The Coffee Shop

As  President George W. Bush’s top speechwriter,Marc Thiessen was provided unique access to the CIA program used in interrogating top  Al Qaeda terrorists,including the mastermind of the 9/11 attack,  Khalid Sheikh Mohammad  (KSM).
Now,his riveting  new book,“Courting Disaster”,How the CIA Kept America Safe  (Regnery),has  been published.

Here is an excerpt from his book “Courting Disaster”:

Just before dawn on March 1, 2003,two  dozen heavily armed Pakistani tactical assault forces move in   and surround a safe house in Rawalpindi.   A few hours earlier they  had received a text message from an informant inside the house. It  read:  “I am with KSM.”

Bursting in, they find the  disheveled mastermind of the 9/11 attacks,  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,  in his bedroom. He is taken into custody.  In the safe house,  they find a treasure trove of computers,documents,cell phones and other valuable “pocket litter.”

Once in custody,KSM  is defiant.  He refuses to answer questions,informing his  captors that he will tell them everything when he gets to America and sees his lawyer. But KSM is not taken to America to see a  lawyer.  Instead he is taken to a secret CIA “black site” in  an undisclosed location.

Upon arrival,KSM finds himself in  the complete control of Americans.  He does not know where he  is,how long he will be there,or what his fate will be.

Despite his circumstances,KSM still refuses to  talk.  He spews contempt at his interrogators,telling them  that Americans are weak,lack resilience,and are unable to do what  is necessary to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their  goals.  He has trained to resist interrogation.  When he  is asked for information about future attacks, he tells his questioners scornfully:“Soon,you will know.”

It  becomes clear he will not reveal the information using  traditional interrogation techniques. So he undergoes a series of  “enhanced interrogation techniques”approved for use only on   the most high-value detainees. The techniques include  waterboarding.  His resistance is described by one senior  American official as  “superhuman.”  Eventually,however,  the  techniques work,and KSM becomes cooperative-for reasons  that  will be described later in this book.

He begins telling his  CIA de-briefers about active al Qaeda plots to launch attacks  against the United States and other Western targets.  He  holds classes for CIA officials, using a  chalkboard to draw a  picture of al Qaeda’s operating structure,  financing,  communications, and logistics.

He identifies al Qaeda travel  routes and safe havens,and helps intelligence officers make sense  of documents and computer records seized in terroristraids.   He identifies voices in intercepted telephone calls,and helps  officials understand the meaning of coded terrorist communications. He provides information that helps our intelligence  community capture other high-ranking terrorists,KSM’s  questioning,and that of other captured terrorists,produces more than 6,000 intelligence reports,which are shared across the  intelligence community,as well as with our allies across the  world.

In one of these reports, KSM describes in detail the  revisions he made to his failed 1994-1995 plan known as the  “Bojinka plot”to blow up a dozen airplanes carrying some 4,000  passengers over the   Pacific Ocean .

Years  later,an observant CIA  officer notices that the activities of a cell being followed by  British authorities appear to match  KSM’s description of his  plans for a Bojinka-style  attack.

In an operation that involves unprecedented  intelligence cooperation  between our countries,British officials  proceed to unravel the plot.  On the night of Aug.9,2006 they  launch a series of raids in a northeast London suburb that lead to  the arrest of two dozen al Qaeda terrorist suspects.  They  find
A USB thumb-drive in the pocket of one of the men with  security details
for Heathrow airport,and information on seven  trans-Atlantic flights that
were scheduled to take off within hours  of each other:

*    United Airlines Flight  931 to San Francisco departing at  2:15 p.m.;
*    Air Canada Flight 849 to Toronto  departing at 3:00  p.m.;
*    Air  Canada Flight 865 to Montreal departing at 3:15   p.m.;
*      United Airlines  Flight  959 to Chicago departing  at  3:40  p.m.;
*      United Airlines  Flight  925 to Washington departing at 4:20  p.m.
*    American Airlines  Flight  131 to New York departing at 4:35 p.m;and
*    American  Airlines Flight 91  to Chicago departing at 4:50 p.m.

