I think that by far the most interesting information to come out of today's Senate Subcommittee hearing is Ali Soufan's testimony that the head of the CIA interrogation team he was working with during the interrogation of Abu Zubayda was "100 percent in sync with the FBI" on how Zubayda should be treated--namely, that he shouldn't be tortured. The head of the CIA interrogation team "walked out before I did" according to Soufan.
Instead, Soufan said that the major disagreement was between a private contractor, who wanted to use torture, in opposition to experienced interrogators from both the CIA and the FBI. Spencer Ackerman has a theory about the identity of the contractor, who he believes to be former SERE instructor James Mitchell.
-- A. Serwer
