Abu Zubaydah's Attorneys' Memo to the Military Commissions, and Convening Authority Reply

The following is taken from a PDF (h/t emptywheel) of a letter from the attorneys of Abu Zubaydah to the top military legal figure for the Military Commissions. The surprising substance of the letter, i.e., that Abu Zubaydah is requesting he be charged with crimes "at the earliest possible date," makes sense when you realize he has been held in U.S. custody for over ten years now.

In a pro forma May 17 reply (PDF) to Zubaydah's attorneys from Bruce MacDonald, the Military Commissions Convening Authority said that the decision to prosecute would first be made by the Office of the Chief Prosecutor, and that if charges were ever referred, "I will separately make my own, independent decision on whether to refer any sworn charges to trial by a military commission."

MacDonald also indicated that he knew that Zubaydah's attorneys were also pursuing a habeas case for their client in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. For MacDonald, this "means a process, guaranteed by the United States Constitution to challenge the legality" of their client's incarceration. According to the Military Commissions official, Zubaydah is held "pursuant to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force... as informed by the principles of the law of war."

MacDonald, of course, never alludes to the fact that the habeas process in the D.C. District Court has become basically a joke, a hollow shell of form with no substance, as this May 1, 2012 study by the Seton Hall University Law School's Center for Policy and Reseach makes clear:

It is an open secret that Boumediene v. Bush’s promise of robust review of the legality of the Guantanamo detainees’ detention has been effectively negated by decisions of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, beginning with Al-Adahi v. Obama....

After Al-Adahi, the practice of careful judicial fact-finding was replaced by judicial deference to the government's allegations. Now the government wins every petition. 

Given the fact-intensive nature of district court fact-finding, the shifting pattern of lower court decisions could only be due to an appellate court’s radical revision of the legal standards thought to govern habeas petitions, raising questions about whether the D.C. Circuit has in fact correctly applied [the Supreme Court decision in] Boumediene. 

Since his capture, Abu Zubaydah has spent years in secret CIA prisons, and even more years in solitary confinement at Guantanamo Bay. Moreover, Abu Zubaydah has been subjected to repeated torture, and his conditions of confinement currently amount at least to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of a prisoner.

The Zubaydah case is important for another reason, as he was the linchpin in a series of circumstances that engaged the CIA torture program in early 2002, and resulted in a series of infamous legal memos by the Bush Administration's Office of Legal Council, written by John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Stephen Bradbury and others. And yet, the actual facts behind the Zubaydah case remain enshrouded in mystery. Even the account of what happened to his missing eye remains classified... unknown.

Jason Leopold revealed in a March 2010 article that the U.S. government, in an unheralded court filing, "quietly recanted nearly every major claim the Bush administration made about Abu Zubaydah."

I've written some on the Zubaydah case, highlighting how "Abu Zubaydah was a primary subject of JPRA/SERE’s reverse-engineering of torture techniques, using the paradigm of psychologist and former American Psychological Association president Martin Seligman’s theory of 'learned helplessness.'"

In September 2009, I examined the so-called psychological profile of Abu Zubaydah, which was presumably used to sell in summer 2002 a certain image of Zubaydah to the OLC, who was then writing the first torture memos. Zubaydah's attorneys in the memorandum below also reference the picture of Zubaydah painted by the OLC, what I called in my article, the portrait of "a superman-terrorist."

Of course, Zubaydah was nothing like that. And above all, he is a man, a human being, held in indefinite detention by the U.S. state. I'm reprinting the full attorney document here for use by the public. Only the footnotes have been left out, and they can be referenced in the original document at this link.

For more on the Zubaydah case, see Andy Worthington's recent article, "Why No Trials for Abu Zubaydah and Seven Other “High-Value Detainees” in Guantánamo?"

10 May 2012

MEMORANDUM FOR The Convening Authority, Military Commissions

Subj: REQUEST FOR IMMEDIATE COMMENCEMENT OF ABU ZUBAYDAH’S MILITARY COMMISSION PROCEEDINGS

1. This letter requests that the Convening Authority immediately commence proceedings against our client, Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn (abu Zubaydah), ISN # 10016. Failure to act would raise serious questions about the integrity and legitimacy of the Convening Authority and, indeed, of the whole process established to try or release Guantanamo detainees.

2. Abu Zubaydah has been detained without a hearing for ten years. Since his capture on 28 March 2002 until the present day, there have yet to be any charges brought against him. There has been no court finding that he needs to be imprisoned, or that he was associated with al Qaeda, or that he committed any act of terrorism as the U.S. government has alleged in the past. To date, his repeated requests for legitimate evaluation of his case have been met with nothing but deafening silence. He now formally requests that the Convening Authority commence prosecution of him before a military commission at the earliest possible date.

3. The failure to convene abu Zubaydah’s military commission proceeding jeopardizes the legitimacy of the entire military commission structure. In September 2006, President Bush told a nationally televised audience that abu Zubaydah had been transferred from CIA to DoD custody so that he could be prosecuted in a military commission proceeding. Now, five and half years later, he has yet to be charged. No system that detains prisoners for years without charge can be legitimate. No system that only allows hearings in cases where the government can first secure a guilty plea, or guarantee a conviction, can be legitimate. No system that refuses to give a hearing because the truth will reveal enormous governmental over-reaching, illegal conduct, and false claims by our highest ranking officials can be legitimate. For the reasons discussed below, abu Zubaydah is entitled to the immediate commencement of his military commission proceedings.

4. This request for prosecution does not rely upon classified information. If the classified evidence corroborates the statements about abu Zubaydah made by some government officers, then a trial would provide the government with an easy victory. But if the classified evidence does not support their reckless hyperbole, this fact would explain why his long-sought hearing has been continually avoided. He simply requests the opportunity to test the government’s evidence and demonstrate in a legitimate setting why his detention and treatment during detention have been unwarranted, and that he is innocent of any crimes.

Why Has Abu Zubaydah Yet to Be Prosecuted Despite President Bush’s Statements?

5. Nearly six years ago, President Bush announced that abu Zubaydah and thirteen other socalled high-value detainees were to be tried by a military commission:

So I’m announcing today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and 11 other terrorists in CIA custody have been transferred to the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. They are being held in the custody of the Department of Defense. As soon as Congress acts to authorize the military commissions I have proposed, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on September the 11th, 2001, can face justice. (Cheers, applause)....

With these prosecutions, we will send a clear message to those who kill Americans: No matter how long it takes, we will find you and we will bring you to justice. (Emphasis added).¹

6. Despite the President’s promise to the nation, the Office of Military Commissions has taken no steps to prosecute him.

