Accused 9/11 mastermind offers dirt on Gina Haspel

This is a crazy world indeed. From inside his cell at Camp 7, postal address Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who once admitted he was the architect of 9/11 and had participated in a whole lot of other terrorist incidents, including the beheading of an American journalist, has offered to provide a few paras of inside information about Gina Haspel, former deputy CIA director and now nominated to be the frst female director of the intelligence agency. He wants to pass these paragraphs to the Senate comittee examining her bona fides to be the next CIA chief. First of all, I have seen Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in action at the military commission tribunal hearings at Guantanamo where he has made several appearances since he was first brought to the detention camp in 2006. A glass partition separated him from me and the other 50 or so people watching the proceedings from the public/media gallery at the back of the court. Mostly he kept quiet, and wasn't required to answer questions apart from procedural matters, such as at what time he was awoken in his cell and asked if he wanted to attend the latest commission hearing. But on one notable occasion Colonel James Pohl, the military judge, received notification that KSM, as he is usually called, wished to say something. Colonel Pohl decided to allow him to speak because he is the sort of judge who wants to be as fair as possible. But he warned KSM that he wasn't to make any sort of political speech and definitely not to make any reference to his time spent with the CIA in secret "black" prisons where he was subjeced to enhanced interrogation methods including waterboarding - 183 times. KSM duly grabbed his moment and ranted for five minutes about the "millions" of people the United States had killed etc etc. Colonel Pohl looked mortified but couldn't stop him. The point of this recollecion is that, if given a chance to pour dirt on the confirmation of Gina Haspel as the next CIA director, he will once again seize his moment. Gina Haspel in October 2002 was in charge of one of the black prisons where some high-value al-Qaeda suspects were held and given the waterboardng treatment. Ms Haspel has refused to discuss whether she did or didn't supervise waterboarding at the black prison in Thailand. But I know that two of the high-value suspects held there, Abu Zoubaydah and Abd Rahim al-Nashiri, were waterboarded BEFORE she took charge of the prison and not afer she arrived. What type of interrogation she allowed after she took charge we don't know because nothing has been documented that can be unclassified. It's secret secret secret. We don't know for exampe whether KSM ever went to the Thailand prison. In his six or so paragraphs he wants passed to the Senate intelligence committee I have no doubt he will say he can reveal exactly what Ms Haspel did, even if he wasn't there. He and Abu Zoubaydah are fellow inmates at Campt 7, the super-secret camp at Guantanamo where 15 high-value detainees are held, although they are rarely given a chance to chat to each other. But should the confirmation hearing for Ms Haspel include any supposed insights from Khalid Skeikh Mohammed, accused of masterminding the killing of nearly 3,000 people? No is my view. No no no.