Torture didn’t lead to bin Laden

Tom Maertens
The Free Press, Mankato, MN
May 24, 2011

History has shown that a lie repeated often enough starts to sound like the truth. At one point, 70 percent of the American people believed (erroneously) that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks, the result of the Bush administration’s extended disinformation campaign.

And so it is with those who claim torture “works.” Bin Laden’s corpse wasn’t even cold before Bush administration officials began appearing on camera to assert that “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including waterboarding, had extracted the crucial intelligence information. They are desperate to vindicate their past policies, both before history, and because some could face arrest for war crimes if they travel to Europe.

They have another, related worry: Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a prosecutor last August to investigate interrogation abuses, which could lead up the chain of command.

Waterboarding was always torture until the Bush administration decided to rewrite history. It was a war crime in WWII when we sentenced Japanese officers to prison for waterboarding American POWs. In 1947, the U.S. sentenced a Japanese officer to 15 years hard labor for waterboarding an American civilian; in 1968, a U.S. soldier was court-martialed for waterboarding a North Vietnamese soldier.

Torture advocates claim that only the “worst of the worst” were subjected to coercive interrogation; coincidentally, Dick Cheney termed the 750 original detainees at Guantanamo “the worst of the worst.” Yet before Bush and Cheney left office, they released 530 of them. That leaves only two possible conclusions: either Bush/Cheney released 530 hard-core terrorists back into society, or, many innocent people were imprisoned and abused at Guantanamo by mistake.

Furthermore, contrary to their theology, torture doesn’t work.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who almost certainly knew bin Laden’s whereabouts, was captured March 1, 2003 and waterboarded 183 times, according to the New York Times of April 19, 2009. But he gave away nothing of value, say people knowledgeable about his interrogation, including bin Laden’s whereabouts. If there had been actionable intelligence, the Bush administration would not have closed down its bin Laden unit in 2005, and it would not have taken eight more years to find him.

Matthew Alexander, a former senior military interrogator who conducted or supervised over 1,300 interrogations in Iraq, has said that waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques “always result in either limited information, false information or no information.” KSM, for example, never gave up bin Laden nor bin Laden’s courier, whose name he also must have known, says Alexander. FBI interrogator Ali Soufan and others (TIME, June 8, 2009) share that assessment and describe proven interrogation methods that don’t involve torture.

The case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, (born Ali Mohamed al Fakheri), demonstrates another negative aspect of torture. Al-Libi was captured by the CIA and then turned over to the Egyptians in late 2001, who then tortured a “confession” out of him alleging that al-Qaida was receiving training in chemical weapons from Saddam.

This was the "credible evidence" Bush cited in his late 2002 address asserting that Saddam was cooperating with al-Qaida on WMD…even though a February 2002 DIA report questioned the confession as likely obtained under torture.

In January 2004, al-Libi recanted his “confession,” and a month later, the CIA recalled all intelligence reports based on his statements. A bipartisan Senate Intelligence committee report later concluded that al-Libi fabricated the link “to avoid torture.” But Bush got what he wanted, a trumped-up war that ended up creating more terrorist recruits for bin Laden.

One of the other costs of torture is the expense of checking out the many false leads it produces. As Matthew Alexander points out, despite being tortured, al-Libi gave a false name for bin Laden’s courier — Maulawi Jan — which sent the CIA on a wild goose chase. The government eventually got the courier’s real name — Abu Ahmad — in 2007, four years after waterboarding was stopped (in spring 2003, says ex-CIA Director Michael Hayden).

Then there is the torture carried out at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi deemed a high-value target by the CIA, was severely beaten, suffering several broken ribs before being subjected to a form of torture known as “Palestinian hanging.” He died 45 minutes later without having revealed whatever information his American interrogator was seeking. NPR (October 27, 2005) and other sources reported that a military autopsy ruled his death a homicide.

We know even less about interrogation practices at Bagram and the “black” CIA prisons around the world, whose locations were kept secret so that the CIA would not have to allow Red Cross visits, as required by the Geneva Conventions. Could it be some prisoners were not “presentable?”

We can’t let the torturers and their enablers rewrite history.

Memo from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

April 29, 2009

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President (delivered to the White House, 4/29/09)

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (about VIPS: Vox Verax • Google • Google News • AfterDowningStreet)

SUBJECT: Torture

This memorandum is VIPS’ first attempt to inform you on a major intelligence issue, as we did your predecessor; thus, some background might be helpful. Five former CIA officers established Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) in January 2003, when we saw our profession being corrupted to justify an attack on Iraq. Since then, our numbers have grown to 70 intelligence professionals, mostly retired, who have served in virtually all U.S. civilian and military intelligence agencies.

