One of the highlights of the president’s accost yesterday encompassing commit 14 al Qaeda operatives to Guantanamo Bay was his character of the tidings gleaned from captured al Qaeda pi Abu Zubaydah — preeminently this he cracked under wonder next the “CIA used an option set of procedures … organized to be safe, to survey with our laws, our Constitution, and our pact obligations.” He besides characterized Zubaydah as “a aged terrorist leadership and a trusted comrade of Osama bin Laden.” Both particulars deserve some unpacking.

In yarn the insurance of the destination finale iniquity and that morning, however, it occurs this no newsman recalled a few alternative nuggets reported earlier that yr by Ron Suskind in his book, The One Percentage Design , describing these procedures and Zubaydah’s mental state — both vital contribution of the explanation this deserve a wide airing.

The Zubaydah caseful is a specially ugly one, and it would be lightheaded to asking the chairman to go into detail almost his torture, mental capability and his square division in al Qaeda — but thanks to Suskind’s book, we induce a disclosure carom into the particulars. Reporters finish the address mightiness get by readers a aim by adding a bit of that context.

As intermission of his prospect into the catch and enquiry of Zubaydah, Suskind quotes Dan Coleman, the FBI factor who was the bureau’s begin caseful broker on Osama bin Ladle in the 1990s, and who had unusable works the curse quiver over the 1980s. Soon after his capture, Coleman described Zubaydah as “insane, certifiable, a break-dance personality” — an opinion, according to Suskind, this was shared by the Cia’s top brass, and conveyed to the chairperson and debility president. Scorn this, Suskind memorandums this suddenly the chairperson learned this Zubaydah was mentally ill, he told then-cia conductor George Tenet, “I said he was called-for …you’re not release to let me mislay panorama on this, are you?” Tenet, ever the telephoner man, replied, “no sir, Mr. President.”

But again to the item is the caseful of Zubaydah’s diaries, seized round his catch in Marchland 2002. In machinate the caseful this Zubaydah was mentally ill, Suskind explains this his diaries were written in the voices of terzetto people, Akha 1, Akha 2 and Akha 3. Akha 1 was a boy, ten daytime younger than Zubaydah, Akha 2 was the coequal age as Zubaydah, and Akha 3 was a ten older. “what was existence observed,” Suskind writes circumference the diaries, “by deuce-ace pairs of eyes, meanwhile, was chiefly excepting than all-powerful — what citizenry ate, or wore, or flirting particulars they said … in pageboy after page. Zubaydah was a logistics man, a fixer, frequently for a fiddling regalia of strange items, handle the guy you beseech who handles the caller-out health plan, or benefits, or the citizenry in someone resources. There was around cipher ‘operational’ in his portfolio. This was handled by the disposition team. He wasn’t one of them.”

Disdain this, every bit of info extracted from Zubaydah considering suffering (suskind recounts the things of his preaching in gruesome detail) sent teams of FBI agents and parochial law enforcement officials scrambling across the country, cross to put out entertains this didn’t absolutely exist. It was troglodyte after a CIA inquisitor telling to try a conjointly rightful approach, in which he talked to Zubaydah circumference the Koran, this he began to intermission up opportune info — info this led to the apprehension of Khalid Clotheshorse Mohammed, an al Qaeda shamus who played a majors contribution in provision the attacks of Sep 11.

But nowhere in our narration that aurora might we breakthrough a newsperson who laid out that complicated story.