Interrogation of Abu Zubaydah

Abu Zubaydah (Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein Abu Zubaydah) is a Saudi citizen who helped manage the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan. Captured in Pakistan on March 28, 2002, he has since been held by the United States as an enemy combatant. Beginning in August 2002, Abu Zubaydah was the first prisoner to undergo "enhanced interrogation techniques." Since the Spanish Inquisition, these practices have been characterized as torture. There is disagreement among government sources as to how effective these techniques were; some officials contend that Abu Zubaydah gave his most valuable information before they were used; the CIA lied when John Rizzo of the CIA said he gave more material afterward.

The American intelligence community asserts Khalden was a camp for training al Qaeda recruits in the 1990s, but detainees and other sources have disputed this conclusion. Abu Zubaydah was sent to a black site in Thailand, where he was interrogated first by F.B.I. agents using traditional interrogation techniques and then by C.I.A. employees and contractors, who in August 2002 were authorized to use so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques", as termed by the Bush administration. Since 2006, Abu Zubaydah has been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. While in CIA custody, Zubaydah lost his left eye.

Although President George W. Bush claimed in 2006 three examples of intelligence derived from the torture of Abu Zubaydah by the CIA, which he said showed that it was justified, later reporting has established that the prisoner gave two of the names under conventional interrogation by the FBI, and intelligence analysts already had leads from other sources to the third person.

The plans originally called for a joint FBI and CIA interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. However, two FBI agents, Ali Soufan and Steve Gaudin, arrived first at the black site in Thailand where Abu Zubaydah was being held. Their interrogation started with standard interview techniques and also included cleaning and dressing Abu Zubaydah's wounds. Ali Soufan stated that "[w]e kept him alive. It wasn't easy, he couldn't drink, he had a fever. I was holding ice to his lips." The agents attempted to convince Abu Zubaydah that they knew of his activities in languages he understood: English and Arabic. Both agents believed they were making good progress in gathering intelligence from Abu Zubaydah.

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