Detainee 063
Thanks to MB, who forwarded this article to me. I still firmly believe that Guantanamo will forever be the shame of the US and, at the same time, the best recruitment for any organization affiliated with al-Qaida.
The Torture of Detainee 063 | ReasonableReflection.net
Submitted by Charles Miller on Fri, 24 Jun 2005
Inside the Interrogation of Detainee 063
EXCLUSIVE: TO GET THE “20TH HIJACKER” TO TALK, THE U.S. USED A WIDE RANGE OF TACTICS. A SECRET LOG REVEALS THE FIRST DOCUMENTED VIEW OF HOW GITMO REALLY WORKS
By ADAM ZAGORIN, MICHAEL DUFFY FOR TIME MAGAZINE
The prisoner known around the U.S. naval station at Guantànamo Bay as Detainee 063 was a hard man to break. Defiant from the start, he told his captors that he had been in Afghanistan to pursue his love of falconry. But the young Saudi prisoner who wouldn’t talk was not just any detainee. He was Mohammed al-Qahtani, a follower of Osama bin Laden’s and the man believed by many to be the so-called 20th hijacker. He had tried to enter the U.S. in August 2001, allegedly to take part in the Sept. 11 attacks. But while Mohammed Atta, the eventual leader of the hijackers, was waiting outside in the Orlando, Fla., airport parking lot, al-Qahtani was detained inside—and then deported—by an alert immigration officer who didn’t buy his story.
More than a year later, after al-Qahtani had been captured in Afghanistan and transferred to Gitmo’s Camp X-Ray, his interrogation was going nowhere. So in late November 2002, according to an 84-page secret interrogation log obtained by TIME, al-Qahtani’s questioners switched gears. They suggested to their captive that he had been spared by Allah in order to reveal the true meaning of the Koran and help bring down bin Laden.
During a routine check of his medical condition, a sergeant approached al-Qahtani and whispered in his ear, “What is God telling you right now? Your 19 friends died in a fireball and you weren’t with them. Was that God’s choice? Is it God’s will that you stay alive to tell us about his message?” At that point, the log states, al-Qahtani threw his head back and butted the sergeant in the eye. Two MPs wrestled al-Qahtani to the ground. The sergeant crouched down next to the thrashing terrorist, who tried to spit on him. The sergeant’s response: “Go ahead and spit on me. It won’t change anything. You’re still here. I’m still talking to you and you won’t leave until you’ve given God’s message.”
The interrogation log of Detainee 063 provides the first internal look at the highly classified realm of Gitmo interrogations since the detention camp opened four years ago. Chief Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita tells TIME that the log was compiled by various uniformed interrogators and observers on the Pentagon’s Joint Task Force at Gitmo as the interrogation proceeded. It is stamped SECRET ORCON, a military acronym for a document that is supposed to remain with the organization that created it. A Pentagon official who has seen the log describes it as the “kind of document that was never meant to leave Gitmo.”
The log reads like a night watchman’s diary. It is a sometimes shocking and often mundane hour-by-hour, even minute-by-minute account of a campaign to extract information. The log records every time al-Qahtani eats, sleeps, exercises or goes to the bathroom and every time he complies with or refuses his interrogators’ requests. The detainee’s physical condition is frequently checked by medical corpsmen—sometimes as often as three times a day— which indicates either spectacular concern about al-Qahtani’s health or persistent worry about just how much stress he can take. Although the log does not appear obviously censored, it is also plainly incomplete: there are numerous gaps in the notes about what is said and what is happening in the interrogation booth beyond details like “Detainee taken to bathroom and walked for 10 minutes.”
Despite the information gaps, the log offers a rare glimpse into the darker reaches of intelligence gathering, in which teams that specialize in extracting information by almost any means match wits and wills with men who are trained to keep quiet at almost any cost. It spans 50 days in the winter of 2002-03, from November to early January, a critical period at Gitmo, during which 16 additional interrogation techniques were approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for use on a select few detainees, including al-Qahtani.
By itself, the log doesn’t make clear how effective the interrogations were. The Pentagon contends that al-Qahtani has been a valuable source of information: providing details of meetings with bin Laden, naming people and financial contacts in several Arab countries, describing terrorist training camps where bin Laden lives and explaining how he may have escaped from Tora Bora in December 2001.
Pentagon officials tell TIME that most of the intelligence gleaned from those sessions was recorded in other documents. But the interrogation log gives a rare window into the techniques used by the U.S. military, suggesting at least in this case that disclosures were sometimes obtained not when al-Qahtani was under duress but when his handlers eased up on him.
The case of Detainee 063 is sure to add fire to the superheated debate about the use of American power in the age of terrorism. The U.S. has been criticized for mistreating Gitmo prisoners and denying their rights at a facility Amnesty International has controversially called the “gulag of our time.” Along with lawmakers and human-rights groups, former President Jimmy Carter has called on Washington officials to shut the camp down. Even President George W. Bush told Fox News last week that his Administration was exploring alternatives to the detention center.
How should a democratic nation proceed when it captures a high-value prisoner like al-Qahtani, when unlocking a mind might save lives? Experts acknowledge that brute torture generally doesn’t work because a person will say anything to stop the pain. So what, exactly, is effective? And when do the ends justify the means?
From the moment Mohammed al-Qahtani stepped off a Virgin Atlantic flight in Orlando back in August 2001, immigration officials noticed something troubling about him. He had arrived on a one-way ticket yet carried only $2,800 in cash, barely enough to buy his return. When an official pressed him for details about his destination, al-Qahtani was hostile and evasive. With an interpreter’s help, the immigration agent questioned al-Qahtani for 90 min. and then sent him packing. Al-Qahtani’s parting words: “I’ll be back.”
From London, al-Qahtani made his way to the United Arab Emirates and then to Afghanistan to fight against the U.S. He was captured fleeing Tora Bora in December 2001. When he was shipped to Guantánamo two months later, officials had not yet realized he was the presumed 20th hijacker. For weeks, he refused to give his name. But in July 2002, the feds matched his fingerprints to those of the man who had been deported from Orlando and marked him for intensive interrogation. Al-Qahtani, explains Pentagon spokesman DiRita, was “a particularly well-placed, well-connected terrorist who was believed capable of unlocking an enormous amount of specific and general insights into 9/11, al-Qaeda operations and ongoing planning for future attacks.” But the initial questioning by the FBI went poorly. “We were getting nothing from him,” a senior Pentagon official says. “He had been trained to resist direct questioning. And what works in a Chicago police precinct doesn’t work in war.”
