Those who actually know what information was gathered from the use of enhanced interrogation techniques by CIA officers are now feeling vindicated. After years of being widely criticized for the program, information that these CIA interrogators learned from their use of enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorists finally led to the demise of al Qaeda founder and chief Osama bin Laden.
“Information provided by KSM and Abu Faraj al Libbi about Bin Laden’s courier was the lead information that eventually led to the location of [bin Laden’s] compound and the operation that led to his death,” Jose Rodriguez, chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center from 2002 to 2005, told Time magazine. As Massimo Calabresi of Time reports, Rodriguez was in his position “when top al-Qaeda leaders Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) and Abu Faraj al-Libbi were taken into custody and subjected to ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ at secret black site prisons overseas. KSM was subjected to waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other techniques. Al Libbi was not waterboarded, but other EITs were used on him.”
