The CIA is confirming that the use of the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ – yes, those techniques – saved the city of Los Angeles from a massive terrorist attack. The attack was specifically targeting the US Bank Tower, formerly the Library Tower, which is the tallest building on the West Coast. You can read more about this below, see photos and a video.
U.S. Bank Tower, formerly The Library Tower
It seems that Barack Obama’s statement that enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding does not make us safer, just isn’t true. Imagine that!
The CIA is now confirming it’s claims made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of ‘enhanced techniques’ of interrogation on al Qaeda leaders Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) and Abu Zubaydah, which included the use of waterboarding, caused them to reveal actionable intelligence that allowed the U.S. government to stop a planned attack on Los Angeles. You can read that CIA waterboarding memo here.
Before he was waterboarded, KSM was asked about future planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, ‘Soon, you will know.’
After KSM was waterboarded a wee bit he decided to become cooperative, providing intelligence that led to the capture of key al Qaeda allies like Abu Zubaydah who also enjoyed enhanced interrogation techniques. The information gathered from both KSM and Abu Zubaydah through waterboarding and other techniques, led to the discovery of the KSM plot called the ‘Second Wave’.
The ‘Second Wave’ attack planned by KSM, stopped by the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, would have hijacked a jetliner and crashed it into U.S. Bank Tower, formerly the Library Tower in Los Angeles which happens to be the tallest building on the West Coast. It is quite safe to say that without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York.
Additional information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing that ‘Second Wave.’ Oh, and Zubaydah? He gave up detailed information regarding al Qaeda’s ‘organizational structure, key operatives, and modus operandi’ and identified KSM as the mastermind of the September 11th attacks.
And just for the record, KSM, Zubaydah, and a third terrorist named Nashiri were the only three persons ever subjected to waterboarding by the CIA. Other terrorist detainees were subjected to some of the other ‘enhanced techniques’ such as slapping, sleep deprivation, dietary limitations, and temporary confinement to small spaces — but not to water-boarding. Maybe worse then all, it has also been reported that they were tortured by watching Britney Spears videos and listening to the Barney song for hours. We’re just horrible!
During the Bush years, enhanced interrogation techniques were used including waterboarding judiciously and rarely. The CIA confirms the use of those measures prevented a terrorist attack on the city of Los Angeles. We were safer for eight years under President Bush’s watch thanks to his courage and leadership because he made it a priority and a committment to all of us (even those far left loons who want him prosecuted) after September 11th. We can no longer say that under the Obama administration.
Waterboarding Saved Los Angeles from Terrorist Attack Photos
Waterboarding Saved Los Angeles from Terrorist Attack Video
April 21st, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Cathyrn, starting today when obama said he hadn’t decided whether or not those who concocted the torture technique program could or would be prosecuted, all sorts of arguments have been made by the right wing of republidom that the “enhanced techniques” gave important actionable information. The cia is terrified its employees might be held accountable for breaking the law, as are justice department lawyers, and all the sudden nsa leaks attacking Jane Harman(dem) etc are surfacing like locusts. The gambit seems to be, don’t prosecute us. We plan to go right to the public as well as intimidate the dems, is what they have been saying. The fact these “people” were captured and traditionally interrogated first, along with a treasure trove of information found at their safe houses gave us a pretty good idea of what was in the works. Whether the torture techniques added to that is a he said, she said thing, as I have heard it said they were led down a lot of false paths wasting time. You can stick a person in an airport terminal 10 hours and suddenly they are very chatty. Its inaccuarate to say that torture got us what your claiming, and those on the right are eggagerating. And you seem to be saying its okay to be amoral if you get what you want. I disagree to be baited like that down such a satanic path. That is what you are saying to people–its okay to be amoral and torture because it works. Frankly, it doesn’t work so well, its inconsistent, a big time waster following up often the wrong leads, and its not at all as reliable as you imply especially among hardened pyschopathic/sociopathic criminals. All you do is contaminate our people who are dealing with them into their criminally insane world. Cheney has been holding the los angeles save in his pocket a long time just for this occasion and has spoken of it before and it turned out to be a half baked plan of some individuals who unlikely would ever have carried it out, as they didn’t. It was not some deep al queda major plan. It was to steal one plane and hit one building as some kind of al queda knock-off from what I have heard from what cheney said.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:53 pm
Having just read the memo in question, a few things jump out at me:
* The evidence issued in the report regarding the alleged LA plot begins: “You have informed us that the interrogation… lead to the discovery of a KVM plot”. It goes on “You have informed us…” about all the other details of the plot. In other words, the people to whom the report is being issued is also the source of the information in the report. This is the same agency whose agents *did* the torturing (and knew their were WMD in Iraq, right?). Additionally, the memo is issued by the Bush’s justice department– the same department who gave legal cover for the torturing in the first place. And this was all during the administration that AUTHORIZED the torturing.
