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This is a painful read, and an important reminder that we have not yet finished with the excesses that began in the months after 9\/11.<\/p>\n
\nI have defended men and women on death row for nearly all of my thirty years as a lawyer, and have represented people caught up in the excesses of the \u201cwar on terror\u201d since very shortly after that war was launched. For more than a decade, I have been counsel for Zayn al-Abedin Muhammad Hussein, known more widely as Abu Zubaydah. Abu Zubaydah was the first person immured in a \u201cblack site,\u201d the clandestine prisons operated around the globe by the CIA from early 2002 to late 2006. He was the first prisoner to have his interrogation \u201cenhanced,\u201d and the only person subjected to all the <\/span>DOJ-approved <\/span>interrogation techniques<\/a>, as well as a number that were never approved (including, for example, rectal rehydration). The infamous <\/span><\/span>torture memo<\/a> <\/span><\/span>was, in fact, written specifically to legitimize Abu Zubaydah\u2019<\/span>s torture.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
At the time of his capture and for years afterward, government officials took great pains to demonize Abu Zubaydah in order to justify his abuse. \u201cThe other day,\u201d President George W. Bush <\/span>announced<\/a> <\/span>at a Republican fundraiser in April 2002, \u201cwe hauled in a guy <\/span><\/span>named Abu Zubaydah. He\u2019s one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States. He\u2019s not plotting and planning anymore. He\u2019s where he belongs.\u201d Various senior administration officials described Abu Zubaydah in comparably colorful terms.<\/span><\/p>\n
These pronouncements, however, are not what set the torture scandal into motion. For that, we can thank a \u201c<\/span>psychological assessment<\/a><\/span>\u201d written by unnamed CIA officers and faxed to John Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer who was the lead author of the torture memo. This document described Abu Zubaydah as \u201cthe third or fourth man in al-Qaida\u201d and \u201c<\/span>a senior Usama Bin Laden lieutenant<\/span><\/span>\u201d who had been \u201cinvolved in every major al-Qaida terrorist operation\u201d and was \u201ca planner of the 11 September hijackings.\u201d He \u201cmanaged a network of [al-Qaeda] training camps,\u201d \u201cdirected the start-up of a Bin Laden cell in Jordan,\u201d and \u201cserved as al-Qaeda\u2019s coordinator of external contacts, or foreign communications.\u201d He was also alleged to be \u201cengaged in ongoing terrorism planning against US interests.\u201d For good measure, he had supposedly written the organization\u2019s \u201cmanual on resistance techniques\u201d and had a particular expertise in thwarting conventional interrogations. It was this assessment that provided Yoo with the \u201cfacts\u201d needed to legalize the unlawful and rationalize the unthinkable.<\/span><\/p>\n
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The \u201cfacts\u201d recounted above to justify this torture <\/span>were all false<\/a>. Abu Zubaydah was no lieutenant to Osama bin Laden. He held no position in al-Qaeda, senior or otherwise. He had no part in September 11 or any other al-Qaeda operations. He did not operate a network of al-Qaeda camps, open an al-Qaeda cell in Jordan, or manage al-Qaeda\u2019<\/span>s external communications. <\/span><\/span><\/span>He did not draft any resistance manual, for al-Qaeda or anyone else, and had no special expertise in resisting interrogations.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n