That’s where things stood in late November 2002, when the log obtained by TIME begins. At that point, tag teams of interrogators are putting al-Qahtani through a daily routine designed to drain the detainee of his autonomy. They wake him every morning at 4 and sometimes question him until midnight. Each day—and sometimes every hour—is shaped around standard Army interrogation techniques, with code names like Fear Up/Harsh, Pride/Ego Down, the Futility Approach and the Circumstantial Evidence Theme. Each day, the interrogators seem to be trying to find those that work best. They promise better treatment; they show him pictures of 9/11 victims, particularly children and the elderly. They talk about God’s will and al-Qahtani’s guilt. They tell him that he failed on his mission and hint that other comrades have been captured and are talking about his role in the plot. They play on his emotions, saying he should talk if he ever wants to see his family or friends or homeland again.
For days, al-Qahtani stonewalls his handlers and maintains that he went to the U.S. to get into the used-car business. “You are working with the devil,” he tells his captors. The interrogators respond by forcing him to stand or sit immobile on a metal chair. He tries to deflect questions about where he went in Afghanistan with answers apparently drawn directly from an al-Qaeda handbook, given to terrorists, about how to resist interrogations. When al-Qahtani resorts to a handbook answer, his handlers reply that it amounts to another admission of guilt.
Yet in other ways, al-Qahtani emerges as an innocent abroad—uneducated, almost from another era. He asks whether the sun revolves around the earth. He wonders about dinosaurs and is told of their history and demise. He confides that he would like to marry someday—apparently not realizing how unlikely that goal now is.
The first break in al-Qahtani ‘s facade comes with a long-delayed call of nature. When a hunger strike he has launched fizzles, he starts refusing water. That becomes a battle of wills—and teeth. Al-Qahtani quickly becomes so dehydrated that medical corpsmen forcibly administer fluids by IV drip. He tries to fight them off with his hands and is restrained. Another time, al-Qahtani tries to rip the IV needle out; when he is cuffed to his chair, he turns his head and bites the IV line completely in two. He is then strapped down and given an undisclosed amount of fluids. An hour or so later, around 9:40 a.m., al-Qahtani tells his guards that he would be willing to talk if he is allowed to urinate. The log notes he is given 3 1/2 bags of IV fluid. He starts to moan and asks again to be allowed to relieve himself. Yes, but first he must answer questions:
Interrogator: Who do you work for?
Al-Qahtani: Al-Qaeda
Interrogator: Who was your leader?
Al-Qahtani: Osama bin Laden
Interrogator: Why did you go to Orlando?
Al-Qahtani: I wasn’t told the mission
Interrogator: Who was with you on the plane?
Al-Qahtani: I was by myself
That answer frustrates the interrogator—You’re wasting my time, he says—and when al-Qahtani requests his promised bathroom break, he is told to go in his pants. Humiliatingly, he does. The log notes 30 minutes later, “He is beginning to understand the futility of his situation . . . He is much closer to compliance and cooperation than at the beginning of the operation.”
But things appear to move slowly after that. It is not clear from the log’s terse entries that increased pressure is leading to new disclosures. The interrogators keep juggling techniques—giving extra sleep some days, offering a home-cooked Arab meal on another (al-Qahtani refuses it). Later that day, when a video of the destruction of the Twin Towers is played, al-Qahtani becomes so violent, he has to be restrained. “We can’t say, Because we did this, we got that,” a senior Pentagon official says. “If we did know what worked, we’d know exactly which pressure points to apply and when.” Even al-Qahtani seems to understand that: “If you interrogate me in the right way and the right position,” he taunts his questioners, “you might find some answers.”
A secondary battle appears to be under way over Ramadan. At various points during the Muslim holy month, al-Qahtani claims to be either on a hunger strike, refusing all food and water, or fasting during daylight hours, as Ramadan requires. According to the log, the interrogators tell al-Qahtani he cannot pray—a religious obligation—unless he disregards another by accepting water. So he declines to pray.
Al-Qahtani’s resilience under pressure in the fall of 2002 led top officials at Gitmo to petition Washington for more muscular “counter resistance strategies.” On Dec. 2, Rumsfeld approved 16 of 19 stronger coercive methods. Now the interrogators could use stress strategies like standing for prolonged periods, isolation for as long as 30 days, removal of clothing, forced shaving of facial hair, playing on “individual phobias” (such as dogs) and “mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing.” According to the log, al-Qahtani experienced several of those over the next five weeks. The techniques Rumsfeld balked at included “use of a wet towel or dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation.” “Our Armed Forces are trained,” a Pentagon memo on the changes read, “to a standard of interrogation that reflects a tradition of restraint.” Nevertheless, the log shows that interrogators poured bottles of water on al-Qahtani’s head when he refused to drink. Interrogators called this game “Drink Water or Wear It.”
After the new measures are approved, the mood in al-Qahtani’s interrogation booth changes dramatically. The interrogation sessions lengthen. The quizzing now starts at midnight, and when Detainee 063 dozes off, interrogators rouse him by dripping water on his head or playing Christina Aguilera music. According to the log, his handlers at one point perform a puppet show “satirizing the detainee’s involvement with al-Qaeda.” He is taken to a new interrogation booth, which is decorated with pictures of 9/11 victims, American flags and red lights. He has to stand for the playing of the U.S. national anthem. His head and beard are shaved. He is returned to his original interrogation booth. A picture of a 9/11 victim is taped to his trousers. Al-Qahtani repeats that he will “not talk until he is interrogated the proper way.” At 7 a.m. on Dec. 4, after a 12-hour, all-night session, he is put to bed for a four-hour nap.
