TIME — The most successful interrogation of an Al-Qaeda operative by U.S. officials required no sleep deprivation, no slapping or “walling” and no waterboarding. All it took to soften up Abu Jandal, who had been closer to Osama bin Laden than any other terrorist ever captured, was a handful of sugar-free cookies.
Abu Jandal had been in a Yemeni prison for nearly a year when Ali Soufan of the FBI and Robert McFadden of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service arrived to interrogate him in the week after 9/11. Although there was already evidence that al-Qaeda was behind the attacks, American authorities needed conclusive proof, not least to satisfy skeptics like Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, whose support was essential for any action against the terrorist organization. U.S. intelligence agencies also needed a better understanding of al-Qaeda’s structure and leadership. Abu Jandal was the perfect source: the Yemeni who grew up in Saudi Arabia had been bin Laden’s chief bodyguard, trusted not only to protect him but also to put a bullet in his head rather than let him be captured.
Abu Jandal’s guards were so intimidated by him, they wore masks to hide their identities and begged visitors not to refer to them by name in his presence. He had no intention of cooperating with the Americans; at their first meetings, he refused even to look at them and ranted about the evils of the West. Far from confirming al-Qaeda’s involvement in 9/11, he insisted the attacks had been orchestrated by Israel’s Mossad. While Abu Jandal was venting his spleen, Soufan noticed that he didn’t touch any of the cookies that had been served with tea: “He was a diabetic and couldn’t eat anything with sugar in it.” At their next meeting, the Americans brought him some sugar-free cookies, a gesture that took the edge off Abu Jandal’s angry demeanor. “We had showed him respect, and we had done this nice thing for him,” Soufan recalls. “So he started talking to us instead of giving us lectures.”
It took more questioning, and some interrogators’ sleight of hand, before the Yemeni gave up a wealth of information about al-Qaeda — including the identities of seven of the 9/11 bombers — but the cookies were the turning point. “After that, he could no longer think of us as evil Americans,” Soufan says. “Now he was thinking of us as human beings.”
Killing them with kindness….Crazy..or Crazy like a fox? Who knows, it could work on some. In an related story, General Petraeus, the man who could do no wrong by the Bushies, says we violated the Geneva Conventions in our use of torture techniques. The armchair torturers can and probably will keep the machine in gear…carry on.
In addition to cookies, there are other ways to soften terrorists.
We could always torture them to death with blogs and twitter feeds.
NO WAY TORTURE IS BEST HOW DO U THINK WE WON WW2 !?!
#1, wouldn’t that harden the terrorists?
If sugar-free cookies worked, imagine how much info we could have gotten with a pint of Haagen-Dazs.
The world is coming unglued.
First, Rachael Maddow blasting Obama and now Fox news giving the lowdown on Petraeus’s (betrayus, remember?) view on interrogation.
Makes me wish for the old days when our news media would just flat-out lie to us.
This just goes to show you how much we do not know about what goes on behind the scenes and how the media and the democrats purposely find the most damning things to be used as political weapons. The media helps to sensationalize a story and the dems can use it for political gain.
The kicker of all of this is that Buttcrack Obama, who spent two years criticizing Bush and his policies on the war has pretty much did a 180 and kept the vast majority of his policies.
I am still waiting for the kool aid drinking lefties to start chanting for Obama’s impeachment for making such bold promises only to renege on them.
#6: You criticize the media for sensationalism, and then use terms like “Buttcrack Obama” and ” kool aid drinking lefties”. A little hypocritical, no?
#4 – dm – wouldn’t that harden the terrorists?
Only a part of them…
And where are those named “terrorists” today? What kind of info did milk and cookies get?
“Far from confirming al-Qaeda’s involvement in 9/11, he insisted the attacks had been orchestrated by Israel’s Mossad.”
And so says FBI, and that’s why Osama bin Laden is not on their “Wanted for 9/11” list, or maybe they dont’ care, he is dead anyway.
so they waterboarded him with milk and cookies???
Last time I was in Afghanistan we used booze, cigarettes, porn and candy for intel. It worked perfectly.
girl scouts AND cookies?
#11 Ah yes the cultural weapons of mass destruction 😉
I’m no expert on enhanced methods of interrogation or torture or either (but I play one on TV). Even some conservative-leaning consulting groups like Stratfor say that harsh treatment does NOT work 99% of the time. It does work IF you know most of the “facts” of an event that might go down and the person has no intention to talk. Guess what? That’s a pretty RARE event.
So use what works 99% of the time (be the pal of the person you’re interrogating) unless…
Now the question is having the people smart enough to know the difference (e.g., what is the usual versus extraordinary). I hope they are but what do I know?
If they wanted to torture me all they would have to do is make me listen to rap/hip hop.
#14 excellent movie reference my friend 🙂
I wonder if they’d talk if 72 virgins in the real world lied waiting outside their prison cell if they fully cooperated?
Cookies leads to prostitution. That’s why it’s the slippery slope.
