Ali Soufan - Former FBI Agent and Interrogator HARDtalk

develop the disease. Those are the headlines. Now it is

Ali Soufan is a man apart. A Muslim and an Arabic-speaker, he became

the FBI's lead investigator on Al- Qaeda, before and after the 9/11

attacks, attacks which he said could have been prevented had some

key intelligence been shared. In his own work for the FBI, he

pursued and interrogated some of Al-Qaeda's top people. Now he has

gone public with the story of his fight against Islamist militants

and his struggle within the American intelligence community.

Indeed, he says he's been a marked man, not from Al Qaeda, so much as

Ali Soufan, will come to HARDtalk. You came to the United States from

Lebanon as an immigrant. -- welcome. You ended up applying to the FBI

pressure to university almost as a joke, as a bet with friends. Tell

me how that happened. When I was in college, an administrator at the

University suggested that I applied to the FBI. It became a joke. It

was a very long application process. You were not of the usual FBI stock.

That is what I thought. Surprisingly, when I finished

graduate school, I was accepted as an FBI agent. You were unusual

because you were one of fully eight Arabic-speaking people in the FBI.

-- one of only. You were one of the first to say a Osama Bin Laden is

posing in a greater threat to the United States, back in the 1990s.

Yes. I was involved with one of the premier terrorist Task forces. I

spoke with some supervisors at the head of the task force about this

man I had been reading about, Osama Bin Laden. I had read his

declaration of G hand in 1996. -- Jihad. I was surprised that we

already knew about him. People were working on it. Soon after, I was

assigned to that team. By the time of the East African embassy

bombings, I was full time. There was still an astonishing level of

ignorance in the FBI about how the structure of Al-Qaeda worked. In

your book, you said that when you were translating a manual of

terrorism which British officers had recovered that looked at high

cell structures work, you were translating, cell numbers are told

not to recognise one another in public, that's amazing, declared an

FBI colleague. Abbas have thought that was elementary. -- I would

have thought. It was amazing that we found that manual. It is amazing

that now we have got a document that would encompass the law

enforcement channels and that describes the or been warfare rules

and regulations for an organisation like Al-Qaeda. -- urban. The FBI

and the Department of Justice indicted Osama Bin Laden in June of

1998. A lot of people do now know that. That was before the first

overt act that Al-Qaeda did against the United States. The embassy

bombings. That was August 1998. the wake of that, due ended up in

Yemen investigating the attack into a US naval ship. You claim that

there was a chief of staff for a member of the Senate intelligence

committee who took you and your colleague to one side and said to

you that the White House, this is a quad, cannot have Al-Qaeda lent to

the attack because President Bush felt he was too politically weak to

do anything like that, to go after Al-Qaeda. That is extraordinary.

were very shocked when that happened, myself and my colleagues.

Later on, if you look at De 9/11 Commission report, many people have

made similar claims. The Secretary of Defence called the whole

investigation stale. When we started trying to explain to the

Attorney-General, the first Attorney-General assigned under

Bush, that there was something called terrorism, be sure that his

side. -- they pushed it to one side. That came back to haunt us.

were in Yemen Brendan 9/11 attacks happened. -- when they are.

Suddenly, the CIA, with whom you had been working with, you had been

sharing intelligence, stuffy had been after four months, you say it

could have had a material impact perhaps in preventing the 9/11

attacks. What did you mean by that. Does? We were able to find a link

between people who were involved with the suicide bombers and a

meeting that took place in south- east Asia. An Al-Qaeda member crew

was spotted at that meeting delivered $36,000 to that meeting.

Be sure that information with the intelligence community at the time.

