"We're Going to Kill Your Children": The CIA Inspector General's Report
First let me state the obvious: the May 7, 2004 "Special Review" on interrogations from the Central Intelligence Agency's Inspector General is a heavily redacted document. Pages and pages of the report, titled "Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001-October 2003)," are either completely blackened out or mostly so. As a historian with a lot of experience with these kinds of documents, I can tell you that whenever the narrative gets juicy, that's when all the black ink spills over everything (you should see Robert F. Kennedy's FBI file!). Whenever I read these types of censored government records, like those I recently encountered at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, I always get the feeling that I live in the old Soviet Union instead of in a representative "democracy." Having said that, there is much in this wretched government text that should make any human being with a soul (Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck need not apply) to feel quite uneasy, even sick at heart. It's another piece of evidence chronicling one of the most despicable episodes in American history, brought to you by the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney administration.
Given the fact that the power drill later became the low-cost torture device of choice among those fighting in Iraq when the sectarian bloodbath was in full swing it's stunning that Americans working for the CIA used power drills back in 2001 for "interrogations." "[T]he debriefer used a power drill to frighten Al-Nashiri. With [redacted] consent, the debriefer entered the detainee's cell and revved the drill while the detainee stood naked and hooded." (p. 42)
And given that attacks aimed at the family members of "high-value" Iraqis who were involved in the insurgency became commonplace in the mid-2000s, the CIA interrogators' threats against the family members of prisoners held in U.S. custody also stands out: "During another incident [redacted] the same Headquarters debriefer, according to a [redacted] who was present, threatened Al-Nashiri by saying that if he did not talk, 'We could get your mother in here,' and 'We can bring your family in here.' . . . interrogation technique involve[d] sexually abusing female relatives in front of the detainee." (p. 42). And, according to the report, CIA interrogators told Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, the guy they waterboarded 183 times, that "if anything else happens in the United States, 'We're going to kill your children.'" (p. 43). This "we're going to kill your children" line I found particularly interesting since whenever I've found myself in debates with torture apologists I've always asked them how far they would go and used the harming of children and family members as a kind of Socratic question. They almost always drew a line there -- not the CIA.
Add to this macabre mix the use of mock executions and it becomes painfully clear that the U.S. had totally lost its bearings in the aftermath of 9-11 under the "steady-hand" leadership of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Finally, Attorney General John Ashcroft has some explaining to do to Congress. Ashcroft testified to Congress that waterboarding was performed only a few times. The report states: "The Attorney General was informed the waterboard had been used 119 times on a single individual." (p. 45)
Yes, the CIA tortured thousands of people in Vietnam under the Phoenix Program; yes, the CIA trained torturers who went off to practice their dismal craft all over the world; yes, the CIA has engineered coups that brought torturing regimes to power and provided "liaison services" to security forces such as SAVAK in Iran, DINA in Chile, and ORDEN in El Salvador that were known to be notorious torture outfits; and yes, the CIA continues even under the Obama administration to use "rendition" of prisoners to U.S. client regimes that are well known to torture people. But this report shows that when Cheney and other Bush administration officials talked about "working the dark side" -- Wow! -- they really meant it. Someone has got to go to jail for this.
Attorney General Eric Holder's appointment of John Durham to investigate this sordid episode should be only the first step in a wholesale reevaluation of American national security priorities in the post-9-11 world.
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Dear Mr.Palermo
Another concern is that the more we bring these matters into the forefront, the more they can be used as an excuse to neglect issues that are closer to home for the average American; especially in a time of so much struggle and misfortune. It would be nice to see the military managing it's affairs without giving the impression that management does not have control over it's people. Because if it did, we would not be hearing about this— and it would never have been a focal point to begin with. Everybody knows that grown men fight and torture one another in the military, after all. If people do not want to be involved in violence, they should mind their own business and get into a peaceful line of work such as house painting, landscaping or catering. No amount of public opinion will change human nature— it takes care of those who take care of it's best interests.
The not so funny thing about it, Christina, is that had it been left to the military, it's more than likely that none of this would have happened. The legal excuses concocted for the administration, by a Politically canted DOJ, coupled with a mercenary force structure and Vice Presidential pressure exerted on the CIA, brings us to where we are today.
And to think public opinion won't change human nature does not mean it can't be used to control our dark sides. We just can't turn away.
Are you suggesting that the U.S. military ought to be a rogue operation without any oversight from administrative bodies? Or is this just a way to lay blame on the people who did not commit the supposed "war crimes"? Do you honestly believe the public has any opinions that are not manufactured by the press? That's naive to an extreme.
I try to keep it all in perspective, and knowing that there are countries where violence far greater than this is an every day occurrence, I would loathe to see the torture of a small hand-full of trouble-makers be employed as a convenient excuse to lower the cultural standards of the West.
We forget what atrocities *are*— we watch passively as young parents murder one another and their babies by their own hands from so much financial and social stress on our own soil, clucking our tongues and shaking our heads, all the while obsessing about a terrorist attack that took place nearly a decade ago as though that were the most pressing social issue at hand.