#16 – You won’t find any here at the convent. These girls go down like submarines.
the amusing thing about all this debate on torture is the assumption that these terroists and their groups genuinly exist.
torture or no torture, its all bullshit.
in fact where torture does occur, its to make innocent muslims lie to say that they are terrorists to keep the lie going.
Some people need waterboarding to force them to tell the truth.
Others require the threat of cookie deprivation.
Either way: Torture.
#16 HMeyers: Maybe just some fatherly convincing that the 72 virgins he faces as a martyr look like these from an earlier DU post.
“Value are often alterable and fungible during times of war”. That’s an interesting little turn of phrase.
On a separate note, just how many bimbos does Fox have?
Let me know what you want in the way of info, hit me with a couple shots of rye and I’ll talk. Hell I won’t shutup.
Read a book called “Slow Burn” about Vietnam. The most effective technique found for getting real information from captured enemy: feed them, treat them with respect, and wait. By simply talking to them and building a matrix of collected information you could figure out who was lying.
People like to talk. If you ask them about what their life is like or what annoys them they will spill. Eventually the interrogator builds knowledge to ask the right questions, and rapport enough to elicit the answers.
In fact, many of the Vietnamese prisoners had been told terrible things about the Americans. Finding them to be relatively civil many started actively cooperating.
This procedure was used in only one region, but that region went from having near the highest level of attacks to the lowest.
More often than not, I find using sugar, and being creative, is far more effective than anger in getting what you want. I’ll give you two examples from my life.
I find that when flying, especially on crazy days when snow and ice has shut down half the nation’s airports, that being nice to the agents will not only get you home, but will often get you a free upgrade. Sometimes even a kind little gift like a pack of M&M’s will open doors. Everyone yells and screams at them all day over something they have no control over. When I show up, I give them a funny little joke, tell them what my objective is, and let them do their job.
When I was a growing up we lived on a sailboat sailing around the world. We had a shotgun on board for self defense, disassembled and hidden. In most of the countries we went to, weapons are strictly forbidden and a serious offense if caught. We also had very little money, about $200 a month was our budget, so we wouldn’t afford any bribes.
Usually the way it works in 3rd world countries is that the customs officers come aboard and then refuse to leave until they are bribed. They can manage to stretch out the inspection process for days if needed. Since we were Americans, they assumed that we would have to pay a lot since we must be rich. But in our case, were were not rich at all. They probably made more than us.
So what we would do was while home in the US we would go to a used books and magazine store and buy a box of old Penthouse and Hustler magazine for like 50 cents to $1 each. Then when going to some poor county, the customs agents would come aboard to inspect the boat. Since we had a bare bones simple sailboat, they also sent the young guys over to do us. We would leave as many of the porn mags out as there were officers.
Of course they would confiscate the porn. But here was the catch. The couldn’t wait to leave and get home with their new girly mags. So they would never finish the inspection, such as crawling behind the diesel tanks and finding the shotgun. So usually within 5 minutes they would conclude everything was fine and get the hell out of there.
This was pre-internet, pre-DVD. So I’m not sure if porn works as a bribe any more.
Normally, most people would either go to elaborate steps to hide, or pay out the nose in cash bribes. But to these young guards, getting a Penthouse magazine was priceless. There was no way they would have been able to buy such a luxury on their salary, even with bribes as a supplement.
#22, chris,
This procedure was used in only one region, but that region went from having near the highest level of attacks to the lowest.
Actually, the CIA was using that technique for most of the war. The Army went in the opposite direction and abuse was the rule. Most prisoners were given to the South to hold and their techniques weren’t polite.
The last couple of years of the war the Army changed their tune and the countryside ended up cooperating more and more. Soon, it was the locals that were turning in the VC to the Army units. Then the war ended before the gains could be realized.
I notice the torture deniers are relatively silent on this.
ALPHIE !!! AH YEA !!! RBG !!!
Well, I guess all the moon bat, commie, loons win by default.
Can’t we torture them first, and then give them cookies?
Kinda like bad cop, good cop.
more like: good cop, bad cop. I’d prefer only good cop, with the use of bribes as well if needed. With torture, they will only tell us what we want and not what is always true.
Don’t the Catholicks hand out cookies and wine at every session?
So, we have a complete picture here. The THREAT of torture AND the liberal use of food treats results in the most docile sheep.
rofl..What a bullsh*t, propaganda puff piece.. I can’t believe Time could publish this without a tongue firmly implanted in cheek.
Aside from the fluff, this article is a product placement ad for sugar-free products.
funny how this coincides with the current push by states to demonize (and tax) sugar while promoting sugar-free products as “healthy”
-alongside of the administrations
“new” anti- torture posture.
too funny, sad thing is, people
actually believe this stuff is
non-biased..
-s
almost forgot,
strange coincidence that Bin Laden
and his body guard both suffer from
diabetes. -for which treatment allows them to be easily tracked via the need
for daily insulin shots..
-s
>say that harsh treatment does NOT work 99% of the time. It does work IF you know most of the “facts”
Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good argument. The memos made public by Pres Obama show that torture or ‘torture’ worked.