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MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD

Event
1
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Type of Event: Interview
"Date: January 22. 2004
Special Access Issues: Treat as TOP SECRET
Additional notes: The interview was not recorded
Prepared by: Thomas Dowling
Reviewed by: Yoel Tobin
Team Number: One (Al Qaeda)
Location pentagon
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Commissiori:, Thomas Dowling, Nicole Grandimo, Yoe] Tobin

s chief of the Exploitation Branch of the Defense Intelligence Agency's JITF-
CT. He described. his office as overwhelmed with information but emphasized this was a
good thing. Pers6nally, he wants to see everything, including raw data (e.g.- FBI FISA
take, raw NSA transcripts) but doesn't always get raw material. Overall, his branch's
mission is to "look foivard, not backwards." From his perspective, detainee
interrogations produce relatively little Fintel but lots of other reports.
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Interrogation Methods
OSD is very strict about information techniques.' 'understands that even the use
of sleep deprivation and isolation requires specia approval from the SecDef/DepSec
level. He added that most interrogations do not employ these techniques. Early in the
process, the FBI threatened to prosecute DOD interrogators for using such methods as
sleep deprivation on specific prisoners. That has now been resolved.

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How reliable is detainee information? .
as asked for his assessment of the reliability of information provided by
detainees...1
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How do we know whether the detainee is telling the truth?
aid the first step was to read enough of the interrogation reports on a detainee
to develop a sense of the individual. He then compared the interrogation information
with that derived from other detainees (what he described as "bouncing the detainees off
each other to weigh their credibility") and captured documents.
DOC X
The National Documentation Exploitation Center translates materials and turns them into
TD's or 1IR's for circulation to the Intelligence Community. We had recovered a lot of
Al Qaeda trainin documents, e.g.- notebooks from training courses at the camps. He
cited the capture
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l i as a major success.
However, as with other intelligence organizations, DOC X is overwhelmed by the
quantity of raw information.
What have we learned?
believes that the detainees have given us a good picture of Al Qaeda. Before
9111, there was an informal jihadist network that identified and fed potential
trainees/recruits into the Afghan camps. Some of them- e.g. John Walker Lindh- plainly
got in over their heads and were sucked in ever deeper.
The number of attacks remains heavy, "I am not sure we're winning the war on terror."
He noted in passing tha
\people linked to Al Qaeda'

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I has connections to

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was unsure whether this is the samel 9/11 Classified Information
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