Anthony Summers - The Eleventh Day

17 anger:Richard Clarke, 152–;

18 $5 million/​“Armed”/​lookout:“Mohammad,” information sheet, FBI, INS Lookout Notice, 2/13/96, “KSM, FBI-INS Misc. Info.,” B11, T5, CF.

19 “al-Balushi”:CR, 276–. e.g., KSM’s nephew Ammar al-Baluchi (also of Baluchi nationality and otherwise known as Ali Abdul Aziz Ali) was allegedly involved in transferring al Qaeda funds to the 9/11 hijackers; another example is senior al Qaeda military commander Abu Faraj al-Libi (the Libyan Mustafa al-’Uzayti). Both were among the group of U.S. captives known as High Value Detainees (“Detainee Biographies,” www.defense.gov);

20 visa/alias:Staff Report, “Monograph on Terrorist Travel,” CO;

21 “recruiting”:CR, 255;

22 “Based on”:Statement of Eleanor Hill, 9/18/02, JI.

23 “failure”:Executive Summary, “CIA Accountability with Respect to the 9/11 Attacks,” Office of the Inspector General, CIA, 6/05. Though a summary was made public after congressional pressure, the full inspector general’s 2005 “Report on CIA Accountability with Respect to the 9/11 Attacks” has not been released. (“Executive Summary,” Central Intelligence Agency, Office of the Inspector General, 06/05, www.cia.gov, NYT , 10/5/05, AP, 5/18/07).

24 KSM capture:Fouda & Fielding, 181–, Tenet, 251–. Questions were raised as to the circumstances and timing of the arrest. The family of one of the men detained with KSM denied that the fugitive had been in the house. Some reports suggested he had been captured by Pakistani forces acting alone, others that it had been a joint U.S.-Pakistani operation. There were differing claims, too, as to who had custody of the suspect in the immediate aftermath. Red Cross staff and KSM’s own defense team, however, who interviewed the prisoner, have not apparently raised questions as to the timing and circumstances of the arrest (questions: e.g. Sunday Times [London], 3/9/03, NYT , 3/3/03, The Guardian [U.K.], 3/3/03, ABC News, 3/11/03, Fouda & Fielding, 181– & see Paul Thompson, “Is There More to the Capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than Meets the Eye?,” 3/4/03, www.historycommons.org; Red Cross/defense team: Red Cross Report, 5, 20, 33–, “Verbatim Transcript of Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing for ISN 10024,” www.defense.gov);

25 “Nothing like”:Tenet, 252;

26 leads/$25 million: LAT , 3/2/03, Suskind, One Percent , 204–, Guardian (U.K.), 3/11/03, Tenet, 253;

27 “wonderful”/“hard”: LAT , 3/2/03;

28 “This is equal”:Fox News, 3/3/03;

29 “No person”:Tenet, 250;

30 “disorient”/“break”: LAT , 3/2/03;

31 “crouched”: Der Spiegel , 10/27/03, New Yorker , 8/13/07;

32 Commission Report/211:authors’ analysis based on Robert Windrem, “Cheney’s Role Deepens,” 5/13/09, www.thedailybeast.com;

33 “enhanced”:Special Review, “Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities,” Office of Inspector General, CIA, 5/7/04, www.cia.gov;

34 “dark side”:transcript, int. of Richard Cheney, Meet the Press , NBC, 9/16/01;

35 “certain acts”:“Memorandum for Alberto Gonzales from Asst. A.G. Jay Bybee,” 8/1/02.

36 Red Cross monitors/asked in vain/​“torture”/​leaked/​“suffocation,” etc.:FAQ, www.icrc.org, Mark Danner, “The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means,” NY Review of Books , 4/30/09, “Report on the Treatment of Fourteen ‘High Value’ Detainees,” International Committee of the Red Cross, 2/07, www.nyrb.com. Measures defined as “torture” or “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” of prisoners of war are illegal under the Third Geneva Convention (1949) and the U.N. Convention Against Torture (1984). To circumvent the treaties, and after advice from the Justice Department, President Bush formally determined in early 2002 that the 1949 Geneva Convention did not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda, and that the group’s detainees therefore did not qualify as “prisoners of war.”

The Red Cross determined that—in addition to KSM—thirteen other prisoners, suspected of having been in al Qaeda’s “inner circle,” suffered mistreatment constituting torture. The authors here confine themselves to U.S. treatment of prisoners relevant to the 9/11 story, but the mistreatment extended to captives elsewhere—as at Abu Ghraib prison after the invasion of Iraq. As well as pertinent documents referred to below, there has been groundbreaking reporting by Seymour Hersh, Jane Mayer, and Mark Danner (“inner circle”: Summary of High Value Detainee Program, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 9/06,

www.c-span.org

; torture: Red Cross Report; pertinent documents: e.g. as excerpted in eds. John Ehrenberg et al.,

The Iraq Papers

, NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 2010, 403–. In addition to the previously cited Red Cross Report, see also “The Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq During Arrest, Internment & Interrogation,” Report, International Committee of the Red Cross, 2/04).

37 “complain”:“Lesson 18,” al Qaeda Manual, www.justice.gov. The “manual” was among items confiscated in May 2000 from the home of a suspected al Qaeda member, Anas al-Liby, following a search by the Manchester (U.K.) police. The document was supplied to the United States, translated, and used by the prosecution in the 2001 embassy bombings trial (transcript, U.S. v. Usama bin Laden et al. , U.S. District Court for the Southern District of NY, S [7] 98-CR-1023, 3/26/01, “Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody,” Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 110th Cong, 2nd Sess., Washington, D.C., U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 11/20/08, Executive Summary, xii).

38 review acknowledged:Special Review, “Counterterrorism,” & see “Memorandum for John Rizzo, CIA from Asst. A.G. Jay Bybee, 8/1/02, & see LAT , 12/22/02, Telegraph (U.K.), 3/9/03;

39 “my eyes”:Red Cross Report.

40 “If anything”:Special Review, “Counterterrorism.” The reference to a threat to kill KSM’s children appears in the CIA’s 2004 “Special Review” of counterterrorism detention and interrogation activities. According to the 2007 statement of another detainee’s father, KSM’s children were at one point “denied food and water,” at another “mentally tortured by having ants or other creatures put on their legs to scare them and get them to say where their father was hiding.” A Justice Department memo released in 2009 shows that approval was given to use insects to frighten an adult detainee into talking, while another document reports that the CIA never used the technique. According to a cousin, one of KSM’s sons is mentally disabled and the other epileptic. As of this writing both boys were reportedly with their mother in Iran (threat: Special Review, Office of the Inspector General, CIA, 5/7/04, www.cia.gov; statement: “Verbatim Transcript of Combatant Status Review Tribunal Hearing for ISN 10020,” www.defense.gov—the statement was made by Ali Kahn, father of Majid Kahn; memos: Memorandum for John Rizzo, CIA from Jay Bybee, Asst. A.G., 8/1/02, Memorandum for John Rizzo, CIA from Stephen Bradbury, Principal Asst. Deputy A.G., 5/10/05, www.aclu.org; disabled/epileptic: New Yorker , 9/13/10; with mother: ibid., WP , 11/14/09).