Guantanamo interrogations termed 'miserable'

JONATHAN WEISMAN AND TONI LOCY, GANNETT NEWS SERVICE

Originally published Wednesday, April 24, 2002

WASHINGTON -- Since he was arrested last month, al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Zubaydah has been kept under wraps, recovering from gunshot wounds in a hospital bed in Pakistan. Or perhaps in Afghanistan. Or perhaps on his way to Norfolk, Va.

But for all the secrecy surrounding Zubaydah's whereabouts, military and intelligence officials have been clear on the one place he is not: the detention center at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

U.S. officials have good reason for their reluctance to bring Zubaydah to the one place seemingly designed for him to be questioned. Interrogation efforts at Guantanamo Bay have largely been a failure, intelligence sources and defense officials concede.

"The experience on interrogations has been miserable," says one congressional intelligence source, "a disaster from the very beginning."

Faced with prisoners they considered extremely dangerous, military leaders at Guantanamo chose safety over the interrogators' recommendations, defense officials say.

The safest arrangement for the detainees was to house them together in large groups that could be monitored closely. That setup may have kept U.S. troops safe, but a Pentagon official concedes that it also may have made interrogations far more difficult.

By spending large amounts of time together in close quarters, prisoners had ample opportunities to create cover stories, bolster one another's morale and monitor wavering al-Qaida members.

As a result, virtually all the prisoners have given the same explanation of their presence in Afghanistan: They were there either to find wives or to study the Quran.

One intelligence source paints a revealing picture of early interrogation efforts. The prisoners -- aware that their interrogators understood Arabic -- used French instead, shouting out cover-story reminders as fellow inmates went off for questioning.

Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a former CIA official, demanded a briefing on the situation at the Pentagon recently, a defense official says.

But the official defends the military's actions. Safety had to come first, the official says. Administration officials also point out that long before their capture, most prisoners had access to al-Qaida training manuals with anti-interrogation techniques.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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