The Incompetence of the C.I.A.

Following 9/11, Bush instructed the C.I.A. to develop an interrogation program. The trouble?

But the program that developed within the Central Intelligence Agency after 9/11 has left the intelligence community playing a fateful role. Surprising as it may be, the CIA has never really been in the interrogation business. After 9/11, it turned its back on its own limited history of interrogations and never consulted those in the U.S. with solid experience in that difficult art. Even in the seven years since it has built an interrogation capability mostly from scratch, the agency has never applied the best practices in behavioral science to improve its regimen. The result has been to privilege brutality out of ignorance, which, according to many experts and insiders interviewed, means that interrogation practices that produce faulty information are now at the very heart of the U.S. efforts against a mysterious and still-unfamiliar enemy.

In short, despite innumerable statements from the Bush administration about the value of the CIA’s interrogation program, U.S. interrogators are still mostly in the dark—in the dark not only about al-Qaeda, but about how to effectively elicit vital national-security information from the detainees in its custody.

Those with intimate knowledge of the program say that in many cases, U.S. interrogators haven’t even been able to learn the basics about many of those they hold or have held, to say nothing of whatever crucial information they possess. "How do you separate the sheep from the wool? There’s no fingerprints, no DNA," said a former senior intelligence official who helped set up the CIA’s interrogation program, and who would not speak for attribution. "You don’t know if you have Osama bin Laden or Joe Shit the rag-man."

Worse than a crime, to paraphrase Tallyrand, interrogation by the CIA has been—and remains—a blunder.

But it didn't have to be this way:

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."

The entire article, by Spencer Ackerman, is well worth reading. The incompetence and mendacity of Bush in this area is a national shame, and all of future history will scorn us.

Canada Puts the U.S. on Its Terror Watch List

No joke. All those tortures really add up quick, don't they?

UPDATE: Erm, not "Terror Watch List," but "Torture Watch List". My mistake. But honestly, torture is a form of terrorism, especially when it is being done to foreign nationals.

The New Anglo-American Relations

Brown and Bush project a united front, but it's difficult to believe that U.S./U.K. relations will be as cozy as they have been since Blair took office and allied himself with Clinton and Bush. The war in Iraq certainly took their toll on Blair, and Brown seems prepared to not make the same mistake. At the same time, he recognizes the need to stay close to the U.S. As the global power dynamics shift from Old Europe (U.K., France, Germany) to New Asia (China, India) in the coming decades, the U.K. will have to stay close to the U.S. to maintain any significant global influence. The U.S. needs the U.K. as an ally in Europe, as the Old World becomes more and more resentful of the U.S.'s hegemony. A few interesting things from the article:

Mr. Brown, who has eschewed the use of the phrase “war on terrorism,” nonetheless hailed Mr. Bush’s leadership in his campaign against terrorism. “In this century, it has fallen to America to take center stage,” he wrote. “And let me acknowledge the debt the world owes to the United States for its leadership in this struggle.”

This is an important point which is often lost in the discussion over Iraq. Only the U.S. has the global military capabilities to truly fight terrorist organizations and control rogue states. And the U.K. (and perhaps France and Germany) face a much stronger terrorist threat than we do. If we decide to just let everyone fend for themselves, it could happen at the detriment of the U.K. and Europe.

On the flip: the U.K. faces more exposure to domestic Islamic terrorist threats than the U.S. does, but that also gives them more opportunities to gain intelligence on global networks which threaten Western democracies. The U.S.'s opportunities are essentially limited to Iraq and Afghanistan, and those gains have (obviously) been limited. Indeed, we might be making the situation worse for ourselves in those places. Keeping Europe on our side in the struggle against terrorism is essential, and the U.K. is uniquely positioned to do that.

Elsewhere:

But even the opinion article pointed up subtle differences, for instance with Mr. Brown referring to the acts of such groups as Al Qaeda as “a crime,” and citing the importance of law enforcement in combating terrorists.

During the 2004 presidential race, Mr. Bush and his re-election campaign had leveled harsh criticism against his Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, for referring to law enforcement action against terrorism, saying it proved Mr. Kerry did not view the threat seriously. Mr. Bush usually refers to terrorist attacks as acts of war.

Asked today whether Mr. Brown’s approach to terrorist groups represented an underlying difference of philosophy, Mr. Bush said it did not and acknowledged that law enforcement tools are part of the fight against terrorism.

