http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9991919/site/newsweek/page/2/In addition to the new issues the latest al-Libi disclosure raises about the handling of pre-war Iraq intelligence, it also raises questions about the reliability of information gleaned from high-value Al Qaeda detainees who have been incarcerated in secret CIA facilities or “rendered” to foreign countries where they are believed to have been subjected to harsh and even brutal interrogation techniques.
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In early 2002, Cloonan says, al-Libi was ordered turned over to the CIA and, with his mouth covered by duct tape, the shackled Al Qaeda operative was transferred in a box onto an airplane at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Cloonan says he was later told that al-Libi was flown to Egypt, which CIA officials believed was his country of origin. (In fact, the FBI believed that al-Libi, as his nom de guerre suggests, was actually from Libya.)
The CIA, as part of its standard policy relating to its handling of all Al Qaeda captives, has declined to comment on what interrogation methods were used, where al-Libi was taken or where he is now being held (although some reports suggest he has since been transferred to the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.)
What is known is that starting in the fall of 2002, al-Libi’s statements to his interrogators became the principal basis for a series of alarming Bush administration assertions about training that Saddam’s regime purportedly provided to Al Qaeda terrorists in the use of chemical and biological weapons. President Bush first referred to the claims in his Oct. 7, 2002, speech in Cincinnati where he strongly emphasized Saddam’s ties to international terror groups in general and Al Qaeda in particular. “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases,” Bush said. (Ironically, this is the same speech that the White House, at the CIA’s request, deleted references to Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium “yellowcake” from Africa because of questions about the reliability of the information.)
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But according to the newly declassified DIA and CIA documents provided to Levin, the credibility of those statements by Bush and Powell were already in doubt within the U.S. intelligence community. While the DIA was the first to raise red flags in its February 2002 report, the CIA itself in January 2003 produced an updated version of a classified internal report called “Iraqi Support for Terrorism.” The previous version of this CIA report in September 2002 had simply included al-Libi’s claims, according to the newly declassified agency document provided to Levin in response to his inquiries about al-Libi. But the updated January 2003 version, while including al-Libi’s claims that Al Qaeda sent operatives to Iraq to acquire chemical and biological weapons and training, added an important new caveat: It “noted that the detainee was not in a position to know if any training had taken place,” according to the copy of the document obtained by NEWSWEEK. It was not until January 2004—nine months after the war was launched—that al-Libi recanted “a number of the claims he made while in detention for the previous two years, including the claim that Al Qaeda sent operatives to Iraq to obtain chemical and biological weapons and related training,” the CIA document says.
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