Torture
continued
Six Reasons Torture Should Be Rejected, cont'd
The Use of Torture Violates the Geneva Conventions
The Geneva Conventions are four treaties and three additional protocols that establish the indisputable standard of international law for humanitarian treatment in war. Together, they regulate the conduct of armed conflict, setting forth protections for civilians, humanitarian workers, prisoners of war, and others directly involved with conflict such as wounded and sick soldiers.
The first ten articles of the First Geneva Convention, the original one, were created in 1864. The U.S. ratified this in 1882, then Geneva Conventions I - IV in 1955. Protocols I and II have been signed but not ratified and Protocol III was ratified in 2007.
The Use of Torture Violates the United Nations Convention Against Torture
The United Nations Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment says:
Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.
The Use of Torture Violates the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005
Article 93 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice – the foundation of military law in the United States – says “any person subject to this chapter who is guilty of cruelty toward, or oppression or maltreatment of, any person subject to his orders shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”
In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that this Article did in fact apply to top terror suspects detained by the United States. The Court held that the Guantánamo Bay military commission established by the Bush administration to try detainees “lacked power to proceed because its structures and procedures violate both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions.”
Moreover, on October 11, 2012 the Department of Defense issued Directive Number 3115.09 which said: “No person in DoD custody or physical control, detained in a DoD facility, or otherwise interrogated, debriefed, or questioned by DoD military personnel, civilian employees, or DoD contractor personnel shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment as defined in title XIV of Public Law 109-163, also known as The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.”
“All intelligence interrogations, detainee debriefings, or tactical questioning by DoD military personnel, civilian employees, or DoD contractor personnel to gain intelligence from individuals in U.S. or foreign custody shall be conducted humanely in accordance with applicable law and policy.”
Every Time We Abandon Our Values and Violate Our Code of Honor, We Essentially Recruit New Followers for Our Enemies.
Not That This Matters – Because We Wouldn’t Support Its Use Either Way – But Torture Isn’t Even Effective:
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush launched an aggressive campaign to “secure” this nation, authorizing activities that went far beyond the accepted parameters of traditional law enforcement. As such, the Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program implemented by the CIA was a global counter-terrorism effort tasked with disrupting al-Qaeda and protecting the United States against another large-scale domestic attack.
In 2014, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a 528-page executive summary of its study of this program (the entire classified report, approved in 2012, is over 6,700 pages). In part, the Committee found that the interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers, and that the conditions of confinement for CIA detainees were harsher than the CIA had represented.
The report described detainees who were “stripped and shackled nude, placed in the standing position for sleep deprivation, or subjected to other CIA enhanced interrogation techniques prior to being questioned by an interrogator.” One detainee, alleged Afghan fighter Gul Rahman, was taken to detention site Cobalt (a.k.a. The Salt Pit), a CIA facility located north of Kabul. There he was “shackled to the wall of his cell in a position that required the detainee to rest on the bare concrete floor.”
His dead body was found the next day. “An internal CIA review and autopsy assessed that Rahman likely died from hypothermia – in part from having been forced to sit on the bare concrete floor without pants.”
Waterboarding is also detailed in the Senate report. Abu Zubaydah, another detainee, was waterboarded to the point that he became “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth…Internal CIA records describe the waterboarding of Khalid Shaykh Mohammad (KSM) as evolving into a ‘series of near drownings.’” The report also found that the CIA waterboarded KSM at least 183 times, and that KSM’s reporting included “significant fabricated information.”
The most damaging – and devastating – part of the Senate report came under the very long heading: “The CIA did not conduct a comprehensive or accurate accounting of the number of individuals it detained and held individuals who did not meet the legal standard for detention. The CIA’s claims about the number of detainees held and subjected to its enhanced Interrogation techniques were inaccurate.” This section included this:
The CIA never conducted a comprehensive audit or developed a complete and accurate list of the individuals it had detained or subjected to its enhanced interrogation techniques. CIA statements to the Committee and later to the public that the CIA detained fewer than 100 individuals, and that less than a third of those 100 detainees were subjected to the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques, were inaccurate. The Committee’s review of CIA records determined that the CIA detained at least 119 individuals, of whom at least 39 were subjected to the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques. Of the 119 known detainees, at least 26 were wrongfully held and did not meet the detention standard in the September 2001 Memorandum of Notification.
In response to the Senate report, the CIA admitted mistakes and acknowledged that the Agency “was unprepared and lacked core competencies to respond effectively to the decision made in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks that the Agency undertake what would be an unprecedented program of detaining and interrogating suspected al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists. This lack of preparation and competencies resulted in significant lapses in the Agency’s ability to develop and monitor its initial detention and interrogation activities.”
They also acknowledged that the agency “failed to perform a comprehensive and independent analysis on the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques.”
