By Aram Roston

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In the 2012 Hollywood hit “Zero Dark Thirty,” a red-haired Central Intelligence Agency analyst played by Jessica Chastain travels to a secret CIA prison and watches a colleague waterboard a screaming Al Qaeda suspect, then lock him in a box a little bigger than a mini-fridge, to make him talk.

In 2002, red-haired CIA analyst Alfreda Scheuer, then known by her maiden name Bikowsky, traveled to a secret CIA prison to watch the torture of Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded and locked in a “dog box,” Senate investigators reported.

The Central Intelligence Agency had granted the filmmakers unprecedented access to agency officials, and outlets from NBC News to The New Yorker reported that Chastain’s character was patterned partially on Scheuer, citing her position but omitting her name because the agency said her work was classified.

For two decades Scheuer was a central figure in some of the major controversies of America’s war on Islamist extremist groups, including secret detention centers and brutal interrogations. CIA operatives normally operate in a dark, shadowy world, but Scheuer’s experiences found the spotlight.

Scheuer, who retired in late 2021 from her last role as deputy chief for Homeland and Strategic Threats, agreed to speak to Reuters this season. It’s the first interview she’s ever done, she said, and she decided to speak to make clear she was not forced out of the agency but left on her own terms. By policy, the CIA doesn’t discuss individual employees or confirm whether they worked at the agency.

Over several calls that lasted two and half hours, Scheuer said she couldn’t discuss individual cases because they were classified. In a general sense she stated that the waterboarding mentioned in government reports is not torture. She also said such techniques are possible to work. Scheuer said criticisms of her were largely due to taking on terrorist threats.

“I got bloodied,” she said, alluding to criticism of her agency in government and media reports, “and kept coming back to try again and again to do something. It’s a proud thing that I was not on the sidelines. I didn’t bury my head in the sand.”

The New Yorker once dubbed Scheuer, again citing her position but omitting her name, as the “Queen of Torture,” writing that “she gleefully participated in torture sessions.”

Scheuer called the description that made it into numerous media reports false and caricature. Scheiner believes that the description of a male operator would be different.

“I got that title because I was in the arena,” she said. “In fact, I raised my hand loud and proud and you know, I don’t regret it at all.”

The Senate investigation doesn’t allege that Scheuer tortured suspects. She said her role was as a “subject matter expert,” not an interrogator.

“There is a very clear line between an interrogator and a debriefer,” she said. “A debriefer is a subject matter expert who asks questions.”

The CIA’s press secretary, Susan Miller, declined to comment about Scheuer, but said simply: “CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques ended in 2007.”

Now out of the CIA, Scheuer’s career has taken a turn: She is a “life coach,” running a business called YBeU Beauty, focusing on helping women “look good, feel good, and do good.” It is a world removed from her prior life, with the website featuring photos of her, thoughtful and confident.

“I know what it’s like to leave your comfort zone to try something new,” she writes on the site. “I had finished a three decades + career as a senior government executive leading teams, mostly females, tasked with no-fail missions, taking smart risks, and even making life-and-death decisions. I loved every minute of it.”

‘BUMP IN THE NIGHT’

Scheuer says she was recruited to the CIA while a graduate student at Tuft University’s Fletcher School in 1988 by the now-deceased CIA officer Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, who founded the agency’s Counterterrorism Center. Clarridge was later indicted for perjury over his testimony regarding the Iran-Contra matter. George H.W. Bush pardoned him. Bush was not tried.

In a job interview conducted by phone, she said, “He asked me what the hell was I thinking and why did I want to come work in the center,” the insider nickname for the CIA.

“I believed in things that go bump in the night and I wanted to do something about it,” she said she replied. “He just kind of laughed and he seemed satisfied with that.”

By “things that go bump in the night,” she said, she meant evil, “and it can prevail if good people don’t do something about it.”

In 1990 she became a staffer after working as a summer graduate intern in the CIA. Her initial focus was, according to her, on Hezbollah-sponsored state groups.

This changed. The CIA created a special unit in 1996 to attack Osama bin Laden. This was as a result of the rise of extremism. The “Zero Dark Thirty” main character is thought to be based on an amalgam of CIA operatives, including Scheuer, though she was not central in the quest to hunt down Bin Laden.

The new unit was called “Alec Station,” headed by a CIA analyst named Michael Scheuer. After Michael Scheuer’s departure as chief, she told Reuters that she had joined Alec Station in 1999. She married him in 2014, and he took her name.

Michael Scheuer, who has been a vocal supporter of conspiracy theories in the past and called for President Donald Trump’s imposition of martial law following his election loss, has espoused conspiratorial ideas. He has said QAnon, the bogus conspiracy theory that Trump was battling pedophiles among Democrats, Hollywood and the “deep state,” has often been correct. Michael Scheuer declined an interview request, telling Reuters: “This is her show. I’m not going to participate.”

Scheuer will not say if she agreed with her husband’s ideas but said she debates him on some issues. “He doesn’t always get a fair deal,” she said.

She was there in intelligence battles two decades ago when Al Qaeda grew, plotting to hijack U.S. aircraft and fly them into New York.

Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CIA were meant to collaborate to fight Al Qaeda. However, reports from government reveal that the collaboration was marred by miscommunications and missteps. Federal inquiries found that better coordination could have allowed the U.S. to identify and question terrorists prior to 9/11.

Scheuer joined Alec Station in the role of deputy chief, and later, as its chief, says she.

A 2005 CIA Inspector General report said the CIA “failed to pass the travel information” about Al Qaeda attackers to the FBI before 9/11. “Cultural walls – real and perceived – continued to hamper coordination” between the FBI and CIA, said then-FBI director Robert Mueller.

Scheuer disputes that the CIA was at fault but instead questioned the FBI’s priorities. “FBI was very, very, very focused on building a legal case and not trying to, you know, prevent an attack,” she said.

Mark Rossini was a former FBI agent and worked for the CIA during that time. He criticized this assertion. “She’s flat out wrong,” he said. “What a bunch of insulting horseshit. Holy Christmas!”

‘SOLEMN DUTY’

Al-Qaeda hijackers crashed four aircraft into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th 2001. Soon after, the CIA pushed an “enhanced interrogation” program that rapidly altered the way the U.S. gathered intelligence and permitted torture and a web of secret prisons in Thailand, Poland and Lithuania.

Some details of the CIA’s actions have been exposed in a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation in 2014, and in court cases. The Senate report cites Scheuer over 20 times regarding the effectiveness of the “enhanced interrogation” techniques, though her name is redacted and she is referred to as the “Deputy Chief of Alec Station.”

Abu Zubaydah was the first to be subject to officially sanctioned torture. He was captured in Afghanistan in 2002, and at that time was suspected erroneously of being a key figure in Al Qaeda. Scheuer flew to the CIA’s black site in Thailand, referred to in the Senate report as “DETENTION SITE GREEN,” to watch Abu Zubaydah.

On the spot, interrogators believed that Scheuer had nothing more to offer. But since headquarters wanted the questioning to continue, Scheuer and a legal officer arrived “to observe the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.”

“I won’t get into the details of what I saw,” Scheuer said, but added: “We took it as a solemn duty to get to the truth to save other lives. All the people I witnessed were professional. It doesn’t mean I took any joy in it.”

For 20 days, Abu Zubaydah was subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques on a near 24-hour-per-day basis,” the Senate report found. He was waterboarded two to four times a day, kept nearly naked and locked in a larger coffin-like box or a smaller “dog-box.”

Abu Zubaydah has not been indicted, but he is still held at Guantanamo bay Detention Center 20 years later. Joseph Margulies is one of his lawyers. According to him, classification rules prohibit him discussing with his client if Scheuer was ever mentioned. “This is how torture became embedded,” he told Reuters. “This is, ‘We had to do it.’ Man, that’s how torture became part of American life.”

Senate investigators claim that Scheuer traveled to Poland (to another dark site) to brief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed about the plot to attack the United States. He underwent “standing sleep deprivation” and was waterboarded 183 times.

Senate investigators say Scheuer questioned Mohammed during an intense torture session, after emailing he was “gonna be hatin’ life on this one.” Reuters couldn’t determine who she emailed. Investigators found out that Scheuer had misunderstood intelligence about Black American Muslims in Afghanistan from another prisoner and asked Mohammed about an accusation no one made, namely that he intended to recruit Black Americans for an attack in the United States. According to the report, Mohammed was able to invent such a plot while under torture.

Scheuer claimed that she didn’t make false claims. “The intelligence that we got was exceptionally good,” she said. “And was, I mean, could not be better than from the horse’s mouth.”

She added: “Everything was done with a clear purpose to obtain intelligence that we needed to thwart the next attack and to find the rest of the network. Period.”

Scheuer emerged in the public eye in 2005, after the “extraordinary rendition” of Khalid El Masri, an innocent man. Extraordinary rendition is the name used to describe the arrest and capture of suspects and their transfer to another country without the need for warrants or extradition.

El Masri, a German citizen, was named after a suspect in the 9/11 attacks. The CIA flew him from the Balkans to Kabul and threw him incommunicado into a small cell with a bucket for a toilet for four months, in a prison called the “Salt Pit.” All along, government investigators found, it should have been clear he was the wrong man.

According to reports and CIA officials, Scheuer pushed for El Masri’s imprisonment. A Senate report stated that she wasn’t disciplined despite her strong support for El Masri’s detention. A CIA IG report concluded that Alec Station “exaggerated the nature of the data” linking him to terrorism. Scheuer said she did not want to “relitigate” the matter, but added, “I do just want to communicate that I don’t have any regrets.”

After that case, the press began writing about her, including a 2005 Washington Post story citing her “spiked hair that matched her in-your-face personality.” She said it was telling that news accounts referred to her “spiked hair” style, or, in another case, mentioned “red lipstick.”

Scheuer stated that red lipstick has not been worn by her. “There was definitely a contingent of old school – you know – old boy network types who resented me,” she added.

Reporting from Washington by Aram Rston. Editing by Ronnie Greene)