“Pressure grows to investigate interrogations,” the New York Times reports.
And why not investigate? Are not answers better than questions?
Here’s why not: In Washington, there’s an old rule that the process is the punishment. You don’t have to convict people of any crime – you don’t even have to charge them with any wrongdoing – in order to wreck careers and ruin lives. You can do that through the declaredly and allegedly neutral method of investigating them. While the investigation continues, they are subject to legal risk. They must pay legal fees out of government salaries. They must suspend other work. All for an uncertain and likely prolonged period of time. Really it might be more compassionate just to shoot them out of hand.
It might be useful here to remember the career of Robert Baer, one of the finest CIA officers of the 1990s. Baer was sent to Iraq in the 1990s to organize a coup against Saddam Hussein. The coup fizzled – and Baer found himself on the receiving end of an FBI investigation on charges of attempted assassination. That’s a fine line to walk between dangerous duty and prosecutable offense! Baer was not charged with any crime. But his career at the CIA ended – and the agency collapsed again into the sluggish torpor that has characterized too much of its history in recent times.
Defenders of the Clinton record in intelligence often argued after 9/11: There is nothing in the rules that forbids targeted effective intelligence operations. But if a bureaucracy is threatened with prosecution if it crosses a line, the bureaucracy will respond by going nowhere near the line. That’s the story of US intelligence gathering in the 1990s. Nobody wanted to face Baer’s fate, so nobody took anything like Baer’s actions – which meant in turn that people with the courage and imagination of a Robert Baer looked for careers elsewhere than the CIA.
Nobody was fired for doing too little to prevent 9/11. But unknown numbers of CIA and Bush administration officials face financial and career destruction for doing too much to prevent the next 9/11.
A message is being sent: Take no risks. Watch your back. Look out for your career first, your country second.
Let us hope that America’s intelligence professionals have the patriotism and courage to disregard this signal. But if they do obey, when the next intelligence failure occurs, let us remember when we are tempted to blame them for returning to their pre-9/11 performance: They were just following our orders.
23 responses so far
1 bloodstar // Apr 21, 2009 at 8:11 am
David, Don’t drink the cool-aid! we’re not asking them to take no risks, we’re asking them to not TORTURE people. Don’t try to recast it as something like sigint where they have to take a risk trying to guess what the meanings of the traffic are. We’re talking about using torture, which has been shown to give a very very low signal to noise ratio. (think of all those women who confessed to flying to their covens and having sex with Satan while under torture, think the percentage of that would really be high?)
Not only a low ratio of useful information to junk, you have absolute proof of the lack of usefulness of Torture (From the NYT):
“Abu Zubaydah had provided much valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsher handling produced no breakthroughs, according to one former intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case. Instead, watching his torment caused great distress to his captors, the official said.
Even for those who believed that brutal treatment could produce results, the official said, seeing these depths of human misery and degradation has a traumatic effect.”
If torture is as effective as they claim, why were there no new breakthroughs when he’d already given up so much information previously? Answer: They’re lying about the effectiveness of torture.
Frum, You’ve got some good points from time to time, but on this one you’re horrifyingly, utterly, absolutely, on the side of evil. and no matter how you dress it up, it’s still evil, and will still corrode the very greatness that makes America the country that others strive to be. We are better than that. We were better in World War II against a much much more dangerous enemy, and we can be better than that today.
2 mlindroo // Apr 21, 2009 at 8:18 am
> A message is being sent: Take no risks. Watch your
> back. Look out for your career first, your country second.
I find this mindset baffling. Regardless of whether you work for the public sector or private company, you are restricted by applicable laws and regulations that should be obeyed. Why should the CIA be any different??
MARCU$
3 krove // Apr 21, 2009 at 8:48 am
No one is asking for the operatives to be investigated. They have already had their punishment in having to endure torturing these people.
Much worse actions were carried out that have been revealed, people died at Abu Ghraib under torture and there has been a systemic cover up on that.
To comply with conventions and treaties that we signed and promised to abide by we must by law investigate and if necessary prosecute those who formed the policy and gave the orders.
If that causes you as a member of the Bush regime to squirm in your shoes then you need to examine your soul on what you personally supported.
4 krove // Apr 21, 2009 at 8:51 am
It’s pretty obvious that members of the Bush regime are running plenty scared of their actions being brought into the light. That’s why cheney is all over Faux noise spewing his usual fearmongering.
I don’t blame them the punishment for torture is pretty severe and it should be.
