FBI Whistleblower says interrogation screwed up information
Soufan, a star FBI agent fluent in Arabic and English, met Abu Zubaydah in Thailand, just days after the al Qaeda suspect was captured after a gun battle in Pakistan. Zubaydah was then the most important operative captured after the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. government selected Soufan and another FBI agent, Steve Gaudin, because they were considered experts at getting al Qaeda suspects to crack.
According to a former intelligence operative at the scene, Zubaydah's confessions and intelligence collected by Soufan and Gaudin resulted in the CIA determining that "death was not an option" for the prisoner. Tenet wanted Zubaydah kept alive, and to continue talking. A top Johns Hopkins surgeon was flown in to treat Zubaydah, and the two FBI agents helped nurse the terrorist into good health. The former operative tells ABC News that the intelligence continued to flow, as Soufan interviewed Zubaydah in the hospital while tending to his recovery. But that all ended when the CIA's team of specialists and a contractor arrived to take over interrogations.
The interrogation didn't help, it just screwed up the questioning. Ali Soufan was brought in to questiong Zubaydah, who talked and provided useful information. And then the interrogators where sent in. At first, before the really hard methods where authorized, interrogation produced nothing at all. They would attack him for a while, and produce nothing. He would then be turned over to the questioning specialists who would get him talking again. And then the interrogators would take over and he would clam up again. Eventually Soufan was pulled off before the waterboarding and other real torture where authorized.
Jay