The general narrative surrounding the use of torture is that the FBI conflicted with the CIA and the military over the use of harsh techniques to interrogate detainees. FBI interrogator Ali Soufan has famously written that he was able to get actionable intelligence out of Abu Zubayda before he was tortured and clashed with the CIA over his treatment.
But the FBI inspector general's report, released last Friday in response to a FOIA request from the ACLU, reveals a wrinkle in this narrative. While noting that "FBI witnesses almost uniformly told us that they strongly favored 'non-coercive rapport-based interview techniques,'" the report also states that:
[W]e also learned about a proposal advanced by certain officials from the FBI and DoJ in late 2002 to change the circumstances of [Mohammed] Al-Qahtani's interrogation. A draft letter prepared for the purpose of presenting this proposal to the National Security Council indicated that this proposal involved subjecting Al-Qahatani to interrogation techniques of the sort that had previously been used by the CIA on Zubaydah and another detainee. DOJ and FBI officials involved with this proposal stated to us that the rationale for this proposal was to bring more effective interrogation techniques to bear on Al-Qahtani than the ineffective interrogation techniques that the military had been using up to that time. The techniques that had been previously used by the CIA on Zubaydah included methods that did not remotely resemble the rapport-based techniques that are permitted under FBI policy.
The IG writes that FBI Director Robert Mueller, then-head of the criminal division Michael Chertoff, and Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher were unaware of the proposal and did not "participate in any specific discussion of such a proposal." In addition, the IG states that he was unable to determine whether those who made the proposal had specific knowledge of the techniques that would be used in the harsher interrogations. The concerns from FBI officials about the DoD's use of harsh techniques did reach Chertoff, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, and Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, but according to the report, the concern seemed to be the "efficacy" of such techniques and not the "legality" or "impact on future prosecutions."
Al-Qahtani was subjected to some horrific treatment while in custody, including being leashed and then forced to perform "dog tricks." Susan Crawford, the DoD official overseeing the military commissions under Bush, memorably dropped the charges against Al-Qahtani because, "We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," and that treatment made him unprosecutable.
It's unclear who within the FBI recommended that the CIA torture Al-Qahtani after the military had already done so, but it seems to me that this is a pretty harrowing example of how torture can't be contained once its use is legitimized. Indeed, after the initial flurry of FBI agents reporting the mistreatment of detainees by other agencies in interrogations, the FBI seemed to accept that this was the new way of doing things, according to the report:
As a result, once it was clearly established within each zone that military interrogators were permitted to use interrogation techniques that were not available to FBI agents, the FBI On-Scene Commanders said they often did not elevate additional reports of harsh detainee interrogations to their superiors at FBI headquarters.
According to the report, even those reports relayed to FBI on-scene commanders "were not elevated within the chain of command" because the OSCs eventually came to understand that "the conduct in question was permitted under DoD policy."
I haven't clearly established the chronology, because I haven't finished reading the report and I don't know if actual dates are set for when the FBI's request regarding Al-Qahtani was made, and when the FBI complaints about detainee mistreatment stopped. But I wouldn't be surprised if the former followed the latter. I should also emphasize that whoever made this request, according to the IG report it was apparently without the knowledge of the head of the FBI and represented a minority opinion within the bureau. By 2004, following the Abu Ghraib scandal, clear guidelines were established preventing agents from using harsh techniques or participating in joint interrogations in which they were utilized.
-- A. Serwer