Over the next few days, al-Qahtani is subjected to a drill known as Invasion of Space by a Female, and he becomes especially agitated by the close physical presence of a woman. Then, around 2 p.m. on Dec. 6, comes another small breakthrough. He asks his handlers for some paper. “I will tell the truth,” he says. “I am doing this to get out of here.” He finally explains how he got to Afghanistan in the first place and how he met with bin Laden. In return, the interrogators honor requests from him to have a blanket and to turn off the air conditioner. Soon enough, the pressure ratchets up again. Various strategies of intimidation are employed anew. The log reveals that a dog is present, but no details are given beyond a hazy reference to a disagreement between the military police and the dog handler. Agitated, al-Qahtani takes back the story he told the day before about meeting bin Laden.
But a much more serious problem develops on Dec. 7: a medical corpsman reports that al-Qahtani is becoming seriously dehydrated, the result of his refusal to take water regularly. He is given an IV drip, and a doctor is summoned. An unprecedented 24-hour time out is called, but even as al-Qahtani is put under a doctor’s care, music is played to “prevent detainee from sleeping.” Nine hours later, a medical corpsman checks al-Qahtani’s pulse and finds it “unusually slow.” An electrocardiogram is administered by a doctor, and after al-Qahtani is transferred to a hospital, a CT scan is performed. A second doctor is consulted. Al-Qahtani’s heartbeat is regular but slow: 35 beats a minute. He is placed in isolation and hooked up to a heart monitor.
The next day, a radiologist is flown in from Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station in Puerto Rico, 600 miles away, to read the CT scan. The log reports, “No anomalies were found.” Nonetheless, al-Qahtani is given an ultrasound for blood clots. For the first time since the log began, al-Qahtani is given an entire day to sleep. The next evening, the log reports that his medical “checks are all good.” Al-Qahtani is “hooded, shackled and restrained in a litter” and transported back to Camp X-Ray in an ambulance.
Over the next month, the interrogators experiment with other tactics. They strip-search him and briefly make him stand nude. They tell him to bark like a dog and growl at pictures of terrorists. They hang pictures of scantily clad women around his neck. A female interrogator so annoys al-Qahtani that he tells his captors he wants to commit suicide and asks for a crayon to write a will. At one stage, an Arabic-speaking serviceman, posing as a fellow detainee, is brought to Camp X-Ray for a short stay in an effort to gain al-Qahtani’s confidence. The log reports that al-Qahtani makes several comments to interrogators that imply he has a big story to tell, but interrogators report that he seems either too scared or simply unwilling, to tell it. On Jan. 10, 2003, al-Qahtani says he knows nothing of terrorists but volunteers to return to the gulf states and act as a double agent for the U.S. in exchange for his freedom. Five days later, Rumsfeld’s harsher measures are revoked after military lawyers in Washington raised questions about their use and efficacy.
It’s unclear how al-Qhatani’s interrogation proceeded from that point and whether it is still continuing. Senior Pentagon officials told TIME that some of his most valuable confessions came not during the period covered in the log or as a result of any particular technique but when al-Qahtani was presented with evidence coughed up by others in detention, especially Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or KSM, the alleged mastermind of 9/11. The intelligence take was more cumulative than anything else, says a Pentagon official. Once al-Qahtani realized KSM was talking, the official speculates, al-Qahtani may have felt he had the green light to follow suit.
Al-Qahtani has never been charged with a crime, has no lawyer and remains in detention at Guantanamo. But his case is already the subject of several probes in Washington. A year ago, a senior FBI counterterrorism official wrote the Pentagon complaining of abuses that FBI agents said they witnessed at the naval base. The agents reported seeing or hearing of “highly aggressive interrogation techniques.” The letter singles out the treatment of al-Qahtani in September and October of 2002—before the log obtained by TIME begins—saying a dog was used “in an aggressive manner to intimidate Detainee #63.” The FBI letter said al-Qahtani had been “subjected to intense isolation for over three months” and “was evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to non existent people, reporting hearing voices, crouching in a cell covered with a sheet for hours on end).” The Justice Department and the Pentagon have opened separate investigations into the charges. A Pentagon official tells TIME he expects that many of those charges will prove to be unfounded.
Interrogators eventually compelled al-Qahtani to focus on his fellow detainees at Guantanamo. In that process, he implicated more than 20 other Gitmo prisoners as members of al-Qaeda or associates of bin Laden’s, according to the Los Angeles Times. A military board has since used al-Qahtani’s identification as a factor in prolonging the detention of some of them. Whether he has won more favorable treatment in return for his cooperation is unknown. But at least one of those he named, a Yemeni, is now claiming in a U.S. federal court that al-Qahtani’s statements about him are unreliable because they “appear to have been obtained by the use of torture.”
President Bush has said the U.S. would apply principals consistent with the Geneva Conventions to “unlawful combatants,” subject to military necessity, at Guantanamo and elsewhere. The Pentagon argues that al-Qahtani’s treatment was always “humane.” But the Geneva Conventions forbid any “outrage on personal dignity.” Eric Freedman, a constitutional-law expert and consultant in some of the growing number of federal lawsuits challenging U.S. treatment of these detainees, says, “If the techniques described in this interrogation log are not outrages to personal dignity, then words have no meaning.” Then again, in the war on terrorism, the personal dignity of a fanatic trained for mass murder may be an inevitable casualty. —With reporting by Brian Bennett, Timothy J. Burger, Sally B. Donnelly and Viveca Novak/Washington
The Torture of Detainee 063 | ReasonableReflection.net
Submitted by Charles Miller on Fri, 24 Jun 2005
Inside the Interrogation of Detainee 063
EXCLUSIVE: TO GET THE “20TH HIJACKER” TO TALK, THE U.S. USED A WIDE RANGE OF TACTICS. A SECRET LOG REVEALS THE FIRST DOCUMENTED VIEW OF HOW GITMO REALLY WORKS
By ADAM ZAGORIN, MICHAEL DUFFY FOR TIME MAGAZINE
The prisoner known around the U.S. naval station at Guantànamo Bay as Detainee 063 was a hard man to break. Defiant from the start, he told his captors that he had been in Afghanistan to pursue his love of falconry. But the young Saudi prisoner who wouldn’t talk was not just any detainee. He was Mohammed al-Qahtani, a follower of Osama bin Laden’s and the man believed by many to be the so-called 20th hijacker. He had tried to enter the U.S. in August 2001, allegedly to take part in the Sept. 11 attacks. But while Mohammed Atta, the eventual leader of the hijackers, was waiting outside in the Orlando, Fla., airport parking lot, al-Qahtani was detained inside—and then deported—by an alert immigration officer who didn’t buy his story.
