Intelligence
Revealed:
the true story of 'Maya', the CIA analyst who hunted down Osama bin Laden
Real-life
model for character in Zero Dark Thirty accused of series of bungles and being
an apologist for torture
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Jessica Chastain as
Maya in Zero Dark Thirty Photo: Jonathan
Olley/Universal
By Richard
Spencer, Middle East Correspondent
7:14PM GMT 20 Dec 2014
In the film Zero Dark
Thirty, she was the persistent, conscientious CIA officer who finally tracked
Osama bin Laden to his lair.
In real life, her
identity and current position were carefully hidden: until now. Following the
release of the controversial US Senate report on the CIA’s use of torture and
rendition, she has had her less-than-sparkling record picked over, been dubbed
by the media “The Queen of Torture” and now finally been outed.
While the film’s
portrayal of her as a life-long al-Qaeda expert is accurate, her career is
revealed to feature a series of blunders and accusations of misleading
Congress.
“She dropped the ball
when the CIA was given information that might very well have prevented the 9/11
attacks,” wrote Jane Mayer, author of a definitive history of the agency’s
“enhanced interrogation” practices, in the New Yorker.
“She gleefully
participated in torture sessions afterward; she misinterpreted intelligence in
such a way that it sent the CIA on an absurd chase for al-Qaeda sleeper cells in
Montana. And then she falsely told congressional overseers that the torture
worked.”
As with other
reporters, Mayer acceded to the requests of the CIA not to name the officer,
although she has been identified in other contexts.
However, in response
to Mayer's article and the investigation by the television NBC news channel
which triggered it, the investigative website The Intercept decided to “out
her”.
It said it was doing
so over “CIA objections because of her key role in misleading Congress about
the agency’s use of torture, and her active participation in the torture
programme (including playing a direct part in the torture of at least one
innocent detainee).”
Many of the incidents
involving the 49-year-old career CIA officer have been described before.
However, because of
“redactions” in official reports of CIA activities, few were aware that the
operative featuring in them repeatedly was the same woman.
According to NBC, she
was harshly criticised after 9/11, when it was revealed that a subordinate had
discovered beforehand that two Al-Qaeda suspects who later joined the hijack
team had entered the country, but failed to notify the FBI.
She went on to become
a “key architect” of the enhanced interrogation methods used to attempt to
extract information from suspects - perhaps as a form of compensation.
She personally
attended the waterboarding at a so-called “black site” in Poland of Khaled
Sheikh Mohammed, the Al-Qaeda number three who masterminded the 9/11 attacks,
even though she had no reason, as an analyst, to be there.
She wrote
enthusiastically that Mohammed was “going to be hatin’ life on this one”, but
then accidentally fed the wrong information to his interrogators, who used it
to extract a false confirmation.
The information - that
there was an al-Qaeda cell of African-Americans operating in the US - then led
to a manhunt for black Muslims in Montana.
She also demanded the
rendition of a German citizen named Khalid al-Masri, who was arrested in
Macedonia and flown to Afghanistan for interrogation, though the man of the
same name the CIA was hunting did not have a German passport.
He was released as a
victim of mistaken identity five months later and compensated.
Despite these errors,
she was promoted, and in 2007 gave evidence to Congress on the use of “enhanced
interrogation” in which she insisted: "There's no question, in my mind,
that having that detainee information has saved hundreds, conservatively
speaking, of American lives."
That was the key CIA
claim for the torture programme which the Senate’s latest report dismissed as
“wrong”.
“She wrote the
template on which future justifications for the CIA program and the CIA's
enhanced interrogation techniques were based," the report concluded.
Maya’s abrasive
character is also matched by that of her model, according to former colleagues
who have sprung to the operative’s defence.
“She's an
extraordinarily capable analyst," one told NBC. "She has a caustic
personality, but she is frighteningly intelligent and knows more about al Qaeda
than virtually anyone else at the CIA.
“She's hard to manage
but brings a lot to the table. She wasn't afraid to make mistakes."
She was said to be
"furious" about the Senate report's conclusions.
Another former officer,
however, disagreed. "She should be put on trial and put in jail for what
she has done,” the officer said.
The CIA, meanwhile,
are continuing to insist that the woman not be identified because of a “climate
of fear and retaliation”.
Mayer said the real
purpose was to protect the CIA’s reputation.
“Without names, or
even pseudonyms, it is almost impossible to piece together the puzzle, or hold
anyone in the American government accountable,” she wrote.
“Evidently, that is
exactly what the CIA was fighting for during its eight-month-long redaction
process, behind all those closed doors.”
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