But they pushed back on other findings: “The Agency disagrees with the study’s unqualified assertions that the overall detention and interrogation program did not produce unique intelligence that led terrorist plots to be disrupted, terrorists to be captured, or lives to be saved.”
Maybe torture did produce some “unique intelligence” but certainly not every time. In fact, the most useful intel was gained when detainees were questioned using non-coercive techniques. < Note: Just to warn you, some of this is rough reading. >
Foreign authorities captured Hassan Ghul in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. After his identity was confirmed in January 2004, Ghul was rendered from U.S. military custody to CIA custody at Detention Site COBALT. The detention site interrogators, who, according to CIA records, did not use the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques on Ghul, sent at least 21 intelligence reports to CIA Headquarters based on their debriefings of Hassan Ghul from the two days he spent at the facility. CIA records indicate that the most accurate CIA detainee reporting on the facilitator who led to Usama bin Laden (UBL) was acquired from Hassan Ghul - prior to the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.
During this same period, prior to the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques, Ghul provided information related to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Abu Faraj al-Libi (including his role in delivering messages from UBL), Jaffar al-Tayyar, ‘Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, Hamza Rabi’a, Shaik Sa’id al-Masri, Sharif al-Masri, Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Najdi, Abu Talha al-Pakistani, and numerous other al-Qaeda operatives. He also provided information on the locations, movements, operational security, and training of al-Qaeda leaders living in Shkai, Pakistan, as well as on the visits of other leaders and operatives to Shkai. Ghul’s reporting on Shkai, which was included in at least 16 of the 21 intelligence reports, confirmed earlier reporting that the Shkai valley served as al-Qaeda command and control center after the group’s 2001 exodus from Afghanistan.
Notwithstanding these facts, in March 2005, the CIA represented to the Department of Justice that Hassan Ghul’s reporting on Shkai was acquired ‘after’ the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques. After two days of questioning at Detention Site COBALT and the dissemination of 21 intelligence reports, Ghul was transferred to Detention Site BLACK. According to CIA records, upon arrival, Ghul was ‘shaved and barbered, stripped, and placed in the standing position against the wall’ with ‘his hands above his head’ with plans to lower his hands after two hours. The CIA interrogators at the detention site then requested to use the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques on Ghul, writing: ‘[the] interrogation team believes, based on [Hassan Ghul’s] reaction to the initial contact, that his al-Qaeda briefings and his earlier experiences with U.S. military interrogators have convinced him there are limits to the physical contact interrogators can have with him. The interrogation team believes the approval and employment of enhanced measures should sufficiently shift [Hassan Ghul’s] paradigm of what he expects to happen. The lack of these increased [sic] measures may limit the team's capability to collect critical and reliable information in a timely manner.’
CIA Headquarters approved the request the same day. Following 59 hours of sleep deprivation, Hassan Ghul experienced hallucinations, but was told by a psychologist that his reactions were ‘consistent with what many others experience in his condition,’ and that he should calm himself by telling himself his experiences are normal and will subside when he decides to be truthful. The sleep deprivation, as well as other enhanced interrogations, continued, as did Ghul’s hallucinations.’”
Ghul also complained of back pain and asked to see a doctor, but interrogators responded that the ‘pain was normal and would stop when [Ghul] was confirmed as telling the truth.’
A cable states that ‘interrogators told [Ghul] they did not care if he was in pain, but cared only if he provided complete and truthful information.’ A CIA physician assistant later observed that Hassan Ghul was experiencing ‘notable physiological fatigue,’ including ‘abdominal and back muscle pain/spasm, heaviness and mild paralysis of arms, legs and feet [that] are secondary to his hanging position and extreme degree of sleep deprivation,’ but that Ghul was clinically stable and had ‘essentially normal vital signs,’ despite an ‘occasional premature heart beat’ that the cable linked to Ghul’s fatigue.
Throughout this period, Ghul provided no actionable threat information, and much of his reporting on the al-Qaeda presence in Shkai was repetitive of his reporting prior to the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques. Ghul also provided no other information of substance on UBL facilitator Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti.’
Other detainees, including Khalid Shaykh Mohammad, provided false information after tortuous interrogation. “Internal CIA records describe the waterboarding of Khalid Shaykh Mohammad (KSM) as evolving into a ‘series of near drownings.’” The report also found that the CIA waterboarded KSM at least 183 times, and that KSM’s reporting included “significant fabricated information.”
In a staggering disconnect, in his book Playing to the Edge, Michael Hayden (CIA Director from May 30, 2006 – February 12, 2009) recounts a story of a professional relationship he had with a CIA interrogator who interrogated Khalid Shaykh Mohammad.
In his account, this interrogator had “built up a personal relationship with KSM.” According to this interrogator, “KSM referred to him as Amir, a term of respect for the man who had waterboarded him and made him feel, over and over again, as though he was drowning. The interrogation techniques – in KSM’s case, especially sleep deprivation –had pushed him into what the interrogators called a zone of cooperation from his previous zone of defiance and after that, KSM’s questioning resembled more an interview than an interrogation. The information we got from him and others was incredibly valuable.”
