The Senate Intelligence report on torture by the CIA after 9/11 published this week, has an important sub-text which to date has not really been covered by the media. George Tenet, Director of the CIA (1997-2004) as the report highlighted, allowed "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", by CIA operatives and contractors during his time at the CIA. However the FBI, under Robert Mueller, who took over the FBI, just two weeks before 9/11 refused to countenance torture, in spite of coming under great pressure from the White House to allow it.
George Tenet, CIA Director, receives Presidential Media of Freedom, 2004.
It is not often that we can see two leaders of major organisations facing the same decision in the same timescale and the reputational damage incurred (and in the case of the FBI avoided) by a decision taken many years before in the heat of the moment.
I, only became aware of this a few weeks ago, buying a remaindered book in the local bookshop in Greenwich, titled The Black Banners, the inside story of 9/11 and the war against Al-Queda. Turns out to be a fascinating book written by one of the leading FBI interrogators of the time, called Ali Soufan, an Arabic speaking operative with great insight of Al-Queda. He highlighted the very different approaches of the FBI and the CIA and the fact that the CIA as an intelligence gathering operation, never had a tradition of formal interrogation for criminal justice - in stark contrast to the FBI. As a result, the CIA after 9/11, instead of drawing on the FBI's expertise, took its own path under great pressure from the White House to produce instant results, with heavy consequences for the USA and the CIA. The hiring of outside contractors to undertake the torture is an element of the report which is particularly shocking.
Ali Soufan's role in the early interrogations of Al-Queda operatives using traditional techniques; witnessing early CIA torture; alerting FBI senior management to CIA behaviour and later evidence to Congressional committees has made him a powerful and credible witness in the US and globally. He has gone on to found a commercial security intelligence service.
His story provides a demonstration also, of the behaviour, that a manager in the front line, under great pressure, may have to resolve drawing on expertise and personal ethics. Not often, do such decisions come back many years later, with brickbats or laurels, but certainly they have this week for the CIA, the FBI and Ali Soufan.
George Tenet, CIA Director, receives Presidential Media of Freedom, 2004.
It is not often that we can see two leaders of major organisations facing the same decision in the same timescale and the reputational damage incurred (and in the case of the FBI avoided) by a decision taken many years before in the heat of the moment.
I, only became aware of this a few weeks ago, buying a remaindered book in the local bookshop in Greenwich, titled The Black Banners, the inside story of 9/11 and the war against Al-Queda. Turns out to be a fascinating book written by one of the leading FBI interrogators of the time, called Ali Soufan, an Arabic speaking operative with great insight of Al-Queda. He highlighted the very different approaches of the FBI and the CIA and the fact that the CIA as an intelligence gathering operation, never had a tradition of formal interrogation for criminal justice - in stark contrast to the FBI. As a result, the CIA after 9/11, instead of drawing on the FBI's expertise, took its own path under great pressure from the White House to produce instant results, with heavy consequences for the USA and the CIA. The hiring of outside contractors to undertake the torture is an element of the report which is particularly shocking.
Ali Soufan's role in the early interrogations of Al-Queda operatives using traditional techniques; witnessing early CIA torture; alerting FBI senior management to CIA behaviour and later evidence to Congressional committees has made him a powerful and credible witness in the US and globally. He has gone on to found a commercial security intelligence service.
His story provides a demonstration also, of the behaviour, that a manager in the front line, under great pressure, may have to resolve drawing on expertise and personal ethics. Not often, do such decisions come back many years later, with brickbats or laurels, but certainly they have this week for the CIA, the FBI and Ali Soufan.
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