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A number of new organizations have picked up on my comments at yesterday’s AEI panel describing how Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had figured out the limits of how long waterboarding could be applied, and mocked his interrogators by counting off the seconds. The Miami Herald has a story here, and Politico has one here.

One minor correction: I said during the panel that KSM “held out his arm” when he ticked off the seconds. In fact, his arm was restrained when he did it. Here is the exact story, as I reported it in my book Courting Disaster, with the quote from a senior CIA official describing what KSM did:

Those familiar with the CIA’s interrogations say there is no way we could have gotten KSM to talk without waterboarding. Former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has said, “No. You can say that absolutely. He would not have talked to us in a hundred years. Tough guy. Absolutely committed. He had this mental image of himself as a warrior and a martyr. No way he would talk to us.” A high-ranking CIA official told me, “Everyone will tell you, even people opposed to the program, that [KSM] was not going to talk otherwise. I mean, this was one tough mother. He would get waterboarded and they would watch his fingers because he’d figured out how long it was going to last, and he’d just count on his hands how long he had to hold out. I mean, that is tough. For a psychotic, you’ve got to give the guy his props. And he was going to break by Starsky and Hutch interrogation techniques?”

The Miami Herald story repeats the assertion that “KSM was waterboarded 183 times” and quotes me as claiming it was only five sessions. In fact, as I pointed out yesterday on the Enterprise Blog, it is KSM himself who told the International Committee of the Red Cross that he only went through five waterboarding sessions. Of course, the terrorists are trained to lie about their treatment—but they generally lie to exaggerate what they went through, not downplay it.

In his speech on the Senate floor last week disputing the importance of CIA interrogations in the operation that got Osama bin Laden (which was the subject of a lively AEI panel discussion this afternoon—view the video here) Senator John McCain referred to “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times.”

This figure has appeared in hundreds of news stories, and is accepted as fact. But it is demonstrably wrong. KSM was not waterboarded 183 times. My source for this information? KSM himself.

After 14 CIA detainees were transferred to Guantanamo Bay in September 2006, the International Committee of the Red Cross was given access to them for the first time. ICRC representatives interviewed the detainees about their treatment, and prepared a confidential report for the CIA detailing what the detainees told them. Of course, the report leaked to the press soon thereafter (confirming the wisdom of the CIA’s decision not to grant the ICRC access to the high-value detainees earlier).

In it, KSM describes his waterboarding sessions. And based on their conversations with him, the ICRC reports that:

The procedure was applied during five different sessions during the first month of interrogation in his third place of detention.

Another terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, also described waterboarding. It has been endlessly repeated in the press that Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. But this is not what Zubaydah told the ICRC. He told them:

The suffocation procedure was applied during five sessions of ill-treatment that took place during an approximately one-week intense session of interrogation allegedly in Afghanistan in 2002. During each session, apart from one, the suffocation technique was applied once or twice; on one occasion it was applied three times.

Big difference. You can read the full report here.

So what accounts for the discrepancy? The 183 and 83 figures come from the CIA inspector general’s report, but they refer not to the number of waterboarding sessions, or even the number of applications during each session. They refer to the number of splashes of water. During each application, which could last no more than 40 seconds and usually lasted much less, there could be several dozen splashes. To say KSM was waterboarded 183 times is the equivalent of walking out into a rainstorm and getting hit by 10,000 rain drops, and saying that you were in 10,000 rainstorms.

This is just one of the many falsehoods about CIA interrogations that have taken hold in the popular imagination and are repeated as fact by many in the press, and even by U.S. senators who should know better. I discuss other misleading assertions that Senator McCain made in his speech in my Washington Post column this week.

But there is one thing McCain said with which I wholeheartedly agree. In the debate over how CIA interrogations were conducted, McCain declared, “much [is] at stake for America’s security and reputation. Each side should make its own case, but do so without making up its own facts.”

As I pointed out here the other day, WikiLeaks almost blew the operation that killed Osama bin Laden when it released a classified Defense Department file on Abu Faraj al-Libi—one of several CIA detainees who helped lead the agency to Osama bin Laden’s courier—which showed that the CIA was on the trail of the courier, and had made the connection between the courier, bin Laden, and the city of Abbottabad. Had al Qaeda read this file before the raid, they could have whisked bin Laden to safety. Fortunately, they did not.

In a normal world, the CIA officials who uncovered the intelligence that helped us get to Osama bin Laden would receive medals. In the Obama administration, they have been given subpoenas, and are under threat of prosecution by the Holder Justice Department.

Meanwhile, the man who gave away that intelligence and nearly blew the bin Laden operation—Julian Assange—appears to be under no threat whatsoever of prosecution by the Holder Justice Department. And this week in London, Assange received a medal, when he was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. UPI reports:

An Australian group has awarded WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange the Sydney Peace Prize, hailing him as a brave champion of human rights …

“For 14 years we’ve awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, but only on three occasions in 14 years have made an exception to the rule and awarded a gold medal for ‘exceptional courage in pursuit of human rights,’” foundation chief Stuart Rees said at the ceremony at the Frontline Club.

