Shining light on CIA torturers cum whiners

This report by Walter Pincus and Joby Warrick is already generating criticism as yet another installment in the Washington Post's repulsive effort to build public support for Dick Cheney's defense of abusive interrogations (regarding which see this satirical commentary on yesterday's installment). I think something more subtle is going on in today's piece. Pincus and Warrick are airing Cheney's argument that the investigation of CIA abuses damage morale at the Agency, only to cut it down by showing repeatedly that any complaints at the CIA are limited to those few officials who took part in the abuse and now stand to be held accountable for it.

Not only does the current article not align itself with Cheney's position, it provides ammunition against Cheney's argument that we should be concerned about the mental anguish of torturers who now have to suffer through an investigation of their conduct. In fact, some of that ammunition is new and will prove useful in rebutting Cheney's talking points.

For example, the article highlights the outrage that was felt by many CIA officials at the reports that were trickling back about the abuse of prisoners. Here it quotes CIA Inspector General John Helgerson saying that he was cheered on by the rank and file officer when he began his investigation into CIA wrongdoing:

Helgerson now says he received a steady flow of information, questions and encouragement during his inquiry. "Frankly, I could not walk through the cafeteria without people walking up to me, not to complain but to say, 'More power to you.' "

Former senior officials say that they were concerned with what was an unprecedented program and that as reports came in from secret sites alleging improper activities, they took action, including sending reports to Helgerson.

The article's central point is made right at the outset, in the last clause of the report's first sentence – which hangs there as a rather pointed rebuke of the torturers' self-serving whining:

Morale has sagged at the CIA following the release of additional portions of an inspector general's review of the agency's interrogation program and the announcement that the Justice Department would investigate possible abuses by interrogators, according to former intelligence officials, especially those associated with the program.

From there Pincus and Warrick go on to quote one of the lead advocates for abusive CIA programs, Alvin Krongard (who retired and went to work for Blackwater), to the effect that the release of Helgerson's report and hence the prospect of investigations means that morale at the CIA has dropped "down to minus 50". That's an assertion that the rest of the article proceeds to show is grossly inaccurate, so Krongard is exposed as an alarmist at best. In any case, Krongard's complaint is directly juxtaposed to a comment by Helgerson:

At the same time, former inspector general John L. Helgerson, whose review of the program was largely declassified Monday, said that the release, though painful, would ensure that the agency confronts difficult issues head on, instead of ignoring or trying to bury them.

As every complaint is aired, the reporters undercut it by showing that it isn't necessarily representative of the views held throughout the Agency. Indeed, they also point out that nobody can reasonably claim to know what all CIA officers think (a rhetorical trick that is essential to the arguments advanced by the Cheney/Krongard faction that claims to speak for the poor put-upon CIA officer):

It is impossible to extrapolate from the small sample contacted by Washington Post reporters about the effect the varied inquiries are having on the thousands of agency employees, more than one-third of whom are spread around the world. But among the dozens of officials who were part of the program and either remain active or have retired, feelings run high about how the White House and the Justice Department have handled the issue.

It's primarily those who are implicated in torture who are raising a fuss about investigations and the release of information about their activities.

The article also points out that CIA officers were wary of the abusive interrogation program from the start and had immediately anticipated that there would be legal problems in the future when the program was exposed...despite Bush administration lawyers' attempts to reassure the CIA that it had been indemnified and was free to torture away.

Read in this light, the Pincus/Warrick column does a public service by dismantling one of Cheney's most emotive talking points.

crossposted at unbossed.com

Does anybody at the Washington Post read?

Anne Kornblut, one of the best WaPo reporters, makes a gross factual error her report on the circumstances under which terrorism suspects will be interrogated in the Obama administration. There's to be a new unit of specially trained interrogators. The unit's purpose allegedly will not be to obtain information to put the prisoners on trial, but "to glean intelligence, especially about potential terrorist attacks". That was also the thrust of George W. Bush's infamous interrogation programs. The new unit will be housed in the FBI but report directly to the National Security Council. It will operate under the rules set out in the newly (2006) revised Army Field Manual.

Kornblut parrots the line propagated initially by the Bush administration, and repeated by Democrats: that the AFM strictly adheres to the Geneva Conventions and prohibits all forms of torture, abuse, and degradation of prisoners. Quite the contrary is true. The new Army Field Manual rules (while a vast improvement over the outrageous practices used by the CIA and DoD and authorization from the Bush administration) do in fact specify ways that prisoners may be abused. The abuse is euphemistically termed 'separation' and codified in Appendix M of the Manual.

Here is Kornblut's assessment of the new interrogation policy:

Using the Army Field Manual means certain techniques in the gray zone between torture and legal questioning -- such as playing loud music or depriving prisoners of sleep -- will not be allowed. Which tactics are acceptable was an issue "looked at thoroughly," one senior official said. Obama had already banned certain severe measures that the Bush administration had permitted, such as waterboarding.

The phrase "gray zone" ought to be an immediate tip off that the author is spinning the truth. There is no legitimate doubt that the use of deafening noise and sleep deprivation to 'soften up' prisoners is torture and illegal in the US. It was the Bush administration that sought to convince Americans that long prohibited practices somehow fell into a middle ground between the legal and the illegal. They did succeed in convincing most major news outlets to refrain from calling torture 'torture', which is why reporters like Kornblut continue in this absurd pretense.

In any case, can Kornblut or her editors be bothered to read documents? The Army Field Manual (PDF) explicitly permits interrogators to use isolation and sleep deprivation on prisoners. References are to sections of Appendix M of the Manual. Prisoners may be confined in total isolation for up to 30 days, and even longer if approval is sought up the chain of command (M-29). Furthermore, the Manual states (on the very last page of its last appendix) that prisoners need not be permitted more than 4 hours of sleep per day (M-30). Anybody who goes for weeks on only four hours of sleep will quickly become subject to all the psychological disturbances that sleep deprivation is notorious for.

Parenthetically, I note a passage worthy of Franz Kafka in Appendix M of the Manual. It asserts blandly (M-4) that 'separation' "is consistent with the minimum humane standards of treatment required by US law, the law of war, and does not constitute cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment as defined in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and addressed in GPW Common Article III" (emphasis mine). The US is of course bound by more than the Detainee Treatment Act, but the Field Manual ignores that fact (making no mention, for example, of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment). Instead, the Appendix consistently pretends that its procedures are acceptable because they are not banned by the 2005 legislation.

Valtin has a lengthy discussion of how the Army Field Manual codifies some of the Bush administration's torture practices.

Meanwhile, no word yet about whether the new government's interrogation unit will continue (as the CIA did under Bush) to employ Blackwater to fly terrorist suspects from their confinement in Guantanamo prison to secret prisons around the world, including such hell holes as Uzbekistan. The purpose of these 'extraordinary renditions' was to subject the prisoners to "special treatment", according to an internal Blackwater memo obtained by Der Spiegel. As if the torture employed at Gitmo were not special enough.

Incidentally, the memo also reveals that the CIA's contract with Blackwater to establish roving assassination squads was overseen by none other than Alvin B. Krongard, the former Executive Director of the CIA (and upon his retirement, a director of Blackwater). He is the brother of Bush's corrupt and partisan Inspector General for the State Department, Howard Krongard, whose hacktacular career we described here two years ago.

crossposted from unbossed.com