In the newly launched Washington Independent, Spencer Ackerman has an article arguing that, surprisingly, the CIA had no real interrogation capacity prior to 9/11. Worse, after 9/11 they botched the job of building their capabilities:
Despite having nearly no off-the-shelf experience, the CIA was tasked by President Bush to come up with a robust interrogation program for the most important al-Qaeda captives. So the agency turned to its partners for assistance in designing its interrogation regimen: Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia—all countries cited by the State Department for using torture—among others. Additionally, as Mark Benjamin has reported for Salon, two psychologists named Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, who worked as contractors for CIA, helped the agency "reverse-engineer" the military and CIA training on resisting torture for use on detainees. Suddenly, waterboarding, an illegal practice of simulating or in some cases inducing drowning, became an American-administered practice.Interestingly, one place that the CIA didn’t look for help was the place where interrogations have been performed, lawfully, for decades: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "In terms of actual interrogations, when you have a suspect in custody, the FBI does that hundreds of times a day, 365 days a year, for 90 years," said Mike Rolince, who spent over three years as Special Agent in Charge of counterterrorism at the FBI’s Washington field office before retiring in October 2005. "The FBI brought serious credibility and a track record to the table. That said, the U.S. government decided to go about [interrogations] in a different way. The results speak for themselves. I don’t think we need to be where we are."
For an example of FBI expertise in action, see the 60 Minutes piece on the wildly successful non-coercive interrogation of Saddam Hussein.
What does that mean, "the results speak for themselves"? The FBI got Zacharias Massaoui to talk? The FBI got the truth out of Abadallah Higazy? I must have missed that.
Now if you want to say that no one in the whole world has the faintest idea how to get useful information from terrorism suspects, or how prevent recidivism among criminals, or how to teach students to think independently, or how to do anything that requires actual understanding of human mental processes, that is probably true, but not a useful criticism of the CIA or the Bush Administration.
Shorter y81-
Who cares about expertise and experience interrogating prisoners when you can torture an Arab!
What, only one?
Seriously, though, what has the CIA done right lately? I want to think they're concealing their successes and flaunting failures in a devious ploy to make our enemies think we're incompetent.
I want to think that. Would be nice.
The real reason to be against torture for interrogation isn't a moral one, although that is the reason most often cited. Moral reasons can change with circumstances. The real reason is practical - other methods work better.
Under torture, you'll say anything, regardless of whether it is true or not just to stop the pain. And you'll likely lie. After all, they are the enemy, and they remind you of that.
But if instead they can get deeper and convince you that they really are your true friends, or at least that their cause is better or truer than your old ways, you'll be more likely to "turn".
Whatever flaws the FBI may have, its agents are professionals who are generally not amenable to giving up professional standards of conduct for a “gloves off” interrogation program. Some CIA agents unfamiliar with interrogation standards, on the other hand, proved to be willing to implement “enhanced” interrogation methodology specified by the George W. Bush administration. Reportedly military personnel and private contractors also participated in interrogations.
I'm glad that Ackerman defined waterboarding as “an illegal practice of simulating or in some cases inducing drowning.” Enhanced interrogation methods, and beating and other harsh methods ostensibly used to soften up or “prepare” subjects for interrogation, were sometimes used to punish or even execute subjects. FBI agents generally would not be top choices to administer such treatments.
Nelson, it depends on what the goal is. If the goal is to extract solid information, then torture is a bad way to go. If the goal is to terrorize the community of the country/culture/area you've invaded, then it's pretty effective.
Oh, that reminds me, thanks again to all the pseudo-libertarians who helped the Iraq Invasion happen. Just think, we may not have had the very effective Abu Ghraib without you.
Reading this sounds like the same problem the CIA (and a few other federal agencies) have been bogged down in for decades: being tasked with new or different responsibilities, but prevented by virtue of bureacratic infighting and politics from coordinating with agencies for information and learning from other agencies' strengths.
On the other hand, I think this is a canard:
Nelson wrote: Under torture, you'll say anything, regardless of whether it is true or not just to stop the pain. And you'll likely lie. After all, they are the enemy, and they remind you of that.
That depends entirely on whether the interrogators are trained to discern when the subject has likely told the truth, whether or not the subject is likely to capitulate under torture, whether or not the subject is reason to believe s/he will be tortured again if the information is checked and determined to be fraudulent...and whether or not the torturer is merely hoping to get a confession in order to use it for purposes of propaganda or blackmail, regardless of its truthfulness.
All of these factors are agnostic as to the value or morality of torture as an information-gathering technique in general, but there is no inherent reason why it should produce a higher incidence of false information.
sedgequill et al., you are really losing me. It was the FBI who got an utterly phony confession out of Higazy. What is the evidence for their vaunted "professionalism" or the reason to believe that they know what they are doing?
ed - If your goal is to terrorize a community, I suggest firebombing.
"Suddenly, waterboarding, an illegal practice of simulating or in some cases inducing drowning, became an American-administered practice."
Waterboarding seems to me a reasonable means of extracting information. The United States should not be torturing people, but waterboarding is not torture. It is used, for example, on American soldiers as a part of their training.
What's the basis for saying that if an American soldier under orders waterboards a foreign terrorist overseas that it is "illegal?" I'd like to know. What American law is being violated?
And evidently Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave up valuable information after being waterboarded. So the technique seems to work. Of course, confessions extracted by waterboarding have no value.
confessions extracted by waterboarding have no value.
Heck, confessions extracted by ordinary non-coercive police interrogation are often of questionable value; tell somebody often enough that witnesses say he did it, and a false confession is common enough that you really do have to worry about it.
It seems worth noting that Spencer Ackerman was fired by The New Republic. I'm not sure why, exactly, but it seems to have been due to an extremely radical viewpoint that was too far left even for that liberal magazine.
That sort of reminds me of the guy (Izzy?) who was kicked out of Guns N' Roses for bing too reckless and addled with drugs.
I think in these cases the truth is far more interesting than a confession.
It is used, for example, on American soldiers as a part of their training.
"The Navy SEALs once used the technique in their counter-interrogation training, but they stopped because the trainees could not survive it without breaking, which was bad for morale." - Howstuffworks
"I'd like to know. What American law is being violated?"
Doesn't the US code apply outside the country to citizens? Like if you go to Thailand and have sex with underage boys then the US can put you in jail for it? The US Code explicitly makes torture illegal, and so does the Geneva Convention. Until we withdraw from the Geneva Convention and change US code it is breaking the law.
Okay Nelson, I accept the correction. I should have written "It has been used on American soldiers and CIA agents as part of their training." And some reporters have undergone waterboarding willingly.
"Okay Nelson, I accept the correction. I should have written "It has been used on American soldiers and CIA agents as part of their training."
And it was banned as a training technique because it broke the SEALs If the Navy SEALs aren't tough enough to handle it, it's definitely torture.
rwe-
You cannot experience the full hell of waterboarding if you do it 'willingly', because of the features/bugs of waterboarding is that the person being waterboarded is incapable of stopping it.
Up until the Bush Administration, there was no one who argued that waterboarding was not torture. None. Everyone knew it was torture, because it so obviously is. Now the great leader is doing it, and the great leader is incapable of torturing people, ergo, waterboarding is not torture.
RWE,
You state flatly that "waterboarding is not torture." I don't know how you to came that conclusion, but if you're right, why did so many historical torturers use it (e.g. the Spanish Inquisition, the Khmer Rouge ...)?
The consent of an individual to an experience in a controlled environment does not mean the experience is not torture. Consider electric shocks for example.
Can you find anyone who pre 9/11 who thought waterboarding was not torture? We have convicted several American soldiers for waterboarding in the
past.
Were we wrong to do so?
Tom
Well, obviously there is disagreement about what constitutes "torture." So I would offer a definition: Torture is a form of punishment that is likely to inflict permanent physical damage to the detainee. And that should be forbidden. If someone has a better definition to offer, he should tell us.
As for the Geneva Conventions, we ought to abide by them when our enemies do the same.
From what I have read, waterboarding--while certainly terrifying--is very unlikely to do any permanent physical damage to the detainee, and is therefore not torture by the definition given above (if I found out otherwise, I would agree that it should be banned).