In our first Memorandum for the President (George W. Bush), dated February 5, 2002, we provided a same-day commentary on Colin Powell’s U.N. speech. We warned the president that “an invasion of Iraq would ensure overflowing recruitment centers for terrorists into the indefinite future [and that] far from eliminating the [terrorist] threat, it would enhance it exponentially.”

We strongly urged the former president to widen the discussion on Iraq “beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” VIPS’ second pre-war Memorandum for the President was titled, “Forgery, Hyperbole, Half-Truth: A Problem”—a reference to the bogus intelligence we saw being ginned up to “justify” war.

President Bush ignored our warning and those of other informed individuals and groups. The corporate media uncritically echoed the Bush administration’s misuse and misrepresentation of the intelligence, despite the questions raised—including those raised by our unique movement. (It was the first time an alumni group of intelligence officials had formed expressly to chronicle and to halt the corruption of intelligence.)

The cheerleading for war had begun—a war that would fit the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal’s description of a “war of aggression.” Nuremberg defined such a war as “the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only in that it contains the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Torture: An Accumulated Evil

Torture is one of those accumulated evils. Violating domestic laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is another. You were right to unceremoniously jettison former CIA director Michael Hayden, who betrayed the thousands of NSA professionals who, until he directed that domestic law could be ignored, had adhered scrupulously to the 1978 FISA law as NSA’s “First Commandment”—Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans Without a Court Warrant.

In contrast, we believe you were badly misguided in giving a prominent White House post to former CIA director George Tenet’s protégé John Brennan, who has publicly defended “extraordinary rendition” in full knowledge that its purpose was torture. Brennan also had complicit knowledge of the lengths to which Tenet conspired with the Department of Justice to distort history and the law in drafting opinions that attempted to “justify” torture.

With all due respect, Mr. President, it would be another mistake for you to believe what you are hearing from the likes of Brennan and Hayden and the journalists they have fed and domesticated. Please do not be deceived into thinking that most intelligence officials, past and present, condone torture—still less that they are angry that you have put a stop to such techniques. We are referring, of course, to what President Bush called “an alternative set of procedures” involving cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment that violates domestic and international law. We focus on torture in the VIPS statement that follows these introductory remarks.

The Senate Armed Services Committee recently concluded that it was President Bush himself who, by Executive Memorandum of February 2002 exempting al-Qaeda and the Taliban from Geneva protections, “opened the door” to the abuse that ensued. You need to know that the vast majority of intelligence professionals deplore “extraordinary rendition” and the other torture procedures that were subsequently ordered by senior Bush administration officials.

Sadly, President Bush was not the first chief executive to find a small cabal of superpatriots, amateur thugs, and contractors—to do his administration’s bidding. But never before in this country were lawless thugs given such free rein. The congressional “oversight” committees looked the other way.

Tenet and his acolytes successfully ingratiated themselves with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the faux lawyers who devised what actually amounts to a very porous “legal” shield for those who carried out the torture. It was a shield designed for and applied exclusively to those “just following orders” at the CIA black sites, and not for the low-ranking soldiers doing similar things at Abu Ghraib.

Some of the latter have done time in prison; one is still there. It would appear that some are less equal than others. And, to this day, the organizers and apologists for torture have managed to escape the consequences of their actions

No doubt you appreciate better than anyone that the official Department of Justice memoranda you insisted be released last week are a national disgrace. Worse still are the first-hand accounts by young soldiers at Guantanamo of perversions like “rape by instrumentality.” You should be aware that this was a practice adamantly defended by former White House lawyers when Congress attempted to draft legislation expressly prohibiting it. Asked to explain their objection, Bush administration lawyers acknowledged that they were worried that such legislation might subject practitioners to prosecution under state and federal criminal statutes.

* * *

Statement of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity on Torture

Interrogation Abuses and Those Responsible Must Be Fully Exposed

Inasmuch as we have gone on record as strongly opposed to torture, both on moral and practical grounds, from the first public awareness that the Bush administration had decided to violate international and domestic law, treaty provisions, and American tradition;

As former intelligence officials we understand that unless intelligence is “actionable”—accurate, specific, and timely enough to be acted upon with some confidence—it is ineffective. Equally important, we acknowledge our responsibility to expose fallacious reasoning regarding the utility of torture in acquiring actionable intelligence. This issue comes to the fore especially in the celebrated, but specious “ticking time bomb hypothetical”—a regular feature of Jack Bauer TV fiction.

The fact that the exploits of Jack Bauer have injected a dangerous level of fiction and fear among impressionable viewers, and have misled not only interrogators at Guantanamo but also the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes—not to mention Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia—leaves no doubt that such illusionary scenarios need to be addressed by professionals with real-life experience.

