TERRORIST CONFESSES

This is an astonishing story from Time Magazine by Gerald Posner. A terrorist called Abu Zubaydah confirms what's been rumored and suspected. By March 2002, the terrorist called Abu Zubaydah was one of the most wanted men on earth and a leading member of Osama bin Laden's brain trust. The following was paraphrased.

Zubaydah was captured and interrogated, was not the take down one of al-Qaeda's most wanted operatives but also unexpectedly provided what one U.S. investigator said "the Rosetta stone of 9/11 ... the details of what (Zubaydah) claimed was his 'work' for senior Saudi and Pakistani officials." The tale begins at 2 a.m. on March 28, 2002, when U.S. surveillance pinpointed Zubaydah in a two-story safe house in Pakistan. Commandos rousted out 62 suspects and voiceprints quickly identified Zubaydah.

Posner elaborates how U.S. interrogators used drugs�an unnamed "quick-on, quick-off" painkiller and Sodium Pentothal, the old movie truth serum�in a chemical version of reward and punishment to make Zubaydah talk. When questioning stalled, CIA men flew Zubaydah to an Afghan complex fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more confessions.

Yet when Zubaydah was confronted by the false Saudis, "his reaction was not fear, but utter relief." Happy to see them, he reeled off telephone numbers for a senior member of the royal family who would, said Zubaydah, "tell you what to do." The man at the other end would be Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, a Westernized nephew of King Fahd's and a publisher better known as a racehorse owner. His horse War Emblem won the Kentucky Derby in 2002. To the amazement of the U.S., the numbers proved valid. When the fake inquisitors accused Zubaydah of lying, he responded with a 10-minute monologue laying out the Saudi-Pakistani-bin Laden triangle.

And there's more, much more to the story in Why America Slept (Random House) by Posner.

The book seems certain to kick up a political and diplomatic firestorm. The first question everyone will ask is, Is it true? And many will wonder if these matters were addressed in the 28 pages censored from Washington's official report on 9/11. It has long been suggested that Saudi Arabia probably had some kind of secret arrangement to stave off fundamentalists within the kingdom. But this appears to be the first description of a repeated, explicit quid pro quo between bin Laden and a Saudi official. Posner told TIME he got the details of Zubaydah's interrogation and revelations from a U.S. official outside the CIA at a "very senior Executive Branch level" whose name we would probably know if he told it to us.

My take is that I'm not surprised, but I do need some time to think about these revelations.