Posted By Philip Zelikow
Thursday, April 23, 2009 - 4:27 PM
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One other consequence of the declassification of the Justice Department opinions and the revelation of the CIA interrogation program is a debate on the effectiveness of these methods. Some of my friends are troubled, because they have been told so often that these methods work.
I will have more to say on the topic of effectiveness later. But for now, I urge those following this controversy to read the op-ed piece published in the New York Times today by former FBI special agent Ali Soufan. I met and interviewed Soufan in the course of my work at the 9/11 Commission, while he was still doing important work at the FBI. From my commission work, my fellow staffers and I had direct knowledge about several of the specific assertions Soufan makes in this piece: about Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi Binalshibh, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. My fellow staffers and I considered Soufan to be credible. Indeed, Soufan is fluent in Arabic, and he seemed to us to be one of the more impressive intelligence agents -- from any agency -- that we encountered in our work.
Soufan states, accurately, that some of the CIA claims reprinted in the Justice opinions (and recently repeated in the media) are demonstrably false or overstated. Some of the very claims that Soufan describes were also used, while I was in government, in CIA memos defending the program that were submitted to the White House. Therefore, the declassification of those memos, as Vice President Cheney and others have called for, would only raise questions that would have to be answered with still more disclosures. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence appears to be trying to sort this out.
To be fair to the program's proponents, many successful intelligence cases are accompanied by rival claims about credit, arguments about which agent or which source provided the key information. That is natural and healthy. And sometimes both sides can be right: a successful stream can have many tributaries. But Soufan's piece is a reminder to be wary of such claims, and especially wary about claims on the key point: whether the extreme techniques were necessary to get satisfactory results.
Among the many hidden costs to intelligence collection are ones like this point, which Soufan makes: "An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him." At the 9/11 Commission, we noticed this too. At the time (late 2003), my commission colleagues and I could not understand why this agent was not helping to question KSM. This was part of broader concerns we had about the substantive quality of the interrogations. I raised the issue in writing with the CIA's General Counsel in our efforts to dig deeper into the way the interrogations were being conducted -- a point that I mentioned in this previously disclosed memo.
FBI Director Robert Mueller has said publicly that he does not believe that coercive techniques made the difference in averting any planned terrorist attacks against the United States. Mueller has sweated the details of innumerable leads and cases over the last eight years. So, though he may or may not be right, his opinion is entitled to some attention, and it is not self-serving.
Whether or not torture worked, it's antithetical to the Enlightenment principles--one might say faith--the belief in basic human rights, on which America was founded. Now, America can survive for a good long time not practicing what it preaches. The nation that proclaimed "all men are created equal" survived the hypocrisy of slavery for fully eighty years. But ultimately the tension tore us apart. Just as condoning torture would have done. It is well that we renounce it, and heartening that some like Zelikow tried to stop it even while it happened.
The problem is--a self-examining perhaps self-flagellating Truth Commission seems likely. But what if the results prove to be so hideous, so outraging that a Special Prosecutor is appointed? As a lawyer Zelikow can tell you it won't stop with the little guys. His ex-boss Condoleeza Rice would face the choice: either plea bargain or go to trial on a charge that upon conviction could mean life imprisonment. The former Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, and Vice President, all their key advisors, all their lawyers--all jailed? After a change of administration the entire top level of the previous administration faces jail? What kind of precedent is that?
The Truth Commission should be the end of it, but Obama cannot realistically pardon torturers, and those who conspired to commit war crimes. The law may force his hand; by its terms the war crimes law will not accept a refusal to prosecute. So, as the ancient Chinese curse has it, "we live in interesting times."
"After a change of administration the entire top level of the previous administration faces jail? What kind of precedent is that?"
I'm not sure why you think it is so shocking that a group of lawbreakers should go to jail, no matter if they were the last administration or ten administrations ago.
When Gerald Ford died, I was in the minority for not praising him for his unforgivable pardon of Richard Nixon, whose crimes were greedy pittances compared to what we have been subjected under Bush and Cheney. Had Nixon been held to account, I don't know that we'd be in the position of reviewing eight years of breathtaking lawlessness that we find ourselves today.
You know, last I looked, torture was still illegal in the US, which renders ANY inquiry that leads off with "did torture work" a canard. Robbing a Brinks truck would work to alleviate my money woes. Shooting at point blank range every HIV-infected man, woman, and child in Africa would work to halt the spread of AIDS in the dark continent. But there are very good reasons that those techniques, while admittedly effective, are *not* employed.
The other response is, even if it WAS effective-and there's no reason to believe that argument, considering who is making it-what are we going to do with that information? Are we seriously considering making torture legal? Does anything work go? Why stop at waterboarding? Why not going for electric shocks to the testicles, cigarette burns, gang rape? That would work, too, and maybe faster.
Don't post crap pretending to debate about torture working or not working. I am ashamed that this argument is taking place in my United States of America, and for alone that I will never, ever forgive the Bush administration.
we should always be proud and relieved that there is a debate going on, and reject any attempts to stifle, stop, or shut down discussion because it's politically unsavory.
