Another weekend has flown by, but if it is Monday, then it must be time for another chapter of our regular MONDAY MUSINGS.  It has been a busy weekend with lots of news stories to digest, but one story really caught my interest.  It seems that the CIA had some serious disagreements over the use of torture techniques against detainees at secret prisons with the FBI agents who first interrogated Abu Zubaida after he was captured in Pakistan. After the CIA team led by two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jensen, began to use torture on Abu Zubaida, the FBI interrogators balked and complained that Abu Zubaida had already given them good information without using illegal tactics.     http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/18/AR2009071802065.html?hpid=topnews.  What importance does this new set of facts have in the whole CIA torture story?  I think it is important because one of the FBI agents recently testified at a Congressional hearing and made the claim that the only good information that was received was obtained through conventional interrogation techniques and this story quotes other sources that confirm the FBI agent’s testimony.  One item that jumped out at me when reading this article was the multiple references by the CIA agents that their techniques were approved by the White House.  Of course, the CIA refers to the White House as “downtown”, according to this same Washington Post article. 

We learn from this article that the FBI were the good guys and the CIA were the bad guys when it came to interrogating Abu Zubaida.  Of course, we also learn something most of us already knew.  That the White House approved the torture techniques on this first big detainee.  I sure hope that the current White House has read this article.  Maybe now President Obama will understand why the Bush regime must be investigated over its illegal use of torture in interrogating detainees.  Maybe the good news here is that Congress is already investigating these torture techniques and will probably beat Obama to the punch. My hope is that the Congressional torture  investigation will provide the politcal cover for Attorney General Holder to approve a special prosecutor with broad authority to take the investigation wherever the facts may lead.  This FBI agents testimony is not only evidence that torture is ineffective, it also proves that the FBI and the CIA were in a pitched battle over the use of these techniques. We had heard some of this information in earlier stories, but this is the first time agents have gone public on this issue. 

The stain of torture is on the Bush administration and those officials who designed and approved it.  If the Obama administration does not investigate and prosecute those responsible, they will also carry that stain.  This FBI agent was not only brave in taking a stand against the CIA’s torture program, he was also right.  Keep an eye on this congressional investigation and let’s see if Holder and Obama have as much courage as FBI agent Ali Soufan did when he balked when the CIA used torture and when he went public to tell what the CIA had done.  Kudos to Agent Soufan.