The Federal Bureau of Investigation is enjoying a reputational Renaissance as the political debate rages around the Central Intelligence Agency interrogation techniques. Under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, the Bureau was tarnished for its politically motivated spying on people like civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. But with FBI Director Robert Mueller’s strong moral and legal compass, the Bureau is coming up roses in the current controversy.
It’s long been known that the FBI objected to the use of “harsh interrogation” methods against high-value al-Qaeda detainnees. See the DOJ Inspector General’s 435-page report on the inter-agency conflicts here. But an April 17 New York Times story highlighted the disagreement, noting that when the FBI – using traditional “rapport building” techniques — questioned al-Qaeda detainee Abu Zubaydah in 2002, he gave up the single most important bit of information: That Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the organizer of the 9/11 attacks. The CIA later took over with the waterboarding. Former Vice President Dick Cheney argues that the waterboarding and other techniques yielded valuable information and has asked for documents to be declassifed to prove it.
UPDATE: We should have mentioned earlier former FBI agent Ali Soufan’s op-ed piece in the New York Times in which the veteran of the USS Cole bombing investigation described how he did it (without torture). And Greg Sargent’s piece in The Plum Line recalling FBI Director Bob Mueller’s 2008 comments that he didn’t believe any attacks on the U.S. had been disrupted using information gleaned by torture.
Ron Suskind, author of the 2006 book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” which outlined some of the interrogation techniques, appeared on the Rachel Maddow last night and praised the FBI. View the show here:
