Thread by @carolrosenberg

Good morning from Guantanamo's Camp Justice on Day 3 of this two-week pretrial hearing in the Sept. 11 case. We expect more open court testimony today from retired FBI agent Adam Drucker on his work on the case.

The 9/11 hearing is in session. KSM and Walid bin Attash have come to court today.

A prison staff attorney testifies that Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Ammar al Baluchi and Mustafa al Hawsawi signed waivers. Army Maj. Anonymous, in battle dress, says Mr. Hawsawi may want to come later.

Judge Cohen says he'll try to combine all the closed sessions into a single day this week.

He says 1:30-1:45 today he will discuss "some privileged matters" with the KSM team, based on his defense team filing. The court will be closed to everyone but KSM and his lawyers.

Bin al-Shibh lawyer Jim Harrington advises the judge that he has applied for a special defense counsel for Mr. bin al-Shibh on an upcoming matter that may require Mr. Harrington to testify as a witness.

Mr. Harrington says a lawyer has been identified for the role of what sounds like a conflict counsel to question Mr. Harrington. If the Convening Authority, Christian Reismeier, refuses to authorize it, Mr. Harrington said, the bin al-Shibh team will file with the judge.

Now, retired FBI agent Drucker is back to testify. Baluchi defense lawyer James Connell is discussing an item in the 9/11 Commission Report base on information that came out of the black sites, as the sole source of intelligence.
9-11commission.gov/report/911Repo…

Connell and Drucker are discussing the basis of questions the FBI agent sent to the black sites for the CIA to ask the defendants. Several instances involve information from foreign governments whose sources he is forbidden to identify.

A focus of the testimony now is information the CIA got in late 2003 black site interrogations of defendant Mustafa al Hawsawi about "a small blue notebook" that was seized in a raid in Pakistan.

Drucker says the FBI and CIA each got copies, did separate analysis -- and then Drucker sent questions into the black site for Hawsawi to answer. Some of which, Connell says, defense lawyers haven't seen in discovery. Drucker: "Probably there is another cable that's out there."

Context: The 9/11 defendants are in the black sites, 2002-2003. Agent Drucker is at the FBI tracking the money trail to the hijackers, sending questions to the CIA to ask the defendants based on seized documents, foreign government records the prosecution wants to use at trial.

Now we get a little cross-cultural literacy lesson.
At the Defense Department, they call their secret email system the SIPRNet. (Short for Secret Internet Protocol Router Network.)
At the FBI they call it "The Red Side."

Now Connell is asking former FBI agent Drucker about his time with the CIA Counterterrorism Center (Feb 2004 – Mar 2009) as deputy chief of operations for law enforcement. He asks about his email and --yikes!-- something prompts the censorship switch. Audio turns to white noise.

Court is in a 15-minute recess for defense lawyer James Connell and prosecutor Ed Ryan to sort out why the Court Security Officer invoked the national-security mute button, cutting the audio from court to the public.
This is the first use of the censorship switch this session.

Here's what we learned: During his time at the CTC, now retired FBI agent Adam Drucker says, he was the main liaison between FBI and CIA managers. One role was to de-conflict and coordinate FBI overseas counterterrorism operations.

Drucker and Connell agreed that greater detail on the agent's role on the "first joint FBI-CIA targeting team" and how he helped disrupt several international terrorism plots during a five-year detail would require a national security session. (Which is planned for tomorrow.)

Then Connell inquired about email/communications, which apparently crossed a line -- causing the Court Security Officer to trigger the switch, either on his own or by request of prosecutors.

(Unless the earlier descriptions of his job are redacted from the hearing transcript.)

Court is back. Prosecutor Ed Ryan announces, "We withdraw our assertion." It appears that the national security censorship switch was struck in error. Or, as some might call it, an abundance of caution.

Judge Cohen explains: If someone in court declares "that's classified," the security officer is under instruction to hit the mute button.
In this instance it wasn't so Connell asks Drucker if there was a way for FBI and CIA to communicate, sounds like at the CTC. There was.

Defense lawyer Connell and retired agent Drucker are discussing a series of cables and communications that we cannot see, with Drucker at times explaining their provenance. These date from 2005.

Agent Drucker was describing the routine way in which he'd find out if information surfaced of interest to him or a cable or EC was addressed to him and, yup, censorship switch. Last words, I believe, before the audio feed was broken was "normal conversation."

Connell is back, asks about a Nov. 23, 2005 FBI cable to the CIA, entitled "Yemeni support cell" with questions for KSM, Bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Hambali and another detainee. (They're in the black sites.)

Ex-agent Drucker doesn't recall taking any action on that one, though he's chopped, or another one on a similar theme.

Connell continues to ask about cables, one dated March 20, 2006 on the subject of an FFI, Full Field Investigation. It's unclear what the point of this is but it makes clear that the FBI was sending requests to the black sites months before the defendants are moved to Gitmo.

Now ex-agent Drucker is answering questions about the plan for the FBI to 'clean-team' interrogate the defendants at Gitmo after their Sept. 4, 2006 transfer.

Drucker said he learned -- doesn't remember when or from whom -- that the "FBI would have access to these detainees."

Drucker says there was a discussion among FBI people of who would do these interviews, and he thought he would interrogate Mr. Baluchi and Mr. Hawsawi -- as a subject matter investigation on the money trail. Both are accused of sending money to the hijackers.

Drucker says it was decided that he wasn't chosen to do the interrogations but he would be on hand to lend his expertise.
"It was deemed that I was not" appropriate to be on the so-called clean-team. So FBI agent James M. Fitzgerald took his place with Agent Abigail Perkins.

Retired agent Drucker said it was decided that he was "too much CIA to be FBI" and "too much FBI to be CIA." He described that as his circumstances during his five-year detail to the CIA.

For those Letterhead Memorandum interviews -- aka the clean-team interrogations -- agent Drucker said the FBI people came in January 2007 on a rolling basis because the FBI had a small charter plane than the one they use now. He was among them.

They included Kimberly Waltz, FBI agents Pellegrino, Gaudin, Perkins, Fitzgerald, Zebley, Jocys and Turchiano. Also analyst Antol. They got townhouses at Gitmo, with no segregation, had an office with a 12-person conference table for work related to the 2007 FBI interrogations.

While at Guantanamo, Drucker testifies, he didn't have contact with people related to the RDI (Black Site) program. Here, at Gitmo, he did have access to his FBI and separately CIA emails as well as same-time communications.

He also apparently got to visit Camp 7 during his time at Gitmo in 2007, though didn't know that's what the prison was called.

Drucker testifies that, in his week or so at Gitmo in 2007, he watched fellow FBI agents question three detainees --Hawsawi, Baluchi and KSM-- from a monitoring room at Camp Echo II.
Aside: These were the men he thought he was uniquely suited to question, based on his expertise.

It sounded like Drucker just testified that, before his detail to CIA, he was unaware of the interrogation techniques used on the detainees.

He also testified earlier that he's never read James Mitchell's "Enhanced Interrogations," about waterboarding, etc., in the black sites.

Connell is done with his open-court questioning of Agent Drucker. None of the other defense attorneys want to question him, this session.
Prosecutor Ryan says he needs an hour to cross-examine him in open court.
Judge Cohen recesses for lunch, expects to resume around 1:45 pm.

Court is back in session. Defendant Hawsawi has come to court. Department of Justice prosecutor Ed Ryan is now questioning the former FBI agent as Mr. Drucker, describing the first World Trade Center bombing case.

It was handled as an FBI case from the New York field office, Drucker agrees with Ed Ryan, along with the Embassies bombing and the USS Cole bombing. The 9/11 attack "was something that had not been experienced before," Drucker says.

They agree that the attacks changed many things for many people that day, including then FBI Agent Adam Drucker's career. He had been on bank fraud, "the ultimate white color crime," as Ryan calls it. It didn't generally involve violence.

Drucker says he had "none" terror experience on 9/11 but was a money guy, with an accounting degree and an MBA in finance. The two sides agree that the attack "changed this nation," a wall between the criminal and intelligence side came down, and the U.S. went to war.

Now they're discussing the 9/11 Commission. Prosecutor Ryan asks if it had information from the black sites. Drucker says they had access to everything the intelligence community had.

Drucker on the 9/11 financing: First evidence was cars the hijackers left behind at airports and trash in their hotel rooms in the U.S. that turned up Western Union receipts that traced back to Mr. Hawsawi, returning money to him in the UAE.

Ryan: Did these early findings lead to other accused in the case?
Drucker: Yes. As far as what led us to Mr. Ali (Baluchi)... Sun Trust transfers had POB 16598, where Mr. Ali worked. An informant led them to an exchange and they triangulated receipts, transfers and P.O.Boxes

Drucker: An application for a credit card under an assumed name led them back to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, whom a detainee identified as "mukhtar." Ramzi bin al Shibh had sent money using his real name to hijackers in New York and Florida.
--That was the first three months, he says.

From there, Agent Drucker starts traveling to the UAE for what prosecutor Ryan called "discussions with entities there," including the Central Bank, to recover records.

On the "feeding frenzy" the agents saw non-FBI agents having over seized evidence in Karachi in September 2002... Drucker says he was not the evidence custodian and that the FBI was not in control of it until it was transferred to Islamabad.

Prosecutor Ryan suggests that there was another agent who had that role, names him. Drucker replies that he recognizes that agent's name because "he was violently ill coming from Karachi to Islamabad."

Now they're discussing "kunyas," which Drucker defines as nom de guerre or war names. Drucker agrees that videos of the hijackers that came out after 9/11 included their kunyas, and that would be an independent source of identification of the hijackers beyond detainee reporting.

Now Prosecutor Ryan asks about a set of questions that Drucker fed into the black sites, which Baluchi attorney James Connell had earlier highlighted. (We don't see it.)

The prosecutor asks if Drucker crafted the questions based on information from sources other than detainee reporting. "All of it, in this particular cable," Drucker replies, noting it was before Baluchi's capture. (And therefore before Baluchi's black site interrogation.)

Agent Drucker on why the FBI continued to investigate the hijackers and their financial ties long after, he says, they traced them back to the five defendants: Leads must be followed. They were looking for sleeper cells, a second wave, sleeper agents.

Prosecutor Ryan asks about Drucker's role in 2007 when the FBI was interrogating the former black site detainees at Gitmo, when Drucker he watched but didn't interrogate.
Ryan: Were you considered, sir, to be the foremost expert on the financing of the 9/11 plot?
Drucker: Yes.

Drucker says he was an expert, just in case somebody had a question. No one did, but he watched FBI agent Fitzgerald question Baluchi based on documents that Drucker had collected in his foremost role.

Drucker called the interrogation "more of a cordial conversation" than a "confrontational interview," cast it as "debriefing a cooperative witness."
He recalled Baluchi mentioning that the @McDonalds apple pie or burger agents gave him for lunch was "delicious."

Drucker recalled that, when Agent Pellegrino interviewed KSM at Gitmo, the prisoner took off his shoe to illustrate something related to the Bojinka plot.

He says he saw no tension, heard no raised voices, saw no indication these were involuntary interviews.

Context: Prosecutor Ryan is defending the 2007 Gitmo interrogations as independent of the abuse that took place in the black sites. Only voluntary statements are admissible evidence at the war court-- and prosecutors argue FBI interrogators used evidence independent of the CIA.

Defense lawyer Connell is following up. He's trying to unpack Drucker's explanation that KSM was linked in, financially, by a supplemental application for a credit card on an account linked to Mr. Hawsawi.

That application included a photograph, Drucker said, which led them to a better copy off a visa application, which the FBI had agent Gaudin show it to Abu Zubaydah, who identified the image as "mukhdar." Drucker either sent them to or had them sent to Agent Gaudin, by email.

Defense lawyer Connell is now unpacking the chain of custody of evidence seized in the Karachi raids in September 2002 that Drucker saw being gone through in a "feeding frenzy" in Karachi before its transfer to Islamabad for proper FBI forensic handling...

