Time to End the Torture Experiment!

My letter was published in the New York Times yesterday under the caption, "The Uproar Over the C.I.A. and Torture":

To the Editor:

The overall idea put forth on Thursday by torture apologists that the C.I.A. and other government employees were only following Department of Justice legal opinions and essentially didn't know that waterboarding and other tortures they committed were illegal and wrong is complete nonsense. Why was torture only whispered about throughout government in hushed, embarrassed tones? Why did the F.B.I. open a "war crimes file"? Why did the news of Abu Ghraib immediately shame all Americans?

It's true, and proved repeatedly in social psychology experiments, that otherwise good people will tend to conform to authority. It's true that people, under such circumstances, often fail to listen to their consciences. But don't conflate this obedience factor with not being able to appreciate the wrongfulness.

In choosing to appease powerful interests by trying to sweep this horrible wrongdoing under the rug, President Obama undoubtedly had to overcome the pangs of his own conscience.

Coleen Rowley
Apple Valley, Minn., April 17, 2009
The writer is the retired F.B.I. agent who exposed F.B.I. lapses that led to the 9/11 attacks.

My opinion comes from lectures I've been giving all over the country on "Ethical Decision-making" which, after my "whistleblowing" experience, doubles as a warning about how easy it is to get sucked into doing bad things and/or to go along with wrongful, illegal decisions. So I always display Soloman Asch's line test and findings about this human weakness that predisposes humans towards conformity over seeing the truth.

For several years now, the American people have found themselves in the same position as social psychologist Stanley Milgram's "victims" in his famous experiment to see how many people will continue to push the button to give electric shocks to their fellow man. The original video of Milgram's experiment has been deleted from YouTube but I found this recent replication which is worth watching if you haven't seen it.

So yes, they were all following orders but just as in Milgram's experiment, they all knew it was wrong.

The NY Times does a good job again today of trying to awaken American conscience in their op-ed: "The Torturers' Manifesto."

Remember folks that all it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing! There are only a few perpetrators but there are a lot of us. So we CAN collectively exercise our power to stop these bad things from continuing. The good news in social psychologist Soloman Asch's and Stanley Milgram's experiments was there's always 1/3 to 1/2 of us who see the truth and choose to do the right thing. And that's plenty to stop the handful of perpetrators.

C'mon Attorney General Holder, c'mon good American people -- it's time to end the experiment!

Comments

[IAmGeorge]

There are many who would agree with President Obama's decision not to prosecute. E.g.:
“We had orders to obey the head of state.”
Hermann Goering, Reichsmarschall

"It is just incomprehensible how those things [atrocities] came about...Ev­ery genius has the demon in him. You can't blame him [Hitler]--it is just in him...It is all very tragic.”
Rudolf Hess, Deputy to the Fuhrer and Nazi Party Leader

"The crimes are horrible beyond belief, if they are true. Secondly, I don't see how they can fail to recognize a soldier's obligation to obey orders. That's the code I've live by all my life." (11/1/45)
Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations for the Nazi High Command

"I have only done my duty as an intelligence organ, and I refuse to serve as an ersatz for Himmler."
Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Chief of RSHA (an organization which includes offices of the Gestapo, the SD, and the Criminal Police) and Chief of Security Police

“I was given this assignment which I could not refuse--and besides, I did everything possible to treat [the foreign slave laborers] well."
Fritz Sauckel, Chief of Slave Labor Recruitment

[whistlerDE]

In Germany we had a lot of experience with the results of "just following orders". In the Nueremberg Tribunals this excuse was not accepted by the US. Is it now?

Coleen, I think you missed an important aspect "the power of organisations to help their members to ignore morality". The experiments of Milgram and Asch only dealt with one time orders or one time group situations. Therefore your 1/3 or 1/2 figures are by fare too optimistic. In less clear (finding truth is more difficult as just seeing a line or hearing people cry) real live situations where people have a real risk of loosing (carrier chances, jobs, friends ...) and were orders are legitimized with much more intensity (thats what the Bush memos did using so called specialists knowledge as it was done by the wall-street specialist legitimizing their brilliant ideas) the number of people not obeying orders is far greater. This is proofed by research on the Nazi-KZ regime done e.g. by H. Arendt, Z. Baumann and J. Balcke.

With the Obama decisions there is not much hope that these things will change. Whistleblowers like you might be admired by some people afterwards, but they will stay exceptions.

[ColeenRowleyMN2]

Yeah, I know. Think about a variation on the Milgram experiment, for example, where the person pressing the button gets paid a bonus for finishing sooner. Or with the Asch test, where the first two confederates are the person's bosses, or are dressed as scientists or experts. I'd wondered if those experiments have been tried or whether the results are just so dismal we don't want to know.

My husband said he read somewhere that Milgram had some run-in with the CIA due to his social psychology experiments--that they didn't want everyone to know what they had already learned about ease of manipulating people. But he wasn't sure so I got to keep reading.

[ColeenRowleyMN2]

One of my veteran friends just e-mailed me this comment: "Well, if the CIA & DOJ employees that condoned illegal torture are being let off the hook, why isn't Janis Karpinski? Maybe she should be re-instated, back to Brigadier General with full back pay and her "forced retirement" withdrawn.­"

[LeftRight]

Anybody else remember the most common defense at the Nuremberg trials? The "I was just following orders" defense?

Oddly enough that was shown to be an invalid defense against war crimes them, why would it be valid now???

[philistine]

Thanks for your valiant efforts to return our government - particularly its ethics - to proper functioning. We have been led by the soulless for too long. I've been mostly pleased with Obama, but his willingness to compromise on ethical lapses is troubling. Please keep fighting the good fight.

[ScooterLiddy]

We just have to keep the clamor up for as long as it takes. Thanks for your efforts.