“By challenging centuries-old practices of government secrecy and by championing people’s right to know, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange have created the potential for a new order in journalism and in the free flow of information.

“Instead of demonizing an Australian citizen who has broken no law, the Australian government must stop shoring up Washington’s efforts to behave like a totalitarian state. The treatment of alleged whistle-blower [U.S. Army Pvt.] Bradley Manning confirms a U.S. administration at odds with their commitment to universal human rights and intent on militaristic bullying.”

You can see a report on the award ceremony here from Australia’s ABC News.

Assange has indeed broken the law—specifically the Espionage Act. It is time for the Holder Justice Department to lift the threat of prosecution from the CIA interrogators who led us to bin Laden, and focus its attention on a real threat to national security: Julian Assange.

Step back from the bellicose statements issued by the Pakistani army and foreign ministry after the killing of Osama bin Laden, and the eruption of prayers and stray protests on behalf of the slain terrorist, and you’ll find an outpouring of thoughtful analysis by some of the country’s leading public intellectuals.

In an essay in the New Republic, reprinted in the delightfully named Goatmilk blog, my former colleague Ahmed Rashid sums up the lesson that ought to be learned:

What Pakistanis desperately need is a new narrative by their leaders—a narrative that does not blame the evergreen troika of India, the United States, and Israel for all of the country’s ills, that breaks the old habit of blaming outsiders and instead looks at itself more honestly and more transparently. Pakistanis as a nation seem incapable of self-analysis, of apportioning blame according to logic and reason rather than emotion.

In Dawn, the country’s leading English newspaper, Cyril Almeida, one of the few non-Muslims of any prominence in Pakistan, strikes a similar note:

Where do we go from here as a country?

As long as national security and foreign policy remain in the hands of a cabal of generals—unaccountable and untouchable, a law unto themselves, and in thrall to their own irrational logic—what future can this country have? Surely, not much of a future.

And here’s Pervez Hoodbhoy, perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of radical Islam.

Bin Laden’s death should be regarded as a transformational moment by Pakistan and its military. It is time to dispense with the Musharraf-era cat and mouse games. We must repudiate the current policy of verbally condemning jihadism—and actually fighting it in some places—but secretly supporting it in other places. Until the establishment firmly resolves that it shall not support armed and violent non-state actors of any persuasion— including the Lashkar-e-Taiba—Pakistan will remain in interminable conflict both with itself and with the world.

Ayesha Siddiqa, whose Military Inc. is the definitive work on the army’s vast business interests, weighs in with a typically pugnacious op-ed:

It is the first time after 1972 that the civilian government has an opportunity to question the unlimited powers of the defence establishment….The fact is that if the political forces won’t do it now, they may never get another opportunity again.

For my money, Pakistan’s beleaguered English-speaking elites are among the bravest people in the subcontinent, willing to speak truth to power, whether military or clerical, in a land where this can carry deadly consequences.

And though it would be foolish to exaggerate their influence—the salons of Lahore and Karachi have little sway over either the masses or the generals—they nonetheless offer a glimmer of hope for the country’s future. President Obama should not squander this opportunity to press for real change in Pakistan along the lines that the most thoughtful voices in that country suggest.

It is a little-known fact that the U.S. government continues to employ waterboarding. But we don’t waterboard terrorists anymore; we only waterboard … Navy SEALs.

Today, President Obama travelled to Fort Campbell, Kentucky to meet with some of those waterboarding victims. CNN reports:

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met privately Friday afternoon with members of the military team responsible for conducting the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney confirmed that Obama and Biden spoke with “special operators” involved in the mission.

The president and vice president met with members of Navy SEAL Team 6 at Fort Campbell—home to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the group that operated the helicopters used in the raid.

Obama and Biden thanked the commandos and were briefed on the operation by the unit members who conducted it, according to a White House official.

No word on whether the president asked members of the unit whether they thought waterboarding was torture. He most likely would not have liked the answer. CNN also reports:

Obama awarded a Presidential Unit Citation to the units involved in the mission, the official said. The citation is the highest such honor that can be given to a military unit.

It is a well-deserved honor. Let’s see if the president does the same for the CIA interrogators who got the intelligence that made last Sunday’s raid possible.

John Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism coordinator, told ABC television on Tuesday that Pakistan had launched an internal investigation to determine whether any individuals within the government or intelligence service (ISI) were involved in sheltering Osama bin Laden in that country’s military heartland. Brennan said he was certain that the “Pakistani officials want to get to the bottom of this, and we’re working closely with them to help them in this investigation.” Pakistan, he emphasized, was a “strong counterterrorism partner.”

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