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Waterboarding Said to have Helped Stop a Terrorist Attack in LA
Al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed
The blogosphere is abuzz about the latest CIA report released showing that waterboarding, a form of torture, was the reason officials were able to thwart a terrorist attack in Los Angeles. LA Times gives the low down:
Could they still have gotten the information out of Mohammed via acceptable techniques?
Defenders of the practice say the waterboarding of Al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced information that allowed the U.S government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles in 2002. According to a previously classified May 30, 2005, Justice Department memo that the Obama administration released last week, before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.”
After the "enhanced techniques," which the agency used on him 183 times, KSM -- the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks -- told investigators about a "second wave" of terrorists from East Asia who planned to crash a hijacked airliner into a building in Los Angeles.
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