More than a year later, after al-Qahtani had been captured in Afghanistan and transferred to Gitmo’s Camp X-Ray, his interrogation was going nowhere. So in late November 2002, according to an 84-page secret interrogation log obtained by TIME, al-Qahtani’s questioners switched gears. They suggested to their captive that he had been spared by Allah in order to reveal the true meaning of the Koran and help bring down bin Laden.
During a routine check of his medical condition, a sergeant approached al-Qahtani and whispered in his ear, “What is God telling you right now? Your 19 friends died in a fireball and you weren’t with them. Was that God’s choice? Is it God’s will that you stay alive to tell us about his message?” At that point, the log states, al-Qahtani threw his head back and butted the sergeant in the eye. Two MPs wrestled al-Qahtani to the ground. The sergeant crouched down next to the thrashing terrorist, who tried to spit on him. The sergeant’s response: “Go ahead and spit on me. It won’t change anything. You’re still here. I’m still talking to you and you won’t leave until you’ve given God’s message.”
The interrogation log of Detainee 063 provides the first internal look at the highly classified realm of Gitmo interrogations since the detention camp opened four years ago. Chief Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita tells TIME that the log was compiled by various uniformed interrogators and observers on the Pentagon’s Joint Task Force at Gitmo as the interrogation proceeded. It is stamped SECRET ORCON, a military acronym for a document that is supposed to remain with the organization that created it. A Pentagon official who has seen the log describes it as the “kind of document that was never meant to leave Gitmo.”
The log reads like a night watchman’s diary. It is a sometimes shocking and often mundane hour-by-hour, even minute-by-minute account of a campaign to extract information. The log records every time al-Qahtani eats, sleeps, exercises or goes to the bathroom and every time he complies with or refuses his interrogators’ requests. The detainee’s physical condition is frequently checked by medical corpsmen—sometimes as often as three times a day— which indicates either spectacular concern about al-Qahtani’s health or persistent worry about just how much stress he can take. Although the log does not appear obviously censored, it is also plainly incomplete: there are numerous gaps in the notes about what is said and what is happening in the interrogation booth beyond details like “Detainee taken to bathroom and walked for 10 minutes.”
Despite the information gaps, the log offers a rare glimpse into the darker reaches of intelligence gathering, in which teams that specialize in extracting information by almost any means match wits and wills with men who are trained to keep quiet at almost any cost. It spans 50 days in the winter of 2002-03, from November to early January, a critical period at Gitmo, during which 16 additional interrogation techniques were approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for use on a select few detainees, including al-Qahtani.
By itself, the log doesn’t make clear how effective the interrogations were. The Pentagon contends that al-Qahtani has been a valuable source of information: providing details of meetings with bin Laden, naming people and financial contacts in several Arab countries, describing terrorist training camps where bin Laden lives and explaining how he may have escaped from Tora Bora in December 2001.
Pentagon officials tell TIME that most of the intelligence gleaned from those sessions was recorded in other documents. But the interrogation log gives a rare window into the techniques used by the U.S. military, suggesting at least in this case that disclosures were sometimes obtained not when al-Qahtani was under duress but when his handlers eased up on him.
The case of Detainee 063 is sure to add fire to the superheated debate about the use of American power in the age of terrorism. The U.S. has been criticized for mistreating Gitmo prisoners and denying their rights at a facility Amnesty International has controversially called the “gulag of our time.” Along with lawmakers and human-rights groups, former President Jimmy Carter has called on Washington officials to shut the camp down. Even President George W. Bush told Fox News last week that his Administration was exploring alternatives to the detention center.
How should a democratic nation proceed when it captures a high-value prisoner like al-Qahtani, when unlocking a mind might save lives? Experts acknowledge that brute torture generally doesn’t work because a person will say anything to stop the pain. So what, exactly, is effective? And when do the ends justify the means?
From the moment Mohammed al-Qahtani stepped off a Virgin Atlantic flight in Orlando back in August 2001, immigration officials noticed something troubling about him. He had arrived on a one-way ticket yet carried only $2,800 in cash, barely enough to buy his return. When an official pressed him for details about his destination, al-Qahtani was hostile and evasive. With an interpreter’s help, the immigration agent questioned al-Qahtani for 90 min. and then sent him packing. Al-Qahtani’s parting words: “I’ll be back.”
From London, al-Qahtani made his way to the United Arab Emirates and then to Afghanistan to fight against the U.S. He was captured fleeing Tora Bora in December 2001. When he was shipped to Guantánamo two months later, officials had not yet realized he was the presumed 20th hijacker. For weeks, he refused to give his name. But in July 2002, the feds matched his fingerprints to those of the man who had been deported from Orlando and marked him for intensive interrogation. Al-Qahtani, explains Pentagon spokesman DiRita, was “a particularly well-placed, well-connected terrorist who was believed capable of unlocking an enormous amount of specific and general insights into 9/11, al-Qaeda operations and ongoing planning for future attacks.” But the initial questioning by the FBI went poorly. “We were getting nothing from him,” a senior Pentagon official says. “He had been trained to resist direct questioning. And what works in a Chicago police precinct doesn’t work in war.”
That’s where things stood in late November 2002, when the log obtained by TIME begins. At that point, tag teams of interrogators are putting al-Qahtani through a daily routine designed to drain the detainee of his autonomy. They wake him every morning at 4 and sometimes question him until midnight. Each day—and sometimes every hour—is shaped around standard Army interrogation techniques, with code names like Fear Up/Harsh, Pride/Ego Down, the Futility Approach and the Circumstantial Evidence Theme. Each day, the interrogators seem to be trying to find those that work best. They promise better treatment; they show him pictures of 9/11 victims, particularly children and the elderly. They talk about God’s will and al-Qahtani’s guilt. They tell him that he failed on his mission and hint that other comrades have been captured and are talking about his role in the plot. They play on his emotions, saying he should talk if he ever wants to see his family or friends or homeland again.