Now, reasonable people can disagree. My own preferred candidate, John McCain, disagrees with me. But we ought to guard against binding our hands so that we can not fight our enemies effectively. When we are fighting enemies that do not shrink from cutting the heads off of Americans with chainsaws while they are still alive, we ought not to shrink from giving them a scare in the water.
Anyway, I have things to do tonight, and must therefore leave the discussion (however reluctantly).
y81,
I didn't mean to appear to give the FBI a whitewashing. There have been many instances of overzealousness and misconduct by FBI personnel, and unconstitutional post-9/11 patterns of conduct have deserved all the scrutiny and denouncement they've received. (You prompted me to revisit the Higazy case; I found this JURIST piece quoting Higazy's attorney to be helpful.) But FBI culture and training, being oriented heavily toward criminal investigations aimed at producing convictions, tend not to make FBI personnel the type of agent executives bent on torture and other “enhanced” interrogation methods would prefer for “high value” sessions.
The law being violated is the 6th Amendment of our Constitution, which holds signed treaties (such as the Geneva Conventions) to be the Supreme Law of the Land. At the time the torturing was done, there was also a US law that called for the death penalty for Geneva Conventions violators. That was back when we were America though, not neo-Nazi Germany.
Waterboarding is torture. Only a complete idiot would declare otherwise. (Did you say that waterboarding isn't torture? Then I really mean that YOU are an idiot.)The reason the military used it for training purposes was precisely because it was torturous-a way of emulating the interrogation techniques of countries who don't quibble about having to chop off the occasional finger to acquire information. Anything that induces excruciating agony and that is potentially lethal is torture. What baffles me is why anyone would feel obligated to try to etch the technique out of the classification of "methods of torture" to begin with. What agenda do you hope to further by conveniently rewriting your personal definition of torture to exclude those activities your country participates in? It wins you nothing. You can make the argument that you think the government should be able to employ torture as a part of its suite of interrogation techniques (an unfortunately widely held opinion among the enthusiastically sadistic conservative underverse), or you can argue the opposite. But this sickly Orwellian redefinition of what constitutes torture just muddies the debate and does nothing to advance either side of it.
That depends entirely on whether the interrogators are trained to discern when the subject has likely told the truth, -- anony-mouse
You mean like how in "Meet the Parents" Robert DeNiro could tell whether or not Ben Stiller was lying just by holding his hands, palms up? But Robert DeNiro was CIA! Clearly they are getting such training. Given that, how come the CIA still hasn't found out whether or not Roger Clemens really did take steroids? Or whether George Bush went AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard? Or who killed the Kennedys? I mean, telling whether or not someone is lying is a cinch. You just have to [redacted] and [redacted] and then [redacted]. Works every time.
Thanks for reinforcing to me the wisdom of my choice to watch The Karate Kid instead of the SOTU last night.
Certain Iberians in the 15th century seemed to confess their various transgressions after a little waterboarding. More recently, Subcontinental cabbies did too. See, it works!
If Spencer Ackerman really wonders why the CIA failed to go to the FBI for advice on interrogation, or anything else, then he ought to read Mark Riebling's Wedge, a history of CIA-FBI relations, which will enlighten him. As a defense policy analyst he probably ought to read it anyway. The short answer is that the two agencies hate each other and can't cooperate on anything. (Full disclosure: Riebling is a friend of mine.)
"The law being violated is the 6th Amendment of our Constitution, which holds signed treaties (such as the Geneva Conventions) to be the Supreme Law of the Land."
I believe the Geneva Conventions apply only to POW's, not unlawful enemy combatants. Terrorists, not being members of any national army, do not qualify as POW's. If there was any doubt about this, one has only to look at the Military Commisions Act of 2006.
And, by the way, the 6th Ammendment doesn't say anything about treaties. Did you actually read it?
Terrorists, not being members of any national army, do not qualify as POW's. - rwe
Right, and how do you know they're terrorists until you interrogate 'em? And of course they'll lie and say they're not, so you have to waterboard 'em. And funny enough, when you waterboard 'em, they all say they're terrorists.
Catch-22! It's the best catch there is.
Yes, as part of training them to resist torture. Not sure how this argument ever gained traction.
