Top US Al-Qaeda Interrogator Says Torture was Unneccessary

The release by the Obama Administration of the Bush era White House torture memos has sparked a spitting match between former Bush Administration officials, most notably Dick Cheney, and those who opposed torture as a technique as to whether it worked and resulted in information that in Cheney's words "saved lives".

Now Ali Soufan a former FBI agent and the the most successful Al-Qaeda interrogator the US come out and said the use of torture was unnecessary.

Time magazine has reported:

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Soufan says Abu Zubaydah gave up the information between March and June 2002, when he was being interrogated by Soufan, another FBI agent and some CIA officers. But that was not the result of harsh techniques, including water boarding, which were not introduced until August. "We were getting a lot of useful material from

There is little doubt that the torture techniques were not necessary. Perhaps it was because Bush and Cheney ignored eight months worth of warnings leading up to the 911 attacks and were responsible for the deaths of 3,000 Americans because of their negligence that they went overboard in trying to prevent another attack.

Soufan stated unequivocally that torture doesn't work. He told Time magazine:

"When they are in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them," he says. "That means the information you're getting is useless."

But Soufan said his main objection to the techniques was moral. Soufan said that when the harsh techniques were introduced he protested and his bosses at the FBI backed him up. He was removed from his assignment as an interrogator.