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Bulk of intel on al Qaeda coming from captured insurgents, not U.S. spy recruits
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CIA Director Michael Hayden gave a glimpse Friday on the methodolody used by his agency to extract information about al Qaeda insurgents in Pakistan.
WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The bulk of the information for the intelligence community's latest assessment of al Qaeda's resurgence in Pakistan came from operatives captured by the U.S., not spy recruits inside the terrorist network.
CIA Director Michael Hayden made the disclosure Friday to underscore the importance of the agency's ongoing policy of capturing and holding terrorist suspects for long periods of interrogation rather than turning them over to the courts.
"More than 70 percent of the human intelligence reporting used in that estimate is based on information from detainees," Hayden told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He asked to speak to the influential nonpartisan group in part to deliver a strong defense of what is called "rendition" - that is, seizing and removing terrorist suspects in foreign countries for interrogation.
Some of al Qaeda's most notorious leaders, including Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, were held for long periods by the CIA in undisclosed facilities in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere. His value as a source exhausted, the CIA turned Mohammed, and other so-called high-value captives, over to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they will face trial.
"These programs are targeted and selective," Hayden said. "They were designed for only the most dangerous terrorists and those believed to have the most valuable information, such as knowledge of planned attacks."
The director said "fewer than 100" suspects had been handled through renditions.
He lashed out at investigators from the European Parliament. One of its reports contended that the CIA operated 1,245 flights into European airports in 2001-05, and suggested most were carrying terrorist suspects.
Hayden said the actual number of rendition flights "is a tiny fraction of that" and called the European Parliament report "absurd on its face."
The four-star Air Force general scoffed at those who deny the U.S. is in a war against al Qaeda, or who use the phrase "The Bush administration's war on terrorism."
Hayden said, "for us, it's simply war. It's a word used commonly and without ambiguity in the halls of the Pentagon and at Langley."
As for the enemy, he said, "Al Qaeda has compensated for losing its Afghan safe haven and key operational lieutenants by regrouping in Pakistan's tribal areas, where they've recruited from a ready pool of adherents."
