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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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March 16th,
2009 - Red Cross Report: CIA Tortured Terror Suspects News article from the
Associated Press Feature article from the New York
Review of Books |
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Red Cross
Report: CIA Tortured Terror Suspects By Pamela Hess Associated Press March 16, 2009 Washington - The CIA's
secret interrogation program amounted to torture for some of the 14
"high-value detainees" held by the agency, according to published excerpts
of an internal 2006 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The ICRC report was obtained
by Mark Danner, a journalist and professor at the University of California at
Berkeley, and excerpted in the April 9 issue of the New York Review of Books. The neutral, Swiss-based
ICRC is designated by the Geneva Conventions on warfare to visit prisoners of
war and other people detained by an occupying power, to ensure countries
respect their obligations under the 1949 accords. ICRC officials would not
confirm details of the report to The Associated Press and denied leaking it. "We regret that
information attributed to the ICRC has been made public. We share our
observations and concerns related to U.S. detentions as part of the
confidential dialogue we maintain with U.S. authorities and so we do not wish
to comment on the substance of the article," said Simon Schorno, a
spokesman for the Geneva headquarters of the International Committee of the
Red Cross. The ICRC generally refuses
to comment on its prisoner-of-war investigations, reasoning that it
undermines the organization's ability to gain access to the prisoners and
influence how they are treated. A U.S. official familiar
with the ICRC report noted that the claims of abuse were made by the alleged
terrorists themselves. The official asked to speak anonymously because the
CIA interrogation program is classified. The ICRC was granted private
access by the Bush administration to the 14 prisoners after they were moved
from secret interrogation sites and prisons to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in
2006. According to the report, as
described by Danner, the prisoners separately and consistently described
long-term solitary confinement, waterboarding - which simulates drowning -
prolonged stress positions, forced prolonged nudity, beatings, denial of
solid food and other forms of abuse. "The allegations of
ill-treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the
ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program,
either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other
elements of the ill-treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," states the report, according to
Danner. The report was written shortly
after then-President George W. Bush publicly declared that the United States
does not and had not tortured detainees at secret CIA prisons known as
"black sites." The Obama administration has
ordered the sites closed and has restricted the CIA to using only those
interrogation methods approved for use by the U.S. military until a complete
review of the program is conducted. A purported al-Qaida
training manual, obtained by police in Manchester, England in 2000 from the
computer of an alleged al-Qaida operative, instructs adherents to claim
torture or abuse if they are captured. The document was translated and posted
onto the U.S. Justice Department's Web site. A leaked 2003 ICRC report
said that prisoners in U.S. custody in Iraq had been abused in ways that in
some cases was tantamount to torture. The report was written before the
abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison became public. It was leaked shortly after
they became known. Associated Press Writer
Alexander G. Higgins contributed to this report from Geneva. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iPW0cuXBLSFZGuQtSV_0yX_xsGwwD96V9KG80 US Torture: Voices from the
Black Sites By Mark Danner New York Review of Books March 12, 2009 ICRC Report on the Treatment
of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA Custody by the International
Committee of the Red Cross, 43 pp., February 2007 We need to get to the bottom
of what happened - and why - so we make sure it never happens again.[1] -
Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee 1. We think time and elections
will cleanse our fallen world but they will not. Since November, George W.
Bush and his administration have seemed to be rushing away from us at
accelerating speed, a dark comet hurtling toward the ends of the universe.
The phrase "War on Terror" - the signal slogan of that
administration, so cherished by the man who took pride in proclaiming that he
was "a wartime president" - has acquired in its pronouncement a
permanent pair of quotation marks, suggesting something questionable,
something mildly embarrassing: something past. And yet the decisions that
that president made, especially the monumental decisions taken after the
attacks of September 11, 2001 - decisions about rendition, surveillance,
interrogation - lie strewn about us still, unclaimed and unburied, like
corpses freshly dead. How should we begin to talk
about this? Perhaps with a story. Stories come to us newborn, announcing
their intent: Once upon a time... In the beginning... From such signs we
learn how to listen to what will come. Consider: I woke up, naked, strapped to
a bed, in a very white room. The room measured approximately 4m x 4m [13 feet
by 13 feet]. The room had three solid walls, with the fourth wall consisting
of metal bars separating it from a larger room. I am not sure how long I
remained in the bed.... A man, unnamed, naked,
strapped to a bed, and for the rest, the elemental facts of space and of
time, nothing but whiteness. NYRB / 13 Clocks The storyteller is very much
a man of our time. Early on in the "War on Terror," in the spring
of 2002, he entered the dark realm of "the disappeared" - and only
four and a half years later, when he and thirteen other "high-value
detainees" arrived at Guantánamo and told their stories in interviews
with representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross
(reported in the confidential document listed above) did he emerge partly
into the light. Indeed, he is a famous man, though his fame has followed a
certain path, peculiar to our modern age: jihadist, outlaw, terrorist,
"disappeared." An international celebrity whose name, one of them
anyway, is instantly recognizable. How many people have their lives described
by the president of the United States in a nationally televised speech? Within months of September
the 11th, 2001, we captured a man known as Abu Zubaydah. We believe that
Zubaydah was a senior terrorist leader and a trusted associate of Osama bin
Laden.... Zubaydah was severely wounded during the firefight that brought him
into custody - and he survived only because of the medical care arranged by
the CIA.[2] A dramatic story: big news.
Wounded in a firefight in Faisalabad, Pakistan, shot in the stomach, groin,
and thigh after jumping from a roof in a desperate attempt to escape. Massive
bleeding. Rushed to a military hospital in Lahore. A trauma surgeon at Johns
Hopkins awakened by a late-night telephone call from the director of central
intelligence and flown in great secrecy to the other side of the world. The
wounded man barely escapes death, slowly stabilizes, is shipped secretly to a
military base in Thailand. Thence to another base in Afghanistan. Or was it
Afghanistan? We don't know, not
definitively. For from the moment of his dramatic capture, on March 28, 2002,
the man known as Abu Zubaydah slipped from one clandestine world, that of
al-Qaeda officials gone to ground in the days after September 11, into
another, a "hidden global internment network" intended for secret
detention and interrogation and set up by the Central Intelligence Agency
under authority granted directly by President George W. Bush in a
"memorandum of understanding" signed on September 17, 2001. This secret system included
prisons on military bases around the world, from Thailand and Afghanistan to
Morocco, Poland, and Romania - "at various times," reportedly,
"sites in eight countries" - into which, at one time or another,
more than one hundred prisoners...disappeared.[3] The secret internment
network of "black sites" had its own air force and its own
distinctive "transfer procedures," which were, according to the
writers of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report,
"fairly standardised in most cases": The detainee would be
photographed, both clothed and naked prior to and again after transfer. A body
cavity check (rectal examination) would be carried out and some detainees
alleged that a suppository (the type and the effect of such suppositories was
unknown by the detainees), was also administered at that moment. The detainee would be made to
wear a diaper and dressed in a tracksuit. Earphones would be placed over his
ears, through which music would sometimes be played. He would be blindfolded
with at least a cloth tied around the head and black goggles. In addition,
some detainees alleged that cotton wool was also taped over their eyes prior
to the blindfold and goggles being applied.... The detainee would be
shackled by [the] hands and feet and transported to the airport by road and
loaded onto a plane. He would usually be transported in a reclined sitting
position with his hands shackled in front. The journey times...ranged from
one hour to over twenty-four to thirty hours. The detainee was not allowed to
go to the toilet and if necessary was obliged to urinate and defecate into
the diaper. One works the imagination
trying to picture what it was like in this otherworldly place: blackness in
place of vision. Silence - or "sometimes" loud music - in place of
sounds of life. Shackles, together sometimes with gloves, in place of the
chance to reach, touch, feel. One senses metal on wrist and ankle, cotton
against eyes, cloth across face, shit and piss against skin. On "some
occasions detainees were transported lying flat on the floor of the
plane...with their hands cuffed behind their backs," causing them
"severe pain and discomfort," as they were moved from one unknown
location to another. For his part, Abu Zubaydah -
thirty-one years old, born Zein al-Abedeen Mohammad Hassan, in Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia, though coming of Palestinian stock, from the Gaza Strip - alleged that during one
transfer operation the blindfold was tied very tightly resulting in wounds to
his nose and ears. He does not know how long the transfer took but, prior to the