For days, al-Qahtani stonewalls his handlers and maintains that he went to the U.S. to get into the used-car business. “You are working with the devil,” he tells his captors. The interrogators respond by forcing him to stand or sit immobile on a metal chair. He tries to deflect questions about where he went in Afghanistan with answers apparently drawn directly from an al-Qaeda handbook, given to terrorists, about how to resist interrogations. When al-Qahtani resorts to a handbook answer, his handlers reply that it amounts to another admission of guilt.
Yet in other ways, al-Qahtani emerges as an innocent abroad—uneducated, almost from another era. He asks whether the sun revolves around the earth. He wonders about dinosaurs and is told of their history and demise. He confides that he would like to marry someday—apparently not realizing how unlikely that goal now is.
The first break in al-Qahtani ‘s facade comes with a long-delayed call of nature. When a hunger strike he has launched fizzles, he starts refusing water. That becomes a battle of wills—and teeth. Al-Qahtani quickly becomes so dehydrated that medical corpsmen forcibly administer fluids by IV drip. He tries to fight them off with his hands and is restrained. Another time, al-Qahtani tries to rip the IV needle out; when he is cuffed to his chair, he turns his head and bites the IV line completely in two. He is then strapped down and given an undisclosed amount of fluids. An hour or so later, around 9:40 a.m., al-Qahtani tells his guards that he would be willing to talk if he is allowed to urinate. The log notes he is given 3 1/2 bags of IV fluid. He starts to moan and asks again to be allowed to relieve himself. Yes, but first he must answer questions:
Interrogator: Who do you work for?
Al-Qahtani: Al-Qaeda
Interrogator: Who was your leader?
Al-Qahtani: Osama bin Laden
Interrogator: Why did you go to Orlando?
Al-Qahtani: I wasn’t told the mission
Interrogator: Who was with you on the plane?
Al-Qahtani: I was by myself
That answer frustrates the interrogator—You’re wasting my time, he says—and when al-Qahtani requests his promised bathroom break, he is told to go in his pants. Humiliatingly, he does. The log notes 30 minutes later, “He is beginning to understand the futility of his situation . . . He is much closer to compliance and cooperation than at the beginning of the operation.”
But things appear to move slowly after that. It is not clear from the log’s terse entries that increased pressure is leading to new disclosures. The interrogators keep juggling techniques—giving extra sleep some days, offering a home-cooked Arab meal on another (al-Qahtani refuses it). Later that day, when a video of the destruction of the Twin Towers is played, al-Qahtani becomes so violent, he has to be restrained. “We can’t say, Because we did this, we got that,” a senior Pentagon official says. “If we did know what worked, we’d know exactly which pressure points to apply and when.” Even al-Qahtani seems to understand that: “If you interrogate me in the right way and the right position,” he taunts his questioners, “you might find some answers.”
A secondary battle appears to be under way over Ramadan. At various points during the Muslim holy month, al-Qahtani claims to be either on a hunger strike, refusing all food and water, or fasting during daylight hours, as Ramadan requires. According to the log, the interrogators tell al-Qahtani he cannot pray—a religious obligation—unless he disregards another by accepting water. So he declines to pray.
Al-Qahtani’s resilience under pressure in the fall of 2002 led top officials at Gitmo to petition Washington for more muscular “counter resistance strategies.” On Dec. 2, Rumsfeld approved 16 of 19 stronger coercive methods. Now the interrogators could use stress strategies like standing for prolonged periods, isolation for as long as 30 days, removal of clothing, forced shaving of facial hair, playing on “individual phobias” (such as dogs) and “mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing.” According to the log, al-Qahtani experienced several of those over the next five weeks. The techniques Rumsfeld balked at included “use of a wet towel or dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation.” “Our Armed Forces are trained,” a Pentagon memo on the changes read, “to a standard of interrogation that reflects a tradition of restraint.” Nevertheless, the log shows that interrogators poured bottles of water on al-Qahtani’s head when he refused to drink. Interrogators called this game “Drink Water or Wear It.”
After the new measures are approved, the mood in al-Qahtani’s interrogation booth changes dramatically. The interrogation sessions lengthen. The quizzing now starts at midnight, and when Detainee 063 dozes off, interrogators rouse him by dripping water on his head or playing Christina Aguilera music. According to the log, his handlers at one point perform a puppet show “satirizing the detainee’s involvement with al-Qaeda.” He is taken to a new interrogation booth, which is decorated with pictures of 9/11 victims, American flags and red lights. He has to stand for the playing of the U.S. national anthem. His head and beard are shaved. He is returned to his original interrogation booth. A picture of a 9/11 victim is taped to his trousers. Al-Qahtani repeats that he will “not talk until he is interrogated the proper way.” At 7 a.m. on Dec. 4, after a 12-hour, all-night session, he is put to bed for a four-hour nap.
Over the next few days, al-Qahtani is subjected to a drill known as Invasion of Space by a Female, and he becomes especially agitated by the close physical presence of a woman. Then, around 2 p.m. on Dec. 6, comes another small breakthrough. He asks his handlers for some paper. “I will tell the truth,” he says. “I am doing this to get out of here.” He finally explains how he got to Afghanistan in the first place and how he met with bin Laden. In return, the interrogators honor requests from him to have a blanket and to turn off the air conditioner. Soon enough, the pressure ratchets up again. Various strategies of intimidation are employed anew. The log reveals that a dog is present, but no details are given beyond a hazy reference to a disagreement between the military police and the dog handler. Agitated, al-Qahtani takes back the story he told the day before about meeting bin Laden.
But a much more serious problem develops on Dec. 7: a medical corpsman reports that al-Qahtani is becoming seriously dehydrated, the result of his refusal to take water regularly. He is given an IV drip, and a doctor is summoned. An unprecedented 24-hour time out is called, but even as al-Qahtani is put under a doctor’s care, music is played to “prevent detainee from sleeping.” Nine hours later, a medical corpsman checks al-Qahtani’s pulse and finds it “unusually slow.” An electrocardiogram is administered by a doctor, and after al-Qahtani is transferred to a hospital, a CT scan is performed. A second doctor is consulted. Al-Qahtani’s heartbeat is regular but slow: 35 beats a minute. He is placed in isolation and hooked up to a heart monitor.
