The Torturers’ Manifesto/Torture Versus War/Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects

New York Times Editorial: The Torturers’ Manifesto
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 18, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/opinion/19sun1.html?_r=1&th&emc=th


To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush’s Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity.

Their language is the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history. They detail how to fashion a collar for slamming a prisoner against a wall, exactly how many days he can be kept without sleep (11), and what, specifically, he should be told before being locked in a box with an insect — all to stop just short of having a jury decide that these acts violate the laws against torture and abusive treatment of prisoners.

In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.

These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors’ statutory obligation. They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country’s most basic values.

It sounds like the plot of a mob film, except the lawyers asking how much their clients can get away with are from the C.I.A. and the lawyers coaching them on how to commit the abuses are from the Justice Department. And it all played out with the blessing of the defense secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence director and, most likely, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Americans Civil Liberties Union deserves credit for suing for the memos’ release. And President Obama deserves credit for overruling his own C.I.A. director and ordering that the memos be made public. It is hard to think of another case in which documents stamped “Top Secret” were released with hardly any deletions.

But this cannot be the end of the scrutiny for these and other decisions by the Bush administration.

Until Americans and their leaders fully understand the rules the Bush administration concocted to justify such abuses — and who set the rules and who approved them — there is no hope of fixing a profoundly broken system of justice and ensuring that that these acts are never repeated.

The abuses and the dangers do not end with the torture memos. Americans still know far too little about President Bush’s decision to illegally eavesdrop on Americans — a program that has since been given legal cover by the Congress.

Last week, The Times reported that the nation’s intelligence agencies have been collecting private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans on a scale that went beyond the broad limits established in legislation last year. The article quoted the Justice Department as saying there had been problems in the surveillance program that had been resolved. But Justice did not say what those problems were or what the resolution was.

That is the heart of the matter: nobody really knows what any of the rules were. Mr. Bush never offered the slightest explanation of what he found lacking in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when he decided to ignore the law after 9/11 and ordered the warrantless wiretapping of Americans’ overseas calls and e-mail. He said he was president and could do what he wanted.

The Bush administration also never explained how it interpreted laws that were later passed to expand the government’s powers to eavesdrop. And the Obama administration argued in a recent court filing that everything associated with electronic eavesdropping, including what is allowed and what is not, is a state secret.

We do not think Mr. Obama will violate Americans’ rights as Mr. Bush did. But if Americans do not know the rules, they cannot judge whether this government or any one that follows is abiding by the rules.

In the case of detainee abuse, Mr. Obama assured C.I.A. operatives that they would not be prosecuted for actions that their superiors told them were legal. We have never been comfortable with the “only following orders” excuse, especially because Americans still do not know what was actually done or who was giving the orders.

After all, as far as Mr. Bush’s lawyers were concerned, it was not really torture unless it involved breaking bones, burning flesh or pulling teeth. That, Mr. Bybee kept noting, was what the Libyan secret police did to one prisoner. The standard for American behavior should be a lot higher than that of the Libyan secret police.

At least Mr. Obama is not following Mr. Bush’s example of showy trials for the small fry — like Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib notoriety. But he has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners — in violation of international law and the Constitution.

That investigation should start with the lawyers who wrote these sickening memos, including John Yoo, who now teaches law in California; Steven Bradbury, who was job-hunting when we last heard; and Mr. Bybee, who holds the lifetime seat on the federal appeals court that Mr. Bush rewarded him with.

These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it.

After eight years without transparency or accountability, Mr. Obama promised the American people both. His decision to release these memos was another sign of his commitment to transparency. We are waiting to see an equal commitment to accountability.







Torture Versus War
By SCOTT SHANE
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 18, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/weekinreview/19shane.html?_r=1&ref=global-home


WASHINGTON

WHEN the Central Intelligence Agency obliterates a dozen suspected terrorists, along with assorted family members, with a missile from a drone, the news rarely stirs a strong reaction far beyond Pakistan.

