RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
We're going to take a closer look now at what is known about those 14 terrorist suspects once held in secret CIA prisons, now incarcerated at Guantanamo. Mary Louise Kelly is NPR intelligence correspondent joins us. Good morning.
MARY LOUISE KELLY: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: What do we know about who these prisoners are and why they've been kept out of sight for so long?
KELLY: Well, some of them are well known. We mentioned Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and he remains the most senior al-Qaida member captured to date. A few examples of the others - Abu Faraj al-Libbi, he reportedly became al-Qaida's general manager after Khalid Sheik Mohammed was arrested three years ago. Another one, Majid Khan - this is a Pakistani who allegedly was working a plot to blow up gas stations in the United States. Abu Zubaydah, the top al-Qaida facilitator. And the list goes on - there are ten others.
MONTAGNE: And talk about CIA secret prisons around the world. Did we learn more about precisely where they've been held or details of their confinement?
KELLY: There's still no official word on where they have been held. There were some interesting details, though, on how these men have been treated. Yesterday, a top U.S. intelligence official told us that these guys were given regular medical and psychological exams. That they had access to a Koran, to prayer rugs, to DVDs, that they were given access to gym equipment so that they could work out.
And that account - talk about gym equipment - is at odds with what some previous reports about how these high level detainees have been treated, isn't it?
KELLY: It is. Most prominently, you may recall a recent book by the writer Ron Suskind. He is believed to be quite well sourced, that it's believed that he got his information directly from former CIA Director George Tenet. And Suskind has written, for example, about Abu Zubaydah, that he was water-boarded - that is made to believe that he was drowning - that Abu Zubaydah was threatened, that he was beaten, that his medication was in fact withheld. Now, Suskind's account has not been discredited, and it does not square with what we were hearing from officials yesterday.
The president, for example, came out and said very firmly: The U.S. does not torture. He talked about Zubaydah, and we can listen for a minute here to what he said specifically about the treatment of Abu Zubaydah.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking. As his questioning proceeded, it became clear that he had received training on how to resist interrogation, and so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures.
KELLY: That's the president speaking yesterday. Now he did not go into any detail about what those procedures were, but he was very clearly insistent that they were safe and that they were legal.
MONTAGNE: Well, let's turn to what these men ended up telling CIA interrogators. The president says it was quite a bit.
KELLY: He laid out a really remarkable chain of arrests, starting apparently with the arrest of Abu Zubaydah. The account that the president provided yesterday goes that Abu Zubaydah, shortly after he was captured, provided a key detail, and that detail was that Khalid Sheik Mohammed's alias was Muqtar(ph). And we're told that this, combined with other tips, helped security officials track down Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
And then, once he was captured, he mentioned another of the terrorists, Majid Khan - that was the gas station plotter, you'll recall. That arrest led to the capture of a Malaysian (unintelligible) and on and on and on. So we got many details along those lines. Details of a foiled plot that allegedly involved anthrax, more airline plots. It was really quite remarkable, and quite a remarkable leap. Until yesterday, administration officials had never acknowledged that secret CIA prisons existed, and then we suddenly heard all kinds of detail about not only that they existed but what kinds of intelligence they'd yielded.
MONTAGNE: Mary Louise, why do you think the White House is releasing all this detail and bringing these men into the public eye now?
KELLY: Well, the president says it's because these men had fessed-up what they knew, that the interrogations were winding down and it was time to think about the next step, perhaps brining them to trial. A couple of other factors: The Supreme Court decision of Hamdan clearly forced the administration's hand; that was a big factor. And then there's politics. Democrats and human rights groups were very quick to point out that this announcement coincides neatly with the eve of fall midterm elections.
MONTAGNE: Mary Louise, thanks very much. NPR's intelligence correspondent Mary Louise Kelly. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
KELLY: You're welcome, Renee.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Mary Louise Kelly.
