KSM, WATERBOARDING AND THE COURIER

Like the AP, Reuters reports that waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did NOT lead to the name of OBL's courier.

Bin Laden kill may reopen CIA interrogation debate
By Mark Hosenball
REUTERS

WASHINGTON | Mon May 2, 2011 11:04pm EDT
One of the key sources for initial information about an al Qaeda "courier" who led U.S. authorities to bin Laden's Pakistani hide-out was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al Qaeda operative said to have masterminded the September 11, 2001 attacks, a former U.S. national security official said.

KSM, as he was known to U.S. officials, was subjected to "waterboarding" 183 times, the U.S. government has acknowledged.

But it was not until later, after waterboarding was suspended because it and other harsh techniques became heatedly debated, that Mohammed told interrogators about the existence of a courier particularly close to bin Laden, a fragmentary tip that touched off a years-long manhunt that ended in bin Laden's death at the hands of U.S. special forces on Sunday.

And at the time the information surfaced, the CIA had already abandoned some of its most controversial interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, in which water is poured over the face of an interrogation subject to simulate drowning, current and former U.S. officials told Reuters.

In 2004, the CIA suspended these techniques. Subsequent revelations about agency practices led to charges the United States had engaged in torture.