Wash. Post claim that KSM “cooperated after waterboarding” undermined by reporting from same article
An August 29 Washington Post article charged that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed “cooperated” with the CIA “after waterboarding” and that this occurred “to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the [CIA] inspector general’s report and other documents released this week indicate.” However, these claims are undermined by reporting elsewhere in the article, which notes that Mohammed gave false information during waterboarding and that the CIA inspector general who investigated the CIA’s interrogation programs could not “reach definitive conclusions about the effectiveness of particular interrogation methods.”
From the August 29 Washington Post report on “counterterrorism detention and interrogation activities,” page 100]
Recently released CIA memos don’t discuss EITs. Several media outlets have noted, as The New York Times did, that the partially declassified versions of two recently released CIA memos do not contain reference “to any specific interrogation methods and do not assess their effectiveness.” Newsweek reported that “the newly declassified material does not convincingly demonstrate” that “the agency’s use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ — including sleep deprivation, stress positions, violent physical contact, and waterboarding” was what “produced … useful information” that detainees provided. The article added that “though two of the newly released CIA reports offer examples of the kind of details that detainees surrendered, the reports do not say what information came as a result of harsh interrogation methods and what came from conventional questioning.”
Other media note that IG report is not conclusive of the effectiveness of controversial interrogation techniques
Bush terrorism adviser Frances Townsend: The report “doesn’t say that” the CIA obtained “the most critical information after techniques had been applied.” Townsend stated: “It’s very difficult to draw a cause and effect, because it’s not clear when techniques were applied vs. when that information was received. It’s implicit. It seems, when you read the report, that we got the … most critical information after techniques had been applied. But the report doesn’t say that.” [CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, 8/25/09]
ABC News: CIA documents do not “indicate” whether valuable “information was obtained as a result of controversial interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding. ” ABCNews.com reported that documents related to the 2004 CIA IG report “back up the Bush administration’s claims that intelligence gleaned from captured terror suspects had thwarted terrorist attacks, but the visible portions of the heavily redacted reports do not indicate whether such information was obtained as a result of controversial interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding.” [ABCNews.com, 8/25/09]
Los Angeles Times: Documents offer “little to support the argument that harsh or abusive methods played a key role.” The article reports that the CIA documents “are at best inconclusive” as to the EITs’ effectiveness and offer “little to support the argument that harsh or abusive methods played a key role.” [Los Angeles Times, 8/26/09]
