No recollection of being made aware? Sorry,
if he did not know anything about the tapes then the answer is very
simple–Never heard of them, never saw them, and this is the first we
have heard of this matter. No room for doubt with that answer.
I know from my time at the CIA how presidents and national
security staffs react to intelligence on high priority matters. They
are ravenous and they are constantly pushing for more info. I remember,
for example, being tasked on an urgent basis to review and analyze
Spanish language documents the CIA obtained from a Nicaraguan military
defector that described the mutual concern of Soviet and Sandinista
officials about U.S. supplied shoulder fired surface to air missiles
that were downing helicopters in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. At the
time, the war in Nicaragua was one of the top five policy priorities of
the White House. And the White House was eager to know what the
defector had to say.
So please answer these questions. In the summer of 2002 was
terrorism and the threat of terrorism at least one of the top three
policy priorities for the Bush Administration? Was the White House
interested in any details about the capture or interrogation of Abu
Zubaydah?
You know the answers–not only yes, but hell yes.
Take a look at page 241 of George Tenet’s account of where the White House stood on these matters. He wrote:
Detainees, in general, had become a critical issue. . . . Abu
Zubaydah’s capture altered that equation. Now that we had an undoubted
resource in our hands–the highest-ranking al-Qa’ida official captured
to date–we opened discussions within the National Security Council
as to how to handle him, since holding and interrogating large numbers
of al-Qa’ida operatives had never been part of our plan. But Zubayda
and a small number of other extremely highly placed terrorists
potentially had information that might save thousands of lives. We
wondered what we could legitimately do to get that information. . .
.Out of those conversations came a decision that CIA would hold and
interrogate a small number of HVDs (i.e., High Value Detainees).
So who is the “we”. When you are talking special interrogation
techniques at a National Security Council meeting you are talking with
George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, George Tenet, and
John Ashcroft at a minimum. The White House lead on the legal issues
was handled by Harriet Miers and Alberto Gonzales. And we also know
that John Yoo at the Department of Justice drafted the letters
ultimately used to assure CIA that torture tactics were legal.
Tenet is quite precise in identifying August 2002 as the moment
that CIA was given clear guidance from the White House and Department
of Justice about the techniques and methods the CIA could employ
against terrorist suspects (also p. 241 of his book).
The respective works of Jim Risen (
State of War) and Ron Suskind (
The One Percent Doctrine)
provide a consistent portrait of George Bush as a president keenly
interested in Abu Zubaydah. And George Tenet was just the man to feed
Bush the information he so desperately wanted. Senior intelligence
officers I know describe Tenet’s dealings with the White House as both
obsequious and enthusiastic. He would dash to the White House like an
excited puppy dog eager for a romp. He was not known as “Slam Dunk”
George for nothing.
The ops cables detailing the results of the interrogation of Abu
Zubaydah were not widely distributed. They most likely were kept in
compartmented channels–in other words, just because you held a Top
Secret clearance did not mean you were seeing the most sensitive
information. If you have seen the latest exploits of Jason Bourne in
the Bourne Ultimatum then you are familiar with “Blackbriar”. That’s an
example of a compartmented program/reporting channel.
Although not widely distributed you can be sure that these
messages made their way to the head of the Counter Terrorsim Center at
the time, Cofer Black. His boss, Jim Pavitt also got the reports. And
both George Tenet and his deputy, John McLaughlin, had the info as did
the staff who put together the Presidential Daily Brief.
We are not talking about some third-rate piece of intelligence on
a backwater of foreign policy. The terrorist threat posed by Al Qa’ida
was a consuming priority, along with prepping for war with Iraq, and
any information about that threat made its way to the Oval Office of
the White House.
Ron Suskind quotes John McLaughlin talking knowingly about the methods employed on Zubaydah:
Imagine him (Zubaydah) sitting with a lawyer. That would be an utter
cop-out. We would never know what we missed (see pp. 117-8, The One Percent Doctrine).
It remains to be seen whether or not the White House played a role in
the CIA’s decision to destroy the videotape interrogations of Zubaydah
and Nashiri. But this much is certain, Bush knew about the tapes and
probably received a personal screening from none other than George
Tenet. What did they snack on while watching Zubaydah hold his breath
under water? That’s what I want to know.
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