their mission.

AMY GOODMAN: They didn’t question, you’re saying.

ROBERT WINDREM: They did not question them.

AMY GOODMAN: And you’re saying that they ordered a second round.

ROBERT WINDREM: There was a second round.

AMY GOODMAN: These interrogations.

ROBERT WINDREM: If you go through the footnotes—

AMY GOODMAN: The Commission.

ROBERT WINDREM: The Commission. And the Commission and the Agency both told us—these are Commission staffers and the Agency staffers—both told us this, that essentially the first round of interrogations were needed to look for what were the impending attacks, whereas the—and they were sort of prospective questioning, whereas the second round that was called for was essentially to fill in details more retrospective on what happened on 9/11. And these took place in early 2004. And there were, from what we could trace through the footnotes, about thirty of them, thirty separate sessions that took place during that period of time.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Philip Zelikow, your response, and also about this issue of whether you saw it as your mission to look at whether the—how the interrogations and the answers to the questions of those prisoners were obtained?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: Well, of course we questioned CIA about how the information was obtained. I mean, the notion that we didn’t ask CIA how they questioned these people would strike anyone in the government now as being deeply ironic, because they’re currently under a federal criminal investigation probing exactly how they answered our questions about the way the interrogations were conducted. We asked for information about the context, about the circumstances under which the questions were asked, about the specific kinds of questions that were asked, about the demeanor of the interrogators and the people who were being interrogated. We asked a host of specific questions repeatedly and in writing from CIA, and then, when we were not satisfied with CIA’s answers to those questions, we spotlighted our concerns in a text box in our report that transparently stated: here are concerns about the nature of this material; we’re going to sift and evaluate it as best we can, even though CIA won’t tell us all the details we wanted to know and even though CIA and the administration refused to give us the direct access to the detainees that we then requested.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you know that these questions were obtained under duress, under torture?

PHILIP ZELIKOW: We did not know that. We could see that they were extremely reluctant to tell us about the circumstances, and therefore we could only assume that they felt they had something that they wished—they didn’t want the Commission to know about.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you ask if they were obtained through torture?

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[EFerrari]

1. He denied like the snake he is. I hope DUers can check it out.

:kick: