In a December 18 article, Washington Post staff writers Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus wrote that “Al-Qaeda captive Abu Zubaida, whose interrogation videotapes were destroyed by the CIA, remains the subject of a dispute between FBI and CIA officials over his significance as a terrorism suspect and whether his most important revelations came from traditional interrogations or from torture.” However, the following day, in a Post article on the videotape controversy, Eggen referred to Zubaydah simply as a “senior al-Qaeda suspect[ ].” Eggen did not mention in the December 19 article, as he and Pincus had reported the day before, that Zubaydah's importance and credibility had been questioned by some FBI agents.

From Eggen's December 19 article on the news that a federal judge “ordered a court hearing Friday to examine whether the CIA violated a judicial order by destroying videotapes showing harsh interrogation methods”:

The dispute centers on hundreds of hours of CIA videotape showing coercive interrogation tactics used on two senior al-Qaeda suspects in 2002: Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, commonly known as Abu Zubaida; and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and other officials said earlier this month that the tapes had been destroyed to protect the identities of interrogators.

In their December 18 article, Eggen and Pincus wrote:

Al-Qaeda captive Abu Zubaida, whose interrogation videotapes were destroyed by the CIA, remains the subject of a dispute between FBI and CIA officials over his significance as a terrorism suspect and whether his most important revelations came from traditional interrogations or from torture.

While CIA officials have described him as an important insider whose disclosures under intense pressure saved lives, some FBI agents and analysts say he is largely a loudmouthed and mentally troubled hotelier whose credibility dropped as the CIA subjected him to a simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding and to other “enhanced interrogation” measures.

[...]

Bush has sided publicly with the CIA's version of events. “We knew that Zubaida had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking,” Bush said in September 2006. “And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures,” which the president said prompted Abu Zubaida to disclose information leading to the capture of Sept. 11, 2001, plotter Ramzi Binalshibh.

But former FBI officials privy to details of the case continue to dispute the CIA's account of the effectiveness of the harsh measures, making the record of Abu Zubaida's interrogation hard for outsiders to assess.

Further, in a December 11 article, Eggen and Post staff writer Joby Warrick reported that “President Bush and others have portrayed Abu Zubaydah as a crucial and highly placed terrorist, but some intelligence and law enforcement sources have said he did little more than help with logistics for al-Qaeda leaders and their associates.”