* According to the memo, the same torture-elicited “confessions” also lead to the valuable information that Jose Padilla was building a dirty bomb, which was immediately publicized by John Ashcroft from Russia, and for which Padilla, an **American citizen** mind you, was held in solitary confinement for years by our government without a trial. The Supreme Court affirmed this was improper way to treat a citizen. And by the way, Padilla was never convicted of trying to building a dirty bomb.
* During this period, Bush told the public many reassuring things like “We do not torture” and “a wiretap requires a court order” that were flat-out, factual lies. There is very little credibility here. Now that they’re out of power, can we finally get an independent, apartisan commission to look into this, please?
* Today’s New York Times has a wonderful story about how the Bush administration did zero research in the history of the tactics they used. Had they, it would have become apparent that “veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective” and that experts believed “I do not think it would lead reliably to more truth-telling” and that “that under such abusive treatment, a prisoner became “malleable and suggestible, and in some instances he may confabulate.”
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:01 am
worse, SERE was spun to say that it caused less long term permanent damage than it would on an enemy combatant compared to one of our trainers undergoing our own program by colleagues from the same service. In fact, repeated torture like that will cause PTSD and Depressive Illness in those subjected to it in the hands of the enemy. Beyond the temporary induction of the fear of death from drowning, water boarding, repeated water boarding will change the brain in just the kind of traumatic event that imprints one with PTSD. So you torture someone, and you damage their brain long term.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:17 am
just remember that august 4th is
“hug a terrorist day”
(which happens to corrospond with obama’s birthday)
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:45 am
It’s unreal that there are those who wouldn’t want a terrorist to get his face damp — least god-forbid tweak their pinkie — to save human life from horrible fates. Someone’s sense of human priority or values are terribly askew here. Terrorists are NOT choirboys; they’d happily slit your daughter’s throat, blow-up her schoolbus or see her irradiated into a crisp then dance on her ashes. What part of “evil person” don’t too many understand? In a time machine way, I’d love to see just how “humane” the 9-11 families would be in the same interrogation room with those hijacking bastards to get the info out of them to prevent it from happening! Just ask please? I think not!
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:04 am
I would think that a terrorist would have trouble planning future attacks against Americans if his brain were damaged from too much waterboarding.
“Sorry fellas, I’d love to help you blow up the Statue of Liberty today, but I’ve got an appointment with my neurologist at 10.”
>>It was not some deep al queda major plan. It >>was to steal one plane and hit one building >>as some kind of al queda knock-off from what >>I have heard from what cheney said.
Just one building? My, how insignificant. It’s like a teenager taking daddy’s corvette on a joyride. Except that you would be singing a completely different tune if they HAD carried out the plan, and one of your closest relatives was inside the building and got killed.
>>That is what you are saying to people–its >>okay to be amoral and torture because it >>works. Frankly, it doesn’t work so well, its >>inconsistent, a big time waster following up >>often the wrong leads, and its not at all as >>reliable as you imply especially among >>hardened pyschopathic/sociopathic criminals.
I would consider the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and the admitted perpetrator behind the beheading of Daniel Pearl a hardened criminal, and torture certainly worked on him so stop pretending you have a clue as to what you’re talking about.
Some people lead very sheltered lives.
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:02 am
a) How would they have pulled this attack off? With the reinforced cockpit doors on all planes since 9/11, it would have been impossible to take over a plane using the same methods. Unless they somehow convinced airplane employees to assist them, they would have no hope of attacking in the manner described in this article.
b) 2 minutes before I read this article, I saw this story at Salon:
http://www.salon.com/news/primary_sources/2009/04/22/torture/index.html
The gist of the article is that political officials were putting pressure on interrogation personnel to use “enhanced” methods to establish a link between Al Qaida and Iraq. This is the opposite of “intelligence”; they were selectively searching for information that would support a questionable invasion (and thereby benefit the political careers of those who supported it).
Of note is the fact that these allegations were made by Army psychiatrist Maj. Paul Burney.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:54 am
This country needs to build up its intel any way that we can. If rough treatment helps then do it. We need to continue to build our foreign service to the levels of the cold war.