See K.J. Dwyer's Profile
Part III
It may seem pedantic to focus on this, however I believe it is key in re-focusing attention where it needs to be; squarely on the Bush administration and its actors who instigated this entire mess to begin with.
Yes, the tactics employed by the CIA are heinous and beyond even the disgusting parameters set forth by the war criminal John Yoo, however unless and until the architects of this mess are taken to task, this kind of thing will continue to happen again and again. The only way to do that is to re-focus attention on the original memoranda that allowed the floodgates of barbarism to open.
That the Obama administration seems intent on "looking forward, not back" and giving tacit assurances that no one who relied on the memoranda will be the focus of investigation (in conjunction with extending the Bush administration's Rendition Program which ensures further torture down the road regardless of oversight provisions) is, at the very least, troubling and, at its worst, a sign that we can expect more of the same from this administration.
See K.J. Dwyer's Profile
Part II
1. to lengthen out in time; extend the duration of; cause to continue longer: to prolong one's stay abroad.
2. to make longer in spatial extent: to prolong a line.
There is nothing in the definition of prolong that infers "long-term" or "lasting months or years". It simply means prolonging, or extending something beyond its original limit or duration. For example, when waterboarding someone, the subject can only take about 40 seconds of torture before he must be allowed to breathe again and if you reapply "after three or four full breaths" for another 40 seconds and then again and again on average for about 20 minutes (pg. 22 DOJ brief quoting OLC memo describing waterboarding) you are, by definition, PROLONGING the sensation of drowning and mental pain and suffering. There is nothing, repeat NOTHING, that talks about "long-term" damage or harm lasting months or years. This was a pure invention on the part of Yoo to allow the twisted sisters of the Bush administration to exact their torture regimen.
There is nothing so frightening as the bureaucratic language surrounding what is permissible in these torture sessions. The language and details of the permitted practices are chilling!
See K.J. Dwyer's Profile
Part I
The abuses that went even beyond the parameters of the OLC memos, for example, are shocking and need to be investigated and the actors prosecuted. However, the Obama administration via Holder is saying that those who relied on the OLC memos and acted within those guidelines "in good faith" (i.e. waterboarding) will not be the subject of investigation. This basically lets off the hook the miscreants who instigated the whole torture regimen in the first place (Cheney, Bush & Co.). The closest anyone will get to prosecuting an architect of this mess is John Yoo who frankly deserves the worst penalties available. Not only should he lose his license to practice law, but he should be imprisoned.
His "opinions" regarding the "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" were made up out of whole cloth. I've only slogged through the first 40 pages of the DOJ brief so far and one of the first things that jumped out at me was on page 18 item 39 where 18 USC 2340 is stated. There you'll see how Congress defined "extreme mental pain or suffering" constituting torture.
"[T]he prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from
(B) the administration or application, or THREATENED administration or application, of mind altering substances or OTHER PROCEDURES CALCULATED TO DISRUPT PROFOUNDLY THE SENSES or the personality . . ." (emphasis added)
Yoo decides to interpret "prolonged" as "long-term" lasting "months or years" (pg. 22 of the DOJ brief). A simple trip to the dictionary shatters his argument completely.
See K.J. Dwyer's Profile
Addendum:
Congress' language could not be more in conflict with Yoo's interpretation. As noted, Congress was so intent that torture be unacceptable that even the mere threat of such torture was defined as causing extreme mental pain and suffering.
"those who relied on the OLC memos and acted within those guidelines "in good faith" (i.e. waterboarding) will not be the subject of investigat
I see what you're saying. Since the opinion of the OLC was solicited by the administration heads
(Bush and Cheney), they thereby are allowed a bit of cover. That having been said, it seems to me that for this investigation to be worth anything, the statement has to be interpreted as meaning that the lowest level operatives should be the only ones immune from prosecution, not the heads. I don't agree with that, either. It needs to be written more clearly.
My opinion is that NO ONE should be immune. Like I've said elsewhere on this thread, to let the lower level criminals in this endeavor off would me a disservice to those within the agency who refused to take part. For the sake of the CIA, those who did NOT take part would be hurt most grievously if those who DID take part were not to feel the sting of the whip. They, who took part, should all swing equally. Those who want to parse torture out by euphemistically referring to it as "enhanced interrogation methods", totally miss the point.
To use this type of phraseology as cover is disingenuous to say the least, and criminal at its worst. Once the intent to do harm to another human being is established, no amount of parsing can mitigate its illegality and need for prosecution.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments and debate.
It is so easy to see why the CIA lost all its ethical boundaries during the Bush administration. The top administration officals had no ethical boundaries, therefore why should underlings? The only thing rewarded in the Bush administration was not excellence or competence, but loyalty to the president. For this reason, Bush gave Medals of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, to George Tenet who said the case for weapons in Iraq was a "slam dunk,' and J. Paul Bremer, who was the architect of firing all Bathists from government jobs in Iraq and dismantling the Iraqi army which created the fierce insurgency campaign among Iraqis.