That's John Yoo's definition. It's not the definition the U.S. government has used for hundreds of years, including when it was prosecuting Americans for waterboarding prisoners.
"I believe the Geneva Conventions apply only to POW's, not unlawful enemy combatants."
It's Bush who decided to call them unlawful enemy combatants, instead of POW's but this is really semantics. Just like calling torture "enhanced interrogation techniques", a term that the Nazis coined to explain their torture of prisoners. The POW status is a way to hold somebody without bringing them to trial, because it's usually obvious that the guy in a German uniform shooting at you is the enemy. The point being that they are going to be held until the war is over and then freed. If they aren't POWs then they are criminals and need to be brought to trial.
We are also held to the Geneva Conventions by Article 6 of the Constitution.
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
Also, all the people I'm aware of who have been voluntarily waterboarded have unequivocably called it "torture".
Thanks rwe, because some of us had some doubts about whether you were a moronic troll or just merely confused. Now we have that all cleared up! Thanks!
Interrogation is easy!
Baggins!!!! Shire!!!!!
Brooksfoe, as I understand it, the Military Commisions Act recognizes the authority of the President and the Secretary of Defense to set up a tribunal to determine whether someone is an "unlawful enemy combatant." You might not like that, but it's the law.
As I said, confessions extracted through waterboarding have no value, but if someone is captured on a battlefield firing on American troops and is not wearing any national uniform, we have good reason to call him a terrorist (or unlawful enemy combatant). There is no catch 22, we just need to open our eyes. And, of course, a "competent tribunal" should make the determination.
"Seriously, though, what has the CIA done right lately? I want to think they're concealing their successes and flaunting failures in a devious ploy to make our enemies think we're incompetent.
I want to think that. Would be nice."
Posted by Rob Lyman
To a large extent, that is true. Consider the Alrich Ames mess. What often gets lost was how successful the CIA had been at turning large numbers of Soviet personel. The fact that there were so many Soviet traitors that Ames could reveal shows success, but it was success that could not be revealed until there was an embarrassing failure.
A success that was actually allowed to be revealed was the early invasion of Afghanistan. The CIA were the first ones in. Large numbers of men went in with bags of money and communications gear and bribed the many disperate factions into uniting against the Taliban, coordinated their activities and coordinated with US air power. These were volunteers who were informed that there was less than a 70% expectation of surviving the mission.
They succeeded in securing sufficient airfields and the tactically necessary territory around those airfields so that an airlifted invasion could take place.
One last word on the subject: I do think there are two weighty arguments against waterboarding:
1) The practice damages our reputation overseas and makes it more difficult, even for freindly foreign leaders like Howard and Blair (both now out of power), to ally with us. It might well be that, as John McCain argues, the diplomatic costs outweigh the benefit of any information obtained.
2) There is always a possibility that the person detained is innocent. In that case we would be inflicting a fair amount of pain on a person who has done no wrong. This cannot be dismissed lightly.
So, given these objections, it might be wiser not to waterboard anyone. Without better information about the quality of the intelligence obtained, it is difficult for the layman to weigh the costs and benefits with any certainty.
I do not have much sympathy for the terrorists, however, given their own depraved brutality. If Osama bin Laden were captured by the Saudis, for example, I wouldn't exactly weep if they decided to waterboard him, or deprive him of sleep for a few nights, etc...
Brooksfoe wrote: You mean like how in "Meet the Parents" Robert DeNiro could tell whether or not Ben Stiller was lying just by holding his hands, palms up? But Robert DeNiro was CIA! Clearly they are getting such training. Given that, how come the CIA still hasn't found out whether or not Roger Clemens really did take steroids? Or whether George Bush went AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard? Or who killed the Kennedys? I mean, telling whether or not someone is lying is a cinch. You just have to [redacted] and [redacted] and then [redacted]. Works every time.
Really? Your best response is to cite "how they do it in the movies", then sloppily tack on a nonsequitur link to a random assortment of domestic events? Even for a snarky hatchet job, that's disappointing. Usually you're a lot more fun than that.