transfer, he reported being told by his detaining authorities that he would
be going on a journey that would last twenty-four to thirty hours. A long trip then: perhaps to
Guantánamo? Or Morocco? Then back, apparently, to Thailand. Or was it
Afghanistan? He thinks the latter but can't be sure.... 2. All classified,
compartmentalized, deeply, deeply secret. And yet what is "secret"
exactly? In our recent politics, "secret" has become an oddly
complex word. From whom was "the secret bombing of Cambodia"
secret? Not from the Cambodians, surely. From whom was the existence of these
"secret overseas facilities" secret? Not from the terrorists,
surely. From Americans, presumably. On the other hand, as early as 2002,
anyone interested could read on the front page of one of the country's
leading newspapers: US Decries Abuse but Defends
Interrogations: "Stress and Duress" Tactics Used on Terrorism
Suspects Held in Secret Overseas Facilities Deep inside the forbidden
zone at the US-occupied Bagram air base in Afghanistan, around the corner
from the detention center and beyond the segregated clandestine military
units, sits a cluster of metal shipping containers protected by a triple
layer of concertina wire. The containers hold the most valuable prizes in the
war on terrorism - captured al Qaeda operatives and Taliban commanders.... "If you don't violate
someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your
job," said one official who has supervised the capture and transfer of
accused terrorists. "I don't think we want to be promoting a view of
zero tolerance on this. That was the whole problem for a long time with the
CIA...." This lengthy article, by Dana
Priest and Barton Gellman, appeared in The Washington Post on December 26,
2002, only months after the capture of Abu Zubaydah. A similarly lengthy
report followed a few months later on the front page of The New York Times
("Interrogations: Questioning Terror Suspects in a Dark and Surreal
World"). The blithe, aggressive tone of the officials quoted - "We
don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so
they can kick the [expletive] out of them" - bespeaks a very different
political temper, one in which a prominent writer in a national newsmagazine
could headline his weekly column "Time to Think About Torture,"
noting in his subtitle that in this "new world...survival might well
require old techniques that seemed out of the question."[4] So there are secrets and
secrets. And when, on a bright sunny day two years ago, just before the fifth
anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the President of the United States
strode into the East Room of the White House and informed the high officials,
dignitaries, and specially invited September 11 survivor families gathered in
rows before him that the United States government had created a dark and
secret universe to hold and interrogate captured terrorists - or, in the
President's words, "an environment where they can be held secretly [and]
questioned by experts" - he was not telling a secret but instead
converting a known and well-reported fact into an officially confirmed truth: In addition to the terrorists
held at Guantánamo, a small number of suspected terrorist leaders and
operatives captured during the war have been held and questioned outside the
United States, in a separate program operated by the Central Intelligence
Agency.... Many specifics of this program, including where these detainees
have been held and the details of their confinement, cannot be divulged.... We knew that Abu Zubaydah had
more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking....
And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures. These procedures were
designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution, and our treaty
obligations. The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods
extensively and determined them to be lawful. I cannot describe the specific
methods used - I think you understand why.... I was watching the live
broadcast that day and I remember the uncanny feeling that came over me as,
having heard the President explain the virtues of this "alternative set
of procedures," I watched him stare straight into the camera and with
fierce concentration and exaggerated emphasis intone once more: "The
United States does not torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our
values. I have not authorized it - and I will not authorize it." He had
convinced himself, I thought, of the truth of what he said. This speech, though not much
noticed at the time, will stand, I believe, as George W. Bush's most
important: perhaps the only "historic" speech he ever gave. In
telling his version of Abu Zubaydah's story, and versions of the stories of
Khaled Shaik Mohammed and others, the President took hold of many things that
were already known but not acknowledged and, by means of the alchemical power
of the leader's voice, transformed them into acknowledged facts. He also, in
his fervent defense of his government's "alternative set of
procedures" and his equally fervent denials that they constituted
"torture," set out before the country and the world the dark moral
epic of the Bush administration, in the coils of whose contradictions we find
ourselves entangled still. Later that month, Congress, facing the midterm
elections, duly passed the President's Military Commissions Act of 2006,
which, among other things, sought to shelter from prosecution those who had
applied the "alternative set of procedures" and had done so, said
the President, "in a thorough and professional way." At the same time, perhaps
unwittingly, President Bush made it possible that day for those on whom the
"alternative set of procedures" were performed eventually to speak.
Even as the President set out before the country his version of what had happened
to Abu Zubaydah and the others and argued for its necessity, he announced
that he would bring him and thirteen of his fellow "high-value
detainees" out of the dark world of the disappeared and into the light.
Or, rather, into the twilight: the fourteen would be transferred to
Guantánamo, the main acknowledged offshore prison, where - "as soon as
Congress acts to authorize the military commissions I have proposed" -
they "can face justice." In the meantime, though, the fourteen
would be "held in a high-security facility at Guantánamo" and the
International Committee of the Red Cross would be "advised of their
detention, and will have the opportunity to meet with them." A few weeks later, from
October 6 to 11 and then from December 4 to 14, 2006, officials of the
International Committee of the Red Cross - among whose official and legally
recognized duties is to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions and to
supervise treatment of prisoners of war - traveled to Guantánamo and began
interviewing "each of these persons in private" in order to produce
a report that would "provide a description of the treatment and material
conditions of detention of the fourteen during the period they were held in
the CIA detention program," periods ranging "from 16 months to
almost four and a half years." As the ICRC interviewers
informed the detainees, their report was not intended to be released to the
public but, "to the extent that each detainee agreed for it to be
transmitted to the authorities," to be given in strictest secrecy to
officials of the government agency that had been in charge of holding them -
in this case the Central Intelligence Agency, to whose acting general
counsel, John Rizzo, the report was sent on February 14, 2007. Indeed, though
almost all of the information in the report has names attached, and though
annexes contain extended narratives drawn from interviews with three of the
detainees, whose names are used, we do find a number of times in the document
variations of this formula: "One of the detainees who did not wish his
name to be transmitted to the authorities alleged..." - suggesting that
at least one and perhaps more than one of the fourteen, who are, after all,
still "held in a high-security facility at Guantánamo," worried
about repercussions that might come from what he had said. In virtually all such cases,
the allegations made are echoed by other, named detainees; indeed, since the
detainees were kept "in continuous solitary confinement and
incommunicado detention" throughout their time in "the black
sites," and were kept strictly separated as well when they reached
Guantánamo, the striking similarity in their stories, even down to small
details, would seem to make fabrication extremely unlikely, if not
impossible. "The ICRC wishes to underscore," as the writers tell us
in the introduction, "that the consistency of the detailed allegations
provided separately by each of the fourteen adds particular weight to the
information provided below." The result is a document -
labeled "confidential" and clearly intended only for the eyes of
those senior American officials to whom the CIA's Mr. Rizzo would show it -
that tells a certain kind of story, a narrative of what happened at "the
black sites" and a detailed description, by those on whom they were
practiced, of what the President of the United States described to Americans
as an "alternative set of procedures." It is a document for its
time, literally "impossible to put down," from its opening page - Contents Introduction 1. Main Elements of the CIA
Detention Program 1.1 Arrest and Transfer 1.2 Continuous Solitary
Confinement and Incommunicado Detention 1.3 Other Methods of
Ill-treatment 1.3.1 Suffocation by water 1.3.2 Prolonged Stress
Standing 1.3.3 Beatings by use of a
collar 1.3.4 Beating and kicking 1.3.5 Confinement in a box 1.3.6 Prolonged nudity 1.3.7 Sleep deprivation and
use of loud music 1.3.8 Exposure to cold
temperature/cold water 1.3.9 Prolonged use of
handcuffs and shackles 1.3.10 Threats 1.3.11 Forced shaving 1.3.12 Deprivation/restricted
provision of solid food 1.4 Further elements of the
detention regime.... - to its stark and unmistakable conclusion: The allegations of
ill-treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the
ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program,
either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other
elements of the ill-treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Such unflinching clarity,
from the body legally charged with overseeing compliance with the Geneva
Conventions - in which the terms "torture" and "cruel,
inhuman, and degrading treatment" are accorded a strictly defined legal
meaning - couldn't be more significant, or indeed more welcome after years in
which the President of the United States relied on the power of his office
either to redefine or to obfuscate what are relatively simple words.