"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.'"
-Nancy Pelosi
There's pretty convincing evidence that regimes that torture actually experience MORE terrorism. A short description of why is at my blog: http://backchannels.blogspot.com/
Kudos for pushing back against this when you could.
If waterboarding and the worst (let's say) 3 coercive interrogation means were removed, would the American means of "coercive interrogation" still be the same as that used in those regimes? Put another way, is sleep deprivation the kind of torture predominant in torturing regimes, or is torture defined there as something just a bit rougher?
Also, I'm curious what people think should be done when "traditional interrogation methods" have failed-as is the case prior to every case of "torture"/coercive interrogation done by the US?
"Put another way, is sleep deprivation the kind of torture predominant in torturing regimes, or is torture defined there as something just a bit rougher?"
Sleep deprivation through shackling someone to the floor so they can't lie down, or subjecting them to meat locker temperatures while keeping them naked, you mean? Yeah, that qualifies as torture in my book. Next?
"Also, I'm curious what people think should be done when "traditional interrogation methods" have failed-as is the case prior to every case of "torture"/coercive interrogation done by the US?"
That's garbage. Read Soufan and you'll realize that you are talking out of your butt on that one. As for "what we should do if traditional interrogation methods haven't worked, there is no reason to believe-and lots of reasons to disbelieve-that torture would produce the desired results if nothing else has. At that point, it just becomes punishment for not giving up the answers. The question also assumes that the end justifies the means. Would anyone arguing for the right to abuse prisoners allow the gang-rape of their daughter if they thought that was the one thing that would gather the information that was so desperately desired? If you say no, you are as big a hypocrite as has ever walked on this planet.
As far as I've read (and while I've read a lot, I haven't read it all nor do I have access like others), coercive techniques/"torture" etc weren't tried until traditional interrogation methods had been tried already; it was not the intelligence gathering method of choice or done 'right off the bat.' Having said that, I reiterate what I said yesterday...
Once traditional methods have failed, and multiple lines of intel are screaming that there's an attack plot in motion, leaders have a choice:
-continue doing the same thing with the hope of getting better results (ie the definition of insanity I believe)
OR
-step up the coercion interrogation methods from verbal trickery or bribing with popsicles to rougher means.
Where do rougher means end? Apparently the grey line becomes black at waterboarding (thankfully shy of pulling out fingernails, whipping etc).
If that line were reduced to sleep deprivation, or cold/hot room manipulation or something less imposing, I believe that the damage to American morality and prestige would be the same because the same voices crying out over waterboarding would still cry out; that the problem is not hundreds or thousands of people being tortured in gruesome manners, but rather the detention of anyone. To that end, if no intelligence is gathered by traditional interrogation methods, perhaps detainees captured without so much as an armband for a uniform should be summarily executed or handed over to an allied nation that will execute on sight? That is not my preferred means, but it is worth adding to the discussion topic list imo.
Whether coercive interrogation works or not we can debate, but the common denominator is that-in all public docs that I've seen-traditional interrogation methods DID NOT, and discussing the value or charge of coercive techniques cannot be discussed without including that very real common denominator.
Soufan is either credible, in which case you can't make the argument that traditional intelligence garnered no results, or he's not and you can make the argument that no usable intelligence was gathered using traditional techniques. You can't do both.
"Whether coercive interrogation works or not we can debate, but the common denominator is that-in all public docs that I've seen-traditional interrogation methods DID NOT, and discussing the value or charge of coercive techniques cannot be discussed without including that very real common denominator."
Right now, we have *no* idea how many people these techniques were even used on, much less whether or not they gave up info before. We have no idea the extent to which torture was going on inside those CIA secret prisons ("black sites"), for example (although President Bush characterized them in a White House speech as extended sleep deprivation, prolonged forced nudity, bombarding detainees with noise and light, repeated immersion in cold water, prolonged standing, sometimes for many days, beatings of various kinds, and waterboarding). We *do* know what our eyes tell us-about 2000 pictures of prisoner abuse are going to be released in a month, not to mention what we've already been sickened by from Abu Ghraib. Did we try softer techniques on all the people at AG before we piled them naked at top of each other, or deprived them of sleep, or threatened them with dogs, or put them in stress positions-all photographed in glorious color for the world to see? How can we possibly say in ALL those cases, traditional techniques failed? (Which again is not the point, but I'm willing to argue it anyway.) We can't, so we cannot make definitive statements that no one was talking so we had to torture them.
Not to mention, according to the CIA inspector general in 2004, that nothing of value was gained in the act of torture, either. So we degraded ourselves for nothing.
These interrogation techniques were not "extreme" -- they were, in fact, lethal: at least "eight people in U.S. custody were tortured to death" between August 2002 and February 2006, according to this Human Rights First report.
And according to this ProPublica report, we don't know whether dozens more disappeared prisoners are still alive.
Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.
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