Enhanced Interrogation Techniques Exposed (Sort Of)
There is a lot to chew on in the long-awaited (but heavily redacted) 2004 CIA Report on Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs) used in the CIA’s counterterrorism intelligence and detention activities. The ACLU sued to get this report released.
The gumshoes at The Washington Independent are doing a much better job distilling this thing, but a few nuggets jumped out at me during a first read. First, this foreshadowing, given the AG is reportedly seeking a special prosecutor to go after interrogators:
(From page 91; redaction noted): During the course of this review, a number of Agency officers expressed unsolicited concern about the possibility of recrimination or legal action resulting from their participation in the CTC (Counterterrorist Center) Program. A number of officers expressed concern that a human rights group might pursue them for activities (redacted). Additionally, they feared that the Agency would not stand behind them if this occurred.
One officer expressed concern that one day, Agency officers will wind up on some “wanted list” to appear before the World Court or war crimes stemming from activities (redacted). Another said, ‘Ten years from now we’re going to be sorry we’re doing this … [but] it has to be done.” He expressed concern that the CTC program will be exposed in the news media and cited particular concern about the possibility of being named in a leak.” (pg 94) (the rest of this section is heavily redacted)
Then, it looks as though the age-old question of whether EITs (torture) really works is still left unanswered. Sorry Dick Cheney. After several paragraphs pointing out that detainee information has been helpful in fingering terrorists, the report comes to this conclusion:
Inasmuch as EITs have been used only since August 2002, and they have not all been used with every high value detainee, there is limited data on which to assess their individual effectiveness. (pg 89)
Bottom line?
The EITs used by the Agency under the CTC Program are inconsistent with the public policy positions that the United States has taken regarding human rights. This divergence has been a cause for concern to some Agency personnel involved with the program. (pg 91)
Meanwhile, Daphne Eviatar explores how DOJ lawyers appear to be up to their necks in this.
UPDATE: Great breakdown of the report and implications from Glenn Greenwald here.
Of course, this CIA witch hunt is a gigantic red herring to distract from Obama’s plummeting poll numbers. Why not investigate Holder for his malfeasance in recommending pardoning Marc Rich to BJ for a pardon? Isn’t White House supervision of a special “interrogations unit” that will play pattycake with suspects rather than subject them to the same conditions they put upon innocent people even more ridiculous than ? We know where this entire bogus snipe hunt—both the specious “investigation” and the new “interrogation units” will go, with “revelations” coming out in dribs and drabs to distract the public from this POTUS’s socialist agenda. Obama wants to change the public discourse with factitious detours away from his ObamaCare as it heads down the toilet into the sewage tank where it belongs. He’s “flooding the zone” with distractions to keep whack-jobs on the left from pillorying him in the press.
And “Green Czar” Van Jones is a self-proclaimed Maoist subversive traitor whose Color of Change is a version of ACORN or SEIU, dedicated to looting the public treasury following the rules of Chicago “Early and Often” political rules.
Kelley I believe that several leaks have indicated that the IG report determined that there is no evidence that torture produces good intelligence, though it is a bit hard to tell from the redacted version that appeared yesterday.
But the real problem here is accountability, not torture per se. One expects an intelligence service to do unsavory things at times but there has to be a rational process to control what is done and how it is carried out. If a Director of Central Intelligence or the President authorizes torture and the deed eventually surfaces in the media with extremely unfortunate consequences then the man who made the decision should be on the spot and should accept full responsibility, not necessarily the drone who carried it out.
As Truman put it, “The buck stops here” but there has been no sense of that in American politics for a long long time. No one is ever held accountable for anything unless he is so stupid as to stash a couple of hundred thou in bribes in his refrigerator freezer. There is no evidence whatsoever that the special prosecutor appointed by Holder will go after any big fish. In all likelihood, he will not even look in that direction. Some small guys will be hung out to dry, for sure, while the rest enjoy their ample pensions and book royalties. Anyone who expects Obama to go after senior officials from the Bush administration is dreaming.
That said, it is clear from the IG report that individual interrogators knew that they were doing wrong and there should be some kind of reckoning. I am even more astonished by the presence of medical doctors supervising the procedures. There is something very wrong about a government agency that asks its employees to engage in such heinous behavior on a systematic basis and something even worse about elected officials and government lawyers who approve it, Until this particular Augean stable is swept out it will be very hard to believe that our government is anything but a kleptocracy or some kind of an asylum in which the inmates rule.
