He Said He Tortures, She Said He Tortures

I've said in the past that the moment we start having a debate about torture, the moment we allow it into civilized conversation and the "he said/she said" format of contemporary politics, we've lost that debate. Nevertheless, we can look at the polls and divine that a slim majority would like to see investigations of Bush-era torture practices. It would have been higher if they actually used the word torture instead of "harsh interrogation technqiues", or described the techniques in a legitimate fashion. And of course, this is why the fact of the debate distorts the debate. Dick Cheney blustered and talked about how effective it was to waterboard prisoners and avoided the word torture, and the polls are taken with an eye toward that and an effort to be "fair." But there's nothing to be fair about, no reason to neuter the language. As Will Bunch puts it, torture is not about "winning the afternoon."

I know this must be hard for the editors at the Politico to fathom, but there are actually some stories that come down the pike that are more important, and more complicated, than "winning the morning" or "winning the afternoon." The growing drumbeat of revelations about the torture of prisoners in American custody -- in a scheme that was cooked up and then rationalized at the highest levels of our government -- is nothing less than a moral test of who we are as a nation and where we want go from here. It doesn't lend itself to cute little "up" and "down" arrows, to dueling cable shouters "on the right" and "on the left," to all the little devices we in the media use to equate American politics on the soundbite level of sports' "Pardon the Interruption." [...]

Almost every flaw of our craft has been on display in the last week or two -- the pleading for a middle-of-the-road answer to a problem where there is no middle ground, the phony "he said, she said" journalism that gives a 50 percent voice to the advocates of American-bred torture, the use of unnecessary anonymous quotes to defend the indefensible, the need for an elite inside-the-Beltway clique to circle the wagons, to insist that aggressive prosecution is only for the crimes that "regular people" commit.

What a shame. Although it is tragic that we must be talking about something like torture in the United States of America in 2009, this issue does offer modern journalism a chance to do something we have not done in at least a generation -- and that is to provide this nation, our readers and viewers, with moral clarity and leadership. There is still time to show that we've learned something from the fiasco of pre-Iraq war journalism, when a lack of aggressive reporting and a kowtowing to authority made us a co-conspirator in one major step into the abyss, when we launched a "pre-emptive war" against a nation not capable of attacking us. Now, there is no reason why every journalistic voice in this country can say it as simply as Fox News Channel's Shepherd Smith, that "we are America, we do not (expletive deleted) torture." Why not? I don't know any journalist who thinks there are two sides to freedom of the press, so why should freedom from torture be any different?

Perhaps the biggest failure in the torture "debate" occurred over a year ago, when ABC debased themselves by taking the views of a CIA agent at face value, statements that have now been utterly debunked. Good for the New York Times to dredge it up.

In late 2007, there was the first crack of daylight into the government’s use of waterboarding during interrogations of Al Qaeda detainees. On Dec. 10, John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who had participated in the capture of the suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002, appeared on ABC News to say that while he considered waterboarding a form of torture, the technique worked and yielded results very quickly.

Mr. Zubaydah started to cooperate after being waterboarded for “probably 30, 35 seconds,” Mr. Kiriakou told the ABC reporter Brian Ross. “From that day on he answered every question.”

His claims — unverified at the time, but repeated by dozens of broadcasts, blogs and newspapers — have been sharply contradicted by a newly declassified Justice Department memo that said waterboarding had been used on Mr. Zubaydah “at least 83 times.”

Some critics say that the now-discredited information shared by Mr. Kiriakou and other sources heightened the public perception of waterboarding as an effective interrogation technique. “I think it was sanitized by the way it was described” in press accounts, said John Sifton, a former lawyer for Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group.

There's no question about it. Kiriakou came out of central casting, a Jack Bauer-lite telling conservatives what they wanted to hear. He never carried out waterboarding, he never set foot in a secret CIA prison. But he became the poster boy, and Brian Ross never thought to challenge him on his statements. Kiriakou later ended up working for ABC. And Ross literally says in this story, "I didn’t give enough credit to the fiendishness of the C.I.A.”

As Glennzilla notes, Kiriakou and Ross' lies zinged around conservative media, despite the lack of evidence. And that shaped the "debate". A debate we should never be having. A debate based on falsehoods and false premises. A debate which is hurting our standing in the world.

More fallout from the torture "debate" - you get moronic polemicists criticizing the media for doing their job.



Scarborough has since apologized. But that doesn't matter. It's out there now.

World's Most Confident War Criminal

This is really unbelievable. Michael Hayden's whole weak excuse for his agency destroying tapes of torture interrogations was that he was looking to protect the identities of those agents involved. And then one of them comes out on national television and admits to it.

A leader of the CIA team that captured the first major al Qaeda figure, Abu Zubaydah, says subjecting him to waterboarding was torture but necessary.

In the first public comment by any CIA officer involved in handling high-value al Qaeda targets, John Kiriakou, now retired, said the technique broke Zubaydah in less than 35 seconds.

"The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate," said Kiriakou in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC News' "World News With Charles Gibson" and "Nightline."

"From that day on, he answered every question," Kiriakou said. "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."

First of all, of course he broke in 35 seconds. You were drowning him. Not simulating drowning, but actually drowning.

Second, the idea that Zubaydah disrupted dozens of attacks can reasonably be called into question. Kevin Drum has led efforts to retrieve the truth about Zubaydah from the memory hole.

"The guy is insane, certifiable, split personality," [Dan] Coleman told a top official at FBI after a few days reviewing the Zubaydah haul....There was almost nothing "operational" in his portfolio. That was handled by the management team. He wasn't one of them...."He was like a travel agent, the guy who booked your flights....He was expendable, you know, the greeter....Joe Louis in the lobby of Caesar's Palace, shaking hands."

