Ex-FBI Official: 'We Left Our Most Important Prisoners To Amateurs'

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/former-fbi-official-ali-soufan-condemns-guantanamo-torture-a-1014475.html



Former FBI agent Ali Soufan was one of the first to interrogate terror suspects at Guantanamo. He later left the prison and criticized torture methods used by the CIA. He accuses the government of turning interrogations of inmates over to outsourced amateurs.

Ex-FBI Official: 'We Left Our Most Important Prisoners To Amateurs'
January 23, 2015 – 04:06 PM

~snip~

SPIEGEL: Mr. Soufan, during your time as an FBI agent, you spent years conducting interrogations. Now you have also written a book about torture at secret American prisons. Were there any surprises for you in the recently released US Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture?

Soufan: Yes, there were few things I didn't know. That we put prisoners (including Zubaydah) in a big box for a total of 266 hours -- that's 11 days and 2 hours -- and that we simply kept one of our most important prisoners, our only high-value-detainee at the time, in total isolation for 47 days instead of questioning him and gaining important information. As a matter of fact, I didn't know about these things.

SPIEGEL: Were details of the report still shocking to you, even though you had known about the allegations for years?

Soufan: At some point it was difficult for me to read on, especially the passages about the torture of the first important prisoner we interrogated, the terror facilitator Zubaydah. The level of unprofessionalism that the report reveals is incredible. It is really shocking. But I should not be surprised, given that 80 percent of this harsh interrogation program was outsourced to outside contractors who had no clue about interrogations. We left our most important prisoners to amateurs.

[merrily]

1. "Enhanced interrogation." As if torture were some kind of improvement.

Let that be a lesson to you. You can do illegal, immoral stuff, as long as you think of a lovely name for it and get a corrupt media to follow your lead in using it. Especially if you accompany it with jingoism.

[libodem]

2. Dick Cheney

Is the mastermind behind this evil. Bush was a clueless, bumbling,idiot. It happened on his watch though,so he is also responsible. I'd love to see them at the Hague. They should be tried in a World Court.

I am astonished that this bullshit gets a pass and no one has had to answer for it or have any consequences.

To me that makes us much more unsafe as Americans traveling abroad. It makes us all targets as a whole group of citizens.

Instead of punishment for the Bush Administration we all suffer the collective guilt and shame of allowing this to remain unaddressed. And we all pay the price for what Cheney did to our reputation around the world.