On August 24, 2001 — less than three weeks before the September 11 attacks — Jordanian intelligence reported that al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was considering mounting attacks inside the United States itself. The Palestinian national and confirmed al-Qaeda member had been under surveillance by multiple intelligence agencies as investigations into Zacarias Moussaoui and the search for Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi continued in the background.
Abu Zubaydah would later become one of the most high-profile detainees held by the United States following the 9/11 attacks. According to declassified CIA records, he was transferred to a CIA black site where he was subjected to waterboarding — an interrogation technique that simulates drowning. Under that duress, Abu Zubaydah provided information about other al-Qaeda operatives and plots, including the name of Jose Padilla, who would later be convicted on conspiracy charges related to a so-called dirty bomb plot.
The intelligence from Jordan arrived during one of the most active periods of FBI counterterrorism work in U.S. history. At that moment, agents were simultaneously pursuing leads on Moussaoui — who had been arrested in Minnesota for suspicious flight training — while searching for al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, two future hijackers believed to be in California.
What the Left Is Saying
Civil liberties advocates and Democratic lawmakers have long argued that the CIA's use of waterboarding and other so-called enhanced interrogation techniques constituted torture and violated domestic and international law. Senator Dianne Feinstein, then-chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released a comprehensive report in 2014 concluding that the CIA's interrogation program was far more brutal than previously acknowledged and produced little intelligence that could not have been obtained through conventional methods.
Human rights organizations have maintained that information extracted under torture is unreliable and that the program undermined America's moral standing abroad. The American Civil Liberties Union filed numerous lawsuits challenging the legality of the CIA black site program, arguing it bypassed constitutional protections meant to prevent cruel and unusual punishment.
What the Right Is Saying
Conservative officials and national security hawks have defended the interrogation program as a necessary tool in gathering critical intelligence during an active war on terror. Former Vice President Dick Cheney argued that the techniques used on Abu Zubaydah generated actionable information that helped disrupt further attacks, though he declined to specify exact details for security reasons.
Republican lawmakers pointed to Abu Zubaydah's status as a high-value target — described by U.S. officials at the time as al-Qaeda's number one terrorist — and argued that traditional interrogation methods were insufficient given the threat level. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden publicly stated that waterboarding produced genuine intelligence about terrorist networks that saved American lives.
What the Numbers Show
The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, published in December 2014, ran 6,700 pages. It found that the CIA conducted at least 119 instances of waterboarding against Abu Zubaydah alone between August 2002 and December 2003 — far more than the 83 times initially disclosed by government officials.
According to the report, Abu Zubaydah was held in secret CIA custody for nearly five years before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006. He was never charged with a crime related to 9/11. The CIA has acknowledged that at least 26 other detainees were subjected to some form of enhanced interrogation techniques during the same period.
A 2007 Justice Department legal memo authorized 13 specific interrogation techniques for use against high-value detainees, including waterboarding, stress positions, and sleep deprivation designed to last up to 180 hours.
The Bottom Line
The August 24, 2001 intelligence report from Jordan came at a pivotal moment in the FBI's race to prevent an imminent attack — one that would ultimately kill nearly 3,000 people less than three weeks later. Abu Zubaydah's subsequent interrogation at a CIA black site became emblematic of the post-9/11 debate over national security and civil liberties.
What remains disputed is whether the intelligence obtained through waterboarding justified its use. Proponents say it generated leads that saved lives; critics argue the same information could have been gathered through standard law enforcement methods, avoiding the legal and ethical consequences that followed.
Congress has since banned enhanced interrogation techniques through the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of detainees regardless of where they are held. The CIA black site program was officially terminated in 2009 by the Obama administration.