The next day, a radiologist is flown in from Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station in Puerto Rico, 600 miles away, to read the CT scan. The log reports, “No anomalies were found.” Nonetheless, al-Qahtani is given an ultrasound for blood clots. For the first time since the log began, al-Qahtani is given an entire day to sleep. The next evening, the log reports that his medical “checks are all good.” Al-Qahtani is “hooded, shackled and restrained in a litter” and transported back to Camp X-Ray in an ambulance.
Over the next month, the interrogators experiment with other tactics. They strip-search him and briefly make him stand nude. They tell him to bark like a dog and growl at pictures of terrorists. They hang pictures of scantily clad women around his neck. A female interrogator so annoys al-Qahtani that he tells his captors he wants to commit suicide and asks for a crayon to write a will. At one stage, an Arabic-speaking serviceman, posing as a fellow detainee, is brought to Camp X-Ray for a short stay in an effort to gain al-Qahtani’s confidence. The log reports that al-Qahtani makes several comments to interrogators that imply he has a big story to tell, but interrogators report that he seems either too scared or simply unwilling, to tell it. On Jan. 10, 2003, al-Qahtani says he knows nothing of terrorists but volunteers to return to the gulf states and act as a double agent for the U.S. in exchange for his freedom. Five days later, Rumsfeld’s harsher measures are revoked after military lawyers in Washington raised questions about their use and efficacy.
It’s unclear how al-Qhatani’s interrogation proceeded from that point and whether it is still continuing. Senior Pentagon officials told TIME that some of his most valuable confessions came not during the period covered in the log or as a result of any particular technique but when al-Qahtani was presented with evidence coughed up by others in detention, especially Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or KSM, the alleged mastermind of 9/11. The intelligence take was more cumulative than anything else, says a Pentagon official. Once al-Qahtani realized KSM was talking, the official speculates, al-Qahtani may have felt he had the green light to follow suit.
Al-Qahtani has never been charged with a crime, has no lawyer and remains in detention at Guantanamo. But his case is already the subject of several probes in Washington. A year ago, a senior FBI counterterrorism official wrote the Pentagon complaining of abuses that FBI agents said they witnessed at the naval base. The agents reported seeing or hearing of “highly aggressive interrogation techniques.” The letter singles out the treatment of al-Qahtani in September and October of 2002—before the log obtained by TIME begins—saying a dog was used “in an aggressive manner to intimidate Detainee #63.” The FBI letter said al-Qahtani had been “subjected to intense isolation for over three months” and “was evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to non existent people, reporting hearing voices, crouching in a cell covered with a sheet for hours on end).” The Justice Department and the Pentagon have opened separate investigations into the charges. A Pentagon official tells TIME he expects that many of those charges will prove to be unfounded.
Interrogators eventually compelled al-Qahtani to focus on his fellow detainees at Guantanamo. In that process, he implicated more than 20 other Gitmo prisoners as members of al-Qaeda or associates of bin Laden’s, according to the Los Angeles Times. A military board has since used al-Qahtani’s identification as a factor in prolonging the detention of some of them. Whether he has won more favorable treatment in return for his cooperation is unknown. But at least one of those he named, a Yemeni, is now claiming in a U.S. federal court that al-Qahtani’s statements about him are unreliable because they “appear to have been obtained by the use of torture.”
President Bush has said the U.S. would apply principals consistent with the Geneva Conventions to “unlawful combatants,” subject to military necessity, at Guantanamo and elsewhere. The Pentagon argues that al-Qahtani’s treatment was always “humane.” But the Geneva Conventions forbid any “outrage on personal dignity.” Eric Freedman, a constitutional-law expert and consultant in some of the growing number of federal lawsuits challenging U.S. treatment of these detainees, says, “If the techniques described in this interrogation log are not outrages to personal dignity, then words have no meaning.” Then again, in the war on terrorism, the personal dignity of a fanatic trained for mass murder may be an inevitable casualty. —With reporting by Brian Bennett, Timothy J. Burger, Sally B. Donnelly and Viveca Novak/Washington
posted by smokey spice at 1:49 AM
16 Comments:
the shame of the united states is now and will always be slavery. all this post-911 bullshit doesn't even have historical significance. al-queera ... they were just a one-trick pussy. and really, i don't honestly believe in osama bin laden's existence. let's say that the jury is still out.
but even if this "terrorist network" does exist, it doesn't pose a threat to any americans. and certainly none of its members are worth any concern -- let alone sympathy -- from me. that's just what they get for getting in bed with bush.
for clarification, i am stating that i believe that on sept. 11, 2001, george w. bush and his arab allies attacked the united states for the sole purpose of making money and bringing arabia under saudi control.
and i think that until i see hard evidence to the contrary, that's how i am going to remember this chapter of the petroleum wars.
"outrage on personal dignity"
Excuse me?
That was really long, Smokey, and I read the whole thing. And I have no objection to any of it. There wasn't any torture described. Nor was there even any abuse. Perfectly legit treatment of a terrorist detainee.
It's a prisoner of war camp, for terrorists. They're being treated better than prisoners of war have EVER been treated, by ANY country. The ACLU can take a flying leap, and so can Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, if they have a problem with it. I'm proud that we treat war criminals so well. Nobody else would, you can be sure of that!
Smokey ma netwaka3ash 'akal min hikki ....wa ma khufiya kana a3zam ..
Something's wrong with your keyboard, H :O
Craig,
I guess you would not want to fall in the hands of people that would treat you the way the prisoners of American terror would.
If you can not see the atrocities and the war crimes and the breaches of Geneva conventions in the abuse that the detainees are seeing in the illegal American detention camps, you are either:
1- A Reality Blind
2- A CUNT
3- A war criminal that is hiding under the user name PC
4- A .
Best Of The Two Worlds
i think i have to agree with the person who is too scared to use their own name.
craig is wrong. we should not even have prisoners of war. these people should have been shot dead on site.
and the only reason they were spared was because they are agents of the bush-haliburton-saudi terrorist network. and that's the real shame.
i really just hope that if they are being tortured, it is with the intent to eventually kill them. they want to be with their "god" anyway. and anything that happens to them, as far as they are concerned, is at the express desire of their "god." unless they want to suggest that either their "god" is not all powerful or is wrong.
of course, i suppose that if they are willing to accept either of those two logical and reasonable conclusions, then maybe their death should be quick. ... as if ...
