In The Interrogator: An Education, retired CIA clandestine officer Glenn Carle tells how, in fall 2002, he was sent to the Middle East to interrogate a purportedly high level al Qaeda figure he calls CAPTUS. While Carle does not identify either the detainee or the countries in which he interrogated him, Scott Horton reports the detainee is an Afghan named Pacha Wazir who, before he was captured, ran a hawala al Qaeda used; the two locations are Morocco and Afghanistan’s Salt Pit. After some weeks of rapport-based interrogation, Carle became convinced CAPTUS wasn’t as involved in al Qaeda as CIA believed him to be.

Osama Bin Laden was looking to re-brand al-Qaeda. Suggestions anyone?

In an internet statement, al-Qaeda confirms that Osama bin Laden is dead and says a message recorded by their dead head before his death will be released soon.

Much of the aftermath of the killing of Osama Bin Laden Sunday night in Pakistan has consisted of sophomoric chest-thumping proclaiming a twisted version of “justice” that Peterr very eloquently exposed here. There is another trend in the response, however, that is even more disgusting. A number of people involved in the torture program created and implemented during the George W. Bush administration are now trying to claim that Bin Laden would not have been found and killed without torture. Marcy Wheeler was out in front of those claims, debunking them before they came out and has stayed on the task with more details as the torturers continue their spin. The torturers are getting more desperate, and today we have none other than Jose Rodriguez, who ordered much of the torture as head of the CounterTerrorism Center (and then was the one who destroyed videotaped evidence of torture, only to be given a “get out of jail free” card by Barack Obama and Eric Holder), appearing in the press to justify his actions.

We can’t say one way or another whether skilled interrogation would have yielded this information in 2005. It’s possible al-Libi would have successfully shielded it in any case. But if the ISI report is even remotely accurate, it seems clear that al-Libi sat in our custody for six years, knowing of the location that might house OBL, and never disclosed it.

Although there were a few small demonstrations on Monday, Tuesday appears to be quiet in Pakistan on the second day after the US killed Osama Bin Laden just outside Islamabad. Warnings to be wary of reprisals have been voiced by both the US and Pakistani governments and two US consulates in Pakistan have been closed as a precaution.

US policy is unlikely to change. The White House background briefing did state that “the death of bin Laden puts al-Qaida on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse,” and I think that’s true. Terrorism expert Peter Bergen last night called it “the end of the war on terror.” But this event fragments and decentralizes something that was already fragmented and decentralized. And notice that it didn’t take long for the official warnings and calls for vigilance against a terrorist threat to ensue. I can’t envision any serious policy change that will spring from the death of Osama bin Laden. We’re still going to have a substantial force in Afghanistan. We’re still going to undertake covert operations in Pakistan. We’re still going to try to stick around in Iraq. We’re still going to make everyone in America take off their shoes and belts and have their bodies X-ray scanned before they get on a plane. We’re still going to see executives assert grand powers to keep America safe, perhaps even more so now that secret, covert counter-terrorism actions have proven successful.

Something funny happened yesterday.

The House Armed Services Committee had a hearing on Gitmo Detainee Transfer Policy. According to Carol Rosenberg’s tweeting, up to two hours of the hearing was conducted in closed session before the hearing opened to the public and the witnesses explained that the interesting details–like the “recidivists” names and the amount paid to other countries to accept detainees–are secret (meaning they presumably got reported in that secret session).

The word in Yemen as of Friday was that President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 32-year rule was nearing its final days. He entered talks with the opposition to leave the office of the Presidency, if the country could be put into “safe hands.” Saleh had previously offered to step down within a year, but the protest movement rejected anything less than an immediate departure, generally through throwing their shoes at pictures of the President.

News from inside Libya remains chaotic. Gaddafi has phoned in a speech to Libyan television that repeated much of his earlier rant but added: “It is obvious now that this issue is run by al-Qaeda.”