5 barker13 // Apr 21, 2009 at 9:36 am
Hey Bloodstar… question for you:
Which action is more “immoral” in your book: 1) Waterboarding someone you’re 99.9% certain is a terrorist with blood on his hands who you’re convinced is withholding vital information that may prevent Americans or allied citizens (or soldiers) being targeted, hurt, and/or killed, or; 2) Being the President. Being told by your intelligence and military advisers that there’s a high probability (let’s say 90%-plus) that there’s a terrorist training camp operating in a sovereign foreign state and upon being asked to authorize a cruise missile attack you do so and even if – best case scenario – the attack kills a terrorist or even several or even many terrorists, spouses and children of the terrorists are also killed and maimed.
Just curious.
No “tricks.” No “games.” No “gotcha.”
I understand true pacifism. I’m just wondering – asking you so as to have one example of a response – how many folks who are against “torture” are also against actual killing.
BILL
6 krove // Apr 21, 2009 at 9:48 am
I will try and answer that one.
The difference is Law.
If you have declared war on a country you are entitled to do whatever you need to do within the laws of war and the rules of engagement.
Torture is controlled by domestic law and international treaties. Bushco broke those laws and treaties.
He asked for legal opinions to be written in a CYA effort, guess was ignorant of the laws or as the “Deciderator” thought he was outside the law. A bit like that other Republican criminal Nixon.
So it’s simply a question of legality. No more no less.
I have nothing against using covert methods in field to find and kill terrorists. If they caught Bin Laden I hope they would put a bullet in his brain and bury him where he fell.
What I would not like is for him to be shipped to some black site to be tortured.
7 ottovbvs // Apr 21, 2009 at 10:33 am
I thought Obama had taken a stance against investigating members of the CIA who participated in this activity so I’m not quite sure what this is all about. Presumably David is talking about the folks who authorized this and none of these folks are going to be running CIA field ops or similar so his strictures hardly apply. In my judgement Obama has handled this sensibly. He didn’t really have a lot of choice on releasing the memos given the legal process that was train and most of it was in the public domain anyway. So he did the right thing but it was making a virtue of a necessity really. Judging by his reception at Langley yesterday the CIA seem comfortable with his approach. It is true that in the process he did huge damage to the Bush/Cheney admin’s record and the professional reputations of the guys who drafted these memos. It’s hard to see how you retain respect as a senior jurist when you’ve authorized torture. And none of these other guys like Addington, Yoo, Bradbury etc are ever going to be judge or get chairs at leading law schools. I’m not sure Cheney was wise to jump into the fray either, he has very little credibility outside movement conservatives and by asking for more stuff to be made public he’s opening a Pandora’s box that I’m sure wouldn’t do him any good. Apparently, there is some chance Holder may appoint someone to inquire into all this and if it has to be done it’s probably the best route since any congressional action will inevitably turn partisan which is why Obama has come out against it. At the end of the day it can’t be defended, conservatives are putting themselves in the wrong by doing so particularly since a lot of the defenses are rather trite. David’s that you’re interfering with the govt process is entirely correct but that didn’t seem to worry him when he was pursuing Clinton whose offenses seem very minor by comparison with some of this stuff. Overall, Obama’s right, it’s best that we move on.
8 bloodstar // Apr 21, 2009 at 12:19 pm
barker13 you’re proposing a false dilemma, and the equation is not that simple: From thedailybeast.com
“There are valid reasons why we havent had enough with torture sanctimony, as Christopher Buckley puts it in an article in The Daily Beast, and let me start with the most importantits going to cost us future American lives in addition to the ones weve already lost.
….
As the senior interrogator in Iraq for a task force charged with hunting down Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former Al Qaida leader and mass murderer, I listened time and time again to captured foreign fighters cite the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as their main reason for coming to Iraq to fight.”
So torturing costs American lives, not saving them. Not only that, but as was pointed out before, torture doesn’t provide substantially more information than can be recovered through normal means, the only difference is it may take longer by building rapport and actually talking to the captive.
at the same time, there’s no magic bullet to make someone talk quickly, not if we have to waterboard someone 180+ times in a month. That tells me that he wasn’t talking enough.
if someone is captured and surrendered, then they’re under your care, it is immoral and evil to torture anyone. Even those people who argue that the ends somehow justify the means cannot refute that Zubaydah gave up all his information before being tortured, and that in world war II we didn’t resort to (systemic) torture of POWs even after the atrocities that we saw in Germany or were visited on American Soldiers in Japan.
We are America, we are better than torture.
