WASHINGTON — Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed told U.S. military officials that he had lied to the CIA after being abused, according to documents made public Monday. The claim is likely to intensify the debate over whether harsh interrogation techniques generated accurate information.
Mohammed made the assertion during hearings at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was transferred in 2006 after being held at secret CIA sites since his capture in 2003.
"I make up stories," Mohammed said, describing in broken English an interrogation probably administered by the CIA concerning the whereabouts of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. "Where is he? I don't know. Then, he torture me," Mohammed said of his interrogator. "Then I said, 'Yes, he is in this area.' "
Mohammed also appeared to say that he had fingered people he did not know as being Al Qaeda members in order to avoid abusive treatment. Although there is no way to corroborate his statements, Mohammed is one of the militants whom the CIA repeatedly subjected to the simulated-drowning technique known as waterboarding.
The newly released information could amplify calls for the Obama administration to make public more details about the treatment of terrorism suspects or allow a broader inquiry into the George W. Bush administration's interrogation policies. Monday's disclosure represented a rare allegation by a detainee that he had lied while being subjected to harsh practices.
A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, said Mohammed's statements raised questions about the effectiveness of the CIA's interrogation program.
"It underscores the unreliability of statements obtained by torture," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project.
The CIA, however, took issue with the description of its interrogation techniques as torture and the assertion that they were not useful.
"The CIA plainly has a very different take on its past interrogation practices -- what they were and what they weren't -- and on the need to protect properly classified national security information," said Paul Gimigliano, an agency spokesman.
The bulk of the documents released Monday, consisting of transcripts of court hearings held at Guantanamo Bay for accused Al Qaeda members, had been previously released. But the Bush administration classified many parts of them, including detainees' allegations that they were abused while in CIA custody. The re-released transcripts remained heavily redacted, containing long passages of blacked-out text.