They seize  bomb-making equipment and hydrogen peroxide to make  liquid explosives.  And they find the chilling martyrdom  videos the suicide  bombers had prepared.
Today,if you  asked an average person on the street what they know about the 2006  airlines plot,most would not be able to tell you much. Few Americans are aware of the fact that al Qaeda had planned to mark  the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with an attack of similar scope and  magnitude.

And still fewer realize that the terrorists’  true intentions in this plot were uncovered thanks to critical  information obtained through the interrogation of the man who  conceived it:Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.   This is only one of  the many attacks stopped with the help of the CIA interrogation  program established by the Bush Administration in the wake of the  Sept. 11,2001,terrorist attacks.

Editor’s Note:For  other foiled terrorist plots,see page 9 of  Courting Disaster.

In addition to helping break up these  specific terrorist cells and plots,CIA questioning provided our  intelligence community with an unparalleled body of information  about al Qaeda

Until  the program was temporarily  suspended in 2006,intelligence officials say,well over half of  the information our government  had about al Qaeda-how it  operates, how it moves money,how  it communicates,how  it recruits operatives,how it picks  targets,how it plans  and carries out attacks-came from the  interrogation of  terrorists in CIA custody.

Former CIA Director George Tenet  has declared:“I know that this program  has saved lives.  I  know we’ve disrupted plots.  I know this program alone is worth more than what the FBI,the Central Intelligence Agency,  and the National Security Agency put together have been able to  tell us.”
Former CIA Director Mike Hayden has said:   ”The facts of the case are that the use of these techniques against  these terrorists made us safer.  It really did  work.”   Even Barack Obama’s Director of National  Intelligence,Dennis Blair,has acknowledged:  “High-value  information came from interrogations in which those methods were  used and provided a deeper understanding of the al   Qaeda organization that was attacking this  country.”   Leon Panetta,Obama’s CIA Director,has  said:  “Important information was gathered from these  detainees.  It provided information that was  acted upon.”

And John Brennan,Obama’s Homeland  Security Advisor, when asked in an interview if  enhanced-interrogation  techniques were necessary to  keep America safe,replied:“Would  the U.S. be handicapped  if the CIA was not,in fact,able to  carry out these types of  detention and debriefing activities?  I would say  yes.”

On Jan. 22,2009,President Obama issued  Executive Order 13491,closing the CIA program and directing that,  henceforth,all interrogations by U.S  personnel must follow the  techniques contained in the Army Field Manual.    The morning  of  the announcement,Mike Hayden was still in his post as CIA Director,He called White House Counsel Greg Craig and told  him  bluntly:  “You didn’t ask, but this is the CIA  officially nonconcurring”.  The president went ahead anyway,  overruling the objections of the agency.

A few months  later,on April 16,2009,President Obama ordered the release of  four Justice Department memos that described in detail the  techniques used to interrogate KSM and other high-value  terrorists.  This time, not just Hayden (who was now retired)  but five CIA  directors -including  Obama’s own director,Leon  Panetta –  objected.  George Tenet called to  urge against the memos’release.  So did Porter Goss.  So  did John Deutch.  Hayden says:  “You had CIA directors in a  continuous unbroken stream to 1995 calling saying,‘Don’t do  this.’”

In addition to objections from the men who led the  agency for a collective 14 years,the President also heard  objections from the agency’s covert  field operatives.  A few  weeks earlier,Panetta had arranged for the eight top officials of  the Clandestine Service to meet with the President. It was highly  unusual for these clandestine officers to visit the Oval Office,and they used the opportunity to warn the President that releasing  the memos would put agency operatives at risk.  The President  reportedly listened respectfully-and then ignored their  advice.

With these actions,Barack Obama arguably did more  damage to America’s national security in his first 100 days of  office than any President in American history.

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This is a startling commentary on the kind of leadership we have in the US today.  A leadership that is more concerned with the political expediency of his administration that the protecting of US citizens from those that are sworn to destroy us.

A couple of links to items mentioned in this excerpt:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plot

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21329.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aDIelrMr3_pE