7. A decision to prosecute abu Zubaydah seems commonsensical if what the government has stated publicly about him is true. Officials at the highest levels of government have repeatedly claimed that he was not only associated with al Qaeda but that he committed numerous specified acts of terrorism against the United States. These officials include the President of the United States, the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the Director of the CIA, high-level officials in the State Department, and high-level officials in the Department of Justice.

8. For example, in that same September 2006 speech urging the creation of military commissions, President Bush spoke from the East Room about the existence of secret CIA prisons:

Within months of September the 11th, 2001, we captured a man known as abu Zubaydah. We believe that Zubaydah was a senior terrorist leader and a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden. Our intelligence community believes he had run a terrorist camp in Afghanistan where some of the 9/11 hijackers trained, and that he helped smuggle al Qaeda leaders out of Afghanistan after coalition forces arrived to liberate that country.... (Emphasis added [sic]).

9. The President also claimed that abu Zubaydah provided:

information that helped stop a terrorist attack being planned for inside the United States -— an attack about which we had no previous information [and]  provided physical descriptions of the operatives and information on their general location. Based on the information he provided, the operatives were detained -— one while traveling to the United States.

10. Were even a fraction of such repeated assertions supported by credible evidence, the most straightforward course for the government would be to convene a military commission, produce the appropriate evidence under the relaxed commission standards, obtain what the government seems to think is a foregone conviction, and administer the resulting punishment. And yet this logical course of action has yet to be taken.

11. Abu Zubaydah has not been tried, has not been charged, and has not even had military commission counsel assigned to him. He has requested the appointment of military commission counsel repeatedly but has received no response. This overt failure to prosecute a supposed terrorist leader causes the world to wonder why. One possibility is that the claims, despite their number and decibel level, are simply untrue, so that the government cannot prove all (or any) of them. A second possibility is that the prosecution would be successful but only at the unacceptable cost of exposing the government to worldwide censure for the manner in which Zubaydah was treated and the evidence against him was obtained. The third possibility, worst of all, is both that the claims are not true and that his treatment is too shameful to be revealed to the world.

12. The factual premises for these scenarios, if untrue, could be put to rest by beginning the prosecution. Failure to do so can only further erode the legitimacy of the military commission process. The ultimate test of the legitimacy of any judicial system is the willingness to hold hearings even when the truths that the hearings may reveal could be embarrassing or politically damaging to high-level officials. Abu Zubaydah formally requests that he receive his military commission hearing immediately. Without such a hearing he may be detained forever as an uncharged prisoner—not necessarily for anything that he has done but because so many people have made so many false allegations to justify government policies that are themselves indefensible that no possibility of disclosure or, far worse, exoneration can be borne.

13. The public record already reveals that the government has long had reason to doubt the accuracy of its accusations. At the very time that President Bush was making the above statements, he was aware of serious reservations about their truth. According to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind, even as Bush was publicly proclaiming abu Zubaydah’s malevolence, he was privately being briefed about misgivings within the intelligence community regarding his significance—and mental stability. President Bush was concerned about the consequences for his own reputation. Suskind quotes the following exchange between Bush and then-CIA Director George Tenet:

I said [abu Zubaydah] was important,” Bush said to Tenet at one of their daily meetings. “You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” (emphasis added). Director Tenet then assured him he would not

The government’s failure to prosecute him continues the protection that Tenet promised.

14. Endless delays of a proceeding promised long ago by the President reflect the government’s implicit recognition that the “abu Zubaydah” who was held out to the American public to justify our nation’s torture, rendition, and detention policies was merely a manufactured distortion of the real person. His false portrayal, once known, will discredit many of the government’s most horrific policies. It was largely by virtue of unwarranted and inaccurate characterizations of abu Zubaydah that the government was able to adopt its torture policies, defend its dark sites and rendition policies, and continue on its course of detaining hundreds of individuals around the world without any process.

Role of the Discredited “Torture Memos” in Abu Zubaydah’s Military Commission

15. If abu Zubaydah’s case might inflict the very public embarrassment that President Bush feared so much, as revealed in his exchange with the then-CIA Director, the “torture memos” provide another source of shame for the government. The already notorious memos would be even more universally condemned were it known that their supposed efficacy in revealing the truth about our enemies was based -- in significant part, at least -- on lies about abu Zubaydah.

16. On August 1, 2002, attorneys with the Office of Legal Counsel completed a memorandum regarding the “Interrogation of al Qaeda Operative” that described the factual basis upon which that torture memo rested. The authors of this memo explained that “[a]s we understand it, Zubaydah is one of the highest ranking members of the al Qaeda terrorist organization.” The Office of Legal Counsel’s advice was “based upon the following facts, which you have provided to us....”

Zubaydah is currently being held by the United States. The interrogation team is certain he has additional information that he refuses to divulge. Specifically, he is withholding information regarding terrorist networks in the United States or in Saudi Arabia and information regarding plans to conduct attacks within the United States or against our interests overseas....

...Zubaydah, though only 31, rose quickly from very low level mujahedin to third or fourth man in al Qaeda. He has served as Usama Bin Laden’s senior lieutenant. In that capacity, he has managed a network of training camps. He has been instrumental in the training of operatives for al Qaeda, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist elements inside Pakistan and Afghanistan. He acted as the Deputy Camp Commander for al Qaeda training camp (sic) in Afghanistan, personally approving entry and graduation of all trainees during 1999-2000. From 1996 until 1999, he approved all individuals going in and out of Afghanistan to the training camps. Further, no one went in and out of Peshawar, Pakistan without his knowledge and approval. He also acted as al Qaeda’s coordinator of external contacts and foreign communications. Additionally, he has acted as al Qaeda’s counter-intelligence officer and has been trusted to find spies within the organization.

Zubaydah has been involved in every major terrorist operation carried out by al Qaeda. He was a planner of the Millennium plot to attack U.S. and Israeli targets during the Millennium celebrations in Jordan. Two of the central figures in this plot who were arrested have identified Zubaydah as the supporter of their cell and the plot. He also served as a planner for the Paris Embassy plot in 2001. Moreover, he was one of the planners of the September 11 attacks. Prior to his capture, he was engaged in planning future terrorist attacks against U.S. interests.

17. What an incredible political embarrassment it would be for the world to discover that the torture and mistreatment of abu Zubaydah were pointless exercises in cruelty. Vice President Cheney, CIA Director Michael Hayden, and many others all have claimed that the torture and mistreatment of abu Zubaydah led to the discovery of useful information. Vice President Cheney stated that:

[t]he techniques worked…. Abu Zubaydah gave up information about Ramzi bin al-Shibh who had assisted the 9/11 hijackers, and on the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was captured after a shoot-out in Pakistan. At he time of his apprehension he was plotting to use commercial airliners in suicide attacks on Heathrow Airport and other structures in London.