"This debate is occurring," as President Bush told reporters in the
Rose Garden the week after he delivered his East Room speech, because of the Supreme
Court's ruling that said that we must conduct ourselves under the Common
Article III of the Geneva Convention. And that Common Article III says that,
you know, there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It's like - it's very
vague. What does that mean, "outrages upon human dignity"?[5] In allowing Abu Zubaydah and
the other thirteen "high-value detainees" to tell their own
stories, this report manages to answer, with great power and authority, the
President's question. 3. We return to a man, Abu
Zubaydah, a Palestinian who, in his thirty-one years, has lived a life shaped
by conflicts on the edge of the American consciousness: the Gaza Strip, where
his parents were born; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he apparently first saw
the light of day; Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, where he took part in the
jihad against the Russians, perhaps with the help, directly or indirectly, of
American dollars; then, post-Soviet Afghanistan, where he ran al-Qaeda
logistics and recruitment, directing aspiring jihadists to the various
training camps, placing them in cells after they'd been trained. The man has
been captured now: traced to a safe house in Faisalabad, gravely wounded by
three shots from an AK-47. He is rushed to the Faisalabad hospital, then to
the military hospital at Lahore. When he opens his eyes he finds at his
bedside an American, John Kiriakou of the CIA: I asked him in Arabic what
his name was. And he shook his head. And I asked him again in Arabic. And
then he answered me in English. And he said that he would not speak to me in
God's language. And then I said, "That's okay. We know who you
are." And then he asked me to
smother him with a pillow. And I said, "No, no. We have plans for
you."[6] Kiriakou and the "small
group of CIA and FBI people who just kept 24/7 eyes on him" knew that in
Abu Zubaydah they had "the biggest fish that we had caught. We knew he
was full of information...and we wanted to get it." According to Kiriakou,
on a table in the house where they found him "Abu Zubaydah and two other
men were building a bomb. The soldering [iron] was still hot. And they had
plans for a school on the table...." The plans, Kiriakou told ABC News
correspondent Brian Ross, were for the British school in Lahore. Their
prisoner, they knew, was "very current. On top of the current threat
information." With the help of the American
trauma surgeon, Abu Zubaydah's captors nursed him back to health. He was
moved at least twice, first, reportedly, to Thailand; then, he believes, to
Afghanistan, probably Bagram. In a safe house in Thailand the interrogation
began: I woke up, naked, strapped to
a bed, in a very white room. The room measured approximately [13 feet by 13
feet]. The room had three solid walls, with the fourth wall consisting of
metal bars separating it from a larger room. I am not sure how long I
remained in the bed. After some time, I think it was several days, but can't
remember exactly, I was transferred to a chair where I was kept, shackled by
[the] hands and feet for what I think was the next 2 to 3 weeks. During this
time I developed blisters on the underside of my legs due to the constant
sitting. I was only allowed to get up from the chair to go [to] the toilet,
which consisted of a bucket. Water for cleaning myself was provided in a
plastic bottle. I was given no solid food
during the first two or three weeks, while sitting on the chair. I was only given
Ensure [a nutrient supplement] and water to drink. At first the Ensure made
me vomit, but this became less with time. The cell and room were
air-conditioned and were very cold. Very loud, shouting type music was
constantly playing. It kept repeating about every fifteen minutes twenty-four
hours a day. Sometimes the music stopped and was replaced by a loud hissing
or crackling noise. The guards were American, but
wore masks to conceal their faces. My interrogators did not wear masks. During this first two to
three week period I was questioned for about one to two hours each day.
American interrogators would come to the room and speak to me through the
bars of the cell. During the questioning the music was switched off, but was
then put back on again afterwards. I could not sleep at all for the first two
to three weeks. If I started to fall asleep one of the guards would come and
spray water in my face. A naked man chained in a
small, very cold, very white room is for several days strapped to a bed, then
for several weeks shackled to a chair, bathed unceasingly in white light,
bombarded constantly with loud sound, deprived of food; and whenever, despite
cold, light, noise, hunger, the hours and days force his eyelids down, cold
water is sprayed in his face to force them up. One can translate these
procedures into terms of art: "Change of Scenery Down."
"Removal of Clothing." "Use of Stress Positions."
"Dietary Manipulation." "Environmental Manipulation."
"Sleep Adjustment." "Isolation." "Sleep Deprivation."
"Use of Noise to Induce Stress." All these terms and many others
can be found, for example, in documents associated with the debate about
interrogation and "counter-resistance" carried on by Pentagon and
Justice Department officials beginning in 2002. Here, however, we find a
different standard: the Working Group says, for example, that "Sleep
Deprivation" is "not to exceed 4 days in succession," that
"Dietary Manipulation" should include "no intended deprivation
of food or water," that "removal of clothing," while
"creating a feeling of helplessness and dependence," must be
"monitored to ensure the environmental conditions are such that this
technique does not injure the detainee."[7] Here we are in a different
place. But what place? Abu Zubaydah
was not only the "biggest fish that we had caught" but the first
big fish. According to Kiriakou, Zubaydah, as he recovered, had "wanted
to talk about current events. He told us a couple of times that he had
nothing personal against the United States.... He said that 9/11 was
necessary. That although he didn't think that there would be such a massive
loss of life, his view was that 9/11 was supposed to be a wake-up call to the
United States." In those initial weeks of
healing, before the white room and the chair and the light, Zubaydah seems to
have talked freely with his captors, and during this time, according to news
reports, FBI agents began to question him using "standard interview
techniques," ensuring that he was bathed and his bandages changed,
urging improved medical care, and trying to "convince him they knew
details of his activities." (They showed him, for example, a "box
of blank audiotapes which they said contained recordings of his phone
conversations, but were actually empty.") According to this account, Abu
Zubaydah, in the initial days before the white room, "began to provide
intelligence insights into Al Qaeda."[8] Or did he? "How Good Is
Abu Zubaydah's Information?" asked a Newsweek "Web exclusive"
on April 27, 2002, less than a month after his capture. The extreme secrecy
and isolation in which Abu Zubaydah was being held, at a location unknown to
him and to all but a tiny handful of government officials, did not prevent
his "information" being leaked from that unknown place directly
into the American press - in the cause, apparently, of a bureaucratic
struggle between the FBI and the CIA. Even Americans who were not following
closely the battling leaks from Zubaydah's interrogation would have found
their lives affected, whether they knew it or not, by what was happening in
that faraway white room; for about the same time the Bush administration saw
fit to issue two "domestic terrorism warnings," derived from Abu
Zubaydah's "tips" - about "possible attacks on banks or
financial institutions in the Northeastern United States" and possible
"attacks on US supermarkets and shopping malls." As Newsweek
learned from a "senior US official," presumably from the FBI -
whose "standard interview techniques" had produced that information
and the "domestic terrorism warnings" based on it - the prisoner
was "providing detailed information for the 'fight against
terrorism.'" At the same time, however, "US intelligence
sources" - presumably CIA - "wonder whether he's trying to mislead
investigators or frighten the American public."[9] For his part, John Kiriakou,
the CIA man, told ABC News that in those early weeks Zubaydah was
"willing to talk about philosophy, [but] he was unwilling to give us any
actionable intelligence." The CIA officers had the "sweeping classified
directive signed by Mr. Bush," giving them authority to "capture,
detain and interrogate terrorism suspects," and Zubaydah was "a
test case for an evolving new role,...in which the agency was to act as
jailer and interrogator of terrorism suspects." Eventually a team from
the CIA's Counterterrorism Center was "sent in from Langley" and
the FBI interrogators were withdrawn. We had these trained
interrogators who were sent to his location to use the enhanced techniques as
necessary to get him to open up, and to report some threat information....
