07/13/16 – Jason Leopold – The Scott Horton Show

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Okay.
Jason Leopold, man, he's a hell of a journalist.
He writes for vice.com, news.vice.com.
And, well, he's the foremost FOIA terrorist in our land, and I mean that in the very best way.
And that is a big part of the reason why he is constantly breaking huge scoops.
I mean, sometimes three, four in a week, and maybe more than that.
I don't know.
Can't keep track of them all.
This one is called, this is how the CIA's first captive after 9-11 described his years of torture.
Welcome back to the show, Jason.
How are you, sir?
Great to be back with you, Scott.
And thank you for that very kind intro and the kind words.
I appreciate it.
Yeah, well, you deserve it.
And, of course, you're the guy, more than anyone else, who's covered the story, told the real story of Abu Zubaydah.
Now, I said he was important.
You're not going to make me lose face on this, are you, George?
I'm sorry.
That was what President George W. Bush said to CIA Director George Tenet.
That's right, yeah.
That was right after.
That was around sometime in 2002, obviously, a very short time after Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in March of 2002.
And it is true that Bush cited him over and over and over again to say, yeah, we had to torture people.
We had guys like this guy Zubaydah, who, if we didn't torture him, he wasn't going to tell us all the stuff he knew.
And boy, did he know a lot of stuff, because he was the number three leader of Al-Qaeda.
Right.
He's the number three leader.
He was involved in every major Al-Qaeda terrorist operation, going back to the East African bombings.
At one point, I believe even Donald Rumsfeld said he may have even been number two in Al-Qaeda.
I mean, the Bush administration held Abu Zubaydah up as the top, top official, if you will, in that terrorist organization.
So what's the truth?
Well, the truth is, is that he wasn't.
He wasn't even a member of Al-Qaeda.
And he never swore bayat, allegiance to Osama bin Laden, which is the formal procedure, if you will, in which one becomes a member of Al-Qaeda.
He sort of rejected Al-Qaeda.
Abu Zubaydah ran a training camp, a training camp that was attended by many of the mujahideen who were fighting the Soviets, that the CIA obviously, you know, supported in Afghanistan back in the 80s and 90s.
And Abu Zubaydah was one of them.
I mean, he was actually someone who was fighting, you know, the Soviets and then the, you know, the communist government there.
And, you know, this training camp was attended by, this was the Kalden training camp was attended by, or thousands of, you know, the mujahideen and later some jihadists attended that training camp.
But he was sort of the facilitator there.
You know, so let me actually correct myself a bit.
He didn't actually run it in the sense of, you know, he was the top guy there.
He was in charge of many of the sort of programs that came out of there.
But the U.S. claimed that this was, you know, an Al-Qaeda training camp.
It was not an Al-Qaeda training camp.
In fact, Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden tries to close, tried to close down the training camp because the emir of that camp, Ibn al-Shiq al-Libi, who also died in, you know, after being in CIA custody, when he was turned over to the Libyans, he rejected that.
And so, you know, that's sort of the inside story of what was happening, or at least what was the truth.
I mean, it sounds like what you're saying is you could see how maybe they would have thought, OK, well, here's an Arab, right?
He's not an Afghan.
Where is he from again?
He's from Saudi Arabia.
Saudi.
He's of Palestinian descent.
And then, yeah, I knew it was something complicated.
But anyway, he ain't from there.
He was born and raised in Saudi Arabia.
He's running this training camp.
And so, you know, I don't know.
Looks like he probably is buddies with Osama.
But at what point should they have known better?
I guess is what I'm trying to ask.
That's actually that's a great question, Scott.
And even the even the point where you say he was buddies with Osama bin Laden, he and he makes a point, you know, in this story that you're talking about here that I put together last week.
Let me just for a moment say that this is, you know, extraordinary in the sense that this is a a declaration that I was about to provide it to his attorneys describing his torture in this declaration.
He said that in Afghanistan, everyone knew who Osama bin Laden was.
It was no secret that if you were in, you know, in a certain part of Afghanistan, you knew who Osama bin Laden was in the same way that if you were, you know, in a certain part in, say, New York City in, you know, Little Italy, you may know who John Gotti was.
You may have bumped into him because, you know, you live in that area.
The U.S. and the CIA in the summer of 2002, OK, that Abu Zubaydah was not the person that the Bush administration had claimed him to be.
They knew very early on.
They knew less than six months, Scott, after they captured him.
But what the Bush administration did, what various officials there did, what the CIA did, is that they continued to hold him up as a, you know, a top official in al-Qaeda.