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:06 am
@Gary: This country needs to build up its intel any way that we can.
So is there any imaginable method of torture that should not be allowed? Can we use electrocution, bamboo shoots in fingernails, the rack, anything? If not, where should we draw the line? What is OK, and what isn’t?
In short, do the ends always justify the means here?
If rough treatment helps then do it.
I’m glad you used the word “if”, because that certainly is up for debate. Even the non-violent “tricks” employed by domestic police have shown a high likelihood to result in misinformation. I can only imagine how that likelihood increases when actual tortuous interrogation is taking place.
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:23 am
Timithoy Noah is not impressed that many lives were saved preventing the Library tower attack, he’d have preferred many 1000 of american live perished rather getting the info from terrorists. Seriously. The left is now saying they prefer dead americans over extracting that info to save them.
The left is straight up pro terror, anti-interrogation.
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:31 am
During the Bush years, enhanced interrogation techniques were used including waterboarding judiciously and rarely.
This is a joke right?
“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Waterboarded 183 Times.”
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/khalid_sheikh_mohammed_waterboarded_183_times/
You think he had anything to say the 183rd time that he didn’t say the 182, or the 82nd?
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:41 am
‘This is a joke right?’
actually Xanthippas no it’s not. only three high value stinking murdering terrorists were ever subjected to waterboarding by the CIA.
if we hadn’t waterboarded KSM those 183 times, would 3000 additional people in LA be dead now?
waterboarding saved american lives. period.
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:54 am
As a Roman Catholic, I tend to disagree with the death penalty, euthenasia, and yes – torture.
As a US Citizen, when I reflect on the issue of torture, I find it an imperative for USA to rightly represent our American values by not engaging in such activities as torture even where valuable information can be gotten.
The reason I feel this way is that I am morally and ethically bound by a fundamentally American code of conduct which forbids torture.
Also, I am quite confident in the positive results which we can aquire through other means involving drugs and high frequency sound in order to draw accurate information which torture may not be able to produce.
I must say, however, that where it comes to the terrorists which we have been recently sorting out, who are perfectly prepared to strap bombs to themselves and blow up countless innocents – perhaps we must take a case by case approach to the matter of torture.
On the downside, torture goes against everything decent, American and Christian, although savages who would just as soon strap bombs to themselves when not raping their sisters no doubt would gladly undergo such toture in the name of their disgusting religion.
On the upside, waterboarding only simulates death by drowning, so think of it as a form of therapy which takes the time to instruct there terrorists that death is NOT what they want and LIFE is what they do want. And in this regard we are, rather, reprogramming our terrorist neighbors to CHOOSE LIFE!
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:56 am
@Kate: if we hadn’t waterboarded KSM those 183 times, would 3000 additional people in LA be dead now?
Well, like I said above, it is not at all clear how anybody could possibly have carried out the attack discussed in this article. How would somebody get through the reinforced cockpit door?
Aside from active assistance from airplane personnel, it’s virtually impossible to hijack a plane. It’s hard to “save” people from something that couldn’t happen.
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:10 am
rhayader and other ‘unbelievers’
let me paint a picture for you…9/11 is still fresh, raw, painful for all of us. we are doing all we can in the field to catch those who hurt us and to protect us here at home.
so we catch one of the top planners! we know he knows a lot because of information gathered on his computer. he tells us that we will soon see another 9-11.
those are the conditions that the CIA agents and the Bush administration found themselves in. because of waterboarding this murdering terrorist and 2 of his buddies (a technique our own seals are trained in by the way), we saved people in L.A. (and ourselves) from a second 9/11 from al qaeda.
the question of how they would get into a reinforced cockpit is a practical one to be sure but why take the chance? why would we risk it? for this man who planned 9/11 and who took off the head of danny pearl right in front of all of us?
dang i would waterboard him myself. and then i would shoot him.
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:21 am
btw of course president bush had a choice. faced with these circumstances, he could have walked that ‘no torture’ line that some of you advocate or he could have made these careful and sacrificial choices and prevented more mass murders at the hands of al qaeda.
if he had chosen to not waterboard and the second wave occurred killing many, what would your position have been then? that he made a higher more nobel choice though americans died? i think not.
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:28 am
Kate
The morons on the left would be screaming that Bush didn’t connect the dots. However, Timothy Noah is NOT impressed that many 1000’s of lives were saved in the Liberty Tower attack so they left is now officially in favor of death by terror attacks.