-- we shared that. This was November, 2000. We continued to

fall some Leeds. In April, 2000 and June, 2000, we were told the

intelligence community knew nothing about this. One day after a 9/11, I

was passed a file that included photographs of people we had been

asking about for many months. It included surveillance photos,

photos of two hijackers were were on Flight 77. Why do you think you

did not get that intelligence? not have any answer for that. I

just put the facts in my book. The facts come to the same conclusion

that where made by the inquiries. Could it be that the CIA was trying

to protect its own sources? There was this thing called the Wall,

where the FBI wants to protect its own potentially criminal

investigations by not having evidence that can be used in the

court of law. I am not buying that theory. When you have 17 sailors

murdered and people who are lent to the modders -- all linked to the

modders being in the United States and you do not tell investigations

about that, you have a problem. If the information is passed to the

FBI in a timely basis, even if the names of the two hijackers are put

on the list, it could have been a different thing. This is a

conclusion. The danger of all the us is that you could perhaps

inadvertently play into the hands, there are great swathe of opinion

he believed there is a conspiracy. People think there is US

governmental complicity. I do not believe in conspiracy theories,

personally. What I tried to do is to put their human face of that

disaster. The disaster steps that cause 9/11. I think that the

conclusion that the commission reached, if this information was

shared with the FBI team investigating, these would be the

findings. 9/11 could have been stopped at many stages. I am trying

to put a human face on it. Usually conspiracy theories come because

you do not have an answer. People are looking for an answer. Do you

think that as a result of 9/11, that President Bush started a war

on terror. Was that the inevitable consequence? But it would become a

war? Absolutely. A war rather than a criminal investigation. Yes. The

way 9/11 happened, crashing planes in two buildings, into the Pentagon,

that is more than an act of war. I believe that that war should have

been focused and limited to Al- Qaeda. It is interesting because

British counter-terrorism chiefs have said that the use of the World

War has not been helpful. Your counterparts, your colleagues in

Britain, they have said that the use of the World War is responsible

for taking us in the wrong direction. -- the word. Many people

agreed with a war against Al-Qaeda. I believe that the war against Al-

Qaeda, the one against their command and control in Afghanistan

was a legitimate war. I don't think anyone opposed that at the very

beginning. One of the by-products of the self declared war was new

rules of engagement, particularly but it comes to interrogation.

There was this thing called enhanced interrogation. Stress

preciousness, sleep deprivation, waterboarding. You interviewed lots

of pop Al-Qaeda people. Reid did not agree with enhanced

interrogation. -- Top. You did not agree. I do not agree with that.

do not think there is any justification for it. Not

operationally. As appalling as these things are to you and me,

they are nothing compared to bodies detain these are expected to

receive and some deals in the Middle East for example. Why did

you want to go down a path were eventually you will have to glass

ceiling? You will hit a water more of a Jew cannot cross. Do you think

it is torture? It depends on how it is being carried out. We all know

but waterboarding is. That is the simulation of drowning. Enhanced

interrogation is not only waterboarding. It is techniques

that evolved into waterboarding. Waterboarding as a technique itself

is by US law considered torture. Who bears the responsibility? For

the use of waterboarding? The fact that the sanction that the top?

goes to the top. Do you think there should be legal redress against

people like President Bush? Won the top? Yes? -- yes. I am asking the

opinion, whether it should be. There should be accountability.

That accountability shouldn't be only for the CIA officers. The way

to follow that logically is to say that there should be a follow-up.

It depends how it came down and what happened and to approve it.

Which channels did it come down? I think we should have some kind of

accountability for what happened. In terms of ethnicity, Peter King

denies what you say. He said that for those who say waterboarding

does not work and that it should be stopped and not used again, they

got vital information through waterboarding that directly led

them to Bin Laden. I disagree with that. People denied facts on the

waterboarding that we later found out were important. People were

lying after 183 sessions of waterboarding. It must have been

important. That is not an indication of the technique.

Everything else we have been told about de effectiveness of

waterboarding is proving to be wrong. The man in question,

waterboarding did not stored until I believe so. I believe that is not

an accurate assessment. I believe the President was not told the

truth about this. How certain are you now that the technique is no

longer used? Pretty certain. I think we did something as a

government that very few governments in the world will do.

We declassified these issues regarding enhance interrogation

techniques. We included the CIA, not one immense threat worse start

because of was a boarding. -- was stopped because of water boarding.

