The debate over accountability for torture, as authorized by the Bush administration, heated up this week. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) led a hearing on Wednesday on Bush-era interrogation practices, featuring testimony from the former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Philip Zelikow. Notably, Zelikow endorsed an investigation into torture: "The U.S. government adopted an unprecedented program of coolly calculated dehumanizing abuse and physical torment to extract information. ... Precisely because this was a collective failure, it is all the more important to comprehend it and learn from it." Though the hearing was a significant step forward for accountability of Bush officials, the White House announced on the same day that it would no longer release hundreds of photographs showing detainee abuse by U.S. troops. At the same time, while progressives continue to advocate investigations, the right wing is attempting to foil moves toward accountability for the real torture culprits, senior Bush officials, instead conjuring up a new attack on congressional officials who were briefed on so-called enhanced interrogation tactics.
New evidence that torture doesn't work: Wednesday's hearing featured testimony from Ali Soufan, a former FBI interrogator who worked closely with Abu Zubaydah. Soufan slammed torture as being "ineffective, slow and unreliable." Describing his team's use of rapport-building techniques with Zubaydah, Soufan said, "Within the first hour of interrogation we gained actionable intelligence." His team quickly learned, for example, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was a key player in the planning of 9/11. Yet contracted CIA interrogators later pushed for abusive interrogations, including "nudity, sleep deprivation, loud noise and temperature manipulation against Zubaydah, even before the Justice Department provided legal permission in writing." Torture was also used to fit the administration's political objectives. In April 2003, "very senior" Bush administration officials suggested that an Iraqi prisoner be waterboarded to see if he would "provide information of a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime," former Iraqi Survey Group chief Charles Duelfer said yesterday. Two senior U.S. intelligence officials said that the suggestion came from the office of Vice President Cheney. Finding this "smoking gun" linking Iraq and al Qaeda was the primary purpose of the interrogation program authorized in 2002, said former Colin Powell chief of staff Larry Wilkerson. Whitehouse responded, saying, "I have heard that to be true," adding that the accusations bolster the case for criminal prosecutions.
Reversing course on accountability: Last month, the Pentagon agreed to comply with a Second Circuit court order requiring the release of hundreds of photographs showing detainee abuse at the hands of U.S. troops. At the time, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that the DOJ "decided based on the ruling that it was hopeless to appeal, and a mandate ordering the release of those photos came Monday." But this week, the White House reversed course and announced that it would appeal the court order and keep the photos secret. The President "believes their release would endanger our troops," the White House explained. "Nothing is added by the release of the photos," Gibbs said this week, calling the photo release a "a sensationalistic portion of that investigation." "Their disclosure is critical for helping the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse as well as for holding senior officials accountable for authorizing or permitting such abuse," countered Amrit Singh, attorney with the ACLU, which originally sued for the release.
Pinning the blame: One of the right wing's latest attempts to distract from the push for torture accountability for Bush officials is saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was equally responsible for Bush's torture program, after reports emerged that the CIA briefed her on "enhanced interrogation techniques" in 2002. Former White House adviser Karl Rove declared that Pelosi was "an accomplice to 'torture.'" House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) claimed Pelosi was "well aware of what these enhanced interrogation techniques were." Rep. Pete Hoesktra (R-MI) said yesterday that the "first witness" in a truth commission should be Pelosi. Yesterday, for the first time, Pelosi "acknowledged that in 2003 she was informed by an aide that the CIA had told others in Congress that officials had used waterboarding during interrogations. But she insisted, contrary to CIA accounts, that she was not told about waterboarding during a September 2002 briefing by agency officials." Pelosi then accused the CIA of "misleading the Congress." Furthermore, in multiple interviews yesterday, former senator and Intelligence Committee ranking member Bob Graham also denied that he had been briefed on waterboarding, contradicting the timeline that the CIA sent to the committee.
Regardless, the debate over whether Congress was an "accomplice to torture" ignores the fact that an August 2002 DOJ memo flatly stated that "Congress may no more regulate the President's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield." In other words, the same conservatives railing that Pelosi should have loudly objected to the program also defended the president's absolute right to order abusive interrogations, with or without congressional approval.