The Washington Stakeout

Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, recently wrote:

“What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 — well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion — its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.

“So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee ‘was compliant’ (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, ‘revealed’ such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

“There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just ‘committed suicide’ in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi….)”

This “evidence” provided by al-Libi was also used in Powell’s infamous speech to the UN shortly before the invasion of Iraq, so on Sunday, I asked Powell about this as he left the studios at CBS:

Sam Husseini: General, can you talk about the al-Libi case and the link between torture and the production of tortured evidence for war?

Colin Powell: I don’t have any details on the al-Libi case.

SH: Can you tell us when you learned that some of the evidence that you used in front of the UN was based on torture? When did you learn that?

CP: I don’t know that. I don’t know what information you’re referring to. So I can’t answer.

SH: Your chief of staff, Wilkerson, has written about this.

CP: So what? [inaudible]

SH: So you’d think you’d know about it.

CP: The information I presented to the UN was vetted by the CIA. Every word came from the CIA and they stood behind all that information. I don’t know that any of them believe that torture was involved. I don’t know that in fact. A lot of speculation, particularly by people who never attended any of these meetings, but I’m not aware of it.

Former long-time CIA analyst and now member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Ray McGovern, who got more background from Wilkerson, puts it in the following context:

“For those of you distracted by the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) spotlight on ‘what-did-Pelosi-know-about-torture-and-when-did-she- know-it,’ please turn off the TV long enough to ponder the case of the recently departed al-Libi, who reportedly died in a Libyan prison, a purported suicide.

“The al-Libi case might help you understand why, even though information from torture is notoriously unreliable, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the sycophants running U.S. intelligence ordered it anyway.

“In short, if it is untruthful information you are after, torture can work just fine!”

Human Rights Watch “briefly met with al-Libi on April 27 during a research mission to Libya. He refused to be interviewed, and would say nothing more than: ‘Where were you when I was being tortured in American jails.’ … A bipartisan report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that that al-Libi ‘lied [about the Iraq link] to avoid torture.’”

But Colin Powell, who delivered the speech before the UN, doesn’t know, or seem to care, about any of this. He is apparently waiting for the CIA to call him and tell him that torture was used on detainees who uttered the false words Bush administration officials wanted to hear. This as Powell attempts, with substantial success, to reconstruct himself.

Web and research help by Matthew Bradley, camera and editing by Mariam Abuhaideri. Special thanks to David Swanson.