The former FBI special agent, torture opponent and interrogator of Abu Zubaydah goes hard from the very first paragraph:

PUBLIC bravado aside, the defenders of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques are fast running out of classified documents to hide behind. The three that were released recently by the C.I.A. — the 2004 report by the inspector general and two memos from 2004 and 2005 on intelligence gained from detainees — fail to show that the techniques stopped even a single imminent threat of terrorism.

Soufan’s op-ed does for reporters what they refused to do for themselves: read the fucking CIA memos declassified a week ago Monday and discover the judgment they delivered on "enhanced interrogation." He combs through the 2004 and 2005 detainee memos requested by Cheney and makes observations similar to the ones I noted in this piece. For instance:

They show that substantial intelligence was gained from pocket litter (materials found on detainees when they were captured), from playing detainees against one another and from detainees freely giving up information that they assumed their questioners already knew. A computer seized in March 2003 from a Qaeda operative for example, listed names of Qaeda members and money they were to receive.

Soon after Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the 9/11 attacks, was captured in 2003, according to the 2005 memo, he “elaborated on his plan to crash commercial airlines into Heathrow Airport.” The memo speculates that he may have assumed that Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a fellow member of Al Qaeda who had been captured in 2002, had already divulged the plan. The same motivation — the assumption that another detainee had already talked — is offered to explain why Mr. Mohammed provided details about the Hambali-Southeast Asia Qaeda network.

Classic interrogation techniques, found in any FBI session, and now elevated to national policy for the most important interrogations through the new High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.

Soufan also breaks some news:

A third top suspected terrorist who was subjected to enhanced interrogation, in 2002, was Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the man charged with plotting the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole. I was the lead agent on a team that worked with the Yemenis to thwart a series of plots by Mr. Nashiri’s operatives in the Arabian Peninsula — including planned attacks on Western embassies. In 2004, we helped prosecute 15 of these operatives in a Yemeni court. Not a single piece of evidence that helped us apprehend or convict them came from Mr. Nashiri.

Nothing! Are Yemeni standards of evidence particularly scrupulous in refusing to admit into the record evidence obtained through torture? What possible valuable information could Nashiri’s torture have produced if none of it contributed to the destruction of his organization? This is the information that we can reasonably presume he’d possess even if he possessed nothing else. 

You’ll also find Soufan attacking the Washington Post piece on KSM; praising former CIA inspector general John Helgerson for calling the interrogation regimen "inhumane"; praising the CIA operatives and officials whose resistence to the regimen prompted Helgerson’s inquiry; and speculating that the torture "may have given Al Qaeda a second wind." 

That point may be somewhat controversial, but I remember an aide to Gen. Petraeus, Col. Douglas Bacon, holding a conference call in 2008 to discuss the results of a comprehensive study he undertook to determine the motivations of foreign fighters who came to Iraq to wage war. Those motivations were the invasion of Iraq and torture:

So what brought Mr. AQI to Iraq? At the mosque, he met a man who could tell Mr. AQI just wanted to belong to something. That man told Mr. AQI he had something Mr. AQI needed to see. Very often, according to Colonel Bacon, it was an image from Abu Ghraib. Or it was a spliced-together propaganda film of Americans killing or abusing Iraqis. The narrative that weighed heavily on Mr. AQI, Colonel Bacon said, was that it was his "religious duty go to Iraq," where he would serve as "an avenger of abused Iraqs."

That Soufan guy, he might know what he’s talking about…