Waterboarding: Two Questions for Michael Hayden

The media is buzzing with the news that Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA, admitted in an open session of Congress on Tuesday that waterboarding -- a long-reviled torture technique, which produces the perception of drowning--was used on three "high-value" al-Qaeda suspects in CIA custody in 2002 and 2003. The three men -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri -- are discussed in my book, The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison.

My questions for Mr. Hayden are simple. Firstly, if it's true that only three detainees were subjected to waterboarding, then why did a number of "former and current intelligence officers and supervisors" tell ABC News in November 2005 that "a dozen top al-Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe" were subjected to six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," instituted in mid-March 2002?

According to the ABC News account, the six techniques used by the CIA on the "dozen top al-Qaeda targets" were "The Attention Grab," "Attention Slap," "The Belly Slap" and three other techniques that are particularly worrying: "Long Time Standing," "The Cold Cell," and, of course, "Waterboarding."

"Long Time Standing" was described as "among the most effective [techniques]," in which prisoners "are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours." The ABC News report added, "Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions." In "The Cold Cell," the prisoner "is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water."

The description of "Waterboarding" was as follows: "The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt."

The article proceeded with recollections of the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who apparently "won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess" (the interrogators tried it on themselves, but "only lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in").

According to the ABC News report, one other detainee who was waterboarded was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the director of the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan, who was captured in November 2001. His current whereabouts are unknown, although there are suspicions that he was finally delivered to the Libyan government. Having slipped off the radar, the government clearly does not want his case revived, not only because it may have to explain what has happened to him, but also because, as a result of the application of "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," al-Libi claimed that Saddam Hussein had offered to train two al-Qaeda operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons.

Al-Libi's "confession" led to President Bush declaring, in October 2002, "Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases," and his claims were, notoriously, included in Colin Powell's speech to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003. The claims were of course, groundless, and were recanted by al-Libi in January 2004, but it took Dan Cloonan, a veteran FBI interrogator, who was resolutely opposed to the use of torture, to explain why they should never have been believed in the first place. Cloonan told Jane Mayer, "It was ridiculous for interrogators to think Libi would have known anything about Iraq … The reason they got bad information is that they beat it out of him. You never get good information from someone that way."