18. Director Hayden also stated that abu Zubaydah’s interrogation “led to reliable information,” that he was a “prolific producer” of information, and that roughly 25 percent of the information on al Qaeda that came from human sources that originated from him. Imagine the political and policy implications that would follow the revelation that no such information was obtained from visiting these abuses on him.

Role of Rendition and Indefinite Detention in Abu Zubaydah’s Military Commission Proceedings

19. The torture policies are not the only programs that would be exposed during the military commission hearing. The U.S. government’s justification of its policies of extraordinary rendition, maintaining secret CIA black sites, and indefinite detention would also be shown to have rested on false and exaggerated claims. Obviously, statements about abu Zubaydah were not the only basis for the creation of the Global War on Terror apparatus. There were many other claims. However, he was the symbol constantly deployed to justify the creation of that apparatus. The numerous fabricated statements made about him constituted a key part of the foundation of that structure. For instance, abu Zubaydah’s supposed misdeeds were used to justify the CIA’s use of black sites and extraordinary rendition as critical elements in the War on Terror.

20. John Kiriakou, the highest ranking CIA officer on the ground in Pakistan involved in abu Zubaydah’s capture, reported as follows:

He was one of the financiers of the September 11th attacks. He was a logistics chief of al Qaeda. We knew that he was close to bin Laden, although not co-located obviously.... [W]e knew at the time that he had a line to bin Laden.

[We knew] that he knew everybody who was worth knowing in al Qaeda. He knew cell leaders. He knew logistics people. He knew finance people. We knew that he was really one of the intellectual leaders of the group.

21. John Rizzo was the CIA’s acting general counsel during the Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT) program. He was interviewed on September 13, 2011, about abu Zubaydah:

He wasn’t necessarily a shooter or a guy who would climb into an airplane, fly into a building. But he basically was moralistically chief operating officer, made sure and facilitated the plan, the travel of various al Qaeda officials. So there was a lot of information derived from him on that score that I recall.... And it’s not just me saying it. Subsequent investigations by the CIA inspector general and other independent bodies confirmed that there was valuable, actionable intelligence derived first from Abu Zubaydah and later (from) other high-value detainees that were subject to the enhanced techniques....

22. Abu Zubaydah has also been frequently used to justify the continued operation of Guantanamo. For example, consider the statement of the State Department’s John Bellinger:

I will just say up front that the issue of Guantanamo...is a source of great frustration for this administration. On the one hand, it serves a very important purpose, to hold and detain individuals who are extremely dangerous, people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, people who have been planners of 9/11, others who were captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and who personally killed U.S. soldiers.

Conclusion

23. The government fears that a military commission hearing for abu Zubaydah will reveal that the facts upon which the American torture policy substantially rests were false and known to be false at the time. The military commission hearing will also reveal that many statements made by the highest officials about him were false and known to be false when made. The government has attempted to conceal the fabrication of the factual basis for his torture, the same basis detailed in the “torture memo” that focused exclusively on him.

24. The government has also gone to great lengths to destroy all evidence that one of its most trusted attorneys had written a dissenting memo arguing that the treatment approved by the “torture memos” was torture that should have been known to be torture. The legal memo revealing the robust dissent to the very practices inflicted upon abu Zubaydah was not only concealed but extraordinary efforts were made to destroy all copies of the memo. Although use of the word “concealment” may seem harsh, this characterization is, if anything, an understatement. The more accurate description of this conduct would be spoliation of evidence revealing the false factual and legal basis upon which abu Zubaydah was tortured. The spoliation efforts were revealed by Phillip Zelikow, a high ranking State Department lawyer and confidant of Secretary Condoleeza Rice, in an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2009. His memo titled “The McCain Amendment and U.S. Obligations under Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture,” dated February 15, 2006, concluded that several of the enhanced interrogation techniques, “singly or in combination, should be considered ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’ within” the meaning of the Convention Against Torture. Zelikow explained that the memo caused senior figures in the Bush White House to become enraged, and that they actually sought to collect and destroy all the copies.

25. The government that has engaged in the spoliation of evidence, including authoritative legal dissent about abu Zubaydah’s treatment, is the same government that holds him in indefinite pretrial detention, too afraid to prosecute him—because such a hearing would reveal even more disturbing truths.

26. The refusal to bring charges and seek judicial review of abu Zubaydah’s case, to provide a forum that will reveal the truth about him and the demonstrably false factual basis for the torture memos and his torture is but another way to conceal the truth. That a government concealed and destroyed documents evidencing dissent to its justification for torture speaks volumes about why that government would refuse to provide abu Zubaydah judicial process that would disclose an even more damning truth: that the factual basis for his torture was false and known to be false at the time.

27. The failure of the Office of Military Commissions to charge and try abu Zubaydah inevitably will be viewed as part of the lamentable pattern of conduct that began with the assertion of false facts to justify his torture in 2002, and produced distorted, inaccurate and incomplete legal opinions as the government labored in vain to contrive the legality of his torture. And that perception undermines the legitimacy of the entire military commission program.

28. Abu Zubaydah asks only for what he was promised by the president of this nation: a military commission hearing. The reformed military commissions have been trumpeted as wholly consistent with basic American precepts of justice. So we say: charge abu Zubaydah and let the chips fall where they may.

29. If the military commissions are to be viewed as legitimate, they should not appear to be complicit in disguising the truth. Instead, military commissions should serve as a vehicle that reveals the truth. The failure to prosecute abu Zubaydah discredits not only American political practices but also the military commissions themselves. Abu Zubaydah asks simply that he be allowed to have a legitimate hearing at which he may challenge the allegations and evidence leveled against him. But as time lingers on, what legitimacy will be found in a system that continues to delay the trial of a man the government once described as a high-ranking al Qaeda operative? Abu Zubaydah is ready for the process to begin, and after ten years of detention and evidence gathering, the government ought to be too.

30. After more than ten years of waiting, your prompt consideration of this request is appreciated.

Very truly yours,

__/s_________________________
Joseph Margulies
Clinical Professor of Law
Roderick MacArthur Justice Center
Northwestern University School of Law
375 East Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611....

__/s_________________________
George Brent Mickum IV
5800 Wiltshire Drive
Bethesda, MD 20816

__/s_________________________
Mark Denbeaux, Esq.
DENBEAUX & DENBEAUX
366 Kinderkamack Road
Westwood, NJ 07675....

__/s_________________________
Amanda Jacobsen
University of Copenhagen
Faculty of Law
Studiestraede 6
Copenhagen Denmark 1455-K

Repost of Appeal to CIA on Mitchell-Jessen Al Qaeda Paper

The following is the text of my letter to the CIA, appealing their decision not to release the paper written by James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, “Recognizing and Developing Countermeasures to Al Qa’ida Resistance to Interrogation Techniques: A Resistance Training Perspective.” The Mitchell/Jessen paper has been referred to in numerous news accounts and Senate testimony as the precursor to the SERE-based torture program used by both the CIA and the Department of Defense beginning (it seems) in early 2002.