"Torture is a form of punishment that is likely to inflict permanent physical damage"
If we can convince the world that we don't torture prisoners.....but we do whip them (being careful not to leave scars), subject them to electric shock, strangle them to unconsciousness, rape them, thrust needles through their bodies in various sensitive locations, force them to eat excrement, apply hot (but not searing) clamps to their flesh to blister them......all of which can be done without inflicting PERMANENT physical damage.......
I'm not sure it would improve our reputation any.
There is no catch 22, we just need to open our eyes. And, of course, a "competent tribunal" should make the determination.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe any of the folks we've held and tortured in secret CIA black sites faced military tribunals first to determine that they were "unlawful enemy combatants". Abu Zubaida was waterboarded in CIA custody in 2002. He did not face a military tribunal until 2006.
Or perhaps things have changed, and now we hold to legal niceties in determining whom we are and are not allowed to torture.
Incidentally, the argument that "the Geneva Conventions" "do not apply" to those who "are not POWs" is based on a misunderstanding. The Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of POWs do not apply to non-POWs. Non-POWs are instead covered under the Geneva Conventions' rules relating to civilians. There are indeed different rules for "unlawful combatants": they can be tried and punished, even executed. Nothing in the Geneva Conventions says they may be tortured.
In any case, the US has ratified the Convention Against Torture, which contains no exceptions for unlawful combatants or anyone else.
There are indeed different rules for "unlawful combatants": they can be tried and punished, even executed.
That's one of Bush's biggest mistakes: failing to treat terrorist battlefield captures as either spies (operating out of uniform, and therefore subject to summary execution), murderers (because the combatant's privilege is denied them), or as a militia that sprang up spontaneously to defend its homeland from invasion (in which case they are POWs).
I'm as suspicious of "international law" as anyone, but this particular area of international law is well-developed through literally centuries of practice and does everything we need it to do. And frankly, a former governor of Texas should have been able to stomach a few terrorist executions.
Brooksfoe, I think that Articles 2 and 4 of the Third Geneva Convention make it clear that enemies who are not signatories to the convention and are not abiding by its terms are not protected by it.
I admit, though, that the Convention Against Torture seems to forbid waterboarding. I suppose that the administration's expansive view of executive power implies that it believes it has the authority to "bypass" such restrictions when necessary to protect the country--that such authority is a part of the "inherent powers" of the executive.
I'll have to think about that argument. On the one hand, I do think that a President ought not to permit his ability to wage a war effectively to be damaged by a treaty he believes impinges upon his inherent constitutional authority. On the other, I am aware that such an arguement is prone to abuse, and to an excessive centralization of power.
There is an interesting discussion of the argument here:
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2005/12/the_presidents_.html
People who debate the "legal niceties" obviously don't understand the power we lose everytime an instance of torture is cited. The idea that Americans, who hold the idea of individual liberty so dear, can accept the idea of torture is a shock to most of the rest of the civilized world. Forget military power (and as a retired officer, I don't do so lightly); the power we need to converse with the rest of the world is of a moral nature. Without that, we should pull up stakes, head home and shut the door behind us. It just doesn't matter. Hopefully we'll have two candidates for President that make that clear, but if we don't you can rest assured there'll be many of us clearly identifying the torturer in the campaign.
Winners get to enforce the treaties (or not, as the case may be). That being said, we don't really want to lose a position of moral authority. One could argue we already have. But I as a citizen of the United States like to think of us as the "good guys". The terrorists engage in torture. We do not. That is one of those clear lines that we should not cross. If we do cross those lines, we will become indistinguishable from those we are fighting against.
Part of the problem is that two things are being confused... torture and interrogation.
I would like to see the US clean up its act and stick to more humane and possibly more effective means of interrogation. As others have said, some who are suspected terrorists might be innocent. We should carefully interrogate prisoners and go through whatever procedures are required to identify who is a terrorist and who isn't.
Once we've identified the terrorists, THEN we can torture them without having to worry about interrogations or questioning or whatever.
rwe,
The no-permanent damage definition of torture is both
a) a redefinition of an understood concept to suit your current political needs and
b) crazy
Sleep deprivation, to take one example, can ultimately kill you. Exposure to extreme cold has been used as torture.
Have you really thought this through?
