Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Arizona Republic (Phoenix)
February 17, 2008 Rapport-building techniques used at Guantanamo to gain intelligence
By Andrew O. Selsky, Associated Press
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Interrogators got intelligence from detainees that helped U.S. troops in Afghanistan attack Taliban fighters last summer, and they did it through casual questioning and not torture, the military's chief interrogator here said.
In a rare interview with the Associated Press, veteran interrogator Paul Rester complained that his profession has gotten a bad reputation due to accounts of waterboarding and other rough interrogation tactics used by the CIA at "black sites."
Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees, however, allege their clients have been subjected to temperature extremes, sleep deprivation and threats at this U.S. military base in southeast Cuba.
Looking more like a harried executive than a top interrogator, Rester groused that his line of work is "a business that is fundamentally thankless."
He sat hunched over a table in a snack room inside the building where the top commanders keep their offices. In an attempt to keep personnel from blabbing about intelligence gathering, a poster showed a picture of a hooded gunman and the words: "Keep talking. We're listening" - today's version of the World War II-era admonishment that "Loose lips sink ships."
"Everybody in the world believes that they know how we do what we do, and I have to endure it every time I turn around and somebody is making reference to waterboarding," Rester said. He insisted that Guantanamo interrogators have had many successes using rapport building and said that technique was the norm here.
For security reasons, he would only discuss one of the successes, and that was only because his boss, Rear Adm. Mark Buzby, already had described it in a speech last month. Buzby said several detainees, using poster board paper and crayons, drew detailed maps of the Tora Bora area in eastern Afghanistan.
Rester indicated the interrogators casually asked the detainees about their knowledge of Tora Bora, not letting on that it was tactically important for a pending military strike.
"And it may in fact, since it was five years old, have seemed totally innocuous to the persons we were talking to," Rester said.
Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer who represents several detainees, scoffed at Rester's contention that rough treatment at Guantanamo was restricted to just two men.
"There are so many accounts by FBI agents ... and others who personally saw non-rapport-building techniques that Rester's statement is just not credible," he said.
February 17, 2008 Rapport-building techniques used at Guantanamo to gain intelligence
By Andrew O. Selsky, Associated Press
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Interrogators got intelligence from detainees that helped U.S. troops in Afghanistan attack Taliban fighters last summer, and they did it through casual questioning and not torture, the military's chief interrogator here said.
In a rare interview with the Associated Press, veteran interrogator Paul Rester complained that his profession has gotten a bad reputation due to accounts of waterboarding and other rough interrogation tactics used by the CIA at "black sites."
Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees, however, allege their clients have been subjected to temperature extremes, sleep deprivation and threats at this U.S. military base in southeast Cuba.
Looking more like a harried executive than a top interrogator, Rester groused that his line of work is "a business that is fundamentally thankless."
He sat hunched over a table in a snack room inside the building where the top commanders keep their offices. In an attempt to keep personnel from blabbing about intelligence gathering, a poster showed a picture of a hooded gunman and the words: "Keep talking. We're listening" - today's version of the World War II-era admonishment that "Loose lips sink ships."
"Everybody in the world believes that they know how we do what we do, and I have to endure it every time I turn around and somebody is making reference to waterboarding," Rester said. He insisted that Guantanamo interrogators have had many successes using rapport building and said that technique was the norm here.
For security reasons, he would only discuss one of the successes, and that was only because his boss, Rear Adm. Mark Buzby, already had described it in a speech last month. Buzby said several detainees, using poster board paper and crayons, drew detailed maps of the Tora Bora area in eastern Afghanistan.
Rester indicated the interrogators casually asked the detainees about their knowledge of Tora Bora, not letting on that it was tactically important for a pending military strike.
"And it may in fact, since it was five years old, have seemed totally innocuous to the persons we were talking to," Rester said.
Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer who represents several detainees, scoffed at Rester's contention that rough treatment at Guantanamo was restricted to just two men.
"There are so many accounts by FBI agents ... and others who personally saw non-rapport-building techniques that Rester's statement is just not credible," he said.