“Of course, this CIA witch hunt is a gigantic red herring to distract from Obama’s plummeting poll numbers”
Investigating and prosecuting government officials in considerable positions of power who commit felonies is… a red herring? It is your contention that our government should not be subject to our laws? You are, then, by definition, a totalitarian?
@S.L. Toddard – pull your head out. We are pointing out the timing of this “investigation”, not the relative merits of the case.
@Philip Giraldi – hey no worries about the anti-war rabids getting co-opted… Unless you notice that Obama hasn’t gotten any laws passed to prevent himself from doing the stuff Bush did. And unless you notice that “High Value Target Interrogation” will now be closely supervised by the White House. Very innocuous, unless you notice the “Deputy Press Secretary” mumbling about the “New Scientific Methods” that will be used to gain better information.
Anybody with the least bit of curiosity about what “New Scientific Methods” help you read the ARMY FIELD MANUAL and the MIRANDA WARNING to an enemy? Anybody here that is capable of anything except the mind-numbing “hate neocons and amerika first”?
Hey Barney if we could somehow recycle the caca that you come out with we could sell it for fertilizer and make a fortune. I don’t even known what “no worries about the anti-war rabids getting co-opted” means and I fail to understand how you seem to miss the frequent and often virulent criticism of Obama on this website and in TAC. If you think a true conservative is measured by willingness to kill tribesmen in central asia and attach electrodes to someone’s genitals then I think you have a somewhat peculiar way of looking at the world, to say the least.
OK, a couple of questions—I don’t see any “hate neocons and amerika first” in Girardi’s post–are we not correct in seeking accountability, especially if laws were broken? And daveinbocca—I don’t like Rich’s pardon either, but leaving that aside, how is it a witch hunt? If laws were broken, especially ones concerning torture, shouldn’t we look into that? And how does releasing this stuff now (when the report might have actually just been finished) help Obama any more that a month or 6 months from now? Just curious.
Oh, and one more thing—aren’t the “relative merits” of this case, governmental law-breaking and torture, possibly of innocent people, more important the the possibility of a little political cover for sliding poll numbers?
And while the timing of any government report can be questioned, aren’t the “relative merits” of CIA torture a little more important the a little political polling cover?
sorry about the double posting, these are my first.
“We are pointing out the timing of this “investigation”, not the relative merits of the case.”
OK – so you agree, then, that officials who broke our most serious laws in the most degraded, barbaric, un-American fashion by authorizing torture and by torturing *suspects* should be investigated and, if found guilty, prosecuted and convicted, correct?
“The timing”. There is no such thing as a “bad time” to root out war criminals who break our laws, defy our Constitution and soil our honor. And that’s not to mention that Obama is – in cowardly beltway fashion – bending over backwards to avoid investigating and prosecuting the most elite officials who are most responsible and instead opting to toss out a few low-level, insignificant foot-soldiers, thereby advocating a two-tiered justice system whereby regular people are subject to one of the harshest criminal justice systems in the world while the most powerful elites live and act entirely beyond the reach of law. This makes him an accessory after the fact to the crimes committed by Bush’s torture regime and in violation of the Convention Against Torture, signed into law by President Reagan.
“Unless you notice that Obama hasn’t gotten any laws passed to prevent himself from doing the stuff Bush did”
There is no need to “pass laws” to outlaw TORTURE – they are (obviously) already on the books – thus rendering George W Bush a war criminal. Did you believe torture to be legal in the U.S.? The Convention Against Torture – signed by Reagan – states:
“Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction”
“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”
“An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture. . . .”
“Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture”
Obama has *no choice* – he is *compelled by law* to investigate and prosecute:
“The State Party in territory under whose jurisdiction a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is found, shall in the cases contemplated in article 5, if it does not extradite him, submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution.”
Should he fail to do so he will be in violation of the “supreme Law of the Land” per Article Six of the Constitution.
Mr Giraldi, you said,”…you think a true conservative is measured by willingness to kill tribesmen …and attach electrodes”.
You DO realize the difference between your fantasy and reality? I never said anything like that. That was completely YOUR construction.
S.L. Toddard, you said, “OK – so you agree, then, that officials who broke our most serious laws in the most degraded, barbaric, un-American fashion by authorizing torture and by torturing *suspects* should be investigated and, if found guilty, prosecuted and convicted, correct?”
YOU made all that up, and you and I would agree on very little.
I am disappointed, Mr Giraldi, that you don’t understand “co-opted”, because you are starting to sound like them.
And S.L. Toddard, here is where we disagree with your people. You have no allegience to the rules of logic, nor honesty, and you would take my money and spend it on your purposes, in the same way you would try to “hijack” my opinion, or put words in my mouth.