In a letter to me dated March 7, 2012, the CIA responded that my appeal had been "accepted and arrangements will be made for its consideration by the appropriate members of the Agency Release Panel. The Acting Information and Privacy Coordinator for the agency noted that they didn't think they could respond within the 20 working days they were supposed to. He was right, as I have not heard anything back yet.

Nevertheless, I'm publishing the letter because it documents the ridiculousness of holding such documents secret. I'd note that since I wrote my letter, revelations about the use of SERE's PREAL manual in the construction and approval of the CIA's program (the latter by Yoo and Company at the OLC), only amplifies what I've written here.

February 13, 2012

Agency Release Panel
c/o Susan Viscuso
Information and Privacy Coordinator
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, DC 20505

Reference: EOM-2012-00039

Dear Agency Release Panel:

This letter constitutes an administrative appeal to the Agency Release Panel, such appeal being guaranteed by Section 3.5(e) of Executive Order 13526.

I am writing to appeal the determination by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with regard to my Mandatory Declassification request filed on September 28, 2011, reference number EOM-2012-00039, for the paper titled “Recognizing and Developing Countermeasures to Al Qa’ida Resistance to Interrogation Techniques: A Resistance Training Perspective.” Copies of the original request letter and the agency responses are attached to this appeal request.

By a letter of February 8, 2012, the CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator Susan Viscuso informed me the document responsive to my request had been located. However, Ms. Viscuso informed me the CIA determined the document could not be released in sanitized form, citing Section 1.4(c) of Executive Order 13526.

The following are my reasons for appeal:

1) According to the CIA denial letter, cting Section 3.5(e) of Executive Order 13526, it would appear that the CIA contends that “unauthorized disclosure” of this document “could reasonably be expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to the national security” as it pertains to intelligence activities (including covert action), intelligence sources or methods, or cryptology.”

2) In his book, The Black Banners, former FBI agent Ali Soufan stated what the authors of this document concluded about countermeasures to Al Qaeda resistance methods. This was also covered in the worldwide press, as this quote from the UK Telegraph demonstrates:

“It was on the basis of the information in this manual that the two reportedly concluded that harsh techniques would be needed to break al-Qaeda detainees,” he writes in a new book called “The Black Banners.”

“This constituted a misreading of the Manchester manual and in fact Boris’s techniques played into what the manual instructed captured terrorists to do.”

URL accessed 2/13/2012 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8833109/CIA-used-Manchester-manual-to-justify-water-boarding.html

Accordingly, I contend that the general conclusions drawn in the article withheld is already a matter of public record, and should be declassified and released.

3) Given the place this paper holds in the development of the government’s interrogation program after 9/11, as stated in both the Senate Armed Service Committee “Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody” and the CIA Inspector General’s May 2004 Special Review, “Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities,” it strains credulity to believe that some of the factual material in this document has not been made publicly available in other formats.

An example of such likely material can be found in the public release of the Al Qaeda Manchester Manual, which includes a chapter on Al Qaeda countermeasures to interrogation. If the paper I have asked to be declassified includes a discussion of the Al Qaeda countermeasures of any descriptive sort, then I argue that at least some of this material, which could be segregable, should be released.

The Manchester Manual itself can be accessed on the Internet at http://www.investigativeproject.org/document/id/10

4) In the Senate Armed Services Committee report referenced above, there are numerous references to the kinds of materials that had been identified as countermeasures by one of the authors of the report requested. As one instance, the Committee report references use of such materials in a slide show training by JPRA given to DIA personnel on March 8, 2002. The kinds of countermeasures advocated include “isolation and degradation,” “sensory deprivation,” and both physiological and psychological “pressures.”

5) Furthermore, a JPRA trainer participating in the March 8 training, Joseph Witsch, is quoted as saying the countermeasures identified in the slides were “just an interpretation of what we were doing at the time and what we constantly did when we trained SERE students.” (pg. 9 of the report). The SASC report then lists a number of such SERE techniques that were also included in the slide show, and likely concern countermeasures, as pointed out by Mr. Witsch, in regards to Al Qaeda resistance methods, including, in addition to the above techniques, “sensory overload,” “disruption of sleep and biorhythms,” and “manipulation of diet.”

Therefore, I maintain that in this instance, too, the material in the requested document is at least largely in the public domain, or already previously declassified.

6) In addition to the instances quoted above, there are a number of instances wherein countermeasures for the resistance methods of proposed Al Qaeda prisoners is described. Indeed, the August 2, 2002 “Memorandum for John Rizzo” on the “Interrogation of an al Qaeda Operative,” declassified by the Obama administration, discusses a number of techniques used as part of an “increased pressure phase” made necessary because of the operatives supposed unwillingness “to disclose further information.”

The list of techniques does not need to be enumerated here, as they were publicized in a plethora of articles following release of the Memorandum. Once more, it appears more than likely that these countermeasures used in the interrogation of the operative (Abu Zubaydah) drew upon the initial analyses utilized in the first examination of Al Qaeda countermeasures written in December 2001 or January 2002, for which I have requested declassification. In other words, it seems highly likely that the substantive discussion of countermeasures in the contested document has already largely been a subject of public revelation and discourse.

7) Finally, I would argue that release of this material is in the public interest, far beyond whatever intelligence activities, sources or methods are involved. Human intelligence sources that might be identifiable could be redacted from the document, as is so often done. The source of the material, largely from the Manchester document, and the methods enumerated, either from the Manchester document, or from SERE methods of counter-resistance, are already well-established in the public record.

There remains only the possibility that this document is associated with some covert action that could cause damage to national security if revealed. However, I find it unlikely that such covert action is discussed in this particular document. Should a classified program of some sort be mentioned in the document, surely that could be segregated and redacted.

The origins of the CIA interrogation program, particularly the “enhanced interrogation techniques,” has been of high interest to the public, with hundreds of articles and books written, symposiums organized and attended. It has been the subject of documentaries and newspaper editorials. The public’s interest in release of this document would have the following benefits:

a. It would provide information about relatively recent and controversial government policy decisions, in particular in relation to interrogation
b. It could potentially expose government wrong-doing or misconduct
c. It would contribute to the ongoing national debate about torture and interrogation, a debate that includes both civil liberties organizations, such as the ACLU, and former administration high officials, such as former Vice President Cheney
d. It would be of scholarly interest for those who are writing the histories of the early years in the “war on terror”

In conclusion, I ask that the Agency Release Panel reconsider the decision to maintain classification of the paper titled “Recognizing and Developing Countermeasures to Al Qa’ida Resistance to Interrogation Techniques: A Resistance Training Perspective,” and release it in total or segregable portions.