These enhanced techniques included everything from what was called an
attention shake, where you grab the person by their lapels and shake them,
all the way up to the other end, which is waterboarding. They began, apparently, by
shackling him to the chair, and applying light, noise, and water to keep him
awake. After two or three weeks of this Abu Zubaydah, still naked and
shackled, was allowed to lie on the bare floor and to "sleep a
little." He was also given solid food - rice - for the first time.
Eventually a doctor, a woman, came and examined him, and "asked why I
was still naked." The next day he was "provided with orange clothes
to wear." The following day, however, "guards came into my cell.
They told me to stand up and raise my arms above my head. They then cut the
clothes off of me so that I was again naked and put me back on the chair for
several days. I tried to sleep on the chair, but was again kept awake by the
guards spraying water in my face." What follows is a confusing
period, in which harsh treatment alternated with more lenient. Zubaydah was
mostly naked and cold, "sometimes with the air conditioning adjusted so
that, one official said, Mr. Zubayah seemed to turn blue."[10] Sometimes
clothing would be brought, then removed the next day. "When my
interrogators had the impression that I was cooperating and providing the
information they required, the clothes were given back to me. When they felt
I was being less cooperative the clothes were again removed and I was again
put back on the chair." At one point he was supplied with a mattress, at
another he was "allowed some tissue paper to use when going to toilet on
the bucket." A month passed with no questioning. "My cell was still
very cold and the loud music no longer played but there was a constant loud
hissing or crackling noise, which played twenty-four hours a day. I tried to
block out the noise by putting tissue in my ears." Then, "about two
and half or three months after I arrived in this place, the interrogation
began again, but with more intensity than before." It is difficult to know
whether these alterations in attitude and procedure were intended, meant to
keep the detainee off-guard, or resulted from disputes about strategy among
the interrogators, who were relying on a hastily assembled "alternative
set of procedures" that had been improvised from various sources,
including scientists and psychiatrists within the intelligence community,
experts from other, "friendly" governments, and consultants who had
worked with the US military and now "reverse-engineered" the
resistance training taught to American elite forces to help them withstand
interrogation after capture. The forerunners of some of the theories being
applied in these interrogations, involving sensory deprivation,
disorientation, guilt and shame, so-called "learned helplessness,"
and the need to induce "the debility-dependence-dread state," can
be found in CIA documents dating back nearly a half-century, such as this
from a notorious "counterintelligence interrogation" manual of the
early 1960s: The circumstances of
detention are arranged to enhance within the subject his feelings of being
cut off from the known and the reassuring, and of being plunged into the strange....
Control of the source's environment permits the interrogator to determine his
diet, sleep pattern and other fundamentals. Manipulating these into
irregularities, so that the subject becomes disorientated, is very likely to
create feelings of fear and helplessness.[11] A later version of the same
manual emphasizes the importance of guilt: "If the 'questioner' can
intensify these guilt feelings, it will increase the subject's anxiety and
his urge to cooperate as a means of escape." Isolation and sensory
deprivation will "induce regression" and the "loss of those
defenses most recently acquired by civilized man," while the imposition
of "stress positions" that in effect force the subject "to
harm himself" will produce a guilt leading to an irresistible desire to
cooperate with his interrogators. 4. Two and a half months after
Abu Zubaydah woke up strapped to a bed in the white room, the interrogation
resumed "with more intensity than before": Two black wooden boxes were
brought into the room outside my cell. One was tall, slightly higher than me
and narrow. Measuring perhaps in area [3 1/2 by 2 1/2 feet by 6 1/2 feet
high]. The other was shorter, perhaps only [3 1/2 feet] in height. I was
taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my
neck, they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against
the hard walls of the room. I was also repeatedly slapped in the face.... I was then put into the tall
black box for what I think was about one and a half to two hours. The box was
totally black on the inside as well as the outside.... They put a cloth or
cover over the outside of the box to cut out the light and restrict my air
supply. It was difficult to breathe. When I was let out of the box I saw that
one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. From now
on it was against this wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my
neck. I think that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of
the impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against
the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury. One is reminded here that Abu
Zubaydah was not alone with his interrogators, that everyone in that white
room - guards, interrogators, doctor - was in fact linked directly, and
almost constantly, to senior intelligence officials on the other side of the
world. "It wasn't up to individual interrogators to decide, 'Well, I'm
gonna slap him. Or I'm going to shake him. Or I'm gonna make him stay up for
48 hours," said John Kiriakou. Each one of these steps...had
to have the approval of the Deputy Director for Operations. So before you
laid a hand on him, you had to send in the cable saying, "He's
uncooperative. Request permission to do X." And that permission would
come.... The cable traffic back and forth was extremely specific. And the
bottom line was these were very unusual authorities that the agency got after
9/11. No one wanted to mess them up. No one wanted to get in trouble by going
overboard.… No one wanted to be the guy who accidentally did lasting damage
to a prisoner. Smashing against hard walls
before Zubaydah enters the tall black coffin-like box; sudden appearance of
plywood sheeting affixed to the wall for him to be smashed against when he
emerges. Perhaps the deputy director of operations, pondering the matter in
his Langley, Virginia, office, suggested the plywood? Or perhaps it was someone
higher up? Shortly after Abu Zubaydah was captured, according to ABC News,
CIA officers "briefed high-level officials in the National Security
Council's Principals Committee," including Vice President Dick Cheney,
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Attorney General John
Ashcroft, who "then signed off on the [interrogation] plan." At the
time, the spring and summer of 2002, the administration was devising what
some referred to as a "golden shield" from the Justice Department -
the legal rationale that was embodied in the infamous "torture
memorandum," written by John Yoo and signed by Jay Bybee in August 2002,
which claimed that for an "alternative procedure" to be considered
torture, and thus illegal, it would have to cause pain of the sort "that
would be associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ
failure, or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body function
will likely result." The "golden shield" presumably would
protect CIA officers from prosecution. Still, Director of Central
Intelligence George Tenet regularly brought directly to the attention of the
highest officials of the government specific procedures to be used on
specific detainees - "whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of
sleep or subject to simulated drowning" - in order to seek reassurance
that they were legal. According to the ABC report, the briefings of
principals were so detailed and frequent that "some of the interrogation
sessions were almost choreographed." At one such meeting, John Ashcroft,
then attorney general, reportedly demanded of his colleagues, "Why are
we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this
kindly."[12] We do not know if the plywood
appeared in Zubaydah's white room thanks to orders from his interrogators,
from their bosses at Langley, or perhaps from their superiors in the White
House. We don't know the precise parts played by those responsible for
"choreographing" the "alternative set of procedures." We
do know from several reports that at a White House meeting in July 2002 top
administration lawyers gave the CIA "the green light" to move to
the "more aggressive techniques" that were applied to him,
separately and in combination, during the following days: After the beating I was then
placed in the small box. They placed a cloth or cover over the box to cut out
all light and restrict my air supply. As it was not high enough even to sit
upright, I had to crouch down. It was very difficult because of my wounds.
The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in the leg
and stomach became very painful. I think this occurred about 3 months after
my last operation. It was always cold in the room, but when the cover was
placed over the box it made it hot and sweaty inside. The wound on my leg
began to open and started to bleed. I don't know how long I remained in the
small box, I think I may have slept or maybe fainted. I was then dragged from the
small box, unable to walk properly and put on what looked like a hospital
bed, and strapped down very tightly with belts. A black cloth was then placed
over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water
on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was
removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the
straps on my wounds was very painful. I vomited. The bed was then again
lowered to horizontal position and the same torture carried out again with
the black cloth over my face and water poured on from a bottle. On this
occasion my head was in a more backward, downwards position and the water was
poured on for a longer time. I struggled against the straps, trying to
breathe, but it was hopeless. I thought I was going to die. I lost control of
my urine. Since then I still lose control of my urine when under stress. I was then placed again in the
tall box. While I was inside the box loud music was played again and somebody
kept banging repeatedly on the box from the outside. I tried to sit down on
the floor, but because of the small space the bucket with urine tipped over
and spilt over me.... I was then taken out and again a towel was wrapped
around my neck and I was smashed into the wall with the plywood covering and
repeatedly slapped in the face by the same two interrogators as before. I was then made to sit on the
floor with a black hood over my head until the next session of torture began.