War is war, and I’m all for bombing and snipers and combat troops to win a war and mistakes will happen. If we make a good faith effort to target military targets, and a mistake happens it happens. but torture wasn’t a mistake, it wasn’t a LT getting angry and taking his frustration out on someone or smacking someone they captured to find out where his other friends were. It was a systematic effort that took place months and years after people were captured, there’s no smoking gun being chased, no ticking time bomb. just people we captured being abused and tortured to no benefit.
9 bloodstar // Apr 21, 2009 at 12:45 pm
another 2 points to consider: Cheney can claim he wants everything released, but it’s a pity the videotapes of the various sessions against Zubaydah KSM and Jose Padilla have all been destroyed.
second: we EXECUTED people in 1946 for the doing the following interrogation techniques http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/WCC/bruns.htm#1.%20THE%20OFFENCES%20ALLEGED:
bread and water
hard beds
dark cells
sleep deprivation
exhaustion exercises
and resorting of blows with a stick (maximum 20 or a doctor must be present)
We used to hang people for resorting to those tactics to get information. and now we simply want to act like it’s just a part of doing business? We *are* better than that. we *must* be better than that.
10 // Apr 21, 2009 at 12:58 pm
barker13:
The only conclusion one can make from your and Frum’s writings is that you believe the U.S. should torture. If that’s how you guys think, then you’re completely alone on this because no elected official or public pundit has come out in support of torture. In fact, both Cheney and Bush clearly said that we do not torture. So, it seems to me that if someone in the government did actually torture (this seems clear), then they did so agains the wishes of Bush, Cheney and every other politician and pundit. Why shouldn’t those persons be held accountable if they committed acts that Bush, Cheney and others believe were wrong?
11 Tom B // Apr 21, 2009 at 1:24 pm
I think the point of David’s column is that Obama stated there would be no investigation, no prosecution of individuals involved. Looking forward not backward, apologize to everyone. That promise will not hold up, the Left wants their pound of political torture, and Obama will give it to them, it was just a campaign promise after all.
To those individuals who think this is the first time, its not. To those who think wars are won on the battle field, they aren’t. In any war ever fought civilians are always killed at a higher number than soldiers. The will to fight, the means to fight are provided via the civilian population. You have to destroy that to win any war. The soldiers may surrender but the civilian signs the peace treaty.
Any political process meant to ease your guilt will not win over or stop the terrorist
12 bloodstar // Apr 21, 2009 at 1:45 pm
It’s not a ‘political process’ to investigate war crimes and torture, nor is it Obama’s call, the AG is supposed to be independent bunch, and despite previous administrations efforts to remove that independence, the AG makes the call on what investigations go forward.
SDspringy I think you’re way off base, people die in wars, lots of people die in wars, I personally have no issue with the firebombing of the cities in Germany or Japan or the nuclear bombings either. There is a huge difference between bombing, attacking and fighting an enemy, regular or irregular. Civilians will die, that’s NOT the issue.
The issue is it’s a stain on the very soul of America that we tortured. You can accept that it’s ok for America to have that stain, I do NOT.
13 krove // Apr 21, 2009 at 2:00 pm
SDspringy,
Obama never promised not to prosecute. What he said was that it is better to look forward than back, however he said that no one is above the law.
He has now stated that no CIA operatives will be prosecuted for following orders though it’s not a defence.
So the outcome is the AG who is independent (or should be) of government will make the call as to who will be investigated. That is exactly right.
14 Tom B // Apr 21, 2009 at 2:03 pm
The naivet is yours Bloodstar. If it happens in Washington its political. Holder isnt anymore independent than the last one. If Obama doesnt like him he is out and it will be political.
The process of interrogation has many forms, your torture is another mans walk in the park. Dont get caught up in the side show, when the rest of the information is out the picture will change. This story will change a dozen times before its over. The left has been howling for blood on this issue and there are plenty of lefties in place now in the administration to provide it. This is political payback, this is political hay, this will be a political sideshow which will drag on till the elections of 2010.
15 krove // Apr 21, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Tweety just asked his guests. “Does the GOP want to be known as the party of tax cuts and torture”? Well that’s about what it will be.
16 krove // Apr 21, 2009 at 2:11 pm
SDspringy.
You are wrong, Torture is a closely defined set of techniques. They are laid down. Water boarding is torture. We the USA hanged Japanese torturers for this very thing. Under the charters we signed (Regan) water boarding is torture there is no dispute on that.
Far worse things happened at Abu Ghraib but all we know for fact is water boarding.