James:
1. Can you please explain why slavery is shameful? Be elaborate.
2. What evidence is there that they are in bed with Bush (and specifically for money) and is their supposed alliance with Bush the primary issue for you?
3. What are your thoughts on habeas corpus, both as a constitutional right as well as philosophical concept?
4. When you say "these people should have been shot dead on site," who are 'these people' that you refer to? By the same token, who exactly are you refering to when you say "they want to be with their 'god' anyway"? Point is, do you know who they are or have any clue why they're in Guantanamo?
PC: With all due respect, I wouldn't expect you to have any objections to any of it.
Yes, it is an outrage on personal dignity to be detained unlawfully and without any process of proving your innocence. It is an outrage to conduct psychological experiments on detainees--especially when they are indefinitely held detainees.
Indefinite detention is a problem & I'm not entirely sure how you manage to collapse your views on proven terrorists with your potential objectivity on legal processes, but you apparently have... or, at least in this instance. Of course, I may be assuming that you do care about due process, but I'll take the risk.
It is NOT a POW camp. POW's get released or traded back. In this case, they get sent to another government that can legally do what this perfectly legit one says it won't.
It is a legal black hole camp for people we don't know deserve even to be imprisoned. From this article and the trials of Moussaoui, we have at least two candidates for 20th hijacker. So which is it? Don't you want to know the truth? Or do we just attach that as the new title to anyone we don't want questions asked about?
Up until organizations like the ACLU & AI (that can take a leap when they don't agree with you, but would probably be used by you as evidence at some other point in time), there were no legal standards for how to treat these detainees. As far as the administration was concerned, they were locked up and the key was thrown away until the threat of public hearings was thrown into the mix (thanks to the Supreme Court decision--should they leap too?).
PC & James: The point of this post wasn't to gain your sympathy. Sympathy, for the most part, doesn't count for shit. There are legal implications in this particular case that bleed into the legal system as a whole and indicate how far we're willing to let the government go.
This isn't just about one man who may or may not be the 20th hijacker. I don't even know if it's so much about the 499 others in Guantanamo. The political is dynamic. What's happening at Gitmo will continue as a legacy... whether that be legal, political, social, or even spiritual.
Sanitize as you will, but there's no questioning its immorality (and, no, the 'we're better than Botswana' argument doesn't cut it for me).
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Do I hear a sound some where in the Bush's....
The best of two worlds
1. shame of slavery ...
i don't really see where your question lies. i mean, the american enslavement of africans was the worst crime in the history of the world.
the two crimes that often (and incorrectly) take that distinction are the jewish holocaust in world war ii, and the genocide of the native peoples of the americas. the holocaust doesn't even compare, as jews claim that 6 million were killed (though it was more like 10 million, just 4 million weren't jews so they didn't count).
yet in the middle passage (the trip from africa to the americas) more than 10 million people died.
now the genocide of the natives killed more than 35 million people. but this is more of an example of the historical phenomenon that accompanies the conquering of people.
slavery is a step above this because we do not keep track of how many slaves were killed, how many blacks were killed in the hundred years that followed slavery, nor how many continue to die in mass numbers today. on top of that, natives are familiar with their culture and history, american blacks are not.
and yes, in that i am saying that the bane of the existence of the american black today is still a product of slavery. and as evidence of that, immigrants have always gone through a period of being hated in the united states, followed by acceptance.
and assuming that america survives the bush-saudi attacks on the fabric of the nation, arabs will also be accepted with time. but blacks have never been accepted, and never will be. part of that is that they did not choose to come here, but it is a lot more deep than that.
and this is of course the shame of the united states because it was slavery that made the united states what it is today, a nation that enjoyed free labor for more than a hundred years, preceded by a foundation of free labor for another 200 years.
slavery remains today both what has made this country what it is, and the greatest source of disharmony within the social fabric.
2.
are you talking about evidence other than the long standing family ties between the bushes and the saudis? are you talking about evidence other than the cooperation that bush has given to saudi arabia, the nation that attacked ours on sept. 11, 2001? i mean, you aren't going to say that you do not know about the carlyle group.
all of the existing evidence points to the enemies of the united states being george w. bush, his family, his business ties, his administration, and his allies in arabia.
there is no supposed alliance. bush = saudi. they are one and the same. so when you ask if the alliance is the only thing i have against the saudis, i can only answer: no, it is the existence of the saudi family that i have a problem with.
any ties they claim to islamic mythology only reinforces their criminal nature, as it is a given fact that religions such as islam are corrupt systems meant to oppress people without the mental capability to reject mythology.
3.
i hardly see how the constitution or our laws are relevant to non-citizens.
having said that, i am in favor of a government being responsible for its citizens. and i think that if an officer of a government insists that the government should prove its care of a citizen who has been taken into custody, either by presence or by testimony, then the government should be responsible and provide such proof.
i am not sure what you are getting at here, as none of this seems germane to the discussion at hand. if the prisoners are not united states citizens, then they are not protected by the constitution.
4.
these people = any prisoner taken from another country and brought to the carribean as captives OR any non-citizen agent of the bush-saudi terrorist network captured within the united states.
followers of abrahamic mythology (including muslims) are under the delusion that when they die, they will be welcomed in by the creative force, which they have personified as a "god." i know, this is childish and silly, but they really believe it. so if that's what they think, let them go to their "god" ... the sooner the better.
obviously, i am specifically referring to the islamic enemy combatants that are being held prisoner, but it applies to all muslims, christians and jews. and really, anyone that let's mythology dictate how they run their life should not be welcome contributing to our gene pool.
do i know who they are? no. and i don't particularly care. the entire war is silly.
i think that on sept. 12, 2001, the united states should h severed all ties with all arab and islamic nations. we should have severed ties with israel.
but if you would like to offer hard evidence that an american citizen is being held captive without cause, then i suppose i would be mildly upset. but still, i would be more concerned with the lasting effects of slavery and the disproportionate amount of black men in united states prisons.
let me point out, smokey, that you were the one who claimed that this would be the "shame of the united states," when it really doesn't compare to many crimes this government has committed throughout its existence.
i should also point out that my third comment there was half sarcastic as a response to the semi-retarded annonymous post that came before it. people with no balls should keep their opinions to theirselves. some of us are willing to say what we really think while using our real names.
i do not believe in killing anyone. but i do believe that wars should be settled in battlefields, and that opponents should be either killed or let go. if you capture a spy, and wish to double them, that's one thing. i see no purpose in detaining grunts. they understood the severity of the decision they made to take part in the war. specifically, they knew dying was likely.
there is no sanitization going on here, the situation is just far more minor than you are making it out to be. eventually you just have to accept the nature of religions and governments.
i edited my comment for you, my sweet. but let me get this straight ... i can put my real name, my real picture, and let people know where i live along with my opinions ... but you are scared that your family will find out you have an opinion?
i find that really funny, being that i think i have far more radical and controversial opinions ... at least that i express.
for the anonymous poster:
1. are the two worlds the world of the mentally handicapped and the world of the illiterate?
