Harsh treatment didn’t get bin Laden

 WASHINGTON – None of the crucial information that led the Central Intelligence Agency down the trail to Osama bin Laden came from coercive interrogation techniques, Sen. John McCain said in the Senate Thursday, contradicting the accounts of current and former U.S. officials.

 McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has always opposed the U.S. use of waterboarding and other abusive techniques employed after the 9/11 attacks – banned by President Barack Obama when he took office – to elicit information from detainees.

 CIA Director Leon Panetta has said some of the information helpful in tracking down the courier who was sheltering bin Laden came from detainees in CIA custody who had been subjected to the techniques. Some former senior officials, including former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, have said flatly that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times, provided the name of the courier. U.S. officials have disputed that, and McCain called it “false.”

 “The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times,” McCain said. “We did not first learn from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed the real name of bin Laden’s courier, or his alias, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti – the man who ultimately enabled us to find bin Laden.”

Tribune Washington bureau