They continued to claim that, you know, that he was operational.
Abu Zubaydah was not operational.
He was not planning operations in the way that other suspected terrorists from al-Qaeda were, that the U.S. captured and placed into the interrogation, the torture program.
So they knew very early on about that.
And in fact, he goes into this amazing detail about what was being said to him, you know, during the course of his interrogation about, yeah, we made a mistake.
So the public was led to believe.
And even to this day, Scott, journalists will continue to write about Abu Zubaydah and claim that he is, you know, a member of al-Qaeda.
He's a top, you know, he's a top terrorist.
He wasn't.
And he isn't.
Yeah.
Well, they Googled it and they got a lot of results for that.
So it seems like the consensus.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, he has, if there is anyone who the U.S. has captured post 9-11, I would say that the person who has the most fascinating story and why I have just been sort of obsessed with his story or with the story is Abu Zubaydah.
The CIA, in their response to the Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report, they say that everything they learned about al-Qaeda came from two people, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah.
Abu Zubaydah is in the 9-11 commission report, you know, dozens of times.
Abu Zubaydah's name appears in that infamous August 2001 presidential daily brief warning Bush that Osama bin Laden is determined to strike in the U.S.
I mean, his name is everywhere.
So he's a very, very interesting character.
And, you know, a few years ago, you and I have spoken about this, I obtained his diaries.
The first six volumes of his diaries that the U.S. seized after he was captured.
And it just provides extraordinary detail into, you know, into the life of, you know, this Mujahideen, Abu Zubaydah, and just the mindset of, you know, of a jihadist.
But it also shows, you know, it's clear if you just take his take him at his own words, that the U.S. should have known very early on.
And what's amazing, Scott, is that after they subjected him to every torture technique, he was the guinea pig for the CIA's torture program.
They then sought to keep secret everything that they did to him.
They destroyed the interrogation torture videotapes, which led the Senate Intelligence Committee to launch its investigation.
One of those videotapes shows Abu Zubaydah being waterboarded.
They blocked any attempt by Abu Zubaydah to discuss openly his own, you know, his own treatment, his torture.
They, in CIA cables that the Senate Intelligence Committee cited in their report, CIA officers said, we can never let Abu Zubaydah see the light of day.
If he dies, we've got to cremate his body.
We've got to disappear him.
I mean, this was a person that more, even more than, say, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any of the people that the U.S. says was behind 9-11 or planned the 9-11 attacks.
It was Abu Zubaydah where they said, where intelligence officers said, we've got to make sure that this person is never seen or heard from again.
All right.
Now, so remind me again, your opinion of the FBI narrative that, geez, we were giving him, you know, ice chips and cookies, and he was telling us everything he knew until the CIA came and kidnapped him away from us.
I'm not sure I completely believe that.
And in fact, you know, again, another extraordinary detail in this declaration.
This is a declaration that was under seal for seven years.
In 2009, his attorneys filed it.
The government said it needs to be under seal.
It was only unsealed two weeks ago.
And in that declaration, Abu Zubaydah talks about when his torture first started.
It first started after he was moved out of a hospital.
He sustained gunshot wounds when the U.S. and Pakistani forces captured him.
And his torture started with the, you know, with the FBI interrogation.
That interrogation by FBI agents consisted of subjecting Abu Zubaydah to sleep deprivation, various other types of torture through, you know, noise, sound machines that he talks about.
And this is before the CIA showed up?
Apparently so.
Again, you know, I mean, it makes clear that, you know, his own memory, because of what he was subjected to, is not entirely reliable.
But, you know, he describes this as torture, you know, being subjected to the sleep deprivation.
Okay, he describes it as that.
And I think others, you know, would agree that that would be consistent with, you know, the definition of torture.
What he says, you know, what changed is when the CIA showed up and then started putting him in dog boxes and other types of, you know, boxes in which he was forced to remain standing or sitting in a crouched position for hours.
So, it was different types of techniques that were being used on him and prior to any, you know, written authorization by the Justice Department.
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Right.
Which, of course, that written authorization wouldn't be enough to override the law anyway, but that is a very important point that they were doing this and got the permission slip after the fact, which, you know, if you have a system supposedly of law, that ought to count for something.
But anyway, am I right?
Do I remember right, Jason, that they didn't once the CIA got ahold of them and they started putting them in these coffins, I mean, virtually burying them alive, if not outright dropping them in the ground there.
But once they started doing that, am I right?