Drucker agrees with Connell that, when Pakistani authorities brought the material to those who fed on it, there was no FBI agent evident functioning as custodian.
(Aside: We learned yesterday that the identities of those people are protected by a national security privilege.)

Connell: Do you know of any instance when the FBI elected not to send an investigative query into the CIA black sites to be posed to their detainees?
Drucker: I can't think of an instance, no.

Drucker doesn't think the term "interrogation" applies to what he saw when he watched his FBI colleagues, Agents Fitzgerald and Perkins, question former black site prisoners at Gitmo in 2007. He prefers the term interviews.

To Drucker, an interrogation means "EITs are applied."

EIT= Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, waterboarding, walling, sleep deprivation, violence and the like. As in what the CIA did to the 9/11 defendants in the 2002-2006 black sites.

Connell clarifies with Drucker that he could both watch and listen to the questions and the answers when he was monitoring Ammar al Baluchi's 2007 interview/interrogation/debriefing with his colleagues at Camp Echo II -- the current attorney-client meeting site at Gitmo.

Connell is done. Prosecutor Ryan has no questions.
KSM attorney Gary Sowards has a few questions.
Prosecutor Ryan objects to Mr. Sowards 'entering the game at this time.'

Judge Cohen says it's not standard, but he's still trying to figure out how to try five death penalty cases at one time. He agrees that Sowards can ask questions for judicial economy.

Sowards: I have questions related to something Prosecutor Ryan asked. Judge: Go ahead.

Sowards: Have you had experience delivering Miranda Warnings to detainees?
Drucker: Yes.
Sowards: Why did you do that?
Drucker: To advise them of their rights under U.S. law.

Sowards: Why were you at Gitmo watching during the FBI interrogations in 2007?
Drucker: In case somebody wanted to step out and ask me a question. But it didn't happen.
Sowards: How did you listen?
Drucker: Either through headphones or a speaker, not sure which one.

Sowards: When you were observing the Gitmo interrogation in 2007 did you know what had happened to the men in the black sites?
Drucker: Not in detail, no. Just rumors, not anything specific. Just that some of them were subjected, not all of them, to certain EITs.

Sowards: Did you know what was happening to them in the black sites when you were sending questions for the CIA to pose to its prisoners?
Drucker: Not specifically, no.
He heard CIA was ‘going a different way. We were not to be involved in it, but we could submit questions.’

Sowards: Were you told how different?
Drucker: No real details as far as what was happening.
He said he learned about the existence of the EITs when he was detailed to the CIA in February 2004, but was told that stuff had stopped and interrogations turned to debriefings.

Sowards asks if Drucker was aware the KSM was "suspended from the ceiling of his cell naked for approximately 12 days, deprived of his sleep, subjected to multiple anal rapes, was threatened with having his children killed if he didn’t answer questions put to him by the CIA....

Sowards recitation got him as far as "183 mock executions," the waterboarding when Prosecutor Ryan objected.
Judge Cohen overrules.
Drucker: First time I heard that.

Drucker says that suspended from the ceiling and anal raping were "not in the EITs that I was aware of."
Sowards: If you knew about that, would you have a different view on whether the agents in 2007 questioning KSM were interrogating, interviewing or debriefing?

Drucker: It depends. I’m not qualified as a psychologist on what that would do to anybody. All I know is that I saw they were cooperative at the time.

Agent Drucker told KSM's lawyer that he "can’t judge" whether the defendants at Gitmo in 2007 were cooperative because of that (the EITs) or because they just wanted to be cooperative.
He added that it depends on the circumstances. Every person’s different.

As Drucker understood it, the 'clean team interviews' took place three years after the EITs stopped, with different people interviewing them. I cannot say if they’d have the same fear from the FBI agents.
Sowards wondered why he though the EITs stopped.
The answer was unclear.

With that, the judge declares the open portion of Agent Drucker's testimony complete and orders the court cleared to transition to his top secret testimony. No detainees. No public. Just the judge and his staff, witness and legal teams.