Despite using harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding, on suspected al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida, CIA agents failed to unearth valuable information to foil even a single significant terror plot, says a leading US daily.
Citing unidentified former senior government officials, who closely followed the interrogations, the Washington post on Sunday reported that when CIA officials subjected captive Abu Zubaida to severe interrogation, they were convinced enough that al-Qaeda operative will divulge details about operations that were yet to be unleashed.
The methods succeeded in breaking him and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads. But, in the end, not a single significant plot was foiled from Zubaida's tortured confessions, the paper said.
Nearly all the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, paper said quoting officials.
Former US president George W Bush, the paper said, had even publicly described him as "al-Qaeda's chief of operations" and other top officials called him a "trusted associate" of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and a major figure in the planning of the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
None of that turned out to be accurate, the new evidence showed. Moreover, within weeks of his capture, US officials had gained evidence that made clear they had misjudged Abu Zubaida.
The paper said that Abu Zubaida was not even an official member of al-Qaeda, according to a portrait of the man that emerges from court documents and interviews with current and former intelligence, law enforcement and military sources.
Rather, he was a "fixer" for radical Muslim ideologues, and he ended up working directly with al-Qaeda only after Sept 11 -- and that was because the United States stood ready to invade Afghanistan.
