Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying to Destroy America by James E. Mitchell & Bill Harlow

Author:James E. Mitchell & Bill Harlow [Mitchell, James E. & Harlow, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 21st Century, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence & Espionage, Military, Political Freedom & Security, Political Science, Terrorism, United States
ISBN: 9781101906842
Google: yT-dDQAAQBAJ
Amazon: B01AES52NC
Publisher: Crown Publishers
Published: 2016-11-29T03:00:00+00:00

For many at the CIA it felt like a ticking time bomb scenario. It was actually worse from my perspective. I had been on a bomb squad, I had worked hostage negotiations and armed standoffs, and I never feared as much for those around me as I did during those first chaotic months after 9/11. The threat of another catastrophic attack was palpable. You could feel it in the briefing rooms and see it taking its toll behind the eyes of CIA officers scrambling to do all they could to make up for having missed the first attack by stopping the next one.

KSM had demonstrated that tea and biscuits weren’t going to get him to provide the information necessary to stop attacks. After KSM was captured and before he was rendered out of Pakistan, two CIA officers had tried to question him using standard debriefing and rapport-building techniques. One CIA officer went so far as to dress head to toe in traditional Pakistani clothing for tea and “respectful conversation.” Later, KSM described him to me and Bruce as a “clown,” saying the officer was “a fool” if he thought KSM was going to inform on his “brothers” because someone put on Pakistani garb and served him tea and treats.

You weren’t going to bully the information out of him, either. Here is how I know. KSM was not moved directly to where we interrogated him. The rendition stopped for several days at another remote black site, where KSM was interrogated by a third CIA officer, the same chief interrogator I had reported earlier for using unapproved EITs.

During this stopover, the chief interrogator and KSM got into what a senior agency psychologist who observed it called “a battle of wills,” a contest that, according to the psychologist, KSM won. The battle of wills was over KSM’s refusal to address the chief interrogator as “sir” each time KSM spoke to him, something that never occurred to me or Bruce to ask any detainee to do.

The psychologist told us that with each refusal, the chief interrogator used more and more physical coercion and became more and more obsessed with “breaking KSM’s will.” So much so that forcing KSM to call him “sir” became the single-minded focus of the last several interrogation sessions before KSM was moved to our location.

The senior agency psychologist (who was not an interrogator but had been resistance-trained in SERE school) told us that in his view, KSM had deliberately drawn the chief interrogator into this battle of wills to derail the interrogations and protect information. KSM avoided answering questions about future al-Qa’ida attacks and operatives still at large by refusing to address the chief interrogator as “sir,” knowing his refusal would irk the chief interrogator, who would stop questioning him and try to bully him into compliance. Winning that battle of wills strengthened KSM’s confidence that if he just held out long enough, he could keep his secrets.

In my opinion, we would never get the information the CIA needed to

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