I look forward to receiving your decision on this appeal in a timely fashion. If you have any questions, or believe discussion of this matter would be beneficial, please contact me directly at XXXX@sbcglobal.net or (415) XXX-XXXX.

Sincerely,

NYT: Soufan Book Adds to Charges CIA Kept 9/11 Terrorist Info from FBI

Ali Soufan's long-awaited new book, The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda, was released the other day, meriting a story on some of its more explosive material in an article by Scott Shane at the New York Times. According to Shane, "Mr. Soufan accuses C.I.A. officials of deliberately withholding crucial documents and photographs of Qaeda operatives from the F.B.I. before Sept. 11, 2001, despite three written requests, and then later lying about it to the 9/11 Commission."

The book made headlines last month when it was revealed the CIA had demanded "scores" of cuts to the book, for purposes of "national security."

According to Soufan, in a special introduction to the new book:

"... the FBI informed me that the manuscript had been sent to the CIA for review. This was strange, as I have never reported to the CIA or had any contractual agreement with them. While I understood that the FBI might feel the need to consult with others in the intelligence community about certain material in the book, there was absolutely no reason to subject me to a second full-blown prepublication review."

Soufan, a long-time special agent working with the FBI, worked on some of the more notorious terrorist cases post-9/11, including the interrogation of Mohamed Al-Qahtani and Abu Zubaydah. According to Soufan, he was pulled off these interrogations when the CIA or military officials wanted to use torture on the detainees. In these cases, and it turns out others, Soufan and his colleagues were pulled out of interrogations at the behest of the Bush administration or the CIA. Soufan was also the lead investigator on the bombing of the USS Cole.

In at least one other case, crucial information was kept from Soufan and other investigators by CIA officials, information that would have helped break the Cole case, and, crucially, have led FBI investigators to identify Al Qaeda operatives who had entered the United States more than eighteen months before 9/11. These two operatives, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, died on the plane that rammed into the Pentagon.

The controversies surrounding the CIA's withholding of information about these two hijackers was told in Lawrence Wright's 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, and was further explored in Kevin Fenton's recent book, Disconnecting the Dots: How 9/11 Was Allowed to Happen.

Here's how Shane described the moment when Soufan realized he'd been had. For some strange reason, the NYT refrains from actually giving al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi's names.

[Soufan] recounts a scene at the American Embassy in Yemen, where, a few hours after the attacks on New York and Washington, a C.I.A. official finally turned over the material the bureau requested months earlier [from the CIA], including photographs of two of the hijackers.

“For about a minute I stared at the pictures and the report, not quite believing what I had in my hands,” Mr. Soufan writes. Then he ran to a bathroom and vomited. “My whole body was shaking,” he writes. He believed the material, documenting a Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000, combined with information from the Cole investigation, might have helped unravel the airliner plot.

According to Shane's report, CIA spokesman Preston Golson called "baseless" the idea that the CIA “purposely refused to share critical lead information on the 9/11 plots."

How Al Qaeda Terrorists Were Allowed to Enter the U.S.

What briefly reportedly occurred was this:

In January 2000, the CIA got information from the National Security Agency that al-Mihdhar and an associate were headed to a seeming summit of top terrorists in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. According to Fenton, "the CIA realized that the summit was so important that information about it was briefed to CIA and FBI leaders, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and other top officials at the start of 2000." The CIA discovered a visa for al-Mihdhar showing he was planning to come to the United States. Al-Mihdhar's father-in-law was the owner of a house in Yemen that NSA, CIA, and likely others were surveilling electronically -- the so-called Al Qaeda Yemen "hub."

In any case, according to Wright, the CIA already knew from Saudi intelligence that al-Mihdhar was Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, the CIA had obtained al-Mihdhar's passport, along with the visa, photographed it and sent it on to the CIA's Bin Laden desk, known as "Alec Station." When an FBI agent assigned to Alec Station, Doug Miller saw the cable, he drafted a memo requesting permission to alert his FBI superiors of the terrorists' intentions to come to the U.S. But permission was denied. We know that this was upon the authority of Alec Station deputy chief Tom Wilshire.

Even worse, another CIA agent at Alec Station, informed others who inquired that the information was passed on to the FBI. Except it never was.

Obstructions Continue

In an article about these matters by Jason Leopold at Truthout, Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick's new book, Triple Agent, about the suicide bomber who killed seven CIA agents at Khost, reports that the CIA Inspector General said "as many as sixty CIA employees" had seen "a series of cabled warnings in 2000 about" al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar "who later became part of the September 11 plot.... yet the two operatives' names were never passed along to the FBI, which might have assigned agents to track them down or shared with the State Department, which could have flagged their named on its watch list. In theory, the arrest of the either man could have led investigators to the other hijackers and the eventual unraveling of the 9/11 plot."

This was the beginning of numerous instances of lying and obstruction of an investigation by CIA, and on occasion, FBI officials, related to these two Al Qaeda personnel in particular. As you can see, far from the 9/11 terrorists begin "lucky," it appears there was a concerted effort to keep FBI criminal investigators from tracking key Al Qaeda operatives in the months, even weeks or days, leading up to 9/11. As Fenton points out, the latter possibly was achieved by detailing Wilshire, the agent who had blocked the first evidence of al-Mihdhar and al-Hawsi entering the U.S., to work with the FBI's counterterrorism unit in early 2001.

Soufan relates a much later instance of obstruction, this time only weeks before 9/11 itself. In late August, the FBI was finally figuring out what the CIA had known over a year before. When one reads this, one should remember that al-Mihdhar was certainly involved in the Cole terrorist plot, and both he and the very existence of the Malaysia Al Qaeda "summit" were kept from Soufan and his investigators for months, only finally told them when they had pretty much figured it out for themselves.

The following exchange took place in late August 2001, after FBI agent Dina Corsi had accidentally copied a criminal FBI investigator on an email about al-Mihdhar:

“Dina, you’ve got to be kidding me. Mihdhar is in the country?” [FBI agent Steve Bongardt] could hardly contain his anger....

“Steve, you’ve got to delete that,” Dina replied nervously. “We’ll have a conference call about it tomorrow.”

Dina called the next day, with a senior CIA official also on the line. Steve was told by the senior official that he had to “stand down” regarding Mihdhar. He was furious to hear—again—that this was intelligence that couldn’t be shared with criminal agents.

