baithak: Baithak World Jun 22: Interrogating a mastermind, News & Views, Paul Szep, Cartoons, RealNews

Mr. Mohammed also claimed a role in a long list of completed and thwarted attacks. Human rights advocates have questioned some of Mr. Mohammed’s claims, including the beheading of Mr. Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, suggesting that they may have been false statements made to stop torture. But Mr. Martinez told colleagues that Mr. Mohammed volunteered out of the blue that he was the man who killed Mr. Pearl. The C.I.A. at first was skeptical, according to two former agency officials. Intelligence analysts eventually were convinced, however, in part because Mr. Mohammed pointed out to Mr. Martinez details of the hand and arm of the masked killer in a videotape of the murder that appeared to show it was him.

Janet Hamlin/Associated Press, Pool

WASHINGTON — In a makeshift prison in the north of Poland, Al Qaeda’s engineer of mass murder faced off against his Central Intelligence Agency interrogator. It was 18 months after the 9/11 attacks, and the invasion of Iraq was giving Muslim extremists new motives for havoc. If anyone knew about the next plot, it was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The interrogator, Deuce Martinez, a soft-spoken analyst who spoke no Arabic, had turned down a C.I.A. offer to be trained in waterboarding. He chose to leave the infliction of pain and panic to others, the gung-ho paramilitary types whom the more cerebral interrogators called “knuckledraggers.” Mr. Martinez came in after the rough stuff, the ultimate good cop with the classic skills: an unimposing presence, inexhaustible patience and a willingness to listen to the gripes and musings of a pitiless killer in rambling, imperfect English. He achieved a rapport with Mr. Mohammed that astonished his fellow C.I.A. officers. Inside a 9/11 Mastermind’s Interrogation - Scott Shane

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