17 ottovbvs // Apr 21, 2009 at 3:29 pm
SDspringy
1:24 PM
..The problem is that it’s not in all in Obama’s hands. My guess is that he will shield the CIA folks for reasons of pragmatism if nothing else. When it comes to the lawyers who wrote these opinions, and indeed political figures like Cheney and Feith, he has no such incentive so he’ll probably just let matters take their course. This is simply not Bush’s DOJ where they just took orders from the white house. The DOJ is and should be a totally independant arm of govt hence the resignations at the time of watergate.
18 ottovbvs // Apr 21, 2009 at 3:31 pm
“”The process of interrogation has many forms, your torture is another mans walk in the park.”
yep waterboarding someone is a walk in the park…..don’t be ridiculous.
19 ottovbvs // Apr 21, 2009 at 4:07 pm
SDspringy
“Holder isnt anymore independent than the last one”
…..And do you have any evidence to back that statement up? You’ve got too used to the idea of hacks like Gonzales who was a third rater who got his state judicial appointment from the Bush’s as an act of political patronage. Holder is in a different league. He was a partner at Covington and Burling. If you don’t know the difference…well there is one.
20 krove // Apr 21, 2009 at 4:54 pm
From June 18th, 2008:
At today’s House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil Rights hearing on torture, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, told Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) that over 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody, with up to 27 of these declared homicides:
NADLER: Your testimony said 100 detainees have died in detention; do you believe the 25 of those were in effect murdered?
WILKERSON: Mr. Chairman, I think the number’s actually higher than that now. Last time I checked it was 108.
NADLER: Colonel Wilkerson, in your prepared testimony, you write that “as I compiled my dossier for Secretary Powell, and as I did further research, and as my views grew firmer and firmer I had to reread that memo (of February 7, 2002), “I needed to balance in my own mind the overwhelming evidence that my own government had sanctioned abuse and torture, which at its worse had led to the murder of 25 detainees and at least 100 detainee deaths. We have murder at least 25 people in detention. That was the clear low point of the evidence.” Your testimony said 100 detainees have died in detention; do you believe the 25 of those were in effect murdered?
WILKERSON: Mr. Chairman, I think the number’s actually higher than that now. Last time I checked it was 108, and the total number that were declared homicides by the military services, or by the CIA, or others doing investigations, CID, and so forth — was 25, 26, 27.
NADLER: Were declared homicides?
WILKERSON: Right, starting as early as December 2001 in Afghanistan.
NADLER: And these were homicides committed by people engaged in interrogations?
WILKERSON: Or in guarding prisoners, or something like that. People who were in detention.
NADLER: They were in detention, not trying to escape or anything, declared homicides by our own authorities.
21 krove // Apr 21, 2009 at 4:58 pm
‘Blunt force injuries’ cited in murder ruling
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
The Guardian, Friday 7 March 2003 08.21 GMT
Two prisoners who died while being held for interrogation at the US military base in Afghanistan had apparently been beaten, according to a military pathologist’s report. A criminal investigation is now under way into the deaths which have both been classified as homicides.
The deaths have led to calls for an inquiry into what interrogation techniques are being used at the base where it is believed the al-Qaida leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is now also being held. Former prisoners at the base claim that detainees are chained to the ceiling, shackled so tightly that the blood flow stops, kept naked and hooded and kicked to keep them awake for days on end.
The two men, both Afghans, died last December at the US forces base in Bagram, north of Kabul, where prisoners have been held for questioning. The autopsies found they had suffered “blunt force injuries” and classified both deaths as homicides.
A spokesman for the Pentagon said yesterday it was not possible to discuss the details of the case because of the proceeding investigation. If the investigation finds that the prisoners had been unlawfully killed during interrogation, it could lead to both civil and military prosecutions. He added that it was not clear whether only US personnel had had access to the men.
One of the dead prisoners, known only as Dilawar, died as a result of “blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease”, according to the death certificate signed by Major Elizabeth Rouse, a pathologist with the Washington-based Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, which operates under the auspices of the defence department. The dead man was aged 22 and was a farmer and part-time taxi-driver. He was said to have had an advanced heart condition and blocked arteri
22 Tom B // Apr 22, 2009 at 12:32 pm
The truth begins to filter out:
From the Washington Post
:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/20/AR2009042002818.html
“Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques “led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the ‘Second Wave,’ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.” KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. “
23 // Apr 22, 2009 at 2:42 pm
SDspringy:
Please explain how torturing KSM led to the disruption of a terrorist plot the FBI broke up BEFORE KSM was ever captured. The plot to destroy the Library Tower was foiled by the FBI in 2002, and KSM wasn’t captured until March, 2003.
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