From 60 Minutes Sunday interview:
Lesley Stahl: You had no qualms? We used to consider some of them war crimes.
Jose Rodriguez: We made some al Qaeda terrorists with American blood on their hands uncomfortable for a few days. But we did the right thing for the right reason. And the right reason was to protect the homeland and to protect American lives. So yes, I had no qualms.
Rodriguez spent 31 years in the CIA’s Clandestine Service where spies are revered as “fighter jocks”. He rose thru the ranks, eventually running covert operations as head of the Latin America division. When al Qaeda struck on 9/11, he’d had no experience in counterterrorism or the Middle East. But he wanted “in” on the war on terror, and went to the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, where the main objective was to stop another attack on the U.S. homeland.
Jose Rodriguez: We were flooded with intelligence about an imminent attack. That al Qaeda had an anthrax program, and that they were planning to use it against us. And that they were seeking nuclear materials to use in some type of nuclear weapon. So we were facing a ticking, time bomb situation and we were very concerned.
Lesley Stahl: So you were getting pressure from Congress and the White House to take the gloves off. Did you go to the dark side?
ose Rodriguez: Well, the dark side, that’s what we do.
Lesley Stahl: You are the dark side.
Jose Rodriguez: We are the dark side.
His first big operation came after the capture of a Palestinian, thought then to have high level al Qaeda connections, named Abu Zubaydah when he was taken prisoner in Pakistan in the spring of 2002, Abu Zubaydah was badly injured in a firefight.
Jose Rodriguez: He actually was on the verge of dying. So we brought in a surgeon from the U.S. to help him out.
Lesley Stahl: You brought in a top-rate surgeon from Johns Hopkins?
Jose Rodriguez: Yes, the best that we could find.
Lesley Stahl: You save him so you can squeeze everything out of his brain that you can?
Jose Rodriguez: So we could elicit intelligence that would allow us to keep our country safe. So we took him to a black site.
Black site. It was the first of several secret interrogation centers around the world. Abu Zubaydah was still recovering from his gunshot wounds when the interrogation began.
Lesley Stahl: When you start the interrogation, it’s both the CIA and the FBI, right?
Jose Rodriguez: Correct. This was our prisoner, our site, our show –
Lesley Stahl: Meaning the CIA?
Jose Rodriguez: The CIA, but we had invited the FBI to come along.
Now there’s a big dispute over which agency got more information and more valuable information. At first, FBI interrogators used their standard interviewing techniques with no coercion, and Abu Zubaydah cooperated, giving tips and leads but–
Jose Rodriguez: After he regains his strength he stopped talking.
Lesley Stahl: And then he just shuts down. Is that what happens?
Jose Rodriguez: He shuts down.
But the FBI’s lead interrogator said he didn’t shut down, and that they should continue with their traditional methods of questioning. Jose Rodriguez, though heard the ticking time bomb and felt a sense of urgency.
Jose Rodriguez: If there was going to be another attack against the U.S., we would have blood on our hands because we would not have been able to extract that information from him. So we started to talk about an alternative set of interrogation procedures.
Lesley Stahl: So you’re the one who went looking for something to break this guy.
Jose Rodriguez: Yes. And let me tell you something, you know, because years later the 9/11 Commission accused, or said that 9/11 was a failure of imagination. Well, there was no lack of imagination on the part of the CIA in June 2002. We were looking for different ways of doing this.
As I would EXPECT YOU WOULD.
Which is why I hold you up as a HERO of these United States of America.
BZ
