"If this were a movie, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, or KSM -- the suspected mastermind of 9/11 -- would have been tortured and then spilled the beans about his ultimate boss. In real life, it is not at all clear. "There was no 'aha' moment here where we thought, ah, this piece of information gives us the location of Osama and it's the result of torturing a detainee," said a senior administration official. "This was one of 500 pieces of a puzzle. We had hundreds of thousands of bits of information."
And did some of that information come as a result of waterboarding? That may well be the case. Or not.
Here's what we do know, at least according to current administration officials: They argue that torture played almost no role in getting to bin Laden. In fact, two of the most high-value detainees -- KSM and bin Laden chief operations man Abu Faraj al-Libi -- actually lied about the important courier when asked about him.
They were dismissive about his importance, and didn't identify him beyond the nickname the CIA already knew. The key here: The CIA already knew that the courier had been a KSM protégé.
"It was their lies that alerted us," said one senior administration official with knowledge of the operation. All in all, Mohammed had been waterboarded 183 times -- and he still lied. "The help that KSM provided was inadvertent," this source said. "He didn't know what we knew."
Indeed. The CIA knew he had something to protect. The next obvious question: How did the CIA get the info on the courier's importance? How did they know Mohammed and al-Libi were lying? Apparently from a less valued al Qaeda operative, who let it be known that the courier was actually a KSM protégé and close to al-Libi, too. Was he waterboarded? We do not know for sure, although one senior administration source said he was not waterboarded."
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/05/04/borger.torture.debate/index.html?hpt=T2
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