Ali Soufan: The American hero

As the fallout from the torture revelations continues, there are several officials of the US government who emerge as true heroes who resisted the impulse of the moment to engage in brutal tactics, and instead, passionately defended American values. The star of these brave souls is the former FBI agent Ali Soufan who, seven years after, is speaking out in this Newsweek article. Ali Soufan was a veteran FBI interrogator and a student of John O'Neill, the famous FBI agent who had warned about Bin Laden and was ignored of course. A son of Beirut immigrants who moved to Philadelphia as a child, he was eventually recruited into the FBI anti-terrorism unit and spoke fluent Arabic. His knowledge of the Kur'an was legendary according to his former colleagues: during interrogations he would cite Kuranic verses, and argue with terrorists about the meaning of certain passages, the legacy of Muhammad, etc. Eventually, he would gain their trust and information would start pouring out. He was a lead investigator of the USS Cole bombing.

In the spring of 2002, Ali Soufan was thrown in the middle of the brewing conflict between the CIA and the FBI over the methods for interrogating terrorism suspects. The subject of contention this time was Abu Zubaydah a fiery and borderline szchizophrenic Palestinian who was seen as a chief logistics chief of Al-Q. He was badly wounded in a firefight in Pakistan and was transferred to US custody by the Pakistanis, and was taken to an unknown location (probably Thailand). He was turned over to Ali Soufan and his fellow FBI interrogator. Together, they nursed the terrorist's wounds: Soufan held ice to his bruised lips, and his colleague nursed his buttocks! Eventually Abu Zubaydah opened up and started telling them valuable information. In the meantime, Soufan had poured through his FBI file and started addressing him by the nickname that his mother had used for him, shocking Abu Zubaydah into talking! In fact, they even started arguing about US influence, and globalism, after which Abu Zubaydah asked for a Coca-Cola a request which had them both laughing. In any case, Abu Zubaydah soon identified Khalid Sheikh Muhammad as one of the plotters of 9/11 and told them in detail valuable information about terrorists training camps.

However, the FBI agents were soon interrupted by CIA contractors, led by James Mitchell who became the architect of the interrogation program. Soufan became alarmed when he saw a coffin-like box outside of Zubaydah's cell, saw him naked, and even heard Mitchell talk about waterboarding him. Furious, he phoned his headquarters and soon the FBI director Muller became involved. After CIA interrogators repelled Soufan's advice that this was illegal (arguing that they had Gonzales' authorization), Soufan threatened to arrest them! At which, he was told by his headquarters to leave CIA premises, and Muller ordered his agents to stay clear of the CIA.

Ironically, the whole episode re-opened the deeply entrenched rift between the FBI and the CIA regarding anti-terrorism struggle with the latter seeing FBI as weak and too patient with terrorists. As the 9/11 Commission report pointed out, it was the FBI-CIA rivalry that had caused serious missteps in the prelude to 9/11. And now, the rift was greater than ever before.

Ali Soufan must be feeling pretty good about himself right now as does the FBI director Muller. As they all should. These are the true American heroes.