Ali Soufan

Soufan obtained a confession from Salim Hamdan, accused of being a driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden. Soufan testified before his military tribunal that Hamdan was a hardened terrorist who had possessed advance knowledge of the September 11th attacks.[11][12] He also obtained a confession from Ali al-Bahlul, an al-Qaeda propagandist and bin Laden media secretary accused of making a video celebrating the Cole attacks, and testified at his military tribunal as well.[13]

On May 14, 2009, Soufan testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee for its hearing on torture.[16] The hearing followed President Barack Obama's declassification of what is known as the "torture memos".[17]

Most notably, Soufan claimed in his testimony that his interrogation of Abu Zubaydah had resulted in actionable intelligence, such as the identity of convicted terrorist José Padilla; and that thereafter, when waterboarding was performed on Abu Zubaydah, the flow of intelligence stopped. Soufan's statement contradicts the one made in the "torture memos", which were intent on making a legal case in favor of—and justification for—the use of waterboarding and other so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" (EITs). Soufan re-stated his claims in an April 22, 2009, op-ed for The New York Times entitled "My Tortured Decision",[18] which was published shortly after the memos were released, and similarly two months later.[19]

According to one of President George W. Bush's speechwriters, Marc Thiessen, writing in the National Review in October 2009, both Soufan's testimony and his April 2009 op-ed in The New York Times are contradicted by CIA documents that state that Abu Zubaydah revealed the actionable intelligence only during the CIA's interrogation, which included rougher treatment than the FBI had used.[20] However, in turn, Thiessen's argument is contradicted by the 2008 Department of Justice's Inspector General Report,[21] which quotes FBI sources stating that "Zubaydah was responding to the FBI's rapport-based approach before the CIA assumed control over the interrogation, but became uncooperative after being subjected to the CIA's techniques."

Soufan's argument was also supported by the CIA Inspector General's 2004 Report into the program.[22] After investigating claims about the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques, the report stated that while the regular interrogation approach achieved many successes, "measuring the effectiveness of the EITs, however, is a more subjective process and not without some concern."

The Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility report,[23] published July 29, 2009, states that "the CIA Effectiveness Memo provided inaccurate information about Abu Zubaydah's interrogation." The CIA memo stated that "Zubaydah's reporting led to the arrest of Padilla on his arrival in Chicago in May 2003." However, the OPR report states, "In fact Padilla was arrested in May 2002, not 2003," and so "the information 'leading to the arrest of Padilla' could not have been obtained through the authorized use of EITs."

In 2020, the CIA declassified more of his memoir, which was reprinted in a revised edition.[24]

On May 8, 2012, Bloomberg News published an op-ed by Ali Soufan criticizing a book recently published by former CIA official Jose Rodriguez.[14] Rodriguez's duties included supervising the CIA's enhanced interrogation program. Soufan strongly disputed Rodriguez's claims that the CIA's enhanced interrogation program was effective at securing reliable, useful information.[14]

Soufan questioned whether the marked differences in Rodriguez's description of al-Nashiri's role in the USS Cole bombing from that of the prosecution would undermine the case against al-Nashiri.[14] Soufan wrote that al-Nashiri was the bombing's mastermind; Rodriguez disputed that al-Nashiri was not intelligent enough to be a "mastermind".

In 2017 Soufan founded The Soufan Center (TSC), "an independent non-profit center offering research, analysis, and strategic dialogue on global security challenges and foreign policy issues...".[25] As of 2021, Michael G. Masters is President of the Center, while Naureen Chowdhury Fink is the Executive Director.[26]

Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist with The Washington Post, and an expatriate from Saudi Arabia, who had stirred the ire of the Saudi government, was a friend of Soufan's.[27] When Khashoggi was assassinated in October 2018, Soufan helped erect a memorial to him in Washington DC.

In May 2020, CIA officials contacted Soufan to inform him they were monitoring al-Qaeda militants who were plotting against him.[28][29] He also started to receive threatening messages via social media.[30] Cybersecurity experts hired by the Soufan Group determined the social media threats were orchestrated not by al-Qaeda, as the CIA claimed, but by the same Saudi government officials who had targeted his friend Jamal Khashoggi, prior to assassinating him.[27][31]