Morality and Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

windcatcher · Apr 28, 2009

Selective morality and political posturing!

A disturbing epidemic of amnesia seems to be plaguing my former colleagues on Capitol Hill. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, members of the committees charged with overseeing our nation's intelligence services had no higher priority than stopping al-Qaeda. In the fall of 2002, while I was chairman of the House intelligence committee, senior members of Congress were briefed on the CIA's "High Value Terrorist Program," including the development of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and what those techniques were. This was not a one-time briefing but an ongoing subject with lots of back and forth between those members and the briefers.

Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as "waterboarding" were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.

Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:

-- The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.

-- We understood what the CIA was doing.

-- We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.

-- We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.

-- On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.

I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues. They did not vote to stop authorizing CIA funding. And for those who now reveal filed "memorandums for the record" suggesting concern, real concern should have been expressed immediately -- to the committee chairs, the briefers, the House speaker or minority leader, the CIA director or the president's national security adviser -- and not quietly filed away in case the day came when the political winds shifted. And shifted they have.
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FROM HERE

Unfortunately, much of the damage to our capabilities has already been done. It is certainly not trust that is fostered when intelligence officers are told one day "I have your back" only to learn a day later that a knife is being held to it. After the events of this week, morale at the CIA has been shaken to its foundation.

We must not forget: Our intelligence allies overseas view our inability to maintain secrecy as a reason to question our worthiness as a partner. These allies have been vital in almost every capture of a terrorist.

The suggestion that we are safer now because information about interrogation techniques is in the public domain conjures up images of unicorns and fairy dust. We have given our enemy invaluable information about the rules by which we operate. The terrorists captured by the CIA perfected the act of beheading innocents using dull knives. Khalid Sheik Mohammed boasted of the tactic of placing explosives high enough in a building to ensure that innocents trapped above would die if they tried to escape through windows. There is simply no comparison between our professionalism and their brutality.

Our enemies do not subscribe to the rules of the Marquis of Queensbury. "Name, rank and serial number" does not apply to non-state actors but is, regrettably, the only question this administration wants us to ask. Instead of taking risks, our intelligence officers will soon resort to wordsmithing cables to headquarters while opportunities to neutralize brutal radicals are lost.

The days of fortress America are gone. We are the world's superpower. We can sit on our hands or we can become engaged to improve global human conditions. The bottom line is that we cannot succeed unless we have good intelligence. Trading security for partisan political popularity will ensure that our secrets are not secret and that our intelligence is destined to fail us.

The writer, a Republican, was director of the CIA from September 2004 to May 2006 and was chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 1997 to 2004.
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windcatcher · Apr 28, 2009

Blame enough to go around?

FROM COMMENTS APPEARING ON THIS BLOG

For the liberals against torture, I have good news. There are more politicians that should be prosecuted. Clinton and Gore originated the "torture by proxy" program, aka Extraordinary Rendition, where suspected terrorists are abducted and taken to foreign countries where they severely tortured, sometimes to death. If we are going to prosecute Bush, we'll have to prosecute Clinton too.

