■tion
HE BATTALION
Wednesday, April 24, 2002
in Laden aide talks
to U.S. interrogators
I
Saudi-born
ini ISVASHINGTON (AP)
ulf Osama bin Laden’s top field
■ W pnmander is talking.
f; -^Trouble is, his American
interrogators don’t know
whether to believe him.
[IfAbu Zubaydah already has
given information that led to last
week’s alert to financial institu
tions in the northeastern United
States, U.S. officials say. He has
also claimed that al-Qaida
knows how to build a “dirty
bomb” designed to spread
radioactivity over a wide area,
ilkleither piece of information
surprised American authorities.
U.S. intelligence already had
obtained similar nonspecific
threats to banks, and bin Laden’s
quest for weapons of mass
destruction is well-known.
■But because the information
came from Abu Zubaydah, the
O) in^rrogators took note. Officials
™^Kcribe the 0 — 11 1
Hestinian as
■ connection
Hween bin
Latien and many
y' of al-Qaida’s
oie r a t i o n a 1
cells.
H“He’s talk
ing. but the issue
/, is! sorting out
/what’s true and
what’s not,
what is reality
ami what is mere boasting,” said
/ ^ v one U.S. official familiar with
St) the interrogation, speaking on
i condition of anonymity. “That’s
going to take some time.”
■ A better source may be his
/ notebook, found when he was
’sjA' captured in a joint Pakistani-
UjS. raid March 28 in
Faisalabad, Pakistan. A defense
, official said it contains informa-
Z y\ tion that could indicate more ter-
^ \roiist attacks are in the works,
but its import isn’t fully clear.
■ Context is crucial, the official
said. “Are these his ideas, his
plpns, his musings?”
BAbu Zubaydah should have
no idea that his words led to last
week's alert. He is recovering in
an undisclosed location from
gunshot wounds received dur
ing his capture, and standard
interrogation technique is to
keep subjects uninformed,
allowing questioners to tell
them anything they want about
what’s not
events in the outside world.
Officials say the terrorist
leader, who speaks English, has
plenty of reasons to lie. They are
well aware he could be manipu
lating them to cause panic.
Bush administration
spokesman Ari Fleischer,
asked if Abu Zubaydah’s
claims are to be believed, said
Tuesday, “Those are judg
ments that intelligence experts
make based on not only what
he says, but on other pieces of
information that will corrobo
rate information.”
The CIA, FBI and military^
can put his claims to other al-
Qaida prisoners, check them
against existing intelligence or
subtly feed them back to Abu
Zubaydah at some later time to
see how he responds.
But officials acknowledge he’s
smart and experienced enough to
know many of the mind games that
comprise a mod
em interrogation.
Pakistani
officials have
said that Abu
Zubaydah has
denied involve
ment in the
Sept. 1 1
attacks.
Defense and
intell igence
■ officials said
He’s talking, but the
issue is sorting out
what’s true and
anonymous U.S. official
al-Qaida terrorist training manu
als uncovered in Afghanistan
advise operatives to say nothing
to interrogators — or else to
spread disinformation.
U.S. techniques to elicit
information from prisoners
include gaining the subject’s
trust, flattering him, disorienting
him with a battery of questions
and playing on his fears and
desires, experts said. CIA offi
cials declined to discuss inter
rogative techniques but said the
agency does not condone torture.
In 1988, CIA operative Dick
Stolz told the Senate that the
agency counted the following
techniques as coercive but falling
short of the definition of torture:
forcing the subject to stand at
attention or sit on an uncomfort
able stool for long periods of
time, depriving him of sleep and
sound, enforcing isolation and
causing climate changes.
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