Last week, a jury in Guantanamo Bay convicted Salim Hamdan of a war crime. But according to a new book, the government might have turned down an opportunity to turn Hamdan into a friendly source.
less-than-complete victory for the government.
Mahler reports that FBI agent Ali Soufan — one of the few FBI agents who spoke Arabic — had interrogated Hamdan at Guantanamo Bay and found he had lots of potentially useful information. While Hamdan was only a bit player, he was a valuable witness. For example, Hamdan had apparently witnessed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed debrief Osama bin Laden on the 9/11 operation.
Instead of prosecuting Hamdan, Mahler writes, Soufan thought he “could persuade Hamdan to plead guilty and cooperate with the government in exchange for a lighter sentence.” After all, Soufan argued, if the government moved ahead with a tribunal, Hamdan would eventually get a lawyer and clam up.
The administration, of course, declined to take Soufan’s advice and opted for a tribunal.
“Soufan’s access to Hamdan was immediately cut off,” writes Mahler, “and the FBI lost a crucial source of information, as well as a potential key witness in other al-Qaida trials.”
We’ve excerpted the relevant passage (PDF). (Also, as a bit of a bonus, we’ve posted the book’s prologue.)
We spoke briefly with Mahler about the incident.