The room was always kept very cold. This went on for
approximately one week. During this time the whole procedure was repeated
five times. On each occasion, apart from one, I was suffocated once or twice
and was put in the vertical position on the bed in between. On one occasion
the suffocation was repeated three times. I vomited each time I was put in
the vertical position between the suffocation. During that week I was not
given any solid food. I was only given Ensure to drink. My head and beard
were shaved everyday. I collapsed and lost
consciousness on several occasions. Eventually the torture was stopped by the
intervention of the doctor. I was told during this period
that I was one of the first to receive these interrogation techniques, so no
rules applied. It felt like they were experimenting and trying out techniques
to be used later on other people. 5. All evidence from the ICRC
report suggests that Abu Zubaydah's informant was telling him the truth: he
was the first, and, as such, a guinea pig. Some techniques are discarded. The
coffin-like black boxes, for example, barely large enough to contain a man,
one six feet tall and the other scarcely more than three feet, which seem to
recall the sensory-deprivation tanks used in early CIA-sponsored experiments,
do not reappear. Neither does the "long-time sitting" - the weeks
shackled to a chair - that Abu Zubaydah endured in his first few months. Nudity, on the other hand, is
a constant in the ICRC report, as are permanent shackling, the "cold
cell," and the unceasing loud music or noise. Sometimes there is
twenty-four-hour light, sometimes constant darkness. Beatings, also, and
smashing against the walls seem to be favored procedures; often, the interrogators
wear gloves. In later interrogations new
techniques emerge, of which "long-time standing" and the use of
cold water are notable. Walid Bin Attash, a Yemeni national involved with
planning the attacks on the US embassies in Africa in 1998 and on the USS
Cole in 2000, was captured in Karachi on April 29, 2003: On arrival at the place of
detention in Afghanistan I was stripped naked. I remained naked for the next
two weeks. I was put in a cell measuring approximately [3 1/2 by 6 1/2 feet].
I was kept in a standing position, feet flat on the floor, but with my arms
above my head and fixed with handcuffs and a chain to a metal bar running
across the width of the cell. The cell was dark with no light, artificial or
natural. During the first two weeks I
did not receive any food. I was only given Ensure and water to drink. A guard
would come and hold the bottle for me while I drank.... The toilet consisted
of a bucket in the cell.... I was not allowed to clean myself after using the
bucket. Loud music was playing twenty-four hours each day throughout the
three weeks I was there. This "forced
standing," with arms shackled above the head, a favorite Soviet
technique ( stoika ) that seems to have become standard procedure after Abu
Zubaydah, proved especially painful for Bin Attash, who had lost a leg
fighting in Afghanistan: After some time being held in
this position my stump began to hurt so I removed my artificial leg to
relieve the pain. Of course my good leg then began to ache and soon started
to give way so that I was left hanging with all my weight on my wrists. I
shouted for help but at first nobody came. Finally, after about one hour a
guard came and my artificial leg was given back to me and I was again placed
in the standing position with my hands above my head. After that the
interrogators sometimes deliberately removed my artificial leg in order to
add extra stress to the position.... By his account, Bin Attash
was kept in this position for two weeks - "apart [from] two or three times
when I was allowed to lie down." Though "the methods used were
specifically designed not to leave marks," the cuffs eventually
"cut into my wrists and made wounds. When this happened the doctor would
be called." At a second location, where Bin Attash was again stripped
naked and placed "in a standing position with my arms above my head and
fixed with handcuffs and a chain to a metal ring in the ceiling," a
doctor examined his lower leg every day - "using a tape measure for
signs of swelling." I do not remember for exactly
how many days I was kept standing, but I think it was about ten days....
During the standing I was made to wear a diaper. However, on some occasions
the diaper was not replaced and so I had to urinate and defecate over myself.
I was washed down with cold water everyday. Cold water was used on Bin
Attash in combination with beatings and the use of a plastic collar, which
seems to have been a refinement of the towel that had been looped around Abu
Zubaydah's neck: Every day for the first two
weeks I was subjected to slaps to my face and punches to my body during
interrogation. This was done by one interrogator wearing gloves.... Also on a daily basis during
the first two weeks a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam
me against the walls of the interrogation room. It was also placed around my
neck when being taken out of my cell for interrogation and was used to lead
me along the corridor. It was also used to slam me against the walls of the
corridor during such movements. Also on a daily basis during
the first two weeks I was made to lie on a plastic sheet placed on the floor
which would then be lifted at the edges. Cold water was then poured onto my
body with buckets.... I would be kept wrapped inside the sheet with the cold
water for several minutes. I would then be taken for interrogation.... Bin Attash notes that in the
"second place of detention" - where he was put in the diaper -
"they were rather more sophisticated than in Afghanistan because they
had a hose-pipe with which to pour the water over me." 6. A clear method emerges from
these accounts, based on forced nudity, isolation, bombardment with noise and
light, deprivation of sleep and food, and repeated beatings and
"smashings" - though from this basic model one can see the method
evolve, from forced sitting to forced standing, for example, and acquire new
elements, like immersion in cold water. Khaled Shaik Mohammed, the
key planner of the September 11 attacks who was captured in Rawalpindi on
March 1, 2003 - nine of the fourteen "high-value detainees" were
apprehended in Pakistan - and, after a two-day detention in Pakistan during
which he alleges that a "CIA agent...punched him several times in the
stomach, chest and face [and]...threw him on the floor and trod on his
face," was sent to Afghanistan using the standard "transfer
procedures." ("My eyes were covered with a cloth tied around my
head and with a cloth bag pulled over it. A suppository was inserted into my
rectum. I was not told what the suppository was for.") In Afghanistan,
he was stripped and placed in a small cell, where he "was kept in a
standing position with my hands cuffed and chained to a bar above my head. My
feet were flat on the floor." After about an hour, I was taken to another room
where I was made to stand on tiptoes for about two hours during questioning.
Approximately thirteen persons were in the room. These included the head
interrogator (a man) and two female interrogators, plus about ten muscle guys
wearing masks. I think they were all Americans. From time to time one of the
muscle guys would punch me in the chest and stomach. These "full-dress"
interrogations - where the detainee stands naked, on tiptoe, amid a crowd of
thirteen people, including "ten muscle guys wearing masks" - were
periodically interrupted by the detainee's removal to a separate room for
additional procedures: Here cold water from buckets
was thrown onto me for about forty minutes. Not constantly as it took time to
refill the buckets. After which I would be taken back to the interrogation
room. On one occasion during the
interrogation I was offered water to drink, when I refused I was again taken
to another room where I was made to lie [on] the floor with three persons holding
me down. A tube was inserted into my anus and water poured inside. Afterwards
I wanted to go to the toilet as I had a feeling as if I had diarrhoea. No
toilet access was provided until four hours later when I was given a bucket
to use. Whenever I was returned to my
cell I was always kept in the standing position with my hands cuffed and
chained to a bar above my head. After three days in what he
believes was Afghanistan, Mohammed was again dressed in a tracksuit,
blindfold, hood, and headphones, and shackled and placed aboard a plane
"sitting, leaning back, with my hands and ankles shackled in a high
chair." He quickly fell asleep - "the first proper sleep in over
five days" - and remains unsure of how long the journey took. On
arrival, however, he realized he had come a long way: I could see at one point
there was snow on the ground. Everybody was wearing black, with masks and
army boots, like Planet-X people. I think the country was Poland. I think
this because on one occasion a water bottle was brought to me without the
label removed. It had [an] e-mail address ending in ".pl." He was stripped and put in a
small cell "with cameras where I was later informed by an interrogator
that I was monitored 24 hours a day by a doctor, psychologist and interrogator."
He believes the cell was underground because one had to descend steps to
reach it. Its walls were of wood and it measured about ten by thirteen feet. It was in this place,
according to Mohammed, that "the most intense interrogation occurred, led
by three experienced CIA interrogators, all over 65 years old and all strong
and well trained." They informed him that they had received the
"green light from Washington" to give him "a hard time."
