Ali Soufan

Ali H. Soufan is a Lebanese-American former FBI agent who was involved in a number of high-profile anti-terrorism cases both in the United States and around the world. A New Yorker article in 2006 described Soufan as coming closer than anyone to preventing the September 11 attacks, even implying that he would have succeeded had the CIA been willing to share information with him. He resigned from the FBI in 2005 after publicly chastising the CIA for not sharing intelligence with him, which could have prevented the attacks.In 2011, he published a memoir, which includes some historical background on al-Qaeda: The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda. In 2017, he published Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State. He is the CEO of The Soufan Groupand founder of The Soufan Center “a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving as a resource and forum for research, analysis, and strategic dialogue related to global security issues and emergent threats.” Ali Soufan is also a Phi Kappa Theta alumnus, recently winning the Kennedy award in 2018.

Soufan was born in Lebanon. He is an admirer of the poet Khalil Gibran. He graduated from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania in 1995, receiving his B.A in political science. He comes from a Sunni Muslim family.

In 1999, Soufan was called to Jordan to investigate the Jordan Millennium Bombing plot. Here he discovered a box of documents delivered by Jordanian intelligence officials prior to the investigation, sitting on the floor of the CIA station, which contained maps showing the bomb sites. His find "embarrassed the CIA", according to a 2006 New Yorker profile of him.

Soufan in Afghanistan (2001)

In 2000, he was made the lead investigator of the USS Cole bombing. When given a transcript of the interrogations of Fahd al-Quso, he noticed a reference to a one-legged Afghan named "Khallad", whom he remembered as a source identified years earlier as Walid bin 'Attash; this helped the FBI to track down Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Following the September 11th attacks, Soufan was one of eight FBI agents who spoke Arabic, and the only one in New York City. Colleagues reported that he would sit on the floor with suspects, offer them tea and argue over religion and politics in fluent Arabic, while drawing out information.

While in Yemen investigating the September 11th attacks, Soufan received intelligence that the CIA had been withholding for months. According to The New Yorker, "Soufan received the fourth photograph of the Malaysia meeting—the picture of Khallad, the mastermind of the Cole operation. The two plots, Soufan instantly realized, were linked, and if the CIA had not withheld information from him he likely would have drawn the connection months before September 11th."

He was tasked with the "intensive interrogation" of Abu Jandal over the course of five days in Yemen, during which time Jandal gave up the names of a number of members of al-Qaeda.

It was his questioning of Mohammed al Qahtani that led to the terrorism charges against Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri in Chicago, whom al Qahtani had mentioned as being a relative.

In 2005, Soufan approached a Florida doctor, Rafiq Abdus Sabir, pretending to be an Islamist militant, and asked him whether he would provide medical treatment to wounded al-Qaeda fighters in the Iraq War. When Sabir agreed to provide medical treatment, he was arrested and sentenced to 25 years' imprisonment for supporting terrorism.

Soufan has been described as having had a close working relationship with FBI counter-terrorist agent John P. O'Neill.

Role in Guantanamo military commissions

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, with advance knowledge of the September 11th attacks.

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.

Ali Soufan resigned from the FBI in 2005 and founded the Soufan Group. In addition he is frequently called upon to serve as an expert commentator. Soufan is a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

Senate testimony

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

Most notably, he 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", which was published shortly after the memos were released, and similarly two months later.

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 New York Times op-ed 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. However, in turn, Thiessen's argument is contradicted by the 2008 Department of Justice's Inspector General Report,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. 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, 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."

Bloomberg op-ed criticizing Jose Rodriguez

On May 8, 2012, Bloomberg News published an op-ed by Ali Soufan, criticizing a book recently published by former CIA official Jose Rodriguez. 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.

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. Rodriguez wrote that al-Nashiri was the bombing's mastermind; Rodriguez disputed that al-Nashiri wasn’t intelligent enough to be a "mastermind".

The Hulu miniseries The Looming Tower is based on Soufan's time in the FBI. He is portrayed by actor Tahar Rahim in the series.

• The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda. W. W. Norton & Company. 2011. ISBN 978-0-393-07942-5.
• Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State. W. W. Norton & Company. 2017. ISBN 978-0-393-24117-4.