MIKE
ARGENTO
In George Orwell’s prescient novel “1984,� the government frequently announces, to great fanfare, the capture or killing of enemies of the state, actions that result, often, in an outpouring of love toward Big Brother, who proclaims a great victory and assures the people that the news heralds a new day in the struggle against whatever the state was struggling against in “1984.�
Then, days pass, everyone forgets about it. Evidence is tossed down the memory hole and new events eclipse the dawning of the new day.
That came to mind when I read about Ron Suskind’s new book, “The One Percent Doctrine,� and the story of Abu Zubaydah recounted in its pages.
Remember Abu Zubaydah?
Maybe vaguely?
He was believed to be al-Qaida’s chief of operations, Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man, the Dick Cheney to the terrorists’ Dubya. He was believed to be one of the biggest of the big cheeses, one of the moolahs who planned the Sept. 11 attacks on this country. He was considered to be easily in the top 10 of enemies of America.
He was believed to be a flat-out evil genius, and when the United States captured him in Pakistan in March 2002, the White House partied like it was 1984, heralding his capture with the kind of restraint usually associated with a team winning the NBA Finals.
And now, we learn from Suskind’s book, that Zubaydah may not be the evil genius we all thought he was.
We learn that, it appears, he wasn’t a mastermind.
He was simply out of his mind.
It turns out, according to intelligence pros quoted in Suskind’s book, he was crazy.
Not just crazy, but fill-tilt bozo bat-guano nuts.
And the White House knew it. And Dubya still went around saying that the guy was an al-Qaida top dog.
You know, some people read “1984� and see it as a frightening vision of a world gone mad. Others read it and say, “Hey, that’s a good idea.�
The story, as reported by Suskind, begins when U.S. and Pakistani soldiers kicked in Zubaydah’s door in Faisalabad and shipped him off to a secret prison for interrogation.
The CIA and FBI studied Zubaydah’s diary and soon discovered that the man they thought was a terrorist mastermind was, in fact, nuts. His diary contained entries written in the voice of three people, Suskind reports. The three people recorded such insightful mastermind-type things such as what people ate, or wore, or mundane conversations about stuff like the weather.
The FBI’s top al-Qaida guy concluded, “This guy is insane.�
OK, there’s nothing that says a person can’t be crazy and be a terrorist. In fact, any person who believes 72 virgins await him in heaven when he kills himself and bunch of innocent people has to be insane.
But the problem was, Zubaydah didn’t know anything about anything. His role in al-Qaida was limited to making travel arrangements for wives and children. Even the terrorists apparently thought the guy was too crazy to even plot suicide attacks.
Suskind reports that the CIA told Dubya and Dick all about the guy and that he was nuts and he didn’t know anything about anything.
Still, a couple weeks after being told that, Dubya gave a speech in which he referred to Zubaydah as “one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.�
Which wasn’t true.
Anyway, Suskind reports that Dubya was obsessed with Zubaydah and said Zubaydah was important because he had said so and asked the CIA whether harsh methods would work at getting the guy to drop a dime on his cohorts. The administration figured that Zubaydah was apparently being crafty and ordered what’s politely referred to as extreme interrogation tactics be used to wrest information from the crazy guy.
Suskind reports Zubaydah was waterboarded — tied to a board and put underwater. Interrogators threatened to kill him. They used bright lights and incessant noise to keep him awake for days.
Finally, he began talking and told his captors all sorts of things — none of which turned out to be true, but were still announced to the public as the terror level rose with each revelation and the military was deployed to thwart the nonexistent threat.
What’s interesting is Suskind’s book has received a lot of press because it revealed credible evidence that al-Qaida planned to attack the subway in New York with cyanide gas in 2003, calling off the attack for unknown reasons. The CIA learned about the plot from a guy who gave up Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, to collect the $25 million reward.
When the CIA learned of that plot, the terror level wasn’t increased. Police and the military weren’t put on alert.
So, for those keeping score at home, a crazy guy tells interrogators all sorts of nonsense and the government says we’re all going to die. Then a credible threat is uncovered and we never hear one peep about it.
And when news of the aborted subway attack broke, Cheney went on TV and said that it wasn’t an accident that the United States hasn’t been attacked again since Sept. 11.
He’s right. It was no accident.
Just dumb luck.
Mike Argento, whose column appears Mondays and Thursdays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints, can be reached at 771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.
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