June 15, 2004
Extraordinary Rendition: Not Just for Republicans!
Until tonight, I knew vaguely that the policy of "extraordinary rendition"--sending terrorism suspects to countries that practice torture for interrogation--started under the Clinton administration. But I did not know any of the details.
Tonight I came across this 2001 Wall Street Journal story*, and learned the details:
CIA-Backed Team Used Brutal Means To Break Up Terrorist Cell in Albania
By ANDREW HIGGINS and CHRISTOPHER COOPER
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
TIRANA, Albania -- Ahmed Osman Saleh stepped off a minibus here in the Albanian capital in July 1998 and caught what would be his last glimpse of daylight for three days. As he paid the driver, Albanian security agents slipped a white cloth bag over Mr. Saleh's head, bound his limbs with plastic shackles and tossed him into the rear of a hatchback vehicle.
Supervising the operation from a nearby car were agents from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Mr. Saleh's Albanian captors sped over rutted roads to an abandoned air base 35 miles north of Tirana. There, recalled an Albanian security agent who participated, guards dumped the bearded self-confessed terrorist on the floor of a windowless bathroom.
After two days of interrogation by CIA agents and sporadic beatings by Albanian guards, Mr. Saleh was put aboard a CIA-chartered plane and flown to Cairo, according to the Albanian agent and a confession Egyptian police elicited from Mr. Saleh in September 1998. "I remained blindfolded until I got off the plane," Mr. Saleh said in the confession, a document written in Arabic longhand that he signed at the bottom.
There were more beatings and torture at the hands of Egyptian authorities. And 18 months after he was grabbed outside the Garden of Games, a Tirana childrens' park, Mr. Saleh was hanged in an Egyptian prison yard.
By the Script
His capture was one of five scripted and overseen by American agents as part of a covert 1998 operation to deport members of the Egyptian Jihad organization to Cairo from the Balkans. At the time, Egyptian Jihad was merging with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. U.S. authorities considered the Tirana cell among the most dangerous terror outfits in Europe. The CIA has refused to acknowledge the 1998 operation. But privately, U.S. officials have described it as one of the most successful counterterrorism
efforts in the annals of the intelligence agency....
About a dozen U.S. agents arrived in Albania to plan the arrests, according to their Albanian counterparts. CIA and SHIK operatives spent three months devising the operation, often meeting in a conference room next to Mr. Klosi's office.
On June 25, 1998, the Egyptian government issued a prearranged arrest warrant for Mr. Attiya, the forger, and demanded his deportation. Most such requests to Western countries had been ignored in the past, said Hisham Saraya, Egypt's attorney general at the time. This one was not.
That day, while driving in his 1986 Audi in Tirana, Mr. Attiya found himself being trailed by an Albanian police car and another vehicle, he later recalled in his confession. He was stopped and arrested. The same day, Albanian security officers raided his home and found more than 50 plates and stamps used to produce fake visas and other bogus documents, according to court records from his 1999 trial.
Several days later, he was taken, handcuffed and blindfolded, to the abandoned air base, north of Tirana. "There, a private plane was waiting for me," he said in his confession. Once in Cairo, he was blindfolded again and driven to Egypt's state security offices on July 2, 1998. "Since then, the interrogations have not stopped," he said.
Mr. Attiya later told his lawyer, Hafez Abu-Saada, that while being questioned, he was subjected to electrical shocks to his genitals, suspended by his limbs, dragged on his face, and made to stand for hours in a cell, with filthy water up to his knees. Mr. Abu-Saada, who represented all five members of the Tirana cell, subsequently recorded their complaints in a published report.
Also deported from Tirana was Mr. Naggar. He was nabbed in July 1998 by SHIK on a road outside of town. He, too, was blindfolded and spirited home on a CIA plane. In complaints in his confession and to his defense lawyer, Mr. Abu-Saada, Mr. Naggar said his Egyptian interrogators regularly applied electrical shocks to his nipples and penis.
Mr. Naggar's brother, Mohamed, said in an interview that he and his relatives also were -- and continue to be -- harassed and tortured by Egyptian police. He said he had suffered broken ribs and fractured cheekbones. "They changed my features," Mohamed Naggar said, touching his face.
About two weeks after Messrs. Attiya and Naggar were deported to Egypt, Albanian security agents took Mr. Tita, the dues-collector, from his Tirana apartment. They covered his head and put him on a plane. "After I was arrested, [Egyptian interrogators] hung me from my wrists and applied electricity to parts of my feet and back," he said in his confession.
As the CIA operation drew to a close, an Arab newspaper in London published a letter on August 5, 1998, signed by the International Islamic Front for Jihad. The letter vowed revenge for the counterterrorism drive in Albania, promising to retaliate against Americans in a "language they will understand."
Two days later, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were blown up, killing 224 people. U.S. investigators have attributed the embassy bombings to al Qaeda and now believe the attacks were planned far in advance. At the time, American officials were rattled enough about the possible connection to the
Tirana arrests that they closed the U.S. Embassy there, moving the staff to a more-secure compound across town.
The embassy bombings didn't stop the CIA from going after Mr. Saleh in Tirana. In August, Albanian security agents grabbed him outside the children's park. During two months of detention in Egypt, he was suspended from the ceiling of his cell and given electrical shocks, he told his lawyer, Mr. Abu-Saada. Also rounded up was Essam Abdel-Tawwab, an Egyptian Jihad member who had lived for a time in Tirana before moving to Sofia, Bulgaria. He, too, later told Mr. Abu-Saada he was tortured. Egyptian prosecutors acknowledged in court documents that they observed a "recovered wound" on Mr. Tawwab's body.
Bill Clinton is not President anymore, and I wasn't a huge fan of his when he was. I already knew that part of the groundwork for the "extraordinary rendition" policy was laid during his presidency. I've said a hundred times that this is not and should not be a partisan issue. But apparently I am more naive and more partisan than I'd like to think, because when I read this article I was shocked that this could happen under a Democratic president.
Fact Sheet: Extraordinary Rendition (12/6/2005)

Excerpted from ACLU story:

Beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to this day, the Central Intelligence Agency, together with other U.S. government agencies, has utilized an intelligence-gathering program involving the transfer of foreign nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism to detention and interrogation in countries where -- in the CIA's view -- federal and international legal safeguards do not apply. Suspects are detained and interrogated either by U.S. personnel at U.S.-run detention facilities outside U.S. sovereign territory or, alternatively, are handed over to the custody of foreign agents for interrogation. In both instances, interrogation methods are employed that do not comport with federal and internationally recognized standards. This program is commonly known as "extraordinary rendition."

