« December 28, 2001 | Blog Index | January 9, 2002 »

Early January, 2002

Captured terrorist Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi is transferred to CIA custody after a battle royale with the FBI and a personal plea from CIA director George Tenet to the President. The FBI, with experience in collecting evidence for trials, advocates treating the captive humanely, even bargaining with him. One high-ranking FBI officer instructs Libi's handlers to "handle this like it was being done right here, in my office in New York." The CIA wants information quicker. "They duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo," an ex-FBI official will later say. "At the airport the CIA case officer goes up to him and says, 'You're going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I'm going to find your mother and I'm going to fuck her.' So we lost that fight."

After two weeks of increasingly harsh interrogation, including waterboarding, Libi breaks down and starts to talk. But he provides information he is not in a position to know, telling his interrogators that Al Qaeda operatives received chemical-weapons training from the Iraqi government. The DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) will express concerns early on that Libi is telling his questioners what they want to hear. Nevertheless, Libi's information will be the basis for the Bush administration's repeated claim that Iraq provided Al Qaeda with training on chemical and biological weapons. Libi will later recant his testimony.

Posted on 01/01/02 at 3:57 PM

Tags: Al Libi, Bush, CIA, DOJ/FBI, FALSE INTEL, TORTURE, WMD

Comments