Yet the waterboarding of three operatives from Al Qaeda — one of them the admitted murderer of 3,000 people as organizer of the 9/11 attacks — has stirred years of recriminations, calls for prosecution and national soul-searching.

What is it about the terrible intimacy of torture that so disturbs and captivates the public? Why has torture long been singled out for special condemnation in the law of war, when war brings death and suffering on a scale that dwarfs the torture chamber?

Those questions arose with new force last week, as President Obama settled a battle between the C.I.A. and the Justice Department by siding with the latter and releasing four excruciatingly detailed legal opinions from the department, written in 2002 and 2005, justifying brutal interrogations. But he also repeated his opposition to a lengthy inquiry into the program, saying that “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” The C.I.A. officers who were acting on the Justice Department’s legal advice would not be prosecuted, he said.

In their meticulousness, and even their elaborate rules intended to prevent death or permanent injury, the memos became the object of fascination and dread. Who knew that along with waterboarding and wall-slamming, cold cells and sleep deprivation up to 180 hours, the approved invasions of the prisoner’s space included the “facial hold” — essentially what grandma does to a visiting grandchild who misbehaves — with hands holding the sides of the head as questions are asked.

“The fingertips are kept well away from the individual’s eyes,” the memo helpfully adds.

In releasing the memos, Mr. Obama again denounced harsh interrogation as unworthy of the United States and said the country “must reject the false choice between our security and our ideals.” He and other critics have often stated their objections: torture or near-torture can produce false information; it handicaps the United States in a battle of ideas; it can be a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.

At the same time, public opinion has shown less horror over the strikes carried out by Hellfire missiles fired from Predator drones in the weeks since those deadly missions have been embraced and even expanded to new territories under Mr. Obama. This is presumably because the president’s implicit view of the relative moral status of these two ways of responding to terrorists is widely shared.

One former C.I.A. official, who in the current atmosphere insisted on not being named, and whose duties at times included briefing the Congressional intelligence committees, said he was bemused by reactions of lawmakers on those panels. Members would be thrilled and cheered by the Predator strike videos he would bring along — and then grill and berate him over the agency’s interrogation methods.

The hands-on nature of torture lends it particular power, said Andrea Northwood, a psychologist who has treated hundreds of people at the Center for Victims of Torture in Minneapolis. Even when the victim is a figure like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the 9/11 plotter, torture carries a vicarious chill.

“It’s a profoundly affecting tool in evoking primal terror,” Dr. Northwood said. “We can easily put ourselves in that situation, and that terrifies us.”

Darius Rejali, the author of “Torture and Democracy,” a massive 2007 history of the myriad ways humans have tormented other humans, said he had often been struck by the disproportionate emotional response to death and torture.

“What’s fascinating to people about torture is it gives one person absolute power over another, which is both alluring and corrupting,” said Dr. Rejali, a professor of political science at Reed College. Torture, like slavery, corrupts both individuals and societies, he said.

But what about the absolute power of the C.I.A. “pilot,” thousands of miles from his unmanned aerial vehicle, who pushes a button and unleashes distant death?

As a different former C.I.A. official said, “Imagine a Hellfire missile coming through your roof. You die in a burning pile of rubble. Isn’t that torture?”

Not quite, Dr. Rejali responds. “The people you’re killing with a Predator,” he said, “are not detained and helpless.”

Ever since word leaked that the C.I.A. subjected Mr. Mohammed and two other prisoners in 2002 and early 2003 to waterboarding, the near-drowning method with a pedigree stretching back to the Spanish Inquisition and beyond, that fact has resonated powerfully in American politics.

In 2007, long after the events, Michael B. Mukasey’s nomination as attorney general almost faltered when he refused to call waterboarding torture. Mr. Obama’s choice to head the Justice Department, Eric H. Holder Jr., swiftly and strongly declared what to many people was the obvious, as did Leon E. Panetta, the new C.I.A. director.