I am against torture. I am as mystified by failure to bring these people to account, as I am that Valerie Elise Plame was allowed to run a rogue op without spending the rest of her life in prison.
Mr Giraldi, I never helped anyone torture anyone. So I don’t have a sense of guilt that makes me beat everyone around me, for the rest of my life. I think I would have had the courage to refuse to participate, both as a soldier in the 60′s, and later if I had been a member of the CIA. I say that, not with a sense of superiority, but as a simple matter of “luck of the draw”. I was never in that situation, and I am NOT guilty of many of the things your LIB brothers and sisters would like to accuse me of.
“YOU made all that up, and you and I would agree on very little”
Yes, I made up that question. That is why I put my name to it and did not garnish it with quotation marks or a footnote. What is your answer?
“And S.L. Toddard, here is where we disagree with your people. You have no allegience to the rules of logic, nor honesty, and you would take my money and spend it on your purposes, in the same way you would try to “hijack” my opinion, or put words in my mouth”
An odd site to frequent for someone with such a low opinion of Conservatives, and with such a distorted view of Conservatism. What “we” want to do with your money is next to nothing – for the most part we want you to spend it as you see fit. Nor did I “hijack” your opinion, or put words in your mouth – it was a question. Note the question mark at the end.
“I am against torture. I am as mystified by failure to bring these people to account, as I am that Valerie Elise Plame was allowed to run a rogue op without spending the rest of her life in prison”
OK – so you agree, then, that officials who broke our most serious laws in the most degraded, barbaric, un-American fashion by authorizing torture and by torturing *suspects* should be investigated and, if found guilty, prosecuted and convicted, correct? It is a yes or no question.
S.L.Stoddard wrote, “There is no such thing as a “bad time” to root out war criminals who break our laws, defy our Constitution and soil our honor.”
Of course there are better or worse times to air out dirty linen to the world. The fact that agents of the US Government over-stepped their orders is deplorable. But the desire of this administration to indulge its hatred of the intelligence services, the police and the military at the expense of our “war” efforts, is childish, destructive and unworthy of serious leadership.
I know what it’s like to apprehend and interrogate people with an ACLU proxie government looking over my shoulder. If Holder has his little dog and pony show, whatever tough, risk-taking element we have left in the fight to prevent another 9/11 will take a hike or take a siesta.
So my answer to the question that you keep putting to Barney Rebble is, no. These people have gone through several layers of review already. If you feel as deeply about the spirit of double jeopardy as you do about other principles you’ll find some other hobby horse. People who go to far in a just cause should get pink slips, not perp-walks for the edification of the left.
“The fact that agents of the US Government over-stepped their orders is deplorable”
The problem isn’t that they “overstepped their orders”, it’s that they committed war crimes. The *orders themselves* are crimes. Being ordered to torture is itself a crime, and an order to torture “may not be invoked as a justification of torture”.
That being said it would be far more just to prosecute only the architects of the policy and those who made the orders than only those who carried them out.
“If Holder has his little dog and pony show, whatever tough, risk-taking element we have left in the fight to prevent another 9/11 will take a hike or take a siesta”
Yes – that is the point. To end the illegal, un-American, unpatriotic torture regime, close our torture chambers and restore the Rule of Law.
“If you feel as deeply about the spirit of double jeopardy”
I don’t think you understand what “double jeopardy” means. These men have not been tried for their atrocities. It is quite simply a violation of our most serious laws as well as the most fundamental rules of human decency to wring confessions from people by freezing them into hypothermia, by hanging them from shackles until their shoulders dislocate, by threatening to rape their wives and daughters. We are a nation that tortures people *to death*; over a hundred people have been murdered during “harsh interrogations” in our torture chambers – people captured far from any battlefield and convicted of no crime, people never even tried. That is the real crime – that America has become so debased, soulless and barbaric that it tortures as a matter of policy; that America blithely commits atrocities that its people support and excuse.
Thomas, you’re in a losing battle, when you try logic on a deceptive person. The agenda you’re up against is a desire to hurt Cheney, then Bush, then the GOP, then the US itself.
The well-meaning anti-war .coms are being used towards this agenda.
The funny thing is that the “hate Bush/Cheneys” are being used by the current administration to smokescreen their mis-steps.
Look for “much sound and fury” (in the Shakespearian sense), and for one or two peons to get hung out to dry, while the “Independent Prosecutor” cries “it’s just too bad we can’t get Bush/Cheney”, and for both the anti-wars, and the stealth-anticonservatives, to scream in the pain of unfulfillment when the dust settles.