This began with FBI agents who had been questioning Abu Zubaydah, who, without the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, had told intelligence officials that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11, the report said.
They expressed concern over the health of Mr. Zubaydah, who had been hospitalized previously. The CIA was planning to use enhanced interrogation techniques on him when he was released, but an FBI official expressed concern. “I have spent an un-calculable amount of hours at [Zubaydah’s] beside assisting with medical help, holding his hand and comforting him through various medical procedures, even assisting him in going [to] the bathroom.... We have built tremendous [rapport] with AZ.”
Zubaydah was subjected to the enhanced interrogation techniques anyway, according to the report, but a senior CIA interrogator objected, saying that the techniques were originally designed by the North Vietnamese to extract “confessions for propaganda purposes” from US troops “who possessed little actionable intelligence.”
The chief of the detention site also warned against the torture. “We are a nation of laws and we do not wish to parse words. A bottom line in considering the new measures proposed is that [Zubaydah] is being held in solitary confinement, against his will, without legal representation, as an enemy of our country,” he wrote. “We do not believe we can assure [that the techniques will be harmless] for a man forced through these processes and who will be made to believe this is the future course of the remainder of his life.”
Zubaydah was waterboarded two to four times a day for roughly three weeks and spent 266 hours (or 11 days) in a large “coffin size” box. “CIA interrogators told Zubaydah that the only way he would leave the facility was in the coffin-shaped confinement box,” the report said. “At times Zubaydah was described as ‘hysterical’ and ‘distressed to the level that he was unable to effectively communicate.” He did not provide any actionable intelligence throughout the time he was subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques, according to the report.
CIA records indicate that the treatment of Zubaydah “had a profound effect on all staff members present ... some to the point of tears and choking up.”