They didn't even start questioning them again for like three months.
They wanted to go ahead and do the the full learned helplessness psychological break before they even started asking him questions again.
Yeah, I would say that that's correct to some extent.
I mean, I don't know if it was three months, but it certainly was a period of time.
And, you know, I interviewed I landed an exclusive interview with the architect of this of this program, and he explained in methodical terms why, you know, the the interrogations would would take on that sort of, you know, why that procedure would would follow, you know, to get them to become compliant.
And by by doing that, by following those guidelines, if you will, those those sort of made up guidelines or what they put in place, you know, the detainee, the prisoner, the captive would become compliant.
And in the case of Abu Zubaydah, it did.
I mean, it worked.
The interrogator would, you know, raise an eyebrow or snap his fingers, and Abu Zubaydah would know immediately that he needed to get onto the waterboarding table.
So it's it's quite chilling.
But even then, you could imagine that they could have gotten him to be that compliant with much less torture and deprivation and and isolation and everything else.
He knew that he had lost the battle the moment he was arrested.
What's he going to do?
Resist them defiantly forever?
Right.
I mean, I think that that is right.
I mean, no.
And, you know, what's what's important for me to point out as well is that while we have heard about, you know, the way in which Abu Zubaydah was was tortured, the way what he was subjected to the the the dozens of waterboarding sessions, we heard that that's not new.
Your listeners are going to say we heard that before.
What is new here, Scott?
What stands out?
What's different is that we've never heard it from Abu Zubaydah.
We've never had the opportunity to read, to hear how he described his own treatment.
Why?
Because that has been classified top secret for 14 years.
We just never had this chance.
This is that first opportunity that you get to hear directly from him in his own words.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, I don't know, man, I wonder about it is 2016.
So audiences certainly change and come and go and this kind of thing.
And I wonder how many people listening to this remember believing George W.
Bush and remember even justifying torture based on the promise that, yeah, we're torturing some guys.
Don't ever call it that.
But, yeah, we're torturing some guys.
But only guys that really, really deserve it.
You know, the ones that knocked our towers down.
So screw them.
Right, everybody.
And 150 million Americans said, yeah, hey, if that's what you say, Mr.
President, we're with you on that.
And yet it was a lie.
Yes, it looks Scott.
I mean, this is this is a a a main argument right now by the presumptive Republican, you know, nominee Donald Trump saying that I he said, you know, just last month, I like waterboarding a lot.
I think we need to return to torture.
These guys did this.
You know, it's it's the same sort of commentary, you know, whether or not they're, you know, they're guilty or they deserve it.
I mean, it this is the same type of rhetoric that we heard immediately after 9-11 and that people rallied around behind, including members of Congress, mind you.
And, you know, we're hearing it again and people are OK with that.
So when it's really in contrast, I mean, it's it's it's something that people do support.
So right.
But meanwhile, all they would have to do if anybody wanted to try.
And I mean, I'm not naive, but I could certainly, you know, easily imagine this argument that actually, no, because we're so exceptional in our wonderful Western civilization here, we don't torture people because that's something that barbarians do not enlightened, wonderful, exceptional people like us.
Even John Adams once said, geez, you shouldn't torture that guy or whatever it is and just dress it all up in red, white and blue and Americanism and and look at how special we are because we're not torturers.
That's all you got to do.
And yet, no, no one has the courage to even try to do that.
No, I don't think that, you know, you have some people coming out and making comments or responding to that.
But for, you know, for some reason, you know, you see what we are contending with after 9-11.
We're still dealing with this, as I said, that this declaration from Abu Zubaydah at seven years old.
But it's still important to get out there, which, by the way, Hillary is on the record for torturing people in the mythical ticking time bomb scenario, which is the same thing that the Bush administration used as their excuse to.
So, right.
Just so we're clear on that.
And by the way, with Abu Zubaydah, that was one of the, you know, assertions by, you know, by the CIA that, you know, this was a ticking time bomb scenario.
He needed to give us, he needed to give us intelligence.
And at least if you were to, you know, take Abu Zubaydah's narrative, right, in this declaration, he's saying time and again that he didn't give them anything.
He did not provide them with any intelligence.
He kept saying that, you know, no, you got the wrong, you know, the wrong person or I don't know about any of these operations.
So, he does say in this declaration that, you know, there came a time when he would just say, tell me what you want me to say.
And other times he would just lie to, you know, to give them what they wanted just to get the pain to stop.
There is, you know, I want to make it clear also that, you know, it's not entirely, you know, to make it sound.
