CIA Interrogation Tapes Investigation | Newsweek Scope

Don’t Shoot
Mark Hosenball 7/14/2009 12:00:00 AM
A ferocious dispute between the CIA and congressional Democrats centers on an ultrasecret effort launched by agency officials after 9/11 to draw up plans to hunt down and kill terrorists using commando teams similar to those deployed by Israel after the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, according to a former senior U.S. official.
To Drone or Not To Drone
Adam B. Kushner 5/23/2009 12:00:00 AM
It's clear that predator drones are revolutionizing the way America fights battles: the flying robots, piloted from thousands of miles away, stand watch while soldiers sleep, kill terrorists from afar and patrol for 24 hours at a stretch. But some counterinsurgency experts say the drones are impeding the broader strategy by losing the war for hearts and minds in Pakistan.
Death In a Libyan Jail Cell
Michael Isikoff 5/16/2009 12:00:00 AM
The Obama Administration is pressing the Libyan government to explain the reported prison death of a former CIA detainee—an incident that U.S. officials fear could reopen questions about the agency's "extraordinary rendition" program and further complicate the president's plans to shut down the Guantánamo Bay detention center. According to human-rights groups, the body of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi—once one of the U.S. government's prize captives—was turned over to family members last week after they were told he had committed suicide at Tripoli's Abu Salim prison by hanging himself with a bedsheet. But U.S. officials are skeptical about the supposed suicide, which was first reported in a newspaper owned by Libyan leader Muammar Kaddafi's son. Two weeks earlier, al-Libi was visited for the first time by human-rights workers investigating allegations that he had been tortured into making false claims connecting Saddam Hussein's regime and Al Qaeda. (Those claims, which al-Libi later retracted, were used by the Bush administration to bolster its case for the Iraq War.) Al-Libi also had been identified recently by U.S. defense lawyers as a possible key witness in upcoming trials of top terror suspects. "We want answers," said an administration official familiar with the case, who asked not to be identified discussing a sensitive matter. "We want to know what really happened here."
TERROR WATCH
Death in Libya
Michael Isikoff 5/12/2009 12:00:00 AM
The reported death of a former CIA "high value" detainee inside a Libyan prison has shocked human-rights workers and raised fresh questions about a case that ranks as one of the biggest intelligence fiascos of the run up to the Iraq War.
JUSTICE
Fresh Questions About the CIA’s Interrogation Tapes
Michael Isikoff 5/2/2009 12:00:00 AM
When president Obama decided to release the Bush-era Justice Department's interrogation memos last month, he tried to calm an anxious CIA by publicly declaring that operatives who "reasonably" relied on them would not face criminal prosecution. But agency officials still have plenty to worry about. Despite Obama's assurances, a Justice Department special counsel is quietly ratcheting up his probe into a closely related subject: the CIA's destruction of hundreds of hours of videotape showing the waterboarding of two high-value Qaeda suspects. At the same time, a Senate panel is planning the first public hearing dealing with CIA interrogations, including testimony from a star witness: Ali Soufan, the former FBI agent who vigorously protested the questioning of one of the detainees, terror suspect Abu Zubaydah.
TERROR
‘We Could Have Done This the Right Way’
Michael Isikoff 4/25/2009 12:00:00 AM
The arguments at the CIA safe house were loud and intense in the spring of 2002. Inside, a high-value terror suspect, Abu Zubaydah, was handcuffed to a gurney. He had been wounded during his capture in Pakistan and still had bullet fragments in his stomach, leg and groin. Agency operatives were aiming to crack him with rough and unorthodox interrogation tactics—including stripping him nude, turning down the temperature and bombarding him with loud music. But one impassioned young FBI agent wanted nothing to do with it. He tried to stop them.