2. what exactly is a reality blind?
here's a hint: if you wish to argue with people who speak english, learn to speak it yourself. and some basic logic wouldn't hurt either.
jeames, get off the crack. My family most certainly knows that I have opinions--trust me, that's quite covered. Maintaining anonymity on the internet isn't about hiding from my family, so I'm not sure how you tied that into the subject. I do thank you for editing though.
I'll respond to the rest tonight rather than at work where I'm constantly looking over my shoulder.
ok, let's pretend like i don't know anything about your leaving the country after high school ...
your note to me said that lybians are a tight knit community and that you didn't want me to use your real name.
admittedly, it's the most contact i have had from you in a long time, but it does sort of leave a lot open for interpretation.
why don't you get off the crack, sweetheart? i mean, do you really care what the lybian community thinks of you? i mean, are you running for public office in lybia?
i actually think of it as rather absurd that the paragraph i used your name in was the one where i criticized the other person for being anonymous.
but let it be known that the cornerstone for any fair establishment in society is the personal responsibility of the involved individuals. if a person does not respect their opinion enough to stand by it proudly, then their opinion doesn't warrent your respect either.
i am not saying that i don't respect your opinion, because i at least know who you are. but i would not say that any anonymous opinion has any philosophical validity, whether it's your's or anyone else's.
ok... so it's libya not lybia. we don't have to pretend anything--my personal history has nothing to do with what we're discussing except that you're trying to throw it in which is not at all amusing.
attaching a name to my opinion is frankly my choice to make. and when i publish commentaries, a name will be attached, but that's based on my time and my conditions, not yours. this is a blog. it's not a publication--it's my thing. whether i want my name known or not is purely my decision and i have no reason to explain to anyone what part of my identity i want to share.
there are plenty of american bloggers who choose to remain unknown. i doubt you're posting comments on their blogs about the merits of attaching their names. i also doubt that you'd have much to do with saving their asses if/when it came time to. so let's speak larger than we are, jeames.
as for your response to my questions:
1. slavery... i don't question any of the things you present as evidence of the shame of slavery.
"but blacks have never been accepted, and never will be. part of that is that they did not choose to come here, but it is a lot more deep than that."
The 'a lot more deep than that' is exactly what I refer to when speaking of exiles, who you dismiss. Of course, there is a difference.
However what all groups mentioned (africans, native americans, and now muslims) have in common is the state of seige and the inability to do anything about it.
Okay, we can say that a couple of hundred years ago, standards were different, but what excuse do we have now for acting like we're in the 1400's? what can we say now?
2. What evidence is there that they are in bed with Bush (and specifically for money) and is their supposed alliance with Bush the primary issue for you?
In this case, you spoke of the saudis when I was asking about 'those people.' Surely you don't think the saudi royal family is representative of all arabs, muslims, or gitmo detainees.
You can't even say who those people are...which just proves my point. Have a problem with the Saudi monarchy, but why blame 30 ethnicities for it?
3. so you're a patriot. humanitarian based principals are actually only for citizens and screw the rest of the people. Is that what I'm understanding here?
4. I'm too sleepy to address this one. tomorrow... inshallah
actually, your personal history has everything in the world to do with my thinking you would hide your opinion from your family. and since you accused me of smoking crack ... well fuck it. if you want to be like that, be like that.
of course, personal histories have everything in the world to do with everything we do. and you know that. at least i hope you know that.
for the record, this is the only blog on the internet that i read. and it's only because i used to be friends with you, and it's become the only contact i have with you.
and it is very much your choice to detach any validity from your opinions by refusing to take responsibility for them, i do not disagree with that.
1. i am not even going to dignify this with a response, as it is foolish to suggest that a group as large as muslims are somehow disempowered.
oh the poor disempowered muslims and christians. if only there was a society based on their archaic and childish morals.
if you want to talk about the plight of the palestinians or iraqis, that's one thing. but you don't because that group is so small, and not at all comparable to american blacks or american natives. but one of the largest and most powerful groups on the planet (muslims) ... whatever.
2. maybe i misinterpreted your question two, but let me make it clear. i believe that the saudi family is in bed with bush. and i believe that osama bin laden and bush are not on opposite sides either. i certainly don't think that all arabs are. in fact, it's the arab dislike for america and bush that is being exploited as a means to oppress them.
and yes, i am saying that americans and arabs (meaning people living in arabia) have a common enemy, and that enemy is the bush-saudi family. these people have us fighting each other, when we should be fighting them.
you keep trying to read all this crap into what i am writing, but you refuse to take it at face value.
i say i don't like the saudis or islam, but have never said i don't like arabs.
and if you were to actually read my response, i clearly defined who i was talking about when i said "these people." try reading it.
3. i am a patriot? have we met? hi. my name is jeames. and never in my life have i been a patriot. in fact, i am a pretty proud anarchist, who happens to enjoy the freedom of being an american citizen.
the constitution is not some sort of document on human rights, it is an agreement on how a government should function and an attempt to craft a "more perfect union."
when i think of humanity, humanitarian, and humane, i hear violence. that's what humans do. they hurt each other, and exploit each other. i actually think that torture is very much inline with humanitarian principals, based on the history of humans.
but what you were (not) hearing in my response was that you can't use the constitution to defend non-citizens. why is this such a hard pill for you to swallow?
do you want me to say torture is wrong? it's wrong. do you want me to say i don't like bush and i don't like this war? do you really need me to say that?
4. of course you can't respond to this one, because this is where i clearly defined "those people." logic would have forced you to actually confront my point.
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