U.S. Recants Claims that Detainee Who Was One of the Main Sources for the 9/11 Report, and Repeatedly Tortured, Was Involved in 9/11 or Even Al Qaeda

Washington's Blog
Abu Zubaydah after his capture in Pakistan, 2002. Credit: ABC News


Abu Zubaydah was the first "high-value" detainee who was tortured, as the U.S. claimed he was a top Al Qaeda terrorist who knew a lot about 9/11.
He was waterboarded at least 83 times in August 2002 alone.
In fact, Abu Zubaydah was one of the main sources of information for the 9/11 report.
Never mind that he was literally crazy. As the New Yorker noted a year ago:

The F.B.I.’s point man on the Abu Zubaydah interrogation, Daniel Coleman, had read Zubaydah’s diaries and concluded that he “had a schizophrenic personality.”

Indeed, the Washington Post noted in 2007:

Retired FBI agent Daniel Coleman, who led an examination of documents after Abu Zubaida's capture in early 2002 and worked on the case, said the CIA's harsh tactics cast doubt on the credibility of Abu Zubaida's information.

"I don't have confidence in anything he says, because once you go down that road, everything you say is tainted," Coleman said, referring to the harsh measures. "He was talking before they did that to him, but they didn't believe him. The problem is they didn't realize he didn't know all that much."

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Abu Zubaida ... was a "safehouse keeper" with mental problems who claimed to know more about al-Qaeda and its inner workings than he really did.

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Looking at other evidence, including a serious head injury that Abu Zubaida had suffered years earlier, Coleman and others at the FBI believed that he hadsevere mental problems that called his credibility into question. "They all knew he was crazy, and they knew he was always on the damn phone," Coleman said, referring to al-Qaeda operatives. "You think they're going to tell him anything?"

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind writes that Coleman advised a top FBI official at the time:

"This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."

Now, Jason Leopold reports that the government is backing away from all claims that Abu Zubaydah had any role in Al Qaeda or 9/11:

For the first time, the government officially admitted that Zubaydah did not have "any direct role in or advance knowledge of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001," and was neither a "member" of al-Qaeda nor "formally" identified with the terrorist organization.

Heck of a job, guys.

Abduction or Defection: The Case of Iran’s Nuclear Scientist

By Soraya Sepahpour-UlrichCounter Currents

In June 2009, Shahram Amiri, one of Iran’s nuclear scientists disappeared in Saudi Arabia while on a Muslim pilgrimage. Soon thereafter Iran pointed the finger at the U.S. and accused it of kidnapping one of Iran’s finest. Washington denied any knowledge of Amiri. 
Until now.

Today, in an ABC exclusive, contrary to previous statements, the U.S. admitted that Amiri had “defected to the CIA” in what it termed as an “intelligence coup”. Undoubtedly, the CIA has been involved in innumerable atrocious coups, tortures, assassinations, and kidnaps, but defects? The very outfit that has been assigned to assassinate American citizens thought to be cooperating with the enemy has been charged with soliciting ‘enemy’ defectors!

Given that Washington denied all knowledge of Amiri for months after his disappearance, the State Department ought to facilitate a meeting between him and the Iranian authorities to reassure all concerned parties that Amiri has indeed defected of his own free will. This was a practice that the Americans obliged even at the height of the Cold War. When a Soviet nuclear physicist by the name of Artem Vladimirovich Kulikov defected in 1985, he met with officials of the Soviet embassy at the State Department to reassure the Russians that he was not being held against his will. Failure to do this will give credibility to the alternative.

This would be more plausible given that in2009 Ynet news reported that with cooperation from the United States Israel has focused on eliminating key human assets involved in Iran’s nuclear program. A few months later an Iranian physicist was killed in a bomb blast in Tehran. The eerie incidents bring back memories of the Iranian diplomat kidnapped and tortured by the CIA while serving in Iraq in 2007 – and denied.

Providing the Iranian authorities and more importantly, the American people and the international community evidence of Shahram Amiri’s well-being and personal choice in ‘defecting’ to the CIA will, at a minimum, allow war promoters to take delight in parading around a live, complacent body who has “helped to confirm U.S. intelligence assessments about the Iranian nuclear program.” Perhaps the thinking is that an imaginary “defector” can sing to the their tune and instill more fear in Americans against an imaginary enemy.

Soon, the enemy will be unveiled: the truth, or the truth denied us.


Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on U.S. foreign policy towards Iran and Iran’s nuclear program, and the role of lobby groups in influencing US foreign policy. She is a peace activist, essayist and public speaker.