Bush lawyers, like John Yoo, wrote memos saying torture was a threshold only reached when there was major organ failure or death, in effect, defining torture out of existence. Many of us were so worried during the Bush years that the country was completing losing its moral bearings. Bush still acted like Jesus placed him in office, but right track, wrong track polls showed something like 80% of Americans thinking we were on the wrong track.
These investigations are a start to reclaiming some moral authority among our allies. We are not al Qaeda and should not behave like them. Of course, we will only find some complete clensing when policy makers are prosecuted. Officials should begin with Joh Yoo, perhaps Cheney and David Addington. We are not a country that tortures or, at least, a country that tortures can not be a democracy!
@JamesNYC,
James, you refer to some of the Gitmo detainees as "911 masterminds". Other than someone saying that KSM was such, and that picture of him in a disheveled state, I've seen no evidence released about this. How do we know that any of the people detained at Gitmo had anything to do with 911? I know it's tough to get your mind around this concept. But how much more heinous and inhuman all of this torture might be if none of these people had anything to do with 911? Not a minority, not a few, but not a single one. To me, this is not only very possible, but very likely. Until I hear the evidence in a public trial, I'm not going to believe a word about any "911 masterminds" at Gitmo.
I dont believe that the US government masterminded 9/11 if that's what you are implying.
How about the idea that the Bush administration bore some responsibility, if not by commission, omission!?!? After all there was the PDB of Aug 6th detailing the fact that Osama "Bin Laden determined to Strike in US". It was totally disregarded by the administration.
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Look, there's torture, and there's torture torture type torture.
What came out in these reports is surely bad, and the folks who put it together, like John Yoo need to be prosecuted. But lets keep things in perspective.
Nobody actually got drilled.
The 9/11 masterminds children were not rounded up and killed.
Nobody was actually executed in the room next door.
We can't allow tactics like what is in the report in this country (nor should we send people off to experience them and worse in other countries). But these tactics really cannot legitimately be compared with "torture torture". Bad but not heinous.
Nice exercise in logic, but you can't parse torture,
any more than you can parse pregnancy.
Im not a moral absolutist. There are degrees of everything. Including pregnancy. A just fertilized egg is not the same as 24 hours away from birth. Brandishing a drill is not drilling out someone's kneecap.
We know that prisoners died in custody at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and there's no doubt at all that many more died at other secret "rendition" hell-hole prisons. Is it torture if physical and mental abuse causes death? Yes it is. YES IT IS TORTURE, AND IT HAPPENED.
People die everywhere. Show me evidence of someone dying of torture in US custody.
A lot has been made of the fact that the people within the CIA would feel disgraced and vilified for the attention being paid to this issue, right now. Somehow, because of it, the organization will become so dysfunctional its ability to protect the country will be compromised. The men of the CIA will be broken; wasted; no longer able to function because WE THE PEOPLE broke them for doing wrong.
What a crock!!! So now, I suppose, we should let them get away with torturing people in the most reprehensible of manners, in our name. Now, understand, within the CIA it was a only a few people who perpetrated these crimes, not all of them, by any means. So what happens to those who are innocent, in this scenario? How are they supposed to feel when they did nothing wrong, and are rewarded for their good behavior by seeing this trash getting away with murder; bringing down the entire agency's reputation;and they, who did nothing wrong, get to share the mantel of shame because we were gutless enough to not prosecute the ones who did wrong, and forgot those who followed the law.
So the next time you hear Pat Buchanan or Ari Fleischer belly ache about the damage to be done to the CIA by investigating the torture issue, remember the the majority of personnel in the agency who had scruples enough to NOT follow the lead of the likes of Bush, Cheney, and Yoo.
Time for Cheney to face the music. His concern for the men and women of the CIA is about as real as the Bush/Cheney concern was for our troops when they sent them to Iraq. He is only diverting attention from his crimes. There is a related post at http://iam
The stuff of Hollywood imaginations and James Bond is actually real? And it's our country? I read about this story and all I could really come up with was, "Wow! Really?"
No, in the movies and these terrorists countries of origin , instead of revving the drill, they use it to drill through your kneecap and cripple you for life. instead of threatening your family, they actually do murder them.
Well said, Prof. P.! And everyone, EVERYONE without exception who broke these basic laws of a moderately
Torture argument aside, if the info did actually prevent another attack and save lives, then how does it make our country less safe?
Can't really put the torture argument aside, but the evidence seems to show that no attacks were prevented by any info from it anyway. But to pretend that we COULD put it aside, these war crimes made the country less safe by putting our own soldiers at greater risk and by undermining our country by discarding the rule of law that makes us the great country we are. Although we supported the Geneva convention in WWII, we also had very practical reasons for following it: because we didn't want the Nazis to mistreat our soldiers who had become POWs (although it didn't work, as we know). By torturing and, it now appears, murdering, prisoners the Bush administration made it much more likely that OUR soldiers would be tortured or murdered by people or governments much less scrupulous than we are, or at least much less scrupulous than all the other administrations in our history, all of whom banned torture. Secondly, when you sell out your laws and your morals -- both of which torturing, rendition, and betraying undercover agents all did -- you weaken the reason you have this wonderful country in the first place; any legitimate exceptionalism as a democratic country ruled by constitutional law becomes a sick joke.
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