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“The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link…there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."
CIA interrogators elicited some “cooperation” from al-Libi through a combination of rough treatment and threats that he would be turned over to Egyptian intelligence with even greater experience in the torture business.
By June 2002, al-Libi had told the CIA that Iraq had “provided” unspecified chemical and biological weapons training for two al-Qaeda operatives, an allegation that soon found its way into other U.S. intelligence reports. Al-Libi’s claim was well received even though the DIA was highly suspicious.
Serious Misgivings
“He lacks specific details” about the supposed training, DIA observed. “It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers. Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest.”
Despite his cooperation, al-Libi was still shipped to Egypt where he underwent more abuse, according to a declassified CIA cable from 2004; the year al-Libi recanted his earlier statements. The cable reported that al-Libi said Egyptian interrogators wanted information about al-Qaeda’s connections with Iraq, a subject “about which [al-Libi] said he knew nothing and had difficulty even coming up with a story.” (This, despite the limited “success” CIA interrogators claimed to have had on this issue.)
According to the CIA cable, al-Libi said his interrogators did not like his responses and “placed him in a small box” for about 17 hours. After he was let out of the box, al-Libi was given a last chance to “tell the truth.”
When his answers still did not satisfy, al-Libi says he “was knocked over with an arm thrust across his chest and fell on his back” and then was “punched for 15 minutes.”
And, sure enough, as Sen. Lindsay Graham has noted, this stuff really works! For it was then that al-Libi expanded on his tales about collaboration between al-Qaeda and Iraq, adding that three al-Qaeda operatives had gone to Iraq “to learn about nuclear weapons.” Al-Libi added that the treatment he received improved after he told that to his interrogators.
In any case, al-Libi’s stories apparently were music to the ears of Colin Powell, who was under pressure to establish in his U.N. speech some evidence of a “sinister nexus” between Iraq and al-Qaeda—the “axis-of-evil” kind of epithet he ended up using to try to justify invading Iraq.
Al-Libi recanted his claims in January 2004. This prompted the CIA, a month later, to recall all intelligence reports based on his statements, a fact recorded in a footnote to the report issued by the 9/11 Commission. But he was really a big help before he recanted!
Just What the Doctor Ordered
George Bush relied on al-Libi’s false confession for his crucial speech in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, just a few days before Congress voted on the Iraq War resolution. Bush declared, "We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases."
Colin Powell relied on it for his own speech to the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003: "I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these [chemical and biological] weapons to al-Qaeda. Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story."
Bear in mind that before the attack on Iraq on March 19, 2003, polls showed that some 70 percent Americans believed that Saddam Hussein had operational ties with al-Qaeda and thus was partly responsible for the attacks of 9/11. Worse still, about half of the American people had been led to believe that Saddam was actually involved in 9/11.
For a while, al-Libi was practically the poster boy for the success of the Cheney/Bush torture regime; that is, at least until it was learned that he recanted, explaining that he only told his interrogators what he thought would stop the torture.