This is the biggest wedge between the U.S. and the rest of the Western democracies. They (rightly) view terrorist actions as international criminal activity, like drug smuggling or arms sales. Obviously, if a specific foreign nation directly subsidizes such criminal actions, then they may be treated as acts of war (e.g. Afghanistan). But to the extent that these actions are being conducted by individual, multinational, private groups, they should be treated as crimes rather than acts of war. This is a fundamental philosophical difference between Europe and the U.S. They view Gitmo and the suspension of Habeas Corpus and the denial of Geneva protections as ridiculous abuses of power, and they are right. Bush views them as necessary (and, supposedly, temporary) actions in a time of indefinite war. Bush's thinking is fundamentally flawed, for a number of reasons which I won't bother going into during this post. Needless to say, he comes across as an authoritarian, and Europe likes nothing less than that. They learned their lessons w/r/t executive abuses of power in the 20th century. That, along with the chip on their shoulder which comes from being second-rate powers now, will preclude them from buying whatever America is selling without asking questions.

The next U.S. president will an immediate opportunity to ingratiate him/herself with the rest of the world: He can formally apologize for Abu Ghraib, close Gitmo and send everyone there to an international tribunal or trials in their own countries, present legislation to Congress to revoke the Military Commissions Act, proclaim that the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" ended with the Bush administration, and reinstate the Writ of Habeas Corpus. Hillary Clinton won't do any of these. Neither will Giuliani or Romney. McCain might do a few. Obama is probably the best chance for a severe straightening of our legal system w/r/t detainees. In the linked article, Bush said that the U.S. and U.K. remain strong allies because "We have common interests throughout the world, but it’s an important relationship primarily because we think the same: We believe in freedom and justice as fundamentals in life." The rest of the world isn't buying it for obvious reasons. The next U.S. president will have the chance to change that perception.

Restoring Habeas Corpus

The move is on. Call your senators, and impress upon them the need to reinforce the Great Writ, which dates back to the 13th century in England. It has been neglected in this country for far too long.

(ht: Andrew Sullivan)

Giuliani hires Podhoretz

Rudy Giuliani must be opposed at all costs. He has just hired Norman Podhoretz, the man who wants to unilaterally bomb a country -- Iran -- which has not provoked us to war.

The man who said of the Iraq war: "an amazing success." He waves his fist and declaims, "There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria. ... This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It couldn't have gone better." He wants more wars, and fast. He is "certain" Bush will bomb Iran, and "thank God" for that.

Yes. He said that Iraq "couldn't have gone better". It was bad enough that Giuliani enthusiastically supports torture in violation of domestic and international law, saying things like: "I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they can think of" when asked if he would support the use of waterboarding, a technique perfected by the Khmer Rouge, and used by the Imperial Japanese and Waffen SS in WWII. That was bad enough to disqualify him from holding any public office.

But now his senior foreign policy advisor is a man who is clearly deluded about the situation on the ground in Iraq, is clearly deluded about the situation in Iraq pre-war, and wants to start bombing more countries for no particular reason. This clearly eliminates Giuliani as a viable voting option for anyone who cares about liberty, justice, the rule of law, or the international interests of the United States. Which should include everyone.

At this point, Romney seems like the best of a lot of bad options on the GOP side.

Update: Apparently, a lot of Catholics agree that Giuliani must be opposed. (ht: Andrew Sullivan)

An Important Resource

Scott Lemiuex points Matthew Iglesias to Marty Lederman, who has compiled an archive of Balkinization's posts: "The Anti-Torture Memos: Balkinization Posts on Torture, Interrogation, Detention, War Powers, Executive Authority, DOJ and OLC." There are a lot of them, because the Bush administration has so often abused their authority and broken domestic and international laws. If anyone is still trying to argue that point, just point them here. The debate is over; there is no counter-argument to be made.

Another Chink in the Armor, pt. 2

More rulings against Bush's detainee policy:

A divided panel from a conservative federal appeals court delivered a harsh rebuke to the Bush administration's anti-terrorism strategy Monday, ruling that U.S. residents cannot be locked up indefinitely as "enemy combatants" without being charged.

The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the government should charge Ali al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident and the only suspected enemy combatant on American soil, or release him from military custody.

The federal Military Commissions Act doesn't strip al-Marri of his constitutional right to challenge his accusers in court, the judges found in Monday's 2-1 decision.

"Put simply, the Constitution does not allow the President to order the military to seize civilians residing within the United States and then detain them indefinitely without criminal process, and this is so even if he calls them 'enemy combatants,'" the court said.

More on Torture

Thankfully, Andrew Sullivan just won't let up:

The report by the the lead investigator for the Council of Europe, Dick Marty, into the secret interrogation and torture sites operated by the CIA these past few years makes for extremely grim reading. For decades, the KGB deployed the classic Gestapo techniques on prisoners; now, under the Bush administration, it is the United States that has adopted the same methods:

Ventilation holes in the cells released bursts of hot or freezing air, with temperature used as a form of extreme pressure to wear down prisoners, the investigators found. Prisoners were also subjected to water-boarding, a form of simulated drowning, and relentless blasts of music and sound, from rap to cackling laughter and screams, the report says.

