Documented: The WikiLeaks That Show Enhanced Interrogation Worked

        

In his new memoir, In My Time, former Vice President Dick Cheney declares that the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program “provided intelligence that enabled us to prevent attacks and save lives” as well as important intelligence “we relied on to find [Osama] bin Laden.” The evidence backing Cheney’s claims is overwhelming—as is the tenacity of those who continue to deny it. Former CIA director Michael Hayden has compared these CIA “deniers” to “‘birthers’ who, even in the face of clear contrary evidence, take as an article of faith that President Obama was not born in the United States” and “9/11 ‘truthers’ who, despite all evidence to the contrary . . . persist in claiming that 9/11 was a Bush Administration plot.”
If the CIA “deniers” won’t accept the word of the former vice president, and the four CIA directors who have testified that CIA interrogations produced invaluable intelligence, perhaps they will believe WikiLeaks. Earlier this year, WikiLeaks released a trove of documents it dubbed the “Gitmo Files.” I doubt it was WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s intent to provide still additional evidence of the effectiveness of CIA interrogations, but that is precisely what his “Gitmo Files” do.
Take, for example, the file WikiLeaks released on the results of the interrogations of Abu Faraj al-Libi—one of the three key CIA detainees who helped the agency identify Osama bin Laden’s courier, who in turn led the CIA to bin Laden. The document describes Abu Faraj as the “communications gateway” to bin Laden who after undergoing CIA interrogation “reported on al-Qai’da’s methods for choosing and employing couriers, as well as preferred communications means.” Based on intelligence obtained from Abu Faraj and other CIA detainees, it states that “in July 2003, [Abu Faraj] received a letter from [bin Laden’s] designated courier” in which “[bin Laden] stated [Abu Faraj] would be the official messenger between [bin Laden] and others in Pakistan.” The file also notes another vital piece of information: To better carry out his new duties “in mid-2003, [Abu Faraj] moved his family to Abbottabad”—the city where bin Laden’s courier lived and where bin Laden eventually met his end. It continues that Abu Faraj “worked between Abbottabad and Peshawar” passing messages for bin Laden. And the file reveals that “in mid-April 2005, [Abu Faraj] began arranging for a store front to be used as a meeting place and drop point for messages he wanted to exchange” with bin Laden’s courier and was captured while waiting to meet him.