A Decade of Fear: Six Questions for Michelle Shephard by Scott Horton

[Jefferson23]

Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star was on top of the “war on terror” story before that name had been coined, covering it even in its most dangerous corners — places like Mogadishu and Sanaa — and demonstrating a fearlessness and tenacity that few national-security reporters can match. In her new book, A Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism’s Grey Zone, Shephard displays deep insight and an irrepressible sense of humor as she moves through the high and low points of America’s transformation in the decade after 9/11. I put six questions to Shephard about her book.

1. I had been hearing for some time that former CIA director Porter Goss liked to demonstrate waterboarding using bar nuts — then I picked up your book and read a firsthand account of him doing so. What did you learn from your cruise with Goss and his successor, Michael Hayden, about the mentality of the men who ran the agency during the Bush years?

Those interviews, conducted aboard a “Spy Cruise” last fall, were among the many rather surreal moments I’ve had the past ten years, but they did provide me with some unguarded comments (using some interesting props). Both men were resolute in their support of disputed “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which they claimed produced results, and they objected to Obama’s use of the word “torture” to describe waterboarding. Hayden emphasized that he understood the debate, but he didn’t subscribe to the view that the methods produced unreliable intelligence, as others have testified — or that they provided Al Qaeda with a propaganda gift. Goss said he was tired of the media scrutiny and second-guessing.

2. A good deal of your book and your reporting chronicles how Canadians were caught up in the “war on terror” — from stockbroker David Barkway, who was in the 105th floor of the North Tower when the first plane struck on 9/11 and who perished that day, to Maher Arar, the engineer who was sent to and tortured in Syria, to Omar Khadr, the child soldier whose prosecution at Guantánamo was frequently sensationalized in the media. How have these varied experiences affected cooperation between America and Canada in dealing with terrorism?

in full: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/10/hbc-90008260

[KoKo]

1. Looks like a good read.. Bookmarked for tomorrow. K&R

[bemildred]

2. CIA's vaccine ruse in Pakistan carries fallout

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan—
A phony vaccination campaign orchestrated by the CIA to help find and kill Osama bin Laden is undercutting Western-backed immunization drives against polio and other diseases, and now has the Pakistani doctor involved in the program possibly facing treason charges.

A Pakistani government commission investigating the U.S. raid that killed Bin Laden in May recommended late Thursday that treason charges be filed against Dr. Shakeel Afridi, who helped carry out the fake vaccination effort designed to obtain DNA evidence from the Al Qaeda leader's sprawling compound in Abbottabad.

If Afridi is charged and convicted, he could face the death penalty. U.S. officials have been seeking the doctor's release since his arrest in May by Pakistani intelligence agents and have defended the ruse, arguing that extraordinary measures were needed to track down the world's most wanted terrorist.

The secret operation to gather evidence from Bin Laden's compound took place in the weeks preceding the May 2 U.S. raid and was masked as a vaccination drive for the hepatitis B virus. It is not known when Afridi, at the time the chief surgeon for the Khyber region in Pakistan's volatile tribal areas, was recruited by the CIA.

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-fg-pakistan-treason-20111008,0,6097147.story

[Jefferson23]

3. Incredible I tell ya..thanks for posting. n/t