When I say innocent, I don't mean innocent in a legal sense.
You know, Abu Zubaydah, you know, did, you know, was involved in things that the U.S. would obviously frown upon, you know, to put it in a way that.
Yeah, unless he was doing it in Syria, in which case they'd pay his way.
But anyway, go ahead.
You know, but the point being that he was certainly, you know, involved in, you know, in things that, programs, operations that the U.S. would, you know, later say that this was, you know, this was terrorism.
And he certainly in his diaries makes clear that he wanted to or at least fantasized about, you know, attacks and plots against Israel and, you know, slaughtering people.
But again, there was no evidence.
There was nothing there that showed that he was involved in any operation, any planning.
He was not involved with al Qaeda.
And the only evidence that the U.S. really has against him is that he was almost like this, he was like a Rolodex.
He was sort of, because of given his position at this camp, he knew people that went in and out of these camps, you know, knew who they were.
He obviously wrote their names down.
What was really interesting is, you know, while you have these, you know, Mujahideen and jihadists that are using pseudonyms, Abu Zubaydah was actually, you know, used his real name.
I mean, Abu Zubaydah, just so people know, it's not a pseudonym.
That's actually his last name.
That's the family's last name.
And he was very proud to say, I'm going to use my real name.
So, you know, his name did pop up because of the people that, you know, went in and out of these camps and because he was an expert forger that, you know, maybe at one point that the U.S. believed, that the FBI believed that he was, you know, involved in something.
But to go back to what you, you know, what you asked early on, they knew within, you know, five to six months, Scott, that this is not the guy.
And for, you know, 11, 12, 13 years, the public was told that, yes, he still remained this top official.
And it wasn't until 2009 that the Justice Department quietly backed away from every assertion that the Bush administration made about Abu Zubaydah.
In fact, they say, you know, in this motion, because he has a habeas corpus case.
He has a case that his attorneys filed in U.S.
District Court in which- Because he's at Guantanamo now, right?
He's at Guantanamo.
He's one of the high value detainees that's being held in Camp 7 over there.
And he's to be tried, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or he's to be held indefinitely without a trial?
Do you know which category he's in there?
That actually is interesting.
He was previously, you know, deemed to, you know, to be held without a trial, although they've been, you know, trying to figure out if they can bring charges against him.
The news that I broke in this story, in addition to, you know, providing some detail about this declaration, which I should add, I need to add that this declaration was unsealed and it was released in response to a motion or a motion to intervene in this case by an investigative reporter named Raymond Bonner.
And Raymond Bonner asked the judge presiding over the case to unseal many of the motions and various filings that have been held, that have been shrouded in secrecy for seven years, more than seven years, Scott.
So that's why this file, this filing was released and this declaration was released.
But as I was saying, you know, the Justice Department quietly backed away from every claim the Bush administration made about Abu Zubaydah.
And in October of 2009, the government admitted in a court file that its understanding of Abu Zubaydah's alleged role in al-Qaeda's activities, quote, has evolved with further investigation and that it no longer stands behind any of the Bush administration's assertions.
For some reason, that, you know, that revelation, that admission has never fully been fleshed out and discussed.
I mean, he continues to be held up as this, you know, as this top official.
So next month, Scott, there is going to be a, you know, a parole board hearing.
They've been having these various parole board type hearings at Guantanamo to determine who can stay or who should stay, who needs to, or who can be released.
And those are, you know, they're taking a look at those so-called forever prisoners and reevaluating them.
Well, Abu Zubaydah is actually getting a parole board hearing.
Now, I don't think that he will ever, ever be released.
I don't think that you will see, you know, this parole board saying, well, he looks like he's rehabilitated.
He can go.
But he is getting a hearing.
And part of that hearing will be available for reporters to observe.
And it would be the first time, you know, in 14 years that he would be seen publicly.
So as you can imagine, it will be closely watched.
Yeah.
Well, I hope you can get back there for that.
Yeah, yeah.
No, that is a plan.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I'll let you go now, dude.
I know you got other great work to do, but I sure appreciate it.
Oh, thank you, Scott.
As always, I really appreciate you giving some attention to this.
It's, you know, it's important and there's going to continue to be more to be revealed.
Absolutely.
Well, you always got an open platform here, sir.
Thank you, Scott.
Take care.
You too.
All right, y'all.
That is the great Jason Leopold.
This is how the CIA's first captive after 9-11 described his years of torture.
Read it at news dot vice dot com.
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