....According to CIA sources, he was water-boarded....He was beaten....He was repeatedly threatened....His medication was withheld. He was bombarded with deafening, continuous noise and harsh lights.

....Under this duress, Zubaydah told them that shopping malls were targeted by al Qaeda....Zubaydah said banks — yes, banks — were a priority....And also supermarkets — al Qaeda was planning to blow up crowded supermarkets, several at one time. People would stop shopping. The nation's economy would be crippled. And the water system — a target, too. Nuclear plants, naturally. And apartment buildings.

Thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each flavor of target. Of course, if you multiplied by ten, there still wouldn't be enough public servants in America to surround and secure the supermarkets. Or the banks. But they tried.

This is actually somewhat backed up by Kiriakou's account. He says that dozens of attacks were thwarted. But to believe that you have to believe that Al Qaeda had dozens of attacks ready, when 9/11 took 18 months to plan and years more to gestate.

Whatever the case, what was done to Zubaydah is obviously torture. And this guy Kiriakou is complicit, admitting that they waterboarded him, which has been in violation of international law for decades. He basically incriminated himself on TV. He's even admitting now that waterboarding is torture that shouldn't be used, although he sounds conflicted by it because he believes this mentally ill person accurately described dozens of attacks.

Kiriakou said the feeling in the months after the 9/11 attacks was that interrogators did not have the time to delve into the agency's bag of other interrogation tricks.

"Those tricks of the trade require a great deal of time -- much of the time -- and we didn't have that luxury. We were afraid that there was another major attack coming," he said [...]

Now retired, Kiriakou, who declined to use the enhanced interrogation techniques, says he has come to believe that water boarding is torture but that perhaps the circumstances warranted it.

"Like a lot of Americans, I'm involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself weighing the idea that waterboarding may be torture versus the quality of information that we often get after using the waterboarding technique," Kiriakou told ABC News. "And I struggle with it." [...]

"At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do. And as time has passed, and as September 11th has, you know, has moved farther and farther back into history, I think I've changed my mind," he told ABC News.

Part of his decision appears to be an ethical one; another part, perhaps, simply pragmatic.

"I think we're chasing them all over the world. I think we've had a great deal of success chasing them...and, as a result, waterboarding, at least right now, is unnecessary," Kirikou said.

Brian Ross: "Did it compromise American principles? Or did it save American lives? Or both?"

John Kiriakou: "I think both. It may have compromised our principles at least in the short term. And I think it's good that we're having a national debate about this. We should be debating this, and Congress should be talking about it because, I think, as a country, we have to decide if this is something that we want to do as a matter of policy. I'm not saying now that we should, but, at the very least, we should be talking about it. It shouldn't be secret. It should be out there as part of the national debate."

Honestly, this is someone who is conflicted because he was witness to madness and he wants to forgive himself. But what you have to ask yourself is, how can it be that Kiriakou feels completely able to come forward and admit to a war crime? It's clear that the CIA destroyed the tapes to avoid prosecution. But I have to say that the destruction is almost irrelevant now. You have a material witness on the record. All the DC-area Staples are probably out of shredders given the gap of several days between the revelation of the tapes and an order for preservation of documents, but again, it doesn't matter. Why is this guy so confident?

Of course, it's because the Bush Administration won't possibly prosecute, no matter who asks for a legal determination of the CIA program. The Democratic leadership and the leadership of the intelligence communities are ethically compromised on the issue as well, having learned of plans to enact torture and meeting them with silence. The US is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court and would do anything in their power to avert prosecution on these grounds.

This is what happens in a country without the rule of law. Torturers can go in front of the cameras and casually admit their guilt. And absolutely nothing will happen to them.

UPDATE: Gerald Posner:

In my 2003 New York Times bestseller, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, I discussed Abu Zubaydah at length in Chapter 19, "The Interrogation." There I set forth how Zubaydah initially refused to help his American captors. Also, disclosed was how U.S. intelligence established a so-called "fake flag" operation, in which the wounded Zubaydah was transferred to Afghanistan under the ruse that he had actually been turned over to the Saudis. The Saudis had him on a wanted list, and the Americans believed that Zubaydah, fearful of torture and death at the hands of the Saudis, would start talking when confronted by U.S. agents playing the role of Saudi intelligence officers.

Instead, when confronted by his "Saudi" interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. "He will tell you what to do," Zubaydah assured them

That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, one of King Fahd's nephews, and the chairman of the largest Saudi publishing empire. Later, American investigators would determine that Prince Ahmed had been in the U.S. on 9/11.

American interrogators used painkillers to induce Zubaydah to talk -- they gave him the meds when he cooperated, and withdrew them when he was quiet. They also utilized a thiopental sodium drip (a so-called truth serum). Several hours after he first fingered Prince Ahmed, his captors challenged the information, and said that since he had disparaged the Saudi royal family, he would be executed. It was at that point that some of the secrets of 9/11 came pouring out. In a short monologue, that one investigator told me was the "Rosetta Stone" of 9/11, Zubaydah laid out details of how he and the al Qaeda hierarchy had been supported at high levels inside the Saudi and Pakistan governments.

He named two other Saudi princes, and also the chief of Pakistan's air force, as his major contacts. Moreover, he stunned his interrogators, by charging that two of the men, the King's nephew, and the Pakistani Air Force chief, knew a major terror operation was planned for America on 9/11.

These three Saudi princes died within a week of one another under highly questionable circumstances, including one who died of "thirst."

UPDATE II: I almost forgot that the CIA was given blanket immunity as part of the Military Commissions Act. This guy is off scot-free. And as I excerpted, Kiriakou declined to use the "enhanced interrogation techniques," i.e. torture. Except he's at the very least an accessory to a war crime, and if he subjected the detainee to extended sleep deprivation, etc., he's complicit.