“If this guy is in the country, it’s not because he’s going to fucking Disneyland,” Steve retorted.

“Stand down,” the senior official replied.

The "stand down" ordered by the CIA was not the first "stand down" surrounding intelligence agencies in the months before 9/11. As I wrote the other day, both here and, with Jason Leopold, at Truthout, according to the former Deputy Chief of a Pentagon intelligence unit, which was hunting Bin Laden, and concerned with the scenarios about when and how and where Al Qaeda would attack, his group was pulled off that work in early 2001. This story is in addition to the controversial news reports about the Army's Able Danger data mining operation, shut down after it had identified some of the Al Qaeda terrorists, and more than one case of FBI reports of possible terrorists training to be pilots that were ignored by higher-ups.

Last month, two investigators released a partial video interview of former counter-terrorism "czar" Richard Clarke talking about the CIA and the withholding of information from the FBI and his office on movements of al-Mihdhar and al-Hawsi. (See video at end of story.) Clarke said George Tenet never told him about the two U.S.-bound terrorists. He also believed that Tenet, and Alec Station chief Rich Blee, "whose true identity was revealed for the first time two years ago, were responsible for the failure to capture al-Mihdhar and al-Hawsi.

The investigators' documentary on all this, "Who is Rich Blee?", was supposed to be released yesterday. But at their website we see the following message, "On Thursday, the CIA threatened the journalists behind Who Is Rich Blee? with possible federal prosecution if the investigative podcast is released in its current form.

"We are delaying that release while we consult with others and weigh our options. A press statement with a more complete explanation will be made available at this site soon."

Silence and the Legacy of 9/11

I haven't yet finished Soufan's book, so this essay is by no means meant to be a review. In the past, I have been critical, for instance, of how Soufan has played around with what he felt were non-coercive interrogations, which I believe meant it was okay to use isolation, for instance. I will be very curious to read his narrative about the Al Qahtani and Zubaydah interrogations, for instance. But for the purposes of this article, I'm concentrating only on the obstruction of justice aspects of his charges.

Whether it was a deliberate attempt to let terrorists operate in this country (as Kevin Fenton maintains), or a terrible combination of over-caution, inertia, lack of imagination, bad judgement, institutional hubris, and bad luck, as others would suggest, remains to be seen. What is clear is that we need a new investigation of the activities of the intelligence groups and the military leading up to 9/11, the earlier investigations being hog-tied by lies, information coerced from tortured detainees, and repeated efforts (mostly successful) to hide or withhold crucial information from investigators.

Only our silence will guarantee that we will never know the truth. Given that 9/11 and the threat of terrorism is used to justify trillions spent on wars, a major crackdown on civil liberties, and the use of torture and other abuses upon detainees, I don't see silence as an option.



Originally posted at FDL/The Dissenter

EXCLUSIVE: New Documents Claim Intelligence on Bin Laden, al-Qaeda Targets Withheld From Congress' 9/11 Probe

Reposted from Truthout 

Monday 13 June 2011

by: Jeffrey Kaye and Jason Leopold, Truthout | Report

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, just as he has done in years past, a top military intelligence analyst identified by the US government only as "Iron Man" will hunker down in front of his television and watch a particularly gruesome scene of the carnage left behind on that fateful day.

"Although I try to avoid it, I glimpse a film clip, a scene, of people throwing themselves from a burning tower, people who deserved better protection from their country, from me and the men I worked with, and I hear the sounds of the lobby in the [World Trade Center] on tape," said the man, whose alter ego chosen by the government appears to be paying homage to the Marvel Comics superhero [4]. "To me, the sights and sounds, the smoke of that day are not yet history. They are a knot, a silence, a facial tick, a missing friend in Iraq. They are not history yet."

For many Americans, the emotional reaction to President Barack Obama's announcement last month that a Navy Seal team had killed Osama bin Laden during a raid at his compound in Pakistan was celebratory. But for others, like the mysterious Iron Man, who has spent his career lurking in the shadows, the death of the late al-Qaeda leader is a painful reminder of what could have been avoided had the government heeded numerous early warnings of an impending attack against the very targets terrorists struck on 9/11.

The intelligence failures leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are an issue the media - and lawmakers - put to bed years ago, despite the fact that new information continues to trickle out, undercutting the integrity of the official investigations into who knew what and when.

It was an exclusive story [5] Truthout published May 23 in the wake of Bin Laden's death, focusing on a little-known intelligence unit that was ordered to stop tracking his movements prior to 9/11, and led Iron Man to contact Truthout to share previously undisclosed documents he recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) [6], which appear to cast further doubt on the official narrative and suggests high-level military and intelligence officials withheld key evidence from Congressional lawmakers probing the attacks.

The materials Iron Man provided to Truthout stand as the most revealing information to surface in years regarding Bin Laden and al-Qaeda's plans to attack the United States.


This is the first page of "Iron Man's" complaint to the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General related to intelligence work he did on Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Formal Complaint

Five years ago, Iron Man, who requested Truthout conceal his true identity out of concern for his family's privacy, lodged a formal complaint with the Department of Defense's Office of Inspector General after he was accused of improperly handling classified material.
Iron Man filed a FOIA request in September 2006, seeking a declassified copy of the six-page complaint he filed with the inspector general's office. He finally received a copy on April 8, just a few weeks prior to the raid on Bin Laden's compound.

What he revealed in that letter, portions of which were redacted by the government because the information is classified, is the inner workings of an elite intelligence unit he headed at one point: the Asymmetric Threats Division, formed in 1999, and "charged with reporting on asymmetric threats, especially terrorism."

The unit worked with Joint Task Force-Civil Support (JTF-CS), also set up in 1999. According to the Defense Department (DoD), JTF-CS was charged with supporting "terrorist response operations in the continental US" and providing "military assistance to civil authorities."
The Asymmetric Threats Division is referred to as DO5, a branch of the Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC), whose responsibilities included, among other things, vetting human intelligence sources on behalf of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). From 1998 to 2001, Iron Man was working as a counterterrorism/counterintelligence analyst for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), assigned to JFIC.

The JFIC is an elite intelligence unit that falls under the authority of the United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) and "had a direct and assigned purview on international terrorism against the US, to include the operations of al-Qa'ida and the 9/11 attackers."

The JFIC was also responsible for monitoring Bin Laden and other suspected terrorists who resided in Afghanistan between 1998 and 2000 and was charged with constructing likely scenarios that could be carried out by terrorists and possible government responses.

Iron Man noted the "purpose of the letter" he wrote "is to formally complain" to the inspector general that "JFIC, when instructed in or before May 2002 to provide all original material it might have relevant to al-Qa'ida and the 9/11 attacks for a Congressional inquiry, intentionally misinformed the Department of Defense that it had no purview on such matters and no such material."