"They never used the word 'torture' and never referred to 'physical
pressure,' only to 'a hard time.' I was never threatened with death, in fact
I was told that they would not allow me to die, but that I would be brought
to the ' verge of death and back again.'" I was kept for one month in
the cell in a standing position with my hands cuffed and shackled above my
head and my feet cuffed and shackled to a point in the floor. Of course
during this month I fell asleep on some occasions while still being held in
this position. This resulted in all my weight being applied to the handcuffs
around my wrist resulting in open and bleeding wounds. [Scars consistent with
this allegation were visible on both wrists as well as on both ankles.] Both
my feet became very swollen after one month of almost continual standing.[13] For interrogation, Mohammed
was taken to a different room. The sessions last for as long as eight hours
and as short as four. The number of people present
varied greatly from one day to another. Other interrogators, including women,
were also sometimes present.... A doctor was usually also present. If I was
perceived not to be cooperating I would be put against a wall and punched and
slapped in the body, head and face. A thick flexible plastic collar would
also be placed around my neck so that it could then be held at the two ends
by a guard who would use it to slam me repeatedly against the wall. The
beatings were combined with the use of cold water, which was poured over me
using a hose-pipe. The beatings and use of cold water occurred on a daily
basis during the first month. Like Abu Zubaydah; like
Abdelrahim Hussein Abdul Nashiri, a Saudi who was captured in Dubai in
October 2002, Mohammed was also subjected to waterboarding, by his account on
five occasions: I would be strapped to a
special bed, which could be rotated into a vertical position. A cloth would
be placed over my face. Cold water from a bottle that had been kept in a
fridge was then poured onto the cloth by one of the guards so that I could
not breathe.... The cloth was then removed and the bed was put into a
vertical position. The whole process was then repeated during about one hour.
Injuries to my ankles and wrists also occurred during the water-boarding as I
struggled in the panic of not being able to breath. Female interrogators were
also present...and a doctor was always present, standing out of sight behind
the head of [the] bed, but I saw him when he came to fix a clip to my finger
which was connected to a machine. I think it was to measure my pulse and
oxygen content in my blood. So they could take me to [the] breaking point. As with Zubaydah, the
harshest sessions of interrogation involved the "alternative set of
procedures" used in sequence and in combination, one technique
intensifying the effects of the others: The beatings became worse and
I had cold water directed at me from a hose-pipe by guards while I was still
in my cell. The worst day was when I was beaten for about half an hour by one
of the interrogators. My head was banged against the wall so hard that it
started to bleed. Cold water was poured over my head. This was then repeated
with other interrogators. Finally I was taken for a session of water
boarding. The torture on that day was finally stopped by the intervention of
the doctor. I was allowed to sleep for about one hour and then put back in my
cell standing with my hands shackled above my head. Reading the ICRC report, one
becomes eventually somewhat inured to the "alternative set of
procedures" as they are described: the cold and repeated violence grows
numbing. Against this background, the descriptions of daily life of the
detainees in the black sites, in which interrogation seems merely a periodic
heightening of consistently imposed brutality, become more striking. Here
again is Mohammed: After each session of torture
I was put into a cell where I was allowed to lie on the floor and could sleep
for a few minutes. However, due to shackles on my ankles and wrists I was
never able to sleep very well....The toilet consisted of a bucket in the cell,
which I could use on request [he was shackled standing, his hands affixed to
the ceiling], but I was not allowed to clean myself after toilet during the
first month.... During the first month I was not provided with any food apart
from on two occasions as a reward for perceived cooperation. I was given
Ensure to drink every 4 hours. If I refused to drink then my mouth was forced
open by the guard and it was poured down my throat by force.... At the time
of my arrest I weighed 78kg. After one month in detention I weighed 60kg. I wasn't given any clothes
for the first month. Artificial light was on 24 hours a day, but I never saw
sunlight. 7. Q : Mr. President,...this is
a moral question: Is torture ever justified? President George W. Bush:
Look, I'm going to say it one more time.... Maybe I can be more clear. The
instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That ought to comfort
you. We're a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You
might look at these laws, and that might provide comfort for you. - Sea
Island, Georgia, June 10, 2004 Abu Zubaydah, Walid Bin
Attash, Khaled Shaik Mohammed - these men almost certainly have blood on
their hands, a great deal of blood. There is strong reason to believe that
they had critical parts in planning and organizing terrorist operations that
caused the deaths of thousands of people. So in all likelihood did the other
twelve "high-value detainees" whose treatment while secretly
confined by agents of the US government is described with such gruesome
particularity in the report of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
From everything we know, many or all of these men deserve to be tried and
punished - to be "brought to justice," as President Bush, in his
speech to the American people on September 6, 2006, vowed they would be. It seems unlikely that they
will be brought to justice anytime soon. In mid-January, Susan J. Crawford,
who had been appointed by the Bush administration to decide which Guantánamo
detainees should be tried before military commissions, declined to refer to
trial Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was to have been among the September 11
hijackers but who had been turned back by immigration officials at Orlando
International Airport. After he was captured in Afghanistan in late 2002,
Qahtani was imprisoned in Guantánamo and interrogated by Department of
Defense intelligence officers. Crawford, a retired judge and former general
counsel of the army, told TheWashington Post that she had concluded that
Qahtani's "treatment met the legal definition of torture." The techniques they used were
all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly
aggressive and too persistent.... You think of torture, you
think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any
one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical
impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And
coercive. Clearly coercive.[14] Qahtani's interrogation at
Guantánamo, accounts of which have appeared in Time and The Washington Post,
was intense and prolonged, stretching for fifty consecutive days beginning in
the late fall of 2002, and led to his hospitalization on at least two
occasions. Some of the techniques used, including longtime sitting in
restraints, prolonged exposure to cold, loud music, and noise, and sleep
deprivation, recall those described in the ICRC report. If the
"coercive" and "abusive" interrogation of Qahtani makes
trying him impossible, one may doubt that any of the fourteen
"high-value detainees" whose accounts are given in this report will
ever be tried and sentenced in an internationally recognized and sanctioned
legal proceeding. In the case of men who have
committed great crimes, this seems to mark perhaps the most important and
consequential sense in which "torture doesn't work." The use of
torture deprives the society whose laws have been so egregiously violated of
the possibility of rendering justice. Torture destroys justice. Torture in
effect relinquishes this sacred right in exchange for speculative benefits
whose value is, at the least, much disputed. John Kiriakou, the CIA officer
who witnessed part of Zubaydah's interrogation, described to Brian Ross of
ABC News what happened after Zubaydah was waterboarded: He resisted. He was able to
withstand the water boarding for quite some time. And by that I mean probably
30, 35 seconds.... And a short time afterwards, in the next day or so, he
told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night
and told him to cooperate because his cooperation would make it easier on the
other brothers who had been captured. And from that day on he answered every
question just like I'm sitting here speaking to you.... The threat
information that he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of
attacks. This claim, echoed by
President Bush in his speech, is a matter of fierce dispute. Bush's public
version, indeed, was much more carefully circumscribed: among other things,
that Zubaydah's information confirmed the alias ("Muktar") of
Khaled Shaik Mohammed, and thus helped lead to his capture; that it helped
lead, indirectly, to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni who was
another key figure in planning the September 11 attacks; and that it
"helped us stop another planned attack within the United States." At least some of this
information, apparently, came during the early, noncoercive interrogation led
by FBI agents. Later, according to the reporter Ron Suskind, Zubaydah named countless
targets inside the US to stop the pain, all of them immaterial. Indeed, think
back to the sudden slew of alerts in the spring and summer of 2002 about
attacks on apartment buildings, banks, shopping malls and, of course, nuclear
plants. Suskind is only the most
prominent of a number of reporters with strong sources in the intelligence
community who argue that the importance of the intelligence Zubaydah
supplied, and indeed his importance within al-Qaeda, have been grossly and
systematically exaggerated by government officials, from President Bush on
down.[15] Though it seems highly
unlikely that Zubaydah's information stopped "maybe dozens of
attacks," as Kiriakou said, the plain fact is that it is impossible,
until a thorough investigation can be undertaken of the interrogations, to
evaluate fully and fairly what intelligence the United States actually
received in return for all the severe costs, practical, political, legal, and
moral, the country incurred by instituting a policy of torture. There is a
sense in which the entire debate over what Zubaydah did or did not provide,
and the attacks the information might or might not have prevented - a debate
driven largely by leaks by fiercely self-interested parties - itself reflects
an unvoiced acceptance, on both sides, of the centrality of the mythical
"ticking-bomb scenario" so beloved of those who argue that torture
is necessary, and so prized by the writers of television dramas like 24. That
is, the argument centers on whether Zubaydah's interrogation directly
"disrupted a number of attacks." Perhaps unwittingly, Kiriakou
