Rapping With KSM

Jane Mayer provides a precious peek inside the treatment of high level terrorist captives in her New Yorker article, "The Black Sites: A rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program."

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Al Qaeda project manager for the Sep 11 attacks, was caught after the US paid $25 million to an informant who pointed the way to his hideout. That's his portrait above after being awakened by his captors, just before he was turned over to the CIA and beginning his worst nightmare. He didn't talk at first, just babbling Koran scripture, but he came around after that.

He supposedly boasted of slaughtering Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl,

"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head."

It looks like he was lying. There are no photos.

"Special Agent Randall Bennett, the head of security for the U.S. consulate in Karachi when Pearl was killed—and whose lead role investigating the murder was featured in the recent film "A Mighty Heart"—said that he has interviewed all the convicted accomplices who are now in custody in Pakistan, and that none of them named Mohammed as playing a role. "K.S.M.’s name never came up," he said. Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. officer, said, "My old colleagues say with one-hundred-per-cent certainty that it was not K.S.M. who killed Pearl.""

KSM liked to talk a big bloody game but he never got his hands dirty actually killing anyone himself. He did his killing by proxy, like Himmler. There is also the possibility that he was covering for the guilty parties. In Pakistan, any new evidence is grounds for appeal. KSM's phony confession could confuse the courts and spare the real killer.

KSM and other Al Qaeda dirtbags were held in secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan and Poland. That makes me think I'm getting my money's worth from my tax dollars and gives me another reason to like the Poles. KSM did not stand up well to waterboarding:

"The inquiry source said that most of the Poland detainees were waterboarded, including Mohammed. According to the sources familiar with the Red Cross report, Mohammed claimed to have been waterboarded five times. Two former C.I.A. officers who are friends with one of Mohammed’s interrogators called this bravado, insisting that he was waterboarded only once. According to one of the officers, Mohammed needed only to be shown the drowning equipment again before he “broke.”

"“Waterboarding works,” the former officer said. “Drowning is a baseline fear. So is falling. People dream about it. It’s human nature. Suffocation is a very scary thing. When you’re waterboarded, you’re inverted, so it exacerbates the fear. It’s not painful, but it scares the shit out of you.” (The former officer was waterboarded himself in a training course.) Mohammed, he claimed, “didn’t resist. He sang right away. He cracked real quick.” He said, “A lot of them want to talk. Their egos are unimaginable. K.S.M. was just a little doughboy. He couldn’t stand toe to toe and fight it out.”"

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the big terrorist mastermind, turned out to be a coward.