As the Obama administration continues to weigh its options for cleaning up the mess left behind by the Bush administration – including how to deal with photos of detainees as well as how to try and detain terror suspects – experienced interrogator Ali Soufan yesterday gave the most detailed, professional critique to date of how bush Administration torture was both ineffective and counter-productive. Soufan, who through traditional interrogation techniques of Abu Zubaydah discovered that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, made clear that once interrogators began torturing Zubaydah he stopped talking. Soufan also explained that the Bush “enhanced interrogation techniques” were much slower than the knowledge based approach professional interrogators had developed for such situations, thus refuting the “ticking time bomb” straw man that is often used to justify torture.
