Revealed: How the FBI Helped Foul Guantánamo 9/11 Cases

New book details how FBI agents fed questions to CIA interrogators from outside black site torture chambers, nullifying later ‘clean’ statements

A cofounder and editor of the Lawdragon news site, John Ryan has spent two decades drilling down on legal issues associated with the ‘war on terror,’ particularly the U.S. government’s interrogation and prosecution of 9/11 suspects. It’s culminated in America’s Trial: Torture and the 9/11 case on Guantanamo Bay—a real life criminal thriller. (Photo by Nick Coleman)

IT WAS ONE OF THE MORE DRAMATIC—SOME MIGHT SAY HEROIC—scenes from the post- 9/11 era. In the spring of 2002, then-FBI director Robert Mueller, was getting reports from his agents that CIA contractors were conducting brutal interrogations of a wounded terror suspect, complete with forced nudity, sleep deprivation, freezing temperatures and a planned mock burial, at an agency black site in Thailand. Appalled at what he was witnessing, one agent, Ali Soufan, called up headquarters. “I swear to God, I’m going to arrest these guys!” he shouted, threatening to cuff the contractors.

Mueller got the message. Get out of there, he ordered his agents—they were law enforcement officers, not goons.