What the episodes showed is what Senator John McCain, perhaps this country’s most famous torture victim, has often said about why the United States must not use it: “It’s not about the terrorists,” he says. “It’s about us.”

It may be that the revelations of the interrogation memos, ending the secrecy about what was done, will quiet the furor over torture. But it seems unlikely. So far every new disclosure about the intimate brutality carried out in the name of national security has only provoked more questions.




Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects
By SCOTT SHANE
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 19, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/world/20detain.html?_r=1&th&emc=th



C.I.A. interrogators used waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, 266 times on two key prisoners from Al Qaeda, far more than had been previously reported.

The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative.

A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.

The 2005 memo also says that the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The New York Times reported in 2007 that Mr. Mohammed had been barraged more than 100 times with harsh interrogation methods, causing C.I.A. officers to worry that they might have crossed legal limits and to halt his questioning. But the precise number and the exact nature of the interrogation method was not previously known.

The release of the numbers is likely to become part of the debate about the morality and efficacy of interrogation methods that the Justice Department under the Bush administration declared legal even though the United States had historically treated them as torture.

President Obama plans to visit C.I.A. headquarters Monday and make public remarks to employees, as well as meet privately with officials, an agency spokesman said Sunday night. It will be his first visit to the agency, whose use of harsh interrogation methods he often condemned during the presidential campaign and whose secret prisons he ordered closed on the second full day of his presidency.

C.I.A. officials had opposed the release of the interrogation memo, dated May 30, 2005, which was one of four secret legal memos on interrogation that Mr. Obama ordered to be released last Thursday.

Mr. Obama said C.I.A. officers who had used waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods with the approval of the Justice Department would not be prosecuted. He has repeatedly suggested that he opposes Congressional proposals for a “truth commission” to examine Bush administration counterterrorism programs, including interrogation and warrantless eavesdropping.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has begun a yearlong, closed-door investigation of the C.I.A. interrogation program, in part to assess claims of Bush administration officials that brutal treatment, including slamming prisoners into walls, shackling them in standing positions for days and confining them in small boxes, was necessary to get information.

The fact that waterboarding was repeated so many times may raise questions about its effectiveness, as well as about assertions by Bush administration officials that their methods were used under strict guidelines.

A footnote to another 2005 Justice Department memo released Thursday said waterboarding was used both more frequently and with a greater volume of water than the C.I.A. rules permitted.

The new information on the number of waterboarding episodes came out over the weekend when a number of bloggers, including Marcy Wheeler of the blog emptywheel, discovered it in the May 30, 2005, memo.

The sentences in the memo containing that information appear to have been redacted from some copies but are visible in others. Initial news reports about the memos in The New York Times and other publications did not include the numbers.

Michael V. Hayden, director of the C.I.A. for the last two years of the Bush administration, would not comment when asked on the program “Fox News Sunday” if Mr. Mohammed had been waterboarded 183 times. He said he believed that that information was still classified.

A C.I.A. spokesman, reached Sunday night, also would not comment on the new information.

Mr. Hayden said he had opposed the release of the memos, even though President Obama has said the techniques will never be used again, because they would tell Al Qaeda “the outer limits that any American would ever go in terms of interrogating an Al Qaeda terrorist.”

He also disputed an article in The New York Times on Saturday that said Abu Zubaydah had revealed nothing new after being waterboarded, saying that he believed that after unspecified “techniques” were used, Abu Zubaydah revealed information that led to the capture of another terrorist suspect, Ramzi Binalshibh.

The Times article, based on information from former intelligence officers who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Abu Zubaydah had revealed a great deal of information before harsh methods were used and after his captors stripped him of clothes, kept him in a cold cell and kept him awake at night. The article said interrogators at the secret prison in Thailand believed he had given up all the information he had, but officials at headquarters ordered them to use waterboarding.

He revealed no new information after being waterboarded, the article said, a conclusion that appears to be supported by a footnote to a 2005 Justice Department memo saying the use of the harshest methods appeared to have been “unnecessary” in his case.