Foreign nationals suspected of terrorism have been transported to detention and interrogation facilities in Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Diego Garcia, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, and elsewhere. In the words of former CIA agent Robert Baer: "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear -- never to see them again -- you send them to Egypt."
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windcatcher · Apr 28, 2009

FROM HERE

"I saw a partial list of the number of members of the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, who were briefed on these interrogation methods, and not a word was raised at the time, not one word," House Minority Leader John Boehner said Thursday.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., is seeking a detailed list of all lawmakers who were briefed on the tactics. Republicans are drawing attention to the briefings to challenge Democrats who now say they are open to investigating, and possibly prosecuting, officials and lawyers involved in the drafting of the harsh interrogation techniques.

Pelosi is among those lawmakers who want an independent commission established to probe the evolution of the policies -- but it's still unclear what she knew early on in the Bush administration.

Asked about the briefings on Thursday, Pelosi said: "We were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used."

But she also did not explicitly say that waterboarding was not part of the conversation. She indicated instead that any discussion they may have had was hypothetical.

"What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel ... opinions, that they could be used, but not that they would," she said.

Pelosi indicated the briefings could have been incomplete, saying: "We only know what they choose to tell us, and the manner and timing which they tell us."

The Post article noted that strict rules during the secret briefings prohibit lawmakers from taking notes or consulting with legal experts, hindering the lawmakers' ability to challenge what they are being told -- in this case, about interrogation tactics.

But that doesn't mean they can't ask critical questions.

Pelosi indicated Thursday she's being hamstrung from fully addressing the briefing, and publicly questioning the tactics described in it, because it was secret.

"It's very interesting that people are talking so freely," Pelosi said.
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"It's very interesting that people are talking so freely," Pelosi said.
Out of her own mouth! Isn't it though?

canadyjd · Apr 28, 2009

corndogggy said: ↑

Being a realist means waking up and realizing that bin Laden is more than likely going to try to coordinate attacks to kill some westerners before one of his Islamic jihadist buddies converts him into a gospel preaching Christian who will turn himself in.
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God is in control. I don't have to play the odds of what is most likely to happen first with Bin Laden. I know that whatever happens to him, it will work together for the good of the elect of God, for those who are called according to His purpose.

The most successful way to accomplish that is to conform our thinking, by renewing of our minds, to what God has revealed in His Word. His Word tells us not to repay evil for evil. His Word tells us to pray for those who persecute, who despitefully use us.

His Word tells us not to be conformed to the world, but to be transformed, to be set apart, to be different.

Let the ungodly "splatter their brains against the cave walls".

Let Christians seek peace with all men, and walk in a manner worthy of our profession of faith.

peace to youraying:

canadyjd · Apr 28, 2009

sag38 said: ↑

Pacifists are baffling and dangerous to the safety and sovereignty of the United States. They would sell us out in a minute as they roll over and allow our enemies to destroy us in the name of peace as they cling to their bumper sticker that says, "Would Jesus Drop a Bomb?"
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I follow the Prince of Peace, the Lord of Lords, Almighty God.

Jesus said, "Blessed are the peace makers".

sag38 says "Pacifists are baffling and dangerous".

I'll follow what Jesus says.

peace to youraying:

JustChristian · Apr 28, 2009

sag38 said: ↑

Pacifists are baffling and dangerous to the safety and sovereignty of the United States. They would sell us out in a minute as they roll over and allow our enemies to destroy us in the name of peace as they cling to their bumper sticker that says, "Would Jesus Drop a Bomb?"
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I consider myself a Christian first and an American second, a distant second. I don't accept the statement "My country right or wrong." Do you?

corndogggy · Apr 29, 2009

canadyjd said: ↑

The most successful way to accomplish that is to conform our thinking, by renewing of our minds, to what God has revealed in His Word.
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Ok, I'll call the Navy SEAL DEVGRU group and tell them that they can stop looking, you've got it all under control. :thumbs:

canadyjd said: ↑

His Word tells us not to repay evil for evil. His Word tells us to pray for those who persecute, who despitefully use us.
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Is "His Word" in the old testament totally null and void? God didn't exactly shy away from violence then.