The former Secretary of General Defence told me, there is obviously

a legal limit to what you can do, you do not want to go beyond that,

but if you want to use tougher measures, it may be justified to

save in media -- immediate lives. It is an absolute principle that

you have to do whatever you can to save lives. I believe in the

efficacy of the interrogation techniques. It is not justified

from and efficacy perspective. I gave so many reasons in the book

Where did not work. This was something from Hollywood. He does

not exist in reality. All my years in the FBI... If we are talking

about the ticking clock ferry. Enhance interrogation techniques do

not deal with the ticking bomb. It is one step that evolved into water

boarding. Sleep deprivation is a week. Where is the ticking bomb

theory in a Which? -- week. These techniques are to be used over time,

not immediately. The limits that he is talking about are not designed

to deal with that theoretical magic theory of ticking bomb theory.

me ask you about another instant decision that has been taking more

and more frequently over recent times, drone attacks. You have said

that the killing of the Yemeni based cleric was legal, he was

killed in Yemen. Why was that legal but enhance interrogation throws up

different questions? You have to look at the act itself.

Interrogation techniques I have got a problem with. Your strategy and

laws have to beat in sink together. Unita get reliable information and

what you want to do with it... You need to get. Yes, I believe that

drone attacks are illegal. We are at war with Al-Qaeda. You have got

Al-Qaeda leaders sitting together, meeting together, conspiring

together. He was involved in every plot against the US since 2009.

Just because the US has declared war on Al-Qaeda, it does not

automatically turn half the world into a battle zone, does it? We are

not taking the battle around the world. Al-Qaeda is taking the

battle around the world. You have individuals plotting to bomb London.

What do you want to do about it? Send special forces to the mill of

a trouble zone just to arrest them? Or is it better to deal with that

target? This is an American citizen's right to judicial process.

I do not discriminate on terrorist based on their nationality. If

someone is trying to kill innocent people around the world and to have

the opportunity to take them out, I believe it is legitimate to take

them out. The drone attacks do not change the overall outcome of the

war. We have to think beyond these tactical wins for a strategy to

deal with the incubators that generate and caused terrorism.

did you decide to leave the FBI? was involved in a lot of things in

the bureau, I reached a time... What do you mean a lot of things. -

-? Around the 9/11 Commission, what I described in the book about

enhanced interrogation techniques, absolutely among some groups... But

I always go the support of the leadership of the FBI. I felt that

it was time for me to get out of the way. I decide are the best

thing for me and for my team and for the bureau is to get the heck

out of the way. There are remarkably few agents like you in

the FBI. There are eight native Arabic speakers when you joined,

now there are nine. Remarkably few. Why is that? The FBI need to do a

better job to reach out to people in communities that can help the

national security of the US. The woeful thing about it is that if

you try to work in the FBI now, you could not get security clearance.

Is that right? I have not been in the government for a while. My

relationship with the people I used to know in the government is still

phenomenal. I know what he's talking about, it is more difficult

for people from some ethnic origins to join the intelligence community.

That is not just about the effectiveness of the fight, it is a

pretty bad indictment of the state of American intelligence, about the

state of the American establishment? Do you agree with

it? I said I do not. Tell me about the fight against Islamist terror,

given the death of Osama Bin Laden, how strong tea think Al-Qaeda is? -

- do you think. A different Al- Qaeda exist today. It shifted from

being chief operator to be in chief motivator. You have an organisation

that is a franchise. It has remnants of Algerian extremists

operating on the border. You have Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsular.

That is Saudi Al-Qaeda and the Yemen side. Fractured, does that

mean it is more difficult to fight against? Yes, I think it is. You

have to focus your strategy on different regional areas. There are

different incubators for each one of these areas. A strategy that can

work in Yemen is very difficult -- very different from a strategy that

can work in Iraq or Algeria. These are the things that we have to chat

-- take into account. The threat is greater or a smaller? The threat is

different. Al-Qaeda has been diminished greatly. Bin Laden's

death was a mortal blow. His importance in Al-Qaeda, he knows