The report, which runs more than 100 pages, says the prisons were operated exclusively by Americans in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2006. It relies heavily on testimony from C.I.A. agents...

According to the report, suspects were often held for months with no contact except with masked, silent guards who would push meals of cheese, potatoes and bread through hatches.

The defense of the Verschaerfte Vernehmung (which are all war crimes under international law and were subject to the death penalty fifty years ago) is the Giuliani defense:

"Here's my question. Was the guy a terrorist? 'Cause if he's a terrorist, then I figure he got what was coming to him."

Of course, there is no due process to determine who is or who is not a terrorist, and thereby subject to torture. Many detainees aren't even captured by U.S. soldiers or agents. Only 19 percent of the captives in Gitmo, for example, were actually captured by U.S. forces. Americans' system of justice has been outsourced to Pakistani bounty-hunters. And then the Gestapo-process takes over. But, hey, if they're terrorists, they get what's coming to them, no? That's exactly the system of justice and warfare the Founders had in mind, isn't it?

This alone disqualifies Giuliani from being president. And it is instructive that only 19% of all Gitmo detainees were actually captured by the U.S. Do we really trust Pakistanis, Afghans, and Iraqis to get the story straight about who is a terrorist and who is just a political/tribal/sectarian enemy? The ticking-time-bomb scenario has (literally) never occurred at any point in human history, and it never will occur. Even if it did, using it as justification for widespread and systematic torture is disgustingly misleading. Life isn't 24, after all.

President Bush's detainee policy is a national disgrace, and history won't forgive us. It cannot be allowed to continue under the new administration.

Restoring Habeas Corpus

I can't believe this is even necessary in the United States, but it deserves all of our support:

Senators Leahy and Specter have introduced the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act (S. 185). The legislation restores habeas rights to foreign nationals who are detained as enemy combatants or who are awaiting determination of their combatant status. It's a critical piece of legislation to undo the most egregious wrong of the Military Commissions Act. The bill is going to be marked up in the Judiciary Committee tomorrow.

Senator Leahy is asking for our help in garnering support for the legislation:

Many of you may recall the hasty passage of the Military Commissions Act in the weeks leading up to last year's election, a bill that set new rules for trying detainees, in particular those currently being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The passage of this bill was a profound mistake, and its elimination of habeas corpus review was its worst error. Righting this wrong is one of my top priorities, and on the first day of this Congress I joined with Senator Arlen Specter to introduce the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act (S. 185). This bipartisan bill already has 17 cosponsors, but it faces a crucial vote in the Judiciary Committee this Thursday so we need your help.

Please e-mail your home-state Senators today and urge them to protect our fundamental liberties by supporting the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act!

This has become necessary.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan reminds us that Edmund Burke is on our side:

My opposition to suspending habeas corpus, to the military commissions farce, and to torture has had many label me a liberal. Well, if Burke was a liberal, then count me in:

The Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol is a simple document – the transmission to two law-enforcement officers of his constituency of an act that the government of Lord North has put to Parliament. The act suspended the great writ of habeas corpus - not for the good burghers of Bristol, of course, but only for a group of murderous insurrectionists who then stood in open and bloody revolt against their lawful sovereign. And the act went further, namely, it provided that these miserable wretches, whose insolence and defiance now extended to the seas, could be labeled enemy combatants pirates at the King’s discretion, and thus robbed of the right to be tried in courts. They would be dealt with in a summary fashion by the King’s military. And the act also provided that these miscreants could be transported across the ocean to England and held there to await their summary disposition – a step which justified the suspension of habeas corpus, since otherwise an English court might demand an accounting for their brutal treatment and incarceration. And there was no doubt as to the brutality of that treatment – these wicked enemies were left rotting in ship hulks and were succumbing to pestilence and malnutrition by the hundreds already.

Burke was not a man to be taken in by such demonization, least of all by the likes of Lord North, and he registered his sharpest opposition to what was being done.

Bush Planned and Approved Torture

The Bush admin. can no longer plead ignorance, or claim that torture cases were isolated incidents done by renegade soldiers. They planned it, they approved it, and they stole their methods from the USSR. Despicable.

Many of the controversial interrogation tactics used against terror suspects in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo were modeled on techniques the U.S. feared that the Communists themselves might use against captured American troops during the Cold War, according to a little-noticed, highly classified Pentagon report released several days ago. Originally developed as training for elite special forces at Fort Bragg under the "Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape" program, otherwise known as SERE, tactics such as sleep deprivation, isolation, sexual humiliation, nudity, exposure to extremes of cold and stress positions were part of a carefully monitored survival training program for personnel at risk of capture by Soviet or Chinese forces, all carried out under the supervision of military psychologists.

