As the myth of Zubaydah grew, it was reported that he was –

  • “worth a ton of guys at Gitmo.”[20]
  • a “senior bin Laden official” and the “former head of Egypt-based Islamic Jihad.”[21]
  • “played a key role in the East Africa embassy attacks.”[22]
  • listed as a “trusted aide” to bin Laden with “growing power.”[23]
  • in control of al-Qaeda.[24]
  • an aide of bin Laden who ran training camps in Afghanistan and “coordinated terror cells in Europe and North America.”[25]
  • a “key terrorist recruiter, operational planner, and member of Osama Bin Laden’s inner circle.”[26]
  • “bin Laden’s CEO”,[27] and “a central figure in Al Qaeda”[28]
  • Bin Laden’s “travel planner.”[29]
  • “one of a handful of men entrusted with running the terrorism network in the event of Osama bin Laden’s death or capture.”[30]
  • a senior bin Laden lieutenant who was believed “to be organizing al Qaida resources to carry out attacks on American targets.”[31]
  • the fourth ranking member of al Qaeda behind Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Muhamed Atef.[32]
  • someone who knew the identities of “thousands” of terrorists that passed through al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan [33]
  • a colleague of Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber.[34]
  • one of bin Laden’s top planners of terrorist operations who knew of al Qaeda plots and cells.[35]
  • the “connection between bin Laden and many of al-Qaida’s operational cells.”[36]
  • the source of information that UAL Flight 93 was intended to hit the White House.[37]

Because we now know that Zubayda was never an al Qaeda operative, or even an al Qaeda associate, we are forced into the stunning realization that all of this was false.  The questions that should arise from that realization include:  How much of what we know about al Qaeda, and how much of the War on Terror, was built on the torture testimony of a man who clearly could not have known anything about al Qaeda at all?

Originally, we were told that it was Zubaydha who first identified KSM as the Bin Laden associate called “Mukhtar.”  This was according to Ali Soufan, the FBI official who first interrogated him at a secret CIA site in Thailand.  Soufan also claimed that Zubaydah said KSM was the “mastermind” behind the 9/11 attacks.  In his 2007 book, CIA director Tenet went further, claiming that “interrogating Abu Zubaydah led to Ramsi bin al Shibh.”[38]

But as we know now, the CIA reportedly told Abu Zubaydah during his interrogation that they discovered he was not an al-Qaeda fighter, partner, or even a member.[39]  Still, KSM and Bin Alshibh were caught and tortured too.

The 9/11 Commission Report was largely based on third-hand accounts of what these tortured detainees said, with “two of the three parties in the communication being government employees.”[40] The Commission itself wrote that “Chapters 5 and 7 rely heavily on information obtained from captured al Qaeda members.”[41] The truth is, however, that more than half of the 9/11 Commission Report is based on completely unreliable torture testimony to which the Commission had absolutely no access – not even through interviews with the interrogators.  KSM’s torture is referred to 221 times in the report, and that of Bin Alshibh is referred to 73 times.  The Commission used one or more of these “interrogations” as its source a total of 441 times in its report footnotes.

The U.S. government admits that Zubaydah was water-boarded 83 times and KSM was water-boarded 183 times.  Given that most people cannot stand a few seconds of this torture, it is apparent that these sessions were not meant to gain information and were, perhaps, meant to eliminate information through the destruction of the victim’s mind.  Through the brief statements his defense team has been allowed to make, Zubaydah has also described how he was kept for long periods in a cage he called “a tiny coffin.”[42]

The torture of Zubaydah was specifically used to support claims about Bin Laden’s plans and actions, al Qaeda’s policies, the recruitment of the hijackers and other al Qaeda operatives, and details about the leaders who planned 9/11.[43]  According to author Jane Meyer, CIA agent John Kiriakou said “Zubaydah openly admitted his role in the September 11 attacks and claimed to regret having killed so many Americans.”[44] Apparently, the 9/11 Commission didn’t think this latter claim to be credible although it promoted other dubious information supposedly generated by the torture of these suspects.

Given the apparent “mistakes” related to Zubaydah being represented as an al Qaeda leader, there appears to be some serious revision required in the official account of 9/11. However, realistically, at this late date the information attributed to Zubaydah cannot likely be untangled from the official myth behind the War on Terror and the associated actions of the U.S. government.  That’s because the torture of Zubaydah was used in support of unprecedented policy changes and actions:

  • President Bush personally used the perceived value of Zubaydah’s capture and torture to justify the use of the CIA’s torture techniques as well as the detention of suspects in secret CIA prisons around the world.[45]
  • The U.S. government used the questionable intelligence obtained from Zubaydah in order to justify the invasion of Iraq. Officials stated that the allegations that Iraq and al-Qaeda were linked through training people on the use of chemical weapons came from Zubaydah. There was no independent verification of these claims.[46]
  • Zubaydah’s torture testimony was also used to justify the use of military tribunals, moving the trial of alleged al Qaeda suspects out of the open civil courts. President Bush asked Congress in a speech in September 2006 to formulate special rules in order to try Abu Zubaydah via military commission in Guantanamo Bay.[47]  In fact, in late April 2002 less than one month after Abu Zubaydah’s capture, Justice Department officials stated Abu Zubaydah “is a near-ideal candidate for a tribunal trial.”[48] Ironically, Zubaydah may be the only leading suspect to never face trial.
  • In addition to justifying the use of illegal torture techniques, the Bush administration used Zubaydah’s capture as justification to accelerate its domestic spying program.  The claim was that it would allow quick action on the phone numbers and addresses seized during Zubaydah’s capture.[49]

A second member of Abu Zubayda’s defense team recently wrote another article that was published in the mainstream media. In this article, attorney Amanda Jacobsen points out that:

U.S. officials have said that Abu Zubaida was a senior al-Qaeda terrorist. They claimed that he was the ‘No. 3 man’ in al-Qaeda, its chief of operations, who worked directly with Osama bin Laden. They said that he was personally involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and every other major al-Qaeda operation and knew the details of future attack plans.

But all of these assertions were wrong.[50]

Now that the US government has admitted that it has no case against Abu Zubaydah and that he was never associated with al Qaeda, will they release him?  As attorney Mickum requested, will his client be allowed to tell his own story?  More importantly, will the official accounts of 9/11 be reviewed to extricate claims allegedly made by and about Zubayda so that those false claims do not to provide additional false direction in War on Terror?

No, almost certainly not.

As with the court order to classify “any statements made by the accused” in the trials of KSM and other suspects,[51] if this man is allowed to speak we may find that his mind has not been completely obliterated through the torture we inflicted upon him.  And we may find that the official myth of 9/11 and al Qaeda will not hold up against the open and un-tortured testimony of the people alleged to have committed the crimes of 9/11.  In the end, it seems that the Zubaydah case is a threat to al Qaeda itself as well as a public admission that some lies must be kept under wraps in order to maintain the overall deception that supports the War on Terror.

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