Gitmo interrogation chief stands by techniques

[Gunny]

Associated Press
updated 9:03 p.m. CT, Sat., Feb. 16, 2008

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Interrogators received intelligence from detainees that helped U.S. troops in Afghanistan attack Taliban fighters last summer — and they did it through casual questioning and not torture, the military's chief interrogator here said.

In a rare interview with The Associated Press, veteran interrogator Paul Rester complained that his profession has gotten a bad reputation because of accounts of waterboarding and other rough interrogation tactics used by the CIA at "black sites."

Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees, however, allege their clients have been subjected to temperature extremes, sleep deprivation and threats at this U.S. military base in southeast Cuba.

Wearing a blue-striped business shirt without a tie and looking more like a harried executive than a top interrogator, Rester groused that his line of work is "a business that is fundamentally thankless."

He sat hunched over a table in a snack room inside the building where the top commanders keep their offices. In an attempt to keep personnel from blabbing about intelligence-gathering, a poster showed a picture of a hooded gunman and the words: "Keep talking. We're listening" — today's version of the World War II-era admonishment that "Loose lips sink ships."

"Everybody in the world believes that they know how we do what we do, and I have to endure it every time I turn around and somebody is making reference to waterboarding," Rester said. He insisted that Guantanamo interrogators have had many successes using rapport-building and said that technique was the norm here.

For security reasons, he would only discuss one of the successes, and that was only because his boss, Rear Adm. Mark Buzby, already had described it in a speech last month. Buzby said several detainees, using poster board paper and crayons, drew detailed maps of the Tora Bora area in eastern Afghanistan that enabled coalition forces to wipe out safe houses, trenches and supplies last summer as Taliban forces were returning to the stronghold they had abandoned more than five years ago.

Buzby, in a separate interview with the AP, said a U.S. commander in Afghanistan had requested the information on a Friday and it was obtained and sent to Afghanistan by the end of the weekend.

Rester indicated the interrogators casually asked the detainees about their knowledge of Tora Bora, not letting on that it was tactically important for a pending military strike.

"And it may in fact, since it was five years old, have seemed totally innocuous to the persons we were talking to," Rester said.

Buzby, the top commander of detention operations at Guantanamo, said the intelligence "had a very positive effect ... for us and a very negative effect on the enemy operating in that area." He declined to be more specific.

Rester: Two detainees had rougher treatment
In the interview, Rester said only two detainees were given rougher treatment in Guantanamo, and that was during the earlier days: Mohammed al-Qahtani, alleged to be the 20th hijacker, who was turned away from the United States by immigration officials just before the Sept. 11 attacks, and an unidentified man Rester said recruited lead hijacker Mohamed Atta.

"Most of the stories (of detainee abuse) that have propagated all stem from those two," said Rester, who began his career in the Vietnam War. "The constant attention on that takes away from the fact that the productive, consistent direct approach ... has enabled us to possess the vast body of knowledge that we actually have."

more ... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23201801/

Wonder how long it will take this one to get to the second page since it flies in the face of all the sensationalism and bullshit ....

 

[rayboyusmc]

So once more an expert has said that torture like waterboarding isn't needed. It was the same for the interogator who was on TV. You build up trust and get the information you want.

I can't believe that McCain is now saying he is in favor or waterboarding. He said when the North Vietnameses tortured him, he admitted whatever they wanted.

Torture does not produce actionable information, it produces propaganda for the people doing the torturing.

I like Scalia remarks justifying torture. What a bunch of frikking cowards. They keep saying that these approaches have saved American lifes. No proof. We just have to trust them.

This administration has destroyed any moral high ground we had for no real reason except their own ineptitude.