The report, completed last August but only declassified and made public on May 18, suggests that the abusive techniques stemmed from a much more formal process than the Defense Department has previously acknowledged. By 2002 the Pentagon was looking for an interrogation paradigm to use on what it had designated as "unlawful combatants" captured in the "war on terror." These individuals, many taken prisoner in Afghanistan, were initially brought to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo, although others were subsequently hidden away in CIA secret prisons or turned over to U.S.-allied governments known to practice torture. That same year, the commander of the detention facility at Guantanamo began using the abusive "counter resistance" techniques adopted from SERE on prisoners at the base, and according to the Pentagon report SERE military psychologists were on hand to help.

In response to fallout over the well-documented cases of prisoner abuse — which included prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation (visual and auditory), forced removal of clothing, exploiting prisoners phobias (notably fear of dogs), and threats against family members — the Pentagon began scaling back the use of SERE tactics in 2002 and eventually banned them altogether. The Army Field Manual, which serves as a primary guide for U.S. military interrogation, now specifically rules out the use of a variety of SERE-founded techniques including water-boarding, a form of simulated drowning, as well as the use of dogs.

U.S. Torture Worse Than Gestapo?

Andrew Sullivan has a great post comparing our use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" to the Gestapo's "versharfte Vernehmung," which translates nicely to "enhanced interrogation," "sharpened interrogation," or "intensified interrogation". A must-read for anyone still unconvinced that the interrogation policies of the U.S. do not qualify as torture. The Gestapo at least acknowledged that they were torturing their prisoners, while the U.S. government is too busy playing semantic games to realize the moral morass into which they've fallen.

Fun Fact: the Gestapo outlawed induced hypothermia and waterboarding, which were both authorized by Pres. Bush. Over a hundred deaths have been documented at U.S. interrogation facilities. These are war crimes, and have been for a long time. Men were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for employing these techniques in WWII. For those on the right to continue to defend the use of this torture is beyond the pale.

Unbelievable

from Andrew Sullivan:

A reader writes:

You asked

"Second, of course, the hideous term: "enhanced interrogation techniques.' I'm not sure where exactly this came from..."

Well, "enhanced interrogation techniques" is a fairly decent English translation of the Gestapo euphemism "verschaerfte Vernehmung" which was the code word for torture in the Third Reich. Look it up.

The dictionary confirms it. So Dean Barnett is picking up his terms from the Gestapo. Way to go, Dean.

Thank God He's a Mormon

If Mitt Romney didn't belong to one of the wackier religions in the world, he might have a chance of being elected. This would be a bad thing, for reasons completely separate from his religious beliefs. Andrew Sullivan explains why:

Here's a fascinating interview with Sean Hannity, a man who would love the Republican candidate to campaign on torturing detainees. Of course, Fox News skews the debate by focusing entirely on the one in a million "ticking time-bomb" scenario. What else would you expect from Brit Hume? But Romney reveals in this clip that he does not believe the president is bound by the law in this question. He says that he will not provide a definition of "what is torture and what is not torture," because a president should be able to keep terror supects guessing. So he supports "enhanced interrogation techniques" and not torture, but refuses to say what the difference is. And he says the president gets to pick. And U.S. citizens are subject to this regime. The logic of Romney's position, then, is that the president can designate any human being or citizen an "enemy combatant," detain them indefinitely without charges or recourse to the courts, and torture them using any method he wishes as long as he says it's not torture and he is under no obligation to explain what torture is. This is tyranny. Period.

It is tyranny. But Sullivan needed to go one step further, and note that this is currently the official policy of the United States: torture is what Pres. Bush says it is. The tyranny already exists, and Romney is merely affirming it. as did Rudy, although he at least had the stones to come right out and say it:

"Last night's debate was about the definition of torture, and whether you — how you define torture, and I haven't changed my position one bit."

"I said, I don't think we should embrace torture, even in that situation."

"But I do think we should go right up to the limit in a situation like that. Which means enhanced techniques, aggressive techniques."

"It was quite clear in what I said, and I think honestly what Governor Romney said, that neither one of us was talking about torture. But we were talking about going further than Senator McCain was talking about."

"The technique that was being described last night [water-boarding] would not fit into the category of torture."

(bold by me)

the problem, of course, is that water-boarding is torture, no matter what Rudy's personal opinion happens to be. it is considered torture -- and therefore illegal -- by both domestic and international law. the Khmer Rouge believed it to be torture. the U.S. has tried and convicted people in past for water-boarding. the State Dept. says that it is illegal. The U.S. Army says it's illegal So it shouldn't matter what Rudy, or Romney, or Bush happens to think. Water-boarding should never be a practice of the United States, because it is against the law.

But the law is secondary to these guys. Imagining themselves as Pres. Palmer in an episode of 24 seems like a greater concern. Sullivan is right: this is tyranny.