A former FBI interrogator who questioned al-Qaeda prisoners testified Wednesday that the Bush administration falsely boasted of success from extreme techniques like waterboarding, when those methods were slow, unreliable and made one witness stop talking.
Ali Soufan, testifying to a Senate panel behind a screen to hide his identity, said his team’s non-threatening interrogation approach elicited crucial information from al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, including intelligence on “dirty bomb” terrorist Jose Padilla.
Soufan said his team had to step aside when CIA contractors took over. They began using harsh tactics that caused Zubaydah to “shut down,” Soufan said, and his team was recalled to get him talking again.
Soufan appeared before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee holding the first hearing on extreme interrogation methods since the Obama administration last month released Bush administration legal opinions authorizing them.
Memos by the Bush Justice Department contended that waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, and other extreme techniques were legal under U.S. and international law, but Democrats said they amounted to torture.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said former Vice President Dick Cheney has suggested there was valuable information obtained from the extreme methods.
Soufan countered that his personal experience showed that the harsh interrogation techniques didn’t work even when there wasn’t a lot of time to prevent an attack.
