Without the great investigative reporters of yore, who's up to cracking this latest scandal, the substance of which is bigger and certainly much uglier than Watergate (which merely, by comparison, entailed non violent burglary and some dirty tricks)? One wouldn't even need the Woodward-Bernstein investigative tenacity to unravel "Torturegate" as there are so many who know the truth about the sordid episode, even without the best evidence of the videotapes. As opposed to the relatively smaller group of "Watergate Seven" conspirators--notably Gordon Liddy, H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Mitchell, and Chuck Colson--there must be literally hundreds of government insiders who know the truth about the ordering and covering up of the Bush-Cheney Administration's illegal torture. It shouldn't be hard at all to find a new "Deep Throat" or two (or actually several) who know more than Mark Felt knew about Watergate.
Andrew Sullivan already connected some dots in "The Torture Tape Fingering Bush As a War Criminal" while Laura Rozen (writing about "Operation Stop Talking" for Mother Jones), Scott Horton ("Judgment and Torture" for Harpers Magazine) and Jason Leopold (writing "Report May Have Motivated Destruction of Torture Tapes" for Truthout) have begun the process of uncovering some of this latest terrible scandal. But much of the main stream media hasn't seemed very interested so far. Where's Dana Priest, for instance, whose reporting about secret black sites and extraordinary renditions may have prompted the destruction of the CIA videotapes in the first place?
Would my colleague's cloak and dagger cartoon be more complete if it included the main stream media as ostriches standing around with their heads in the sand?
Why has no reporter apparently bothered to contact a Bin Laden expert like Ali Soufan (whom I recently quoted in "Torture Is Wrong, Illegal and It Doesn't Work") or (retired FBI agent) Jack Cloonan or (former CIA operative) Bob Baer who previously explained how and why torture doesn't work before news of the destruction of the CIA torture tapes arose? Here's what Baer and Cloonan said about torture before "Operation Stop Talking" went into effect:
(REPORTER) SALLY NEIGHBOUR (to Bob Baer): So was the decision not to use torture an ethical one or a practical one?
BOB BAER, FORMER CIA OFFICER AND AUTHOR, "SEE NO EVIL": I think it's well, that's a moral question. You're asking a CIA officer a moral question? No, I mean it's, it's practical and it doesn't work and the moral question is: does the United States adhere to the rule of law, international conventions or doesn't it?
SALLY NEIGHBOUR: The question of what you get from torture is of keen interest to professional interrogators like FBI veteran Jack Cloonan. Based in New York with the FBI's bin Laden squad, Cloonan interrogated dozens of al Qaeda-linked militants, and convicted the men who bombed the US embassies in east Africa in 1998. He says the key to getting good information is building a rapport.
JACK CLOONAN, SENIOR SPECIAL AGENT, FBI'S BIN LADEN UNIT, 1996-2002: I may sit and talk to them, I may just tell them my name and not even ask them a question. I may say, "Have you prayed today? Do you know which way Mecca is and if you haven't prayed why don't I allow you to pray? And by the way, how are you feeling? Do want something to eat?" You know.
SALLY NEIGHBOUR (to Jack Cloonan): Does that approach work?
JACK CLOONAN, SENIOR SPECIAL AGENT, FBI'S BIN LADEN UNIT, 1996-2002: Often times it did surprisingly. If you engage in a lot of yelling and a lot of histrionics and frankly amateurish sophomoric stuff you are gong to stiffen the resolve of somebody who's trying to protect information.
SALLY NEIGHBOUR (to Jack Cloonan): And what about if you use physical coercion, even torture?
JACK CLOONAN, SENIOR SPECIAL AGENT, FBI'S BIN LADEN UNIT, 1996-2002: I'm not going to argue that you aren't going to get information from people if you torture them. You will get information. The question is are you going to get accurate information or are you just getting something that frankly is expedient?
Soufan's, Baer's and Cloonan's prior public opinions that torture practices are ineffective tools for eliciting reliable information run totally counter to former CIA agent Kiriakou's sad attempt to defend his involvement in waterboarding. Several of us former intelligence officers, astonished that Judge Mukasey couldn't answer whether waterboarding is torture, wrote a letter in early November pointing out the same thing as Soufan, Baer and Cloonan in opposition to Mukasey's nomination to become Attorney General. "Operation Stop Talking" has pre-empted further debate on torture-related issues, however, as the Bush Administration apparently looks to scapegoat Kiriakou and other field agents as well as mid-level managers like Jose Rodriguez for ordering the videotapes destroyed. Without a special prosecutor assigned to the case, no Woodward or Bernstein unraveling things, and (Bush loyalist) Mukasey in overall charge of the Department of Justice's criminal investigation, it could take a while longer for the truth to come out.
No wonder Kiriakou's newly hired attorney declared the "hypocrisy (of the Bush Administration) is breathtaking"!
They teach a lot of things in cloak and dagger school but obviously not what happens when the green light goes out. What to do when caught up in attempted cover-ups? Or what to do when the real light comes back on, and you're left holding the bag? Most importantly, how to put up with the breathtaking hypocrisy of those who deny they ever turned on the green light? Shouldn't CIA trainees at least be warned that the green light always goes out?