is most revealing about the intelligence value of interrogation of
"high-value detainees" when he discusses what the CIA actually got
from Zubaydah: What he was able to provide was
information on the al-Qaeda leadership. For example, if bin Laden were to do
X, who would be the person to undertake such and such an operation? "Oh,
logically that would be Mr. Y." And we were able to use that information
to kind of get an idea of how al-Qaeda operated, how it came about
conceptualizing its operations, and how it went about tasking different cells
with carrying out operations.... His value was, it allowed us to have
somebody who we could pass ideas onto for his comments or analysis. This has the ring of truth,
for this is how intelligence works - by the patient accruing of individual
pieces of information, by building a picture that will help officers make
sense of the other intelligence they receive. Could such "comments or
analysis" from a high al-Qaeda operative eventually help lead to the
disruption of "a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks"? It
seems possible - but if it did, the chain of cause and effect might not be
direct, certainly not nearly so direct as the dramatic scenarios in
newspapers and television dramas - and presidential speeches - suggest. The
ticking bomb, about to explode and kill thousands or millions; the evil
captured terrorist who alone has the information to find and disarm it; the
desperate intelligence operative, forced to do whatever is necessary to gain
that information - all these elements are well known and emotionally
powerful, but where they appear most frequently is in popular entertainment,
not in white rooms in Afghanistan. There is a reverse side, of
course, to the "ticking bomb" and torture: pain and ill-treatment,
by creating an unbearable pressure on the detainee to say something,
anything, to make the pain stop, increase the likelihood that he will
fabricate stories, and waste time, or worse. At least some of the
intelligence that came of the "alternative set of procedures," like
Zubaydah's supposed "information" about attacks on shopping malls
and banks, seems to have led the US government to issue what turned out to be
baseless warnings to Americans. Khaled Shaik Mohammed asserted this directly
in his interviews with the ICRC. "During the harshest period of my
interrogation," he said, I gave a lot of false
information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to
hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop.... I'm sure that the false
information I was forced to invent...wasted a lot of their time and led to
several false red-alerts being placed in the US. For all the talk of ticking
bombs, very rarely, if ever, have officials been able to point to information
gained by interrogating prisoners with "enhanced techniques" that
enabled them to prevent an attack that had reached its "operational
stage" (that is, had gone beyond reconnoitering and planning). Still,
widespread perception that such techniques have prevented attacks, actively
encouraged by the President and other officials, has been politically
essential in letting the administration carry on with these policies after
they had largely become public. Polls tend to show that a majority of
Americans are willing to support torture only when they are assured that it
will "thwart a terrorist attack." Because of the political
persuasiveness of such scenarios it is vital that a future inquiry truly
investigate claims that attacks have been prevented. As I write, it is impossible
to know what benefits - in intelligence, in national security, in disrupting
al-Qaeda - the President's approval of use of an "alternative set of
procedures" might have brought to the United States. What we can say
definitively is that the decision has harmed American interests in quite
demonstrable ways. Some are practical and specific: for example, FBI agents,
many of them professionals with great experience and skill in interrogation,
were withdrawn, apparently after objections by the bureau's leaders, when it
was decided to use the "alternative set of procedures" on Abu
Zubaydah. Extensive leaks to the press, from both officials supportive of and
critical of the "alternative set of procedures," undermined what
was supposed to be a highly secret program; those leaks, in large part a
product of the great controversy the program provoked within the national
security bureaucracy, eventually helped make it unsustainable. Finally, this bureaucratic weakness
led officials of the CIA to destroy, apparently out of fear of eventual
exposure and possible prosecution, a trove of as many as ninety-two video
recordings that had been made of the interrogations, all but two of them of
Abu Zubaydah. Whether or not the prosecutor investigating those actions
determines that they were illegal, it is hard to believe that the recordings
did not include valuable intelligence, which was sacrificed, in effect, for
political reasons. These recordings doubtless could have played a critical
part as well in the effort to determine what benefits, if any, the program
brought to the security of the United States. Far and away the greatest
damage, though, was legal, moral, and political. In the wake of the ICRC
report one can make several definitive statements: 1. Beginning in the spring of
2002 the United States government began to torture prisoners. This torture,
approved by the President of the United States and monitored in its daily
unfolding by senior officials, including the nation's highest law enforcement
officer, clearly violated major treaty obligations of the United States,
including the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture, as well
as US law. 2. The most senior officers
of the US government, President George W. Bush first among them, repeatedly
and explicitly lied about this, both in reports to international institutions
and directly to the public. The President lied about it in news conferences,
interviews, and, most explicitly, in speeches expressly intended to set out
the administration's policy on interrogation before the people who had
elected him. 3. The US Congress, already
in possession of a great deal of information about the torture conducted by the
administration - which had been covered widely in the press, and had been
briefed, at least in part, from the outset to a select few of its members -
passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and in so doing attempted to
protect those responsible from criminal penalty under the War Crimes Act. 4. Democrats, who could have
filibustered the bill, declined to do so - a decision that had much to do
with the proximity of the midterm elections, in the run-up to which, they
feared, the President and his Republican allies might gain advantage by
accusing them of "coddling terrorists." One senator summarized the
politics of the Military Commissions Act with admirable forthrightness: Soon, we will adjourn for the
fall, and the campaigning will begin in earnest. And there will be 30-second
attack ads and negative mail pieces, and we will be criticized as caring more
about the rights of terrorists than the protection of Americans. And I know
that the vote before us was specifically designed and timed to add more fuel
to that fire.[16] Senator Barack Obama was only
saying aloud what every other legislator knew: that for all the horrified and
gruesome exposés, for all the leaked photographs and documents and horrific
testimony, when it came to torture in the September 11 era, the raw politics
cut in the other direction. Most politicians remain convinced that still
fearful Americans - given the choice between the image of 24 's Jack Bauer, a
latter-day Dirty Harry, fantasy symbol of untrammeled power doing "everything
it takes" to protect them from that ticking bomb, and the image of weak
liberals "reading Miranda rights to terrorists" - will choose Bauer
every time. As Senator Obama said, after the bill he voted against had
passed, "politics won today." 5. The political damage to
the United States' reputation, and to the "soft power" of its
constitutional and democratic ideals, has been, though difficult to quantify,
vast and enduring. In a war that is essentially an insurgency fought on a
worldwide scale - which is to say, a political war, in which the attitudes
and allegiances of young Muslims are the critical target of opportunity - the
United States' decision to use torture has resulted in an enormous
self-administered defeat, undermining liberal sympathizers of the United
States and convincing others that the country is exactly as its enemies paint
it: a ruthless imperial power determined to suppress and abuse Muslims. By
choosing to torture, we freely chose to become the caricature they made of
us. 8. In the wake of the attacks of
September 11, 2001, Cofer Black, the former head of the CIA's
Counterterrorism Center and a famously colorful hard-liner, appeared before
the Senate Intelligence Committee and made the most telling pronouncement of
the era: "All I want to say is that there was 'before' 9/11 and 'after'
9/11. After 9/11 the gloves come off." In the days after the attacks
this phrase was everywhere. Columnists quoted it, television commentators
flaunted it, interrogators at Abu Ghraib used it in their cables. ("The
gloves are coming off gentlemen regarding these detainees, Col Boltz has made
it clear that we want these individuals broken."[17] ) The gloves came off: four
simple words. And yet they express a complicated thought. For if the gloves
must come off, that means that before the attacks the gloves were on. There
is something implicitly exculpatory in the image, something that made it
particularly appealing to officials of an administration that endured, on its
watch, the most lethal terrorist attack in the country's history. If the
attack succeeded, it must have had to do not with the fact that intelligence
was not passed on or that warnings were not heeded or that senior officials
did not focus on terrorism as a leading threat. It must have been, at least
in part, because the gloves were on - because the post-Watergate reforms of
the 1970s, in which Congress sought to put limits on the CIA, on its freedom
to mount covert actions with "deniability" and to conduct
surveillance at home and abroad, had illegitimately circumscribed the
President's power and thereby put the country dangerously at risk. It is no
accident that two of the administration's most powerful officials, Dick
Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, served as young men in very senior positions in
the Nixon and Ford administrations. They had witnessed firsthand the gloves
going on and, in the weeks after the September 11 attacks, they argued
powerfully that it was those limitations - and, it was implied, not a failure
to heed warnings - that had helped lead, however indirectly, to the country's
vulnerability to attack. And so, after a devastating
and unprecedented attack, the gloves came off. Guided by the President and
his closest advisers, the United States transformed itself from a country
that, officially at least, condemned torture to a country that practiced it.
