Right after 9/11, the CIA was given the power to imprison Al Qaeda terrorists, The New York Times' Matt Apuzzo and James Risen report. And the initial plan was to keep those jails in adherence to U.S. standards for federal or military prisons, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee report released this week on the spy agency's harsh interrogation program. But when Abu Zubaydah, a Qaeda logistics planner, was captured in Pakistan in March 2002, he was the first high-level terrorist to be caught. He was kept alone in a cell in Thailand for 47 days while the CIA and the Justice Department debated the legality of using harsh tactics like waterboarding, the Times reports. Then, "for three weeks in August 2002, Mr. Zubaydah was questioned using the harshest measures available, including waterboarding. But the Senate report says he never revealed information about a plot against the United States. The CIA concluded he had no such information."
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