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:52 am
the question of how they would get into a reinforced cockpit is a practical one to be sure but why take the chance?
Well why take the chance at perpetrating torture to get unclear and probably misleading information? Given the obvious barriers to carrying out a hijacking like the one described here, isn’t it possible that this guy — who, like you said, is a murderous, lying, sniveling rat — told us what we wanted to hear to end his interrogation?
What information did he share? What actions did authorities take as a result of this information? What corroborating evidence of this attack did they find, and how close to attempted execution was this plan? What was the likelihood of its success? Until we can answer these and other questions, the claim that “waterboarding saved LA” rests on way too many unproven assumptions to be taken as fact.
I realize these people are bad dudes, but that doesn’t give us an unrestricted license to commit torture.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:15 am
Rhayader
with all due respect those seem like false questions. we weren’t there. nor should we have been. it wasn’t on our shoulders to keep america safe it was on theirs. though these memos were released we do not have all the information.
it’s a very, very basic principle for me: would we possibly allow maybe thousands of americans to die for the purist principles of whether waterboarding is torture? or so that our conscience is clear that we aren’t being mean or inhumane to cretons?
these are dangerous times for our country.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:37 am
Hey, at least you didn’t insult your readers’ intelligence by doing what World Nut Daily does, which is link to documents and sites that don’t even exist. Unfortunately, you did insult their intelligence by linking to a document that, if they weren’t too stupid and lazy to bother reading it, would give them a belly laugh. The memo wingers are using as “proof that terror works” is from the OLC to John Rizzo, senior CIA counsel, and is full of “you have informed us”. “You have informed us” that the interrogation of KSM led to the discovery of a plot to have east Asians fly airplanes into LA buildings, e.g.. Unfortunately for wingers, no one has ever found any evidence that such a plot ever actually existed, other than a forced confession under torture. And here’s the part I love the most: “You have informed us” that Zubaydah provided information on a U.S. cell led by Jose Padilla that was constructing a dirty bomb. Everyone has known for years that the dirty bomb story was a complete fabrication, as was pretty much everything else out of Zabaydah’s mouth, who apparently wasn’t considered reliable enough to be allowed to know anything.
So once again, this is all total bullshit, proving yet again that torture leads to major time and money wasted on wild goose chases, and proving yet again that right wingers are too effing stupid and lazy to even read their source documents.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:47 am
They are not “false questions” at all. They suggest the underlying question that must be asked before we even debate the morality of torture: does torture even work? To me there is absolutely no evidence that it does work. The “prevention” of this “attack” certainly has not been presented in sufficient detail to change my mind.
You say these are dangerous times, and I agree. However, what good are principles and values if we can abandon them because of inconvenience or danger? It’s easy to avoid torture when there is no threat. What really matters is how we react under pressure; allowing ourselves to resort to the tortuous techniques we have, as a nation, agreed to avoid is a clear sign of a lack of resolve and altruism.
What good is protecting our country if we allow that protection to erode the principles that keep the country together?
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:56 am
i get the whole principles thing. i do. i appreciate them. i live my life by them.
but if someone breaks into my house and holds a gun to my baby’s head, believe me, i would do anything it took to protect my baby. suddenly the very civil and decent principles that govern my day-to-day life would change in an instant to protect my family.
and rhayadar, i suspect it would be the same for you. i hope that makes sense.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:17 pm
[...] at some of the sanctimonious and utterly disconnected comments made by those on the left here and here about the so-called ‘torture’ technique of [...]
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:24 pm
It does make sense, and I would undoubtedly react the same way if someone I loved was placed in direct harm. It’s an emotional situation and would necessitate an emotional response. But we’re talking about our government and our laws here, neither of which should be informed by emotional responses to emergency situations. I hate terrorists and want them stopped, but I could never support government-sanctioned terrorism. No end could justify those means.
Speaking of which, like I said, the “end” discussed in this article (prevention of an attack on LA) is highly questionable. Check out this article:
http://www.slate.com/id/2216601/
Not only did an unnamed senior FBI official tell the LA Times that Bush’s characterization of this incident as a “disrupted plot” was “ludicrous”, but the plot in question was foiled in 2002. KSM was captured in March 2003.
Saying that the waterboarding of KSM led to the foiling of this plot requires us to completely ignore the basic timeline. Like I said, there is no evidence to support the claim that we benefited in any way from torturing suspects.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Aww crap, I mis-typed. The penultimate sentence of the first paragraph should read “…government sanctioned torture“. Not terrorism.
My bad.