Also, being persecuted for religion isn't exactly the same as letting innocent people die for no reason just because they're citizens of a particular country.

canadyjd · Apr 30, 2009

corndogggy said: ↑

Ok, I'll call the Navy SEAL DEVGRU group and tell them that they can stop looking, you've got it all under control. :thumbs:
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I said Almighty God has it under control. You, apparently, disagree with God's management of the Bin Laden issue.

Is "His Word" in the old testament totally null and void? God didn't exactly shy away from violence then.
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Once again, you ignore the fact that God is the only person who has the wisdom and perfect righteousness to take life as He choses. God allows evil, and then punishes those who committed the evil.

Let the ungodly do evil. Let Christians follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Also, being persecuted for religion isn't exactly the same as letting innocent people die for no reason just because they're citizens of a particular country.
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You present it as an "either...or" situation. "Either allow torture, or innocent people die". I don't believe it.

We should never "do evil" so that "good will come". The ends do not justify the means.

peace to youraying:

corndogggy · Apr 30, 2009

canadyjd said: ↑

You, apparently, disagree with God's management of the Bin Laden issue.
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I agree with it just fine... we've been blessed with the best special ops forces in the world and those guys are tracking him down. :thumbs:

corndogggy · Apr 30, 2009

canadyjd said: ↑

Once again, you ignore the fact that God is the only person who has the wisdom and perfect righteousness to take life as He choses. God allows evil, and then punishes those who committed the evil.
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Concerning the old testament... no, there were more than enough times where violence was committed and it specifically said that it pleased God. If anything, they were rewarded, not punished. So I'll ask again, is the old testament null and void now? Did God change his mind?

JohnDeereFan · Apr 30, 2009

Ps104_33 said: ↑

If your wife and children were being held hostage by an amoral, ruthless gang of terrorist thugs and you had in your possession an individual who you knew for a fact was involved and knew their location and you are of the opinion that waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques are wrong, what method or methods would you use, besides prayer, to try to get your family back safe and sound. I would like to hear from those who are against the use of waterboarding please. Those of you who are not, I already know what you would do.
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I would politely ask him to tell the location, how many men are holding them, how they are armed, what configuration they're holding them in.

If he did not answer, I would shoot him in the foot and ask him again. If he did not answer, I would shoot him in the other foot and ask him again. If he does not answer, shoot him in the knee and ask him again. If he does not answer, then I shoot him in the other knee and ask him again. If he does not answer after that, I will make Jack Bauer look like a girl scout.

billwald · Apr 30, 2009

Don't you want your wife to go to Jesus? Anyone disagree with "To live is Christ and to die is gain?" I'm concerned with inconsistencies in concepts.

OldRegular · Apr 30, 2009

billwald said: ↑

Don't you want your wife to go to Jesus? Anyone disagree with "To live is Christ and to die is gain?" I'm concerned with inconsistencies in concepts.
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It is obvious that liberals don't hold life precious [except perhaps their own] since they have strongly endorsed the slaughter of 50 million [that is 50,000,000] unborn children and for some, such as obama, just born children.

I believe that Scripture teaches that life is precious and that we should cherish the life that GOD gives us. That is the reason we have a medical industry.

Following the logic in your above post every Christian should immediately commit suicide. There was a nut case some years back named Jones who led several hundred people to do just that.

canadyjd · Apr 30, 2009

corndogggy said: ↑

Concerning the old testament... no, there were more than enough times where violence was committed and it specifically said that it pleased God. If anything, they were rewarded, not punished. So I'll ask again, is the old testament null and void now? Did God change his mind?
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Please show me where O.T. scripture specifically says God was "pleased" with violence? I thought the O.T. said that God took no pleasure in the destruction of the wicked.

Nevertheless, Christians are not the Nation of Israel living under the Law.

The commands to Christians are pray for those who persecute, to turn the other cheek, to love and forgive just as God has loved and forgiven us.

I know it is tough. But if we are faithful, God will strengthen us to endure and enable us to live as He desires we live.

peace to youraying:

Alcott · Apr 30, 2009

canadyjd said: ↑

Why do you say "besides prayer"? Is there something more likely to get results than taking your requests before Almighty God in prayer? Exactly what is more effective than prayer?
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A lot of things. Working for a living, for one. Earning a paycheck puts food on the table better than praying for it and doing nothing else.

canadyjd · Apr 30, 2009

Alcott said: ↑

A lot of things. Working for a living, for one. Earning a paycheck puts food on the table better than praying for it and doing nothing else.
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Read the question for the op.

peace to youraying:

OldRegular · Apr 30, 2009

A short passage of Scripture just as a reminder to folks.

Romans 12:9 Abhor that which is evil.

historyb · Apr 30, 2009

and another word for Abhor - Hate. Hate that which is evil

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