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The Interrogation
Aired December 17, 2003 - 14:06 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Day four in captivity for Saddam Hussein. So is he talking yet?
Our national security correspondent David Ensor has his ear to the intelligence community.
David, what do you know?
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATL. SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, as you say, it's the fourth day of questioning. You can assume there's been some nights of questioning as well. They are very interested in knowing more from Saddam Hussein. CIA and military officials have a lot of questions for him. They'll be pressing hard, though. No one is confident they'll get useful answers.
First and foremost, they're asking, what does he know about the insurgency against American forces in Iraqi security? Can he supply any information that could save lives?
Now the documents that are with him have already led to several arrests in Baghdad, but officials say that they suggest that those running the insurgency were keeping him informed, but so far, they haven't found anything that suggests he was actually directing the insurgency.
There are, of course, a lot of other questions -- did he have weapons of mass destruction? Did he have connections with terrorist groups? It's not clear at this point whether the CIA can use all the same techniques on Saddam that it's been able to use on senior al Qaeda prisoners to obtain information, although certainly some of them will be used. They include, of course, sleep deprivation, false flag operations, where he might, for example, be shown false newspaper headlines. Good cop/bad cop routines, which are standard in any kind of interrogation, or appeals to the vanity of a man who after all is known for his outsized ego, to get him to boast of something, perhaps be informative in that way. Short of torture, there's a lot they can still do.
There is an interagency task force currently meeting in this town to discuss what the rules of the game for Saddam should be. What she he be considered, a prisoner of war, hostile detainee? There are a whole host of issues to consider, and they may affect his treatment -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Well, in addition to treatment, what he is saying, the way he was found, some are -- many people -- many critics are saying, look, he was just surviving, he was living in a hole, he really couldn't have been leading any type of outside guerrilla warfare. So can he -- does he have a lot to say about that? Or is this just more about trying to get information from the past 10 years?
ENSOR: Well, he did -- he was captured with something in the area of 500 pages of documents, many of them just scribbled notes. But some of them are apparently significant type-written documents with names in them, that have led to arrests. So he was being informed by others what was going on in the insurgency. I should say that a lot of these documents are about the insurgency against the American forces in Iraq.
So he was being told about things. The question is whether he was giving orders. And on that, they're somewhat skeptical. But he was told a lot. He might know more than is in the documents. So they're definitely going to pursue pretty tough questioning of this man.
PHILLIPS: All right, David Ensor, thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired December 17, 2003 - 14:06 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Day four in captivity for Saddam Hussein. So is he talking yet?
Our national security correspondent David Ensor has his ear to the intelligence community.
David, what do you know?
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATL. SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, as you say, it's the fourth day of questioning. You can assume there's been some nights of questioning as well. They are very interested in knowing more from Saddam Hussein. CIA and military officials have a lot of questions for him. They'll be pressing hard, though. No one is confident they'll get useful answers.
First and foremost, they're asking, what does he know about the insurgency against American forces in Iraqi security? Can he supply any information that could save lives?
Now the documents that are with him have already led to several arrests in Baghdad, but officials say that they suggest that those running the insurgency were keeping him informed, but so far, they haven't found anything that suggests he was actually directing the insurgency.
There are, of course, a lot of other questions -- did he have weapons of mass destruction? Did he have connections with terrorist groups? It's not clear at this point whether the CIA can use all the same techniques on Saddam that it's been able to use on senior al Qaeda prisoners to obtain information, although certainly some of them will be used. They include, of course, sleep deprivation, false flag operations, where he might, for example, be shown false newspaper headlines. Good cop/bad cop routines, which are standard in any kind of interrogation, or appeals to the vanity of a man who after all is known for his outsized ego, to get him to boast of something, perhaps be informative in that way. Short of torture, there's a lot they can still do.
There is an interagency task force currently meeting in this town to discuss what the rules of the game for Saddam should be. What she he be considered, a prisoner of war, hostile detainee? There are a whole host of issues to consider, and they may affect his treatment -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Well, in addition to treatment, what he is saying, the way he was found, some are -- many people -- many critics are saying, look, he was just surviving, he was living in a hole, he really couldn't have been leading any type of outside guerrilla warfare. So can he -- does he have a lot to say about that? Or is this just more about trying to get information from the past 10 years?
ENSOR: Well, he did -- he was captured with something in the area of 500 pages of documents, many of them just scribbled notes. But some of them are apparently significant type-written documents with names in them, that have led to arrests. So he was being informed by others what was going on in the insurgency. I should say that a lot of these documents are about the insurgency against the American forces in Iraq.
So he was being told about things. The question is whether he was giving orders. And on that, they're somewhat skeptical. But he was told a lot. He might know more than is in the documents. So they're definitely going to pursue pretty tough questioning of this man.
PHILLIPS: All right, David Ensor, thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