And this fateful decision, however much we may want it to, will not go away,
any more than the fourteen "high-value detainees," tortured and
thus unprosecutable, will go away. Like the grotesque stories in the ICRC
report, the decision sits before us, a toxic fact, polluting our political
and moral life. Since the inauguration of
President Obama, the previous administration's "alternative
procedures" have acquired a prominence in the press, particularly on
cable television, that they rarely achieved when they were actually being
practiced on detainees. This is especially the case with waterboarding, which
according to the former director of the CIA has not been used since 2003. On
his first day in office, President Obama issued executive orders that stopped
the use of these techniques and provided for task forces to study US
government policies on rendition, detention, and interrogation, among others. Meantime, Democratic leaders
in Congress, who have been in control since 2006, have at last embarked on
serious investigations. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Christopher Bond, the
chair and ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, have announced a
"review of the CIA's detention and interrogation program," which
would study, among other questions, "how the CIA created, operated, and
maintained its detention and interrogation program," make "an
evaluation of intelligence information gained through the use of enhanced and
standard interrogation techniques," and investigate "whether the
CIA accurately described the detention and interrogation program to other
parts of the US government" - including, notably, "the Senate
Intelligence Committee." The hearings, according to reports, are unlikely
to be public. In February, Senator Patrick
Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, called for the establishment of
what he calls a "nonpartisan commission of inquiry," better known
as a "Truth and Reconciliation Committee," to investigate "how
our detention policies and practices, from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, have
seriously eroded fundamental American principles of the rule of law."
Since Senator Leahy's commission is intended above all to investigate and
make public what was done - "in order to restore our moral
leadership," as he said, "we must acknowledge what was done in our
name" - he would offer grants of immunity to public officials in
exchange for their truthful testimony. He seeks not prosecution and justice
but knowledge and exposure: "We cannot turn the page until we have read
the page." Many officials of human
rights organizations, who have fought long and valiantly to bring attention
and law to bear on these issues, strongly reject any proposal that includes
widespread grants of immunity. They urge investigations and prosecutions of
Bush administration officials. The choices are complicated and painful. From
what we know, officials acted with the legal sanction of the US government
and under orders from the highest political authority, the elected president
of the United States. Political decisions, made by elected officials, led to
these crimes. But political opinion, within the government and increasingly,
as time passed, without, to some extent allowed those crimes to persist. If
there is a need for prosecution there is also a vital need for education.
Only a credible investigation into what was done and what information was
gained can begin to alter the political calculus around torture by replacing
the public's attachment to the ticking bomb with an understanding of what
torture is and what is gained, and lost, when the United States reverts to
it. President Obama, while
declaring that "nobody's above the law, and if there are clear instances
of wrongdoing...people should be prosecuted," has also expressed his
strong preference for "looking forward" rather than "looking
backwards." One can understand the sentiment but even some of the
decisions his administration has already made - concerning state secrecy, for
example - show the extent to which he and his Department of Justice will be
haunted by what his predecessor did. Consider the uncompromising words of
Eric Holder, the attorney general, who in reply to a direct question at his
confirmation hearings had declared, "waterboarding is torture."
There is nothing ambiguous about this statement - nor about the equally blunt
statements of several high Bush administration officials, including the
former vice-president and the director of the CIA, confirming unequivocally
that the administration had ordered and directed that prisoners under its
control be waterboarded. We are all living, then, with a terrible
contradiction, an enduring one, and it is not subtle, any more than the
accounts in the ICRC report are subtle. "It was," as Mr. Cheney
said of waterboarding, "a no-brainer for me." Now Abu Zubaydah and
his fellow detainees have stepped forward out of the darkness to link hands
with the former vice-president and testify to his truthfulness. Notes [1] See "Restoring Trust
in the Justice System: The Senate Judiciary Committee's Agenda in the 111th
Congress," 2009 Marver Bernstein Lecture, Georgetown University,
February 9, 2009. [2] See "President
Discusses Creation of Military Commissions to Try Suspected Terrorists,"
September 6, 2006, East Room, White House, available at cfr.org. [3] See, for the
authoritative account, Dana Priest, "CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret
Prisons," The Washington Post, November 2, 2005. [4] See Jonathan Alter,
"Time to Think About Torture: It's a New World, and Survival May Well
Require Old Techniques That Seemed Out of the Question," Newsweek,
November 5, 2001. See also Raymond Bonner, Don Van Natta Jr., and Amy
Waldman, "Interrogations: Questioning Terror Suspects in a Dark and
Surreal World," The New York Times, March 9, 2003. [5] "President Bush's
News Conference," The New York Times, September 15, 2006. [6] From "CIA - Abu
Zubaydah. Interview with John Kiriakou." This is the rough and undated
transcript of a video interview conducted by Brian Ross of ABC News,
apparently in December 2007, available at abcnews.go.com. Quotations from
this document have been edited very slightly for clarity. See also Richard
Esposito and Brian Ross, "Coming in from the Cold: CIA Spy Calls
Waterboarding Necessary But Torture," ABC News, December 10, 2007. [7] See "Working Group
Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism: Assessment
of Legal, Historical, Policy, and Operational Considerations," April 4,
2003, in Mark Danner, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on
Terror (New York Review Books, 2004), pp. 190–192. A great many of these
documents, collected in this book and elsewhere, were leaked in the wake of
the publication of the Abu Ghraib photographs, and have been public since
late spring or early summer of 2004. [8] See David Johnston,
"At a Secret Interrogation, Dispute Flared Over Tactics," The New
York Times, September 10, 2006. [9] See Mark Hosenball,
"How Good Is Abu Zubaydah's Information?," Newsweek Web Exclusive,
April 27, 2002. [10] See Johnston, "At a
Secret Interrogation, Dispute Flared Over Tactics." [11] See KUBARK
Counterintelligence Interrogation - July 1963 and Human Resource Exploitation
Training Manual - 1983, both archived at "Prisoner Abuse: Patterns from
the Past," National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 122.
For the historical roots of the "alternative set of procedures" see
Alfred W. McCoy, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War
to the War on Terror (Metropolitan, 2006); and Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The
Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
(Doubleday, 2008), especially pp. 167–174. See also my "The Logic of
Torture," The New York Review, June 24, 2004, and Torture and Truth. [12] See Jan Crawford
Greenburg, Howard L. Rosenberg, and Ariane de Vogue, "Sources: Top Bush
Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation,'" ABC News, April 9, 2008. [13] The bracketed comment
appears in the ICRC report. [14] See Bob Woodward,
"Detainee Tortured, Says US Official: Trial Overseer Cites 'Abusive'
Methods Against 9/11 Suspect," The Washington Post, January 14, 2009. [15] See Ron Suskind,
"The Unofficial Story of the al-Qaeda 14," Time, September 10,
2006. See also Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's
Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 (Simon and Schuster, 2006), pp. 99–101, and
Mayer, The Dark Side, pp. 175–177. [16] See "Statement on
Military Commission Legislation: Remarks by Senator Barack Obama,"
September 28, 2006. [17] See my Torture and
Truth, p. 33. External link: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22530 |