Tom
rwe,
The no-permanent damage definition of torture is both
a) a redefinition of an understood concept to suit your current political needs and
b) crazy
Sleep deprivation, to take one example, can ultimately kill you. Exposure to extreme cold has been used as torture.
Have you really thought this through?
Tom
Tom G.,
I have already more or less retreated from my earlier position on waterboarding. As I wrote above:
"So, given these objections, it might be wiser not to waterboard anyone."
I read your posts and brooksfoe's and thought about my own nagging doubts about whether the benefits (from the intelligence gained) outweighed the damage done to our relations with other countries, and concluded at the very least that I don't want to be an advocate for interrogation techniques of dubious legality.
I have no sympathy for the terrorists. Whatever Pakistan or Saudi Arabia does to them, I will shed no tears. But I'm not so sure now that it is in this country's interests to be doing this sort of thing.
John McCain is very serious about defending this country (as for example the Clintons are not) and so his opposition to waterboarding and the like carries some weight with me.
I try to be guided by reason. Occasionally I change my mind. This is one of those times.
rwe, this is why it's actually interesting to continue participating in a discussion online. I am humbled.
Just as a side note: the clearest example of the inadequacy of the "permanent damage" definition of torture is rape, which causes no permanent damage and has been used as torture by pretty much every regime that's tortured people.
rwe,
I try to keep my mind open and be willing to change it. I give anyone credit for doing so.
I would just note that I think there is a large moral component to the question and that one can hate someone and still disapprove of torturing them on moral grounds. There is also, as our death penalty history shows, significant chance for error no matter how strong the formal protections against it we create.
Tom
Typical frigging liberals: they screech that treaties are being violated, and when someone points out that according to the text of the treaty the prisoners aren't lawful combatants now all of a sudden the actual treaty language is "really semantics".
This is why debating with a liberal is like debating with a snake. It'll just ignore what you say and then bite you again.
Its also why you never debate the rule of law with them: They'll make up treaty conditions or laws on the spot, ignore ones they find inconvienent, and then accuse YOU of not adhering to the rule of the law that they just invented.
Not one of them can wrap their beady little minds around the FACT that confessions that are even remotely arguably torture-derived are not admissable in a court of law. Which leads to a couple of conclusions that wipes out at least half their objections when they apply that knowledge (which of course is why they avoid confronting that fact in the first place).
As a prime example, if you torture someone whom you don't already know is a terrorist (meaning you are very damn certain you have enough evidence to convict him without the tainted confession), then when the tainted confession is thrown out you are going to have the specticle of having tortured a man who just got acquitted in a court of law... even if he is guilty as sin, as confirmed by information you got that an innocent man couldn't have given... none of that matters because none of it is admissable - "fruit of the poisoned tree".
Which is why certain venomouly traitorous people get to pat themselves on the back about Jose Padilla... they crow that he wasn't convicted on ONE of the things he did as if it's proof that he's an innocent victim... which a jury of his peers found that he was must assuredly not.
What ACTUALLY happened is that the government acquired enough evidence that they knew he could convict him even if they got a flaming liberal judge to throw out everything within twenty degrees of seperation of a tainted confession. At that point they could have chosen to play like the FBI and just concentrate on getting only admissible evidence so the trial is squeaky clean with every last charge intact, or they could have chosen to do their JOB and extract as much information as possible in hopes of getting enough data to disrupt Al Queda operations, knowing that this choice would have the likely effect of making americans safer at the cost of further angering the peanut gallery who would have simply found a different excuse to savage Evil America anyway. I'm glad that the feces-flingers were not appeased.
The very moment a person makes a comparison between law enforcement and stopping terrorists, that person should cease to be taken seriously... and I can prove that with two questions.
1. Is is true or false that traditional law enforcement overwhelmingly relies on finding a criminal after a deed is committed, not preventing it from happening in the first place?
2. Given that the answer to (1) is clearly "true", what exactly would be the decibel level of contemptous laughter one of the 9/11 hijackers would emit upon being threatened that they'd be caught after the act?
Yeah, we need more of a law enforcement approach... if our primary consideration is to cover our asses AFTER more americans die. Then we'll have our excuses lined up and properly documented. Yay.
good site )