In an interview published Friday by the German newspaper Der Spiegel, former FBI agent Ali Soufan continues the intense debate over U.S. interrogation techniques and their success in prying information out of terror suspects.
In the interview, Soufan criticized U.S. treatment of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Detention facility in Cuba, saying "this is not how you counter the narrative of authoritarian regimes and terrorists."
Soufan argues that techniques like waterboarding failed to persuade Abu Zubaydah, a senior al-Qaida operative, to provide information and that his own techniques focused on trying to reason with detainees and persuade them to cooperate yield more useful intelligence information. It's the latest in a long-running dispute Soufan has had with many CIA officials, including
Jose Rodriguez, who ran the agency's enhanced interrogation program and claims that the CIA techniques worked.
And, as Marc Thiessen noted in a 2012 story on
National Review Online, Soufan's FBI partner is on record that the CIA has it right, and that its interrogation techniques were successful.
The Soufan interview was first published by Der Spiegel Dec. 15. The publication said it decided to post an English version of the interview with Soufan published 5 1/2 weeks ago "in conjunction with this week's release of the book 'Guantanamo Diary.'"
The book is written by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, described by the publication as "the first prisoner still being held to detail his torture experience at the U.S. military facility."
Der Spiegel published a lengthy excerpt in which Slahi says how he was mistreated while in U.S. custody.
In the book,
he claims to have been beaten, tortured and sexually abused. Ould's lawyer and civil-liberties groups are demanding his immediate release from prison.
On Wednesday, the book cracked Amazon's top 100 list.
While Slahi proclaims his innocence, terrorism experts say there is a large amount of evidence on the record linking him to terrorist activities, including 9/ll and the December 1999 plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.
The Long War Journal has reported that Slahi was identified by the 9/11 commission as a key recruiter of al-Qaida's Hamburg terror cell and that his most high-profile recruits were key operatives and planners of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
While in Hamburg in 1999, "Slahi arranged for Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the key facilitators of the 9/11 operation, and three of his cohorts to travel from Germany to Afghanistan so that they could train in al-Qaida's camps and swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden. Binalshibh's three friends were: Mohammed Atta, Marwan al Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah
— the suicide pilots of American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, and United Airlines Flight 93, respectively,"
according to the Long War Journal.
In late 1999, Slahi persuaded Binalshibh, Shehhi, and Jarrah to travel to Afghanistan for terror training instead of going to Chechnya to fight Russia. Slahi provided instructions on "on how to travel to Karachi and then Quetta, where they were to contact someone named Umar al Masri at the Taliban office," according to the 9/11 Commission.
Slahi left Hamburg for Montreal, where he attended a local mosque and reportedly met members of an al-Qaida cell planning to carry out an attack inside the United States.
Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian immigrant who attended the mosque, attempted unsuccessfully to enter the United States to bomb Los Angeles International Airport in December 1999.
Slahi's detention at Guantanamo has long been controversial because of the interrogation techniques used on him.
A military prosecutor decided not to press charges against Slahi because of that, according to the Long War Journal, even though Slahi is regarded as one of the most dangerous jihadists in U.S. custody.
"Of the cases I had seen, [Slahi] was the one with the most blood on his hands," Lt. Col. Stuart Crouch said in 2007.
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