F.B.I. Agents Became C.I.A. Operatives in Overseas Prisons

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — In the torturous past of the U.S. government’s achromatic sites, the F.B.I. has agelong been portrayed arsenic acting with a beardown motivation compass. Its agents, disgusted with the unit they saw astatine a concealed C.I.A. situation successful Thailand, walked out, enabling the bureau to aboriginal deploy “clean teams” untainted by torture to interrogate the 5 men accused of conspiring successful the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But caller accusation that emerged this week successful the Sept. 11 lawsuit undermines that F.B.I. narrative. The 2 quality agencies secretly arranged for 9 F.B.I. agents to temporarily go C.I.A. operatives successful the overseas situation web wherever the spy bureau utilized torture to interrogate its prisoners.

The once-secret programme came to airy successful pretrial proceedings successful the decease punishment case. The proceedings are presently examining whether the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 plot, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and his 4 co-defendants voluntarily confessed aft years successful the achromatic tract network, wherever detainees were waterboarded, beaten, deprived of slumber and isolated to bid them to comply with their captors’ wishes.

At contented is whether the subject justice volition exclude from the eventual proceedings the grounds of F.B.I. agents who questioned the defendants successful 2007 astatine Guantánamo and besides forbid the usage of reports that the agents wrote astir each man’s relationship of his relation successful the hijacking conspiracy.

A seasoned Guantánamo prosecutor, Jeffrey D. Groharing, has called the F.B.I. interrogations “the astir captious grounds successful this case.” Defense lawyers reason that the interrogations were tainted by the years of torture by U.S. authorities agents.

In unfastened tribunal connected Thursday, different prosecutor, Clayton G. Trivett Jr., confirmed the antithetic arrangement, successful which 9 F.B.I. agents were “formally detailed” to the bureau “and frankincense became a subordinate of the C.I.A. and worked wrong C.I.A. channels.”

He said that the agents served arsenic “debriefers,” a C.I.A. word for interrogators, and questioned achromatic tract prisoners “out of the coercive environment” and aft the usage of “E.I.T.s.”

E.I.T.s, oregon enhanced interrogation techniques, is simply a C.I.A. euphemism for a bid of abusive tactics that the bureau utilized against Mr. Mohammed and different prisoners successful 2002 and 2003 — tactics that were past approved but are present illegal. They see waterboarding, achy shackling and isolating a captive nude, shivering and successful the acheronian to interruption his volition to defy interrogation.

Mr. Trivett offered nary precise clip play but made wide that the F.B.I. agents were absorbed by the C.I.A. sometime betwixt 2002, erstwhile the achromatic sites were established, and September 2006. On their instrumentality to the F.B.I., they took connected the presumption of C.I.A. assets, helium said, and truthful their identities are classified.

Five of the 9 agents had roles successful the interrogations of immoderate of the defendants successful the case, Mr. Trivett said, and their names person been provided to defence lawyers connected the ground that they not beryllium disclosed.

The F.B.I. declined to remark connected the arrangement, arsenic did the C.I.A.

A defence lawyer, James G. Connell III, added much details successful the aforesaid tribunal hearing.

He said that the 9 agents “stopped being F.B.I. agents and became C.I.A. agents temporarily” nether a memorandum of knowing that established a antithetic statement than the much emblematic duty of a typical of 1 instrumentality enforcement bureau to enactment retired of the enactment of another.

A erstwhile C.I.A. historian, Nicholas Dujmovic, said determination was a precedent for “taking employees from different authorities bureau and rapidly making them C.I.A. employees for circumstantial functions.”

In the 1950s, the C.I.A. transformed U.S. Air Force pilots into C.I.A. employees during their stints flying U-2 spy planes and past returned them to the Air Force without the nonaccomplishment of seniority oregon benefits. “President Eisenhower thought it was important that U-2s not beryllium piloted by U.S. subject pilots,” Dr. Dujmovic said. The process was called “sheep dipping,” helium said.

Earlier grounds showed the F.B.I. participating remotely successful the C.I.A. interrogations through requests sent by cables to the achromatic sites seeking definite accusation from circumstantial detainees, including Mr. Mohammed aft helium was waterboarded 183 times to unit him to talk.

The pretrial hearings are successful their ninth twelvemonth and the subject judge, Col. Matthew N. McCall of the Air Force, is the 4th justice to perceive grounds astatine Guantánamo. In arguing implicit imaginable proceedings evidence, the prisoners’ lawyers person repeatedly accused prosecutors of redacting accusation that the defence needs to hole for the superior trial. In the subject commissions, prosecutors are the gatekeepers of imaginable proceedings grounds and tin withhold accusation they deem not applicable to the defense’s needs.

In 1 example, Mr. Connell showed the justice a November 2005 cablegram the F.B.I. sent to the C.I.A. that contained questions for 3 of the defendants portion they were successful a achromatic tract — retired of scope of the courts, lawyers and the International Red Cross.

The F.B.I. released the cablegram to the nationalist this period nether an enforcement bid by President Biden to declassify accusation astir the F.B.I. probe of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Connell had earlier received a mentation of the aforesaid cablegram from prosecutors. But it was truthful redacted that it obscured the information that the F.B.I. wanted Mr. Mohammed and the different defendants questioned successful the achromatic sites.

Mr. Trivett sought to play down the disclosure of the F.B.I.-C.I.A. collaboration arsenic regular concern astatine a clip erstwhile the U.S. authorities was devoting tremendous resources to investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. “This is not immoderate large bombshell,” helium told the judge.

A lawyer for Mr. Mohammed, Denny LeBoeuf, formed the collaboration arsenic portion of a conspiracy to represent F.B.I. accounts of interrogations of the defendants astatine Guantánamo successful 2007 arsenic “clean squad statements,” a instrumentality enforcement expression.

“They were ne'er clean,” Ms. LeBoeuf said. “Torture isn’t clean. It is filthy. It has sights and sounds and consequences.”