"JFIC's role" and the DoD's "role, in the pursuit of al-Qa'ida before 9/11 and timely analysis of the targets actually struck by the 9/11 attackers have remained unknown even to senior DoD officials," the letter says.

Moreover, there has never been a public accounting of the work conducted by DO5. But Iron Man's letter provides deep insight into the secret military intelligence group's highly classified activities.

Tracking Terrorists

DO5 was "a fore-runner of current all-source fusion centers," the letter Iron Man wrote says. Individuals assigned to the unit had "a wide mix of skills" in intelligence disciplines, including human and open-source intelligence, signals intelligence and imagery and signature intelligence.

DO5 drafted "numerous original reports ... identifying probable and possible movements and locations of Usama bin Ladin and Mullah Omar," including likely identification of the house where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed allegedly planned the 9/11 attacks.

From 1999 to 2001, the intelligence unit also "conducted imagery analysis of Jalalabad and Qandahar" and other parts of Afghanistan as they were "pulled into a community-wide initiative on al-Qa'ida."

The letter further states, "DO5 was able to 'scoop' [the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency]," an agency which played a crucial role in identifying the compound in Pakistan where Bin Laden had been hiding.

According to US government officials, it was one of Bin Laden's most trusted couriers, whom intelligence operatives identified about five years ago, that led the CIA to pinpoint Bin Laden's Abbottabad compound.

But Iron Man's 2006 letter states that DO5 worked closely with DIA and was instrumental in identifying "a likely financial courier" for al-Qaeda, and one who may have led intelligence officials directly to Bin Laden well before 9/11.

Early Intelligence Pointed to the World Trade Center, Pentagon

In 2002, following his departure to DIA, Iron Man returned to JFIC to teach two classes on asymmetric warfare, and he kept "numerous" slides related to DO5's work on "pre-9/11 briefings."

As Iron Man explained in his letter of complaint to DoD's inspector general, "upon my arrival at DIA, I had these documents e-mailed from JFIC to my DIA account, so that I could use them as references for the asymmetric warfare course I was drafting for DIA, and as references for any future counter-terrorism work I might pursue at DIA."

It appears that the allegation Iron Man mishandled classified material stems from a decision he made to email the briefing slides to his DIA account. Iron Man declined to elaborate about the circumstances of the allegations leveled against him. Still, what he reveals in his carefully worded letter in response to those charges is explosive.

"I kept the original classifications on the slides, as historical documents, although the fact that al-Qa'ida was likely to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was clearly no longer classified." (Emphasis added.)

Iron Man further elaborated on this point by stating that high-level DoD officials held discussions about DO5's intelligence activities between the summer of 2000 and June 2001 revolving around al-Qaeda's interest in striking the Pentagon, the World Trade Center (WTC), and other targets.

In other words, the Bush administration was fully aware the terrorist organization had set its sights on those structures prior to 9/11 and, apparently, government officials failed to act on those warnings.

For example, Iron Man states in his letter that in the summer of 2000, DO5 briefed USJFCOM senior intelligence officials and staffers, including the deputy commander in chief, on the "WMD Threat to the U.S."

Iron Man describes a "sensitive," "oral briefing" that took place that summer "indicating that the World Trade Centers #1 and #2 were the most likely buildings to be attacked [by al-Qaeda], followed closely by the Pentagon. The briefer indicated that the worst case scenario would be one tower collapsed onto another."

Furthermore, as he states in his letter, Iron Man was certain that such a scenario was part of a "red cell analysis" discussion that took place prior to the intelligence briefing and included a finding that the buildings "could be struck by a jetliner." He wrote that there was a suggestion about alerting WTC security and engineering or architectural staff, "but the idea was not further explored because of a command climate discouraging contact with the civilian community."

One official who attended the DO5 briefing was Vice Adm. Martin J. Meyer, the deputy commander in chief (DCINC), USJFCOM (Iron Man's complaint does not identify Meyer by name, but notes the presence of the "DCINC" for USJFCOM). But despite the red flags raised during the briefing, Meyer [7] reportedly told Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold, the commander of the Continental United States NORAD Region (CONR), and other high-level CONR staffers two weeks before the 9/11 attacks that "their concern about Osama bin Laden as a possible threat to America was unfounded and that, to repeat, 'If everyone would just turn off CNN, there wouldn't be a threat from Osama bin Laden.'"

Mayer retired from the Navy in 2003 and was hired [8] by defense contractor Lockheed Martin.

Intelligence Withheld From Congress

Even worse, according to Iron Man's letter, the information DO5 had collected about Bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the lead up to 9/11 was withheld from Congress after the House and Senate Intelligence Committees launched an investigation into the attacks.

"When the Justice Department requested all documents relating to 9/11 from DoD in May 2002, I notified [redacted] in the DIA Congressional Affairs office that I retained these documents," Iron Man's letter states. "I spoke to [redacted] JFIC DI1 [an individual who works in the command administrative staff], who informed me that JFIC had already submitted a response without any documents. I was surprised and disappointed when my successor at DO5 [redacted] notified me of the full JFIC non-response. I notified [redacted] in the Congressional Affairs office, and was told to submit the documents as DIA documents, with an explanatory e-mail. I did so on 29 May 2002, presuming (probably correctly) that the documents might be overlooked, since they originated at JFIC. I forwarded copies to [redacted] (who was departing JFIC that week), (his subordinate), and [redacted] (who was also departing JFIC that week)."

A DoD spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople for the House and Senate Intelligence Committees also did not respond to calls for comment.

After raising his concerns, Iron Man, who from late 2000 to June 2001 was acting head of DO5, was told by his former boss that JFIC's formal response to Congress' inquiries was that "al-Qaida and the 9/11 attacks had been outside JFIC's purview and that JFIC consequently held no material on those issues," which was a lie.

Iron Man's boss said, "He insisted [to officials who responded to the Congressional inquiries] that such was not the case, but was told this was JFIC's response."

Iron Man wrote that "many people" working at government agencies were knowledgeable about JFIC's "role in preparing original analysis" on al-Qaeda, including officials at the CIA, NCIS, USJFCOM, DIA and NSA, whose names were redacted in the letter he sent to DoD's inspector general.

However, after conducting at least 300 interviews and reviewing hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, the final report issued by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in December 2002, into "Intelligence Community Activities Before And After The Terrorist Attacks Of September 11, 2001" did not cite any of DO5's work on al-Qaeda or Bin Laden or the fact that the intelligence unit was able to identify the terrorist group's top two targets in the US. The later 2004 9/11 Commission Report did not mention DO5 or JFIC.

