Former U.S. Interrogator: Torture Policy Has Led to More Deaths than 9/11 Attacks

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted December 5, 2008.

AG: And so, those last 30 minutes?

MA: Those last 30 minutes, I decided to take a gamble. I decided to take a risk, which is -- part of interrogations is risk-taking and not being afraid to lay it out on the line. And so, during those last 30 minutes, I told him that I already knew that he was close to somebody and that if he would provide me the name of that person and show me that he trusted me, that I could help him. And I actually had no particular person in mind. It was a ruse. But he believed me, and he told me that he was friends with Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who is now the current leader of al-Qaida in Iraq and who was Zarqawi's right-hand man.

AG: And so, what information did he give up then? Where he was?

MA: Well, eventually -- at that point, we had just been able to establish that he was in the higher echelon. It took us a period of weeks after that, about two weeks, to get him to admit that he was friends with Zarqawi's personal spiritual adviser, who was Sheikh Abu Abdul Rahman, who was the person who led us to Zarqawi. But he told us not only who Rahman was, but how to find Rahman and how we would know when he went to meet with Zarqawi.

AG: And where was Rahman?

MA: Rahman was in Baghdad, in his home. And he was actually a coordinator of events also for Zarqawi. He was a spiritual adviser. Zarqawi used Iraqi imams like Abu Hadir and like Rahman to try to legitimize his suicide bombings against Shia civilians, and in exchange, these people got money and arms from al-Qaida. So that was his way of legitimizing what he was doing.

AG: Why was it a risk to say you would help him if he turned in someone important?

MA: It's a risk because it's very hard to make that come true. At the time that I was in Iraq, we had no program to reach out to Sunnis and to literally work with them. We could promise them that. And certainly, if they cooperated with us when they went before a panel of judges later for sentencing, they would look favorably on their cooperation. However, we had no program like they have now that Gen. [David] Petraeus put in place to reach out to Sunnis and to arm them and to physically work together with them.

AG: So you find Rahman, you bring him in, or you follow him to where he's going to meet with Zarqawi?

MA: We follow him. And yeah, let me point out that, you know, this was an entire team effort. There was a huge organization. There's people who, you know, do surveillance. There's people who do -- there's interrogators. There's analysts supporting all this. There's operations officers, intelligence officers. There's numerous people dedicated in this process. So it's an entire team effort to make this happen. I happened to have the opportunity to be the end of that chain of events to locate him. But there was numerous other links in that chain prior to that that allowed this to happen.

But, you know, ultimately, what we did is we followed Rahman. You know, in the book, I talk about the first time we followed him. We were all watching it live, and we lost him. And we were all so disheartened, because we had worked so hard to find this man and to get a path to Zarqawi, and we lost him.

AG: How did you lose him?

MA: You know, Baghdad traffic and tall buildings. It's hard to follow people. It's harder than I think we give it credit for. You know, the people who do the surveillance of these people that we're watching and following, this is a very tough skill. And they're very talented, but sometimes the elements just play against you.

AG: So how did you get him?

MA: Well, they picked him up again a couple weeks later, and they followed him. And we knew that there was a tactic in which he would change cars. And when he got into a certain type of vehicle, we knew that that meant he would be going to meet with Zarqawi. And he did that.

And, you know, we were all in a room watching this live on TV. And that car went to a house out in rural Iraq, and we watched him go inside. And we waited, and then the house exploded when some Air Force F-16s dropped bombs on it. And at that point, people cheered, but they weren't sure that Zarqawi was inside. There was no way to be 100 percent sure. But I knew at that time, 100 percent, that Zarqawi was in that house. And it was just a gut feeling that we had been right.

AG: Was there any thought of capturing him as opposed to killing him?

MA: We would have loved to have captured him because of the intelligence that he could have provided, and we had a whole plan in place, obviously. We were prepared to interrogate him. However, the decision was made by our leadership to drop the bombs, because it would have taken some time to get to his location, and he may have escaped. And he escaped once before by running a checkpoint. And so, I think it was a good decision that we had to eliminate him when we had the chance versus risking him getting away again.

See more stories tagged with: iraq, torture, u.s. military, interrogations, abu musab al-zarqawi, how to break a terrorist, al-qaeda in iraq

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!

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