Abu Zubaydah : biography
When Americans investigated the cards, they worked with "a Muslim financier with a questionable past, and with connections to the Afghan Taliban, al Qaeda, and Saudi intelligence." Risen wrote, "Saudi intelligence officials had seized all of the records related to the card from the Saudi financial institution in question; the records then disappeared. There was no longer any way to trace the money that had gone into the account."
A search of the safehouse turned up Zubaydah’s personal 10,000-page diaries, in which he recorded his thoughts as a young boy, old man, and at his current age. What appears to be split personalities is how Zubaydah was piecing his memories together after his 1992 shrapnel head wound. As part of his therapy to regain his memories, he began recording the diary that detailed his life, emotions, and what people were telling him. He split information into categories, such as what he knew about himself and what people told him, and listed them under different names to distinguish one set from the other. This was later incorrectly interpreted by some analysts reviewing the diary as symptoms of split personality disorder.
Abu Zubaydah was turned over to the CIA., The Washington Post, 18 December 2007, The Washington Post, 2 November 2005 Reports later alleged that he was transferred to secret CIA-operated prisons, known as black sites, in Pakistan, Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland, Northern Africa, and Diego Garcia., International Herald Tribune, October 19, 2007Dick Marty, , Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, June 7, 2007, ABC News, 5 December 2005, Global Pulse, 5 December 2005, The Observer, 13 June 2004, Reprieve Historically, renditions of prisoners to countries which commit torture have been illegal. A memo written by John Yoo and signed by Jay Bybee of the Office of the Legal Counsel, DOJ, days before Abu Zubaydah’s capture, provided a legal opinion providing for CIA renditions of detainees to places such as Thailand., Department of Justice, 13 March 2002 In March 2009, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee launched a year-long study on how the CIA operated the secret prisons, or black sites, around the world., Bloomberg Report, 5 March 2009
Top U.S. officials approved enhanced interrogation techniques
In the Spring of 2002, immediately following the capture of Abu Zubaydah, top Bush administration officials, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and US Attorney General John Ashcroft discussed at length whether or not the CIA could legally use harsh techniques against him., New York Times, September 24, 2008, ABC News, April 11, 2008 Condoleezza Rice specifically mentioned the SERE program during the meeting, saying, “I recall being told that U.S. military personnel were subjected to training to certain physical and psychological interrogation techniques…”
In addition, in 2002 and 2003, the administration briefed several Democratic Congressional leaders on the proposed “enhanced interrogation techniques.”, The Washington Post, December 9, 2007 These congressional leaders included Nancy Pelosi, the future Speaker of the House, and Representative Jane Harman. Congressional officials have stated that the attitude in the briefings ranged from “quiet acquiescence, if not downright support.” The documents show that top U.S. Officials were intimately involved in the discussion and approval of the harsher interrogation techniques used on Abu Zubaydah. Condoleezza Rice ultimately told the CIA the harsher interrogation tactics were acceptable,, Fox News, April 22, 2009Senate Report: Rice, Cheney OK’d CIA use of waterboarding, CNN, April 23, 2009 and Dick Cheney stated, "I signed off on it; so did others.", Atlantic Free Press, December 29, 2008 During the discussions, US Attorney General John Ashcroft is reported as saying, “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”
