First of all, my point in this thread was a narrow one: whether Mukasey had a real (as opposed to perceived) conflict, having signed the Material Witness warrant leading up to Padilla’s May 8 arrest. Coleman appears to agree, given the claim that “there is little dispute” about the early interrogations, that the first month of interrogation was “traditional.” And even valid, given what he said to Pincus and the reported “lack of debate” that he gave up useful intelligence.

And frankly, Suskind actually supports the claim that Zubaydah went at least a month without being tortured.

Zubaydah’s injuries–gunshot wounds to the leg, groin, andabdomen–had been successfully treated by the finest US physicians in late April and early May. The doctors repaired internal bleeding, a fracture, and organ damage.

He was stabilized by mid-May, and thus, ready.

Yes, there’s still a debate about whether torture started before August or not (and I wouldn’t doubt that they were doing somethign before August). But it appears that Zubaydah was not tortured until several weeks after Padilla was arrested.

For the torture issues, though, there are lots of different evidentiary issues (such as whether or not evidence of torture at a later date makes more credible allegations of torture at an earlier date, or evidence of torture against one detainee makes more credible evidence of torture against another detainee) and there are several different operative dates where info was offered up that could have been tainted by torture and where there could have been duties of disclosure and/or duties to protect and produce evidence: 1) the arrest warrant issuing; 2) the Bush enemy combatant order and USAtty helping kidnap organize the transfer of the detainee out of court jurisdiction; 3) the responsive pleadings filed in NY and the Mobbs declaration; 4) the pleadings and declarations filed in So Car; 5) the pleadings and declarations filed in the 4th Circuit; 6) the June 2005 Press Conference; 7) the oral and written arguments to the Sup Ct (btw – Clement assured the Sup Ct based on all info available to all of the DOJ that we don’t torture or do things like torture) and then in the Florida proceedings.

I think Mukasey believes legal opinions authored by OLC protect the executive from prosecution even when the opinion was wrongly concluded and poorly reasoned.

That’s interesting, because in his book, Goldsmith himself wasn’t so sure. He seemed concerned that operatives acting under cover of a truly flaky OLC opinion could well have massive exposure instead. Which fits — recall that his big acts were to try to “fix” the previous iffy work of Yoo and Bybe

I marked the page because of a previous exchange between EW and myself about this question so I could go root it out, if anyone cares.

There is little dispute, according to officials from both agencies, that Abu Zubaida provided some valuable intelligence before CIA interrogators began to rough him up, including information that helped identify Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla.

[snip]

During his first month of captivity, Abu Zubaida described an al-Qaeda associate whose physical description matched that of Padilla, leading to Padilla’s arrest at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago in May 2002. A former CIA officer said in an interview that Abu Zubaida’s “disclosure of Padilla was accidental.” The officer added that Abu Zubaida “was talking about minor things and provided a small amount of information and a description of a person, just enough to identify him because he had just visited the U.S. Embassy” in Pakistan.

Other officials, including Bush, have said that during those early weeks — before the interrogation turned harsh — Abu Zubaida confirmed that Mohammed’s role as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

[snip]

Whether harsh tactics were used on Abu Zubaida prior to official legal authorization by the Justice Department is unclear. Officials at the CIA say all its tactics were lawful. An Aug. 1 Justice document later known as the “torture memo” narrowly defined what constituted illegal abuse. It was accompanied by another memo that laid out a list of allowable tactics for the CIA, including waterboarding, according to numerous officials.

And note that Coleman is one of the people saying the interrogations were “traditional” at the beginning:

“I don’t have confidence in anything he says, because once you go down that road, everything you say is tainted,” Coleman said, referring to the harsh measures. “He was talking before they did that to him, but they didn’t believe him. The problem is they didn’t realize he didn’t know all that much.”

[snip]

Coleman said reports of Abu Zubaida’s statements during his early, traditional interrogation were “consistent with who he was and what he would possibly know.”

Given their claims about the widespread agreement in both agencies, there seems little doubt that COleman believes Zubaydah described Padilla without torture.

This NYT story also describes Zubaydah’s treatment as getting progressively harsher.

More significant, interrogations of Abu Zubaydah had gotten rougher, with each new tactic approved by cable from headquarters. American officials have said that Abu Zubaydah was the first Qaeda prisoner to be waterboarded, a procedure during which water is poured over the prisoner’s mouth and nose to create a feeling of drowning. Officials said they felt they could not risk a public leak of a videotape showing Americans giving such harsh treatment to bound prisoners.

I need to find it, but an early version of Mazzetti’s work on this uses the August date.

I’m not saying one or the other is true. I’m saying, in the face of conflicting data, I’m not willing to presume allegations by completely ignoring contrary information. One thing that still needs to be explained, though, in the first scenario, is why you destroy al-Nashiri’s tapes, too.

And as for the hundreds of hours–reports have already said the tapes also taped Zubaydah sitting in his cell. That adds up to hundreds of hours pretty quickly.