Flawed DoD Investigation

Although the inspector general acted on Iron Man's complaint and launched an investigation, the findings of the probe, outlined in a report [9], declassified last year, previously reported by Truthout, was highly flawed and failed to address Iron Man's charges that intelligence was withheld from Congress.

Indeed, it appears the author of the inspector general's report confused Congress' investigation into the 9/11 attacks with the independent National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States [10], otherwise known as the 9/11 Commission, created in late 2002 by legislation passed by Congress. The inspector general's report insisted it did not find any "evidence that the Joint Forces Intelligence Command misled Congress by withholding operational information in response to the 9/11 Commission."

But Iron Man's complaint specifically addressed intelligence withheld from Congress' inquiries into the 9/11 attacks, not the independent panel's probe, thereby dismissing an allegation Iron Man had never made.

Iron Man told Truthout the inspector general's final report "was, shall we say, very incorrect, and intentionally did not address the full scope of the [his] complaint. "

The watchdog did not tackle another of Iron Man's explosive claims about DO5 briefings that centered on "numerous examples and suggestions of how [Osama bin Laden] was being hunted by JFIC and could be hunted by the [intelligence community]."
One such briefing held for a "DIA senior intelligence officer on counterterrorism" was entitled "The Search (for Osama bin Laden) - A [commander in chief] Level View," which included "a compendium of imagery of [a] suspected [Bin Laden] house dating from 23 August 1999 until 11 April 2000."

At the briefing, intelligence officials were informed that "eleven special reports" by DO5 had been disseminated in the "Daily Intelligence Summary on [Bin Laden], Taliban leadership, Afghan military movements, UN locations, and the economic status of Afghanistan."
Another briefing for the counterintelligence/counterterrorism chief at NCIS, and about 30 NCIS agents, "clearly stated the JFIC's Asymmetric Threat Division monitored 'worldwide [counterterrorism/counterintelligence] traffic' and routinely prepared 'analytic reports' and 'supplements national agencies with original intelligence on [Bin Laden] and Afghanistan.'"

Congress was kept in the dark about those discussions and was not shown the documents distributed to intelligence officials at the briefings. The inspector general never bothered to find out why. Remarkably, the watchdog stated in its report, "JFIC did not have the mission to track Usama Bin Ladin or predict imminent US targets."

Iron Man told Truthout it was key intelligence withheld from Congress about al-Qaeda and Bin Laden's pre-9/11 activities that also played a part in his decision to file a complaint with the inspector general.

"My concern was not only that the 9/11 commission had not been informed, but the larger Congress, in its larger oversight responsibilities, had also not been informed," he said.

A Heavy Burden

What remains unclear is exactly what took place back in May 2006 that prompted Iron Man's complaint to the inspector general, given that the issues he had raised centered on events that unfolded four years earlier.

The answer to that question can be found in these passages of Iron Man's letter, particularly the last few sentences:

"My motivation for this complaint is multi-faceted," Iron Man wrote. "I do believe that knowledge of the work done by DO5 would add to DoD's understanding of its role in the events leading up to 9/11, and how to avoid future attacks ... I have been falsely accused of revealing classified information on DO5's work, when I am certain that information is not and has not been classified since 9/11, and I do want to see myself cleared of that false accusation.

"In addition, I and the deputy of that team, [redacted], especially carried the burden of knowledge of how close DoD came to bin Ladin and perhaps being able to reduce the number of lives lost on 9/11 ..."

The deputy whose name the government redacted from Iron Man's letter, is believed to be Kirk von Ackermann, a former Air Force captain and intelligence analyst, who was working for the US Army as a contractor in Iraq and disappeared in October 2003 while traveling between Tikrit and Kirkuk. A computer, a briefcase containing $40,000, and other materials were found in von Ackerman's vehicle after he went missing.

Because von Ackerman's name was classified in the complaint Iron Man filed with the inspector general, he could not confirm whether von Ackerman is the individual he was referring to.

Just three months after Iron Man filed his complaint with DoD's inspector general, in August 2006, the Army Criminal Investigative Service concluded that von Ackerman had been kidnapped and killed. His remains have never been found nor has anyone claimed responsibility for his death.

Von Ackerman's tragic story [11] has been previously reported by journalist-blogger Susie Dow on the web site e Pluribus Media, but has largely remained under the radar. In a May 6 article she published on her personal blog, Dow identified von Ackermann as a member of JFIC's Asymmetric Threats Division. Iron Man's complaint suggests he ultimately became deputy chief of DO5.

In October 2006, Dow wrote [12] that von Ackermann was "assigned to a counterterrorism team."

"You'll find no mention of either Kirk von Ackermann or his team in the 9-11 Commission report.... Well before 9-11, Kirk von Ackermann predicted aircraft could be hijacked and used as weapons against the United States. He also predicted potential targets."

Von Ackerman's wife, Megan von Ackerman, has maintained a blog called "Missing in Iraq [13]," dedicated to her missing husband. In March 2006, she wrote that her husband had planned for such a catastrophic event, but his warnings were ignored:

"... When 9/11 happened everyone around us reacted as normal, civilians would - shock, horror, fear ... but Kirk, isolated from the intelligence and military community of people who knew what he knew, felt what he felt, was essentially alone," Megan von Ackerman wrote. "For a year he had spent his days imagining just this sort of scenario. He had come up with countless plans, evaluated targets, totaled up casualties and estimated political value. He had thought like a terrorist so he could stop them. Now he had to watch it made horribly real - the nightmare he had worked so hard to avoid ... Kirk had tried to make the warning, he had worked endless hours to stop this very thing happening. He knew he had no guilt that he had been ignored. But he retained an enormous sense of responsibility - not only for what happened, but for dealing with the new world that 9/11 ushered in."

Knowing exactly how close he, von Ackerman and DO5 came to capturing Bin Laden and possibly thwarting the attacks on 9/11 is a "burden" Iron Man said he "no longer wants to carry."

"[Redacted] and I discussed this issue the last time we spoke," Iron Man wrote in the final paragraph of his letter to the inspector general, likely referring to von Ackerman. "He remains the longest missing man in Iraq in this war, and I want, one day, to be able to explain to his children what their father foresaw."

[14]

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Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/new-documents-claim-intelligence-bin-laden-al-qaeda-targets-withheld-congress-911-probe/1307986777

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[6] http://truth-out.org/files/inspector-general-complaint-911-iron-man.pdf
[7] http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=martin_mayer_1
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[10] http://www.9-11commission.gov/
[11] http://www.epluribusmedia.org/features/2006/20060512_missingman_p1.html
[12] http://missingman.blogspot.com/2006/10/counter-terrorism-and-kirk-von.html
[13] http://missinginiraq.blogspot.com/2006/03/getting-to-iraq-part-three-911.html
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