US News
Former agent testifies against harsh interrogations
May 13, 2009, 17:56 GMT
Washington - A former federal agent who was involved in the interrogation of terrorism suspects said in congressional testimony Wednesday that the harsh techniques used by the Bush administration were ineffective and unreliable.
Ali Soufan told a Senate judicial committee that al-Qaeda operatives were trained to resist the harsh methods, including waterboarding, and argued that conventional interrogations were much more reliable in extracting information.
'I strongly believe that it is a mistake to use what has become known as enhanced interrogation techniques,' said Soufan, who was a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 'A major problem with it is it is ineffective. Al-Qaeda are trained to resist torture.'
Soufan was involved in the questioning of Abu Zubaydah, an alleged top al-Qaeda operative captured in 2002 and still held at the US military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The CIA has acknowledged waterboarding Zubaydah, and memos released last month by the White House said the technique was used on him dozens of times.
Soufan said that he and other agents were able to gain useful information of Zubaydah through conventional interrogations, but when the CIA began waterboarding, Zubaydah stopped talking.
The Senate has begun hearings on the interrogations practices approved under former president George W Bush that critics say amounted to torture. The process followed President Barack Obama's decision last month to release the Bush-era memos.
Former vice president Dick Cheney has been appearing on news shows in recent weeks to defend the interrogations, saying they provided valuable information that saved American lives. He warned that Obama's softer approach places national security at risk.
Philip Zelikow, who was a legal advisor to former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, said he circulated a memo in the administration objecting to the harsh methods shortly before a trip to the Middle East.
'When I came back, I heard the memo was not considered appropriate for further discussion and that copies of my memo should be collected and destroyed,' he said.
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Older Talkback
page: 1
... I smell a bureaucrat covering his ass. Where was this guy when all of this was happening? There were forty briefings to Congress..just ask Nancy Pelosi....and where was HIS testimony?
Notice how Bush and Cheney are not apologizing...while Obama is gagging the photos?
Perhpas he just wants a few of his own from Obama's Gitmo east in Afghanistan...then again..outsourced torture is sooo much easier!
I smell SP4, who just uncovered his ass. I wonder when the drug addict is going to have a bath. Hopefully at a waterboarding, as guest of honor. Speaking of outsourcing, seeing as how SP doesn't have a functioning brain, he's outsourced the worm farm in his head to the GOP.
Hey idiots stick'
'... I smell a bureaucrat covering his ass. Where was this guy when all of this was happening? There were forty briefings to Congress..just ask Nancy Pelosi....and where was HIS testimony?'
or maybe something different that you right wing nut jobs do not understand, just telling the truth.
'Notice how Bush and Cheney are not apologizing...while Obama is gagging the photos?'
I did notice how one draft dodger (Cheney) stood up for another draft dodger (Limbaugh) instead of standing behind a war hero, all for politics. Great party you support idiot's stick.
'Perhpas he just wants a few of his own from Obama's Gitmo east in Afghanistan...then again..outsourced torture is sooo much easier!'
'Perhpas' what the hell is that 3rd grader? None of the rest makes any sense. Is your brain so rotten it cannot make sense with a simple sentence?
Thanks again Idiot's Stick for showing just how brain dead you really are. None of what you posted here manes any sense at all, as the party that was in total control for 6 of the 8 years is the party that is responsible and should be held accountable for all the problems...no other way!
Is the biggest HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSER in the entire world!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Are you really going to correct someone's typos if you don't even proofread your own posting? You're an idiot.
...renditions, outsourced 'interrogations' heck monkey boy!...we knew libnazis had it in them when we saw their moves at Waco!
Hey SP4 Jr., please point our my spelling mistakes---idiot!
He can't even spell spellcheck without the family dog humping some brains into him, by way of SP's left ear.
Cheney is trying to cover his a$$ by using the 'good offence is the best defence' strategy.
He is afraid, scared turdless in fact, that he is going to be held accountable for his crimes against humanity.
He is correct. Hopefully he will take the rest of the Bush team of evildoers; W, Rice, and Rove especially, down with him.
Too bad Murdock, Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Drudge, O'Reilly, Ingraham, and a boat load of other fascist scum won't go down with them.
...it seems that it's Nancy Pelosi whoo is spending most of her time trying to deny her knowledge of rendition and interrogations, not Cheney. In fact, Cheney is calling on full release of all documents, something Oabam is refusing to do, not an act of a desparate man.
So, that being the case, I think you need to go back and inform yourself.
to educate himself. He is the result of a desperate man at a truckstop, meeting SP's mother.
..there doing tag teams and, while the thought of cornholing your mom went through my head, her utter repugnance, swayed me to leave as fast as i could. Don't worry though monkey boy, she is doing coast to coasts with some russian marathon drivers..she'll be home in a week or two.
page: 1
sp'sassMay 13th, 2009 - 19:42:44
This Fed agent is a total wack job, and a traitor, who obviously has been co-opted by the extreme biassed MSM. Of course we don't torture enemy, but even if we did it would be ok. We should have done some enhanced interrogation techniques on osama bin laden's brothers and sisters before they left Texass and Boston on the first planes to fly after 9/11. We could have found out where in Iraq osama was hiding. We should have done the same to Saddam the insane leader of Iraq, and we could have gotten him to tell us where he hid his zillion tonne stockpile of WMD.
Our problem is that most of our politicians, especially in the new admin, are gutless appeasers of enemy, and unfit to defend the country.
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