The New York Times reports that “the previously undisclosed arrest of a senior leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq in Baghdad last month provided Iraqi and American security forces with a trove of intelligence that led to the killing of the group’s two top leaders.” The story goes on to state that “the senior American military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, said the raid on Sunday reflected a deepening marriage between American technical superiority and Iraq’s ‘ability to do human intelligence.’”
Human intelligence generally includes interrogations. This revelation raises some important questions:
Was this senior al Qaeda leader interrogated by Americans or by the Iraqis? If the Iraqis conducted the interrogation, did they follow the Army Field Manual? If Americans conducted the interrogation, did the Obama administration use its new High-Value Interrogation Group (aka the HIG) to do the questioning? If not, why not? If the HIG is not going to be deployed for the interrogation of a senior al Qaeda leader, whom exactly is it going to interrogate?