President Bush, who told us all that the United States does not torture endorsed the CIA's statement that waterboarding helped them to ascertain important information from Abu Zubaida, an Al-Qaeda operative. The only problem is that the important information and how it was gathered is in dispute. The CIA is backing up what they did, but FBI agents involved in his interrogation say that once he was subjected to torture whatever he told his handlers was "crap."
From The Washington Post:
In legal papers prepared for a military hearing, Abu Zubaida himself has asserted that he told his interrogators whatever they wanted to hear to make the treatment stop.
Retired FBI agent Daniel Coleman, who led an examination of documents after Abu Zubaida's capture in early 2002 and worked on the case, said the CIA's harsh tactics cast doubt on the credibility of Abu Zubaida's information.
"I don't have confidence in anything he says, because once you go down that road, everything you say is tainted," Coleman said, referring to the harsh measures. "He was talking before they did that to him, but they didn't believe him. The problem is they didn't realize he didn't know all that much."
The only good information came before they started "enhanced interrogation" methods (i.e. torture) which was an accidental slip that led to Jose Padilla's arrest and Khalid Sheik Muhammad's capture.
Coleman basically thinks that those at the CIA claiming waterboarding did any good is nuts. Torture has never provided any good information to anyone and this was certainly proved to be true in Abu Zubaida's case. Anyone at the CIA that tells you different is trying to pull gold from thin air.
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