Wow! It sounds like KSM was at Disney World hanging out with his buddies!
General Hayden should be commended for his four-plus decades of service to this country. But, if anyone is going to defend these techniques, they need to at least have the guts to be honest about what they truly are, and how and why they were used.
There are two other highly concerning parts of General Hayden’s book. Predictably, he was aghast that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was going to release a report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program, which is understandable because he would certainly be right in the thick of things. However, what deeply disturbs us are two specific passages:
The first: “I’ve since reflected on the Feinstein report and what lessons to draw from it. One positive take-away was the clear need to brief Congress fully and contemporaneously on sensitive activity...I’m close to drawing a second, darker conclusion too. Be careful what you tell these people. Some are less interested in honest dialogue than listening to rebut and accuse and discredit.”
General Hayden, with all due respect, regardless of what you think of members of Congress, it is not up to you – or anyone, for that matter – to decide what the CIA does and does not get to tell them. In fact, that attitude is what got you all into this mess in the first place. Even though the U.S. Constitution grants no formal congressional oversight power, it is implied in Congress’s vast breadth of enumerated powers, and checks and balances are vital to our democracy.
The second worrisome passage in his book is this: “Why the report? CIA was out of the interrogation business. It wasn’t going back.”
Sir, again with all due respect, that is a shockingly naïve statement for a retired United States Air Force four-star general and former Director of the National Security Agency. Those who cannot remember the past, or are content to sweep it under the rug, are condemned to repeat it.
Thankfully, the CIA did not use enhanced interrogation techniques after November 8, 2007, and no detainee was held by the CIA after April 2008. In January 2009, President Obama signed executive orders to end CIA secret prisons, and to declare that all interrogations must follow the non-coercive methods of the Army Field Manual.
In the CIA’s response to the Senate report, CIA Director John Brennan – who was Director from March 8, 2013 – January 20, 2017 – wrote:
The Agency takes no position on whether intelligence obtained from detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques could have been obtained through other means or from other individuals. The answer to this question is and will forever remain unknowable.
After reviewing the Committee Study and the comments of the Agency review team, and as I indicated at the outset of this memorandum, I personally remain firm in my belief that enhanced interrogation techniques are an inappropriate method for obtaining intelligence. Moreover, it is my resolute intention never to allow any Agency officer to participate in any interrogation activity in which enhanced interrogation techniques would be employed.
He’s hardly alone. In September 2015, 42 retired generals and admirals of the U.S. Armed Forces sent a letter to the 2016 presidential candidates. Much of the letter reflected on our nation’s values:
We know from experience that U.S. national security policies are most effective when they uphold our nation’s core ideals...Torture violates our core values as a nation. Our greatest strength is our commitment to the rule of law and to the principles embedded in our Constitution.
Our servicemen and women need to know that our leaders do not condone torture of any kind...George Washington admonished his soldiers that anyone engaging in torture ‘bring[s] shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.’ Ronald Reagan pressed the Senate to ratify the Convention Against Torture, stating that the United States must clearly express her will to ‘bring an end to the abhorrent practice of torture.’
But the generals and admirals went a step further:
Torture is unnecessary. Based on our experience – and that of our nation’s top interrogators, backed by countless studies – we know that lawful, rapport-based interrogation techniques are the most effective way to elicit actionable intelligence. But torture is actually worse than unnecessary; it is counterproductive and undermines our national security.
It increases the risks to our troops, hinders cooperation with allies, alienates populations whose support the United States needs in the struggle against terrorism, and provides a propaganda tool for extremists who wish to do us harm.
The following year, 58 retired generals and admirals wrote to the Republican and Democratic national committees to ask they include the rejection of torture into their party platforms: “We have diverse political affiliations and opinions, but we are in firm and unanimous agreement that the United States is strongest when it remains faithful to its core values.”
“We are asking the platform committees of both major parties to send a clear message that the next President of the United States will uphold our obligations under international and domestic law, and reaffirm the United States’ long-standing and proper role as a world leader on human rights.”
After a December 2021 hearing in Guantánamo for a Pakistani man named Majid Khan – which detailed inhuman treatment during interrogations by American officials, including beatings, forced sodomy, and tubes covered with hot sauce being shoved up his nose – seven horrified members of the jury, all senior military officers, called Mr. Khan’s treatment a “stain on the moral fiber of America.” They went on to say that his treatment was the same as the “torture performed by the most abusive regimes in modern history.”
“Mr. Khan was subjected to physical and psychological abuse well beyond approved enhanced interrogation techniques. This abuse was of no practical value in terms of intelligence, or any other tangible benefit to U.S. interests…The treatment of Mr. Khan in the hands of U.S. personnel should be a source of shame for the U.S. government.”