Inasmuch as the recently released legal memos that comprised part of the “golden shield” constructed by Bush Administration lawyers do shed some light but also provide inadequate information on “harsh interrogation tactics,” and that the memos sow confusion regarding which officials were responsible for institutionalizing those methods—not to mention whether they were actually effective, as former vice president Cheney continues to insist;

Inasmuch as it has come to light that three detainees were waterboarded a total of 266 times, throwing strong doubt on various rationalizations regarding the effectiveness of waterboarding in providing timely actionable intelligence (in a “ticking time-bomb” scenario, for example);

Whereas CIA Director Leon Panetta has insisted that the “harsh interrogation tactics that some officials have declared to be torture” (the circumlocution now in vogue in the corporate media) might again be used in a future “ticking time-bomb hypothetical;”

Whereas, when the torture technique of waterboarding, a practice with antecedents in the Spanish Inquisition was applied by Japanese troops in WWII to American and British prisoners—Japanese officers were later tried and executed;

Whereas there has been no better system devised— despite some shortcomings—to ascertain the truth of potential wrongdoing than the criminal investigative and judicial adversary process, which provides the right to attorney and right to jury and is governed by judicial rules which attempt to ensure fairness;

Whereas we recognize that the criminal justice process serves the important goal of stopping and deterring criminal actions and cannot be dismissed as merely “retribution;”

Whereas 92 videotapes showing application and results of the “harsh interrogation tactics that some officials have declared to be torture” have already been destroyed, and there is understandable concern that other evidence is being destroyed as the days go by;

Whereas other civilian and military intelligence professionals have also gone on record (see attached Annex) with respect to how torture tactics are not only ineffective in terms of getting reliable, actionable intelligence but have fueled recruitment by Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to the point that, arguably, more U.S. troops have been killed by terrorists bent on revenge for torture than the 3,000 civilians killed on 9/11;

Whereas the false confessions that were elicited by the torture of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, for example, were used by the president, vice president, and the secretary of state (at the U.N.) to claim that proof existed of operational ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and whereas such false confessions also diverted limited investigative resources to pursue bogus leads;

We of VIPS call for a full, truthful, and public fact-finding process to begin without delay. We ask that you give careful consideration to Senator Carl Levin’s suggestion that the attorney general appoint retired judges with solid reputations for integrity to begin the process. Another viable possibility would be the appointment of an independent “blue-ribbon commission,” perhaps modeled on the Church Committee of the mid-Seventies, to assess any illegal or improper activities and make recommendations for reform in government operations against terrorism.

We commend the administration for releasing the Department of Justice memos attempting to legalize torture. We believe the remaining relevant information must be released promptly so that the citizenry can make informed judgments about what was done in our name and, if warranted, an independent prosecutor can be appointed without unnecessary delay. We believe strongly that any judgments regarding amnesty, forgiveness, or pardon can only be made on the basis of a fully developed, public record—and not used as some sort of political bargaining chip. Finally, we firmly oppose the notion that anyone can arrogate a right to ignore the Nuremburg Tribunal’s rejection of “only-following-orders” as an acceptable defense.

(signatories are listed alphabetically with former intelligence affiliations)

Gene Betit, US Army, DIA, Arlington, VA
Ray Close, National Clandestine Service (CIA), Princeton, NJ
Phil Giraldi, National Clandestine Service (CIA), Purcellville, VA
Larry Johnson, CIA & Department of State, Bethesda, MD
Pat Lang, US Army (Special Forces), DIA, Alexandria, VA
David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council, Linden, VA
Tom Maertens, Department of State, Mankato, MN
Ray McGovern, US Army, CIA, Arlington, VA
Sam Provance, US Army (Abu Ghraib), Greenville, SC
Coleen Rowley, FBI, Apple Valley, MN
Greg Theilmann, Department of State & Senate Intel. Committee staff, Arlington, VA
Ann Wright, US Army, Department of State, Honolulu, HI

==========================================
Annex

We list below other experienced intelligence personnel, who have spoken out publicly about the inefficacy and counter productiveness of torture:

FBI: Ali Soufan, Dan Coleman, Jack Cloonan

CIA: John Helgerson (former Inspector General), Bob Baer, Haviland Smith

Military: Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora; Major General Antonio Taguba (who probed Abu Ghraib and concluded that Bush officials committed war crimes: www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/41514.html); Air Force Col Steven M. Kleinman; Rear Admiral (ret) and former Judge Advocate General for the Navy John Hutson; former Naval Intelligence officer and Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration Lawrence Korb; former U.S. military interrogator (pseudonym) Mathew Alexander; and former military intelligence officer Malcolm Nance,

Links

FBI

Ali Soufan Op-Ed Contributor; My Tortured Decision; Reclaiming America’s Soul - NYTimes.com Apr 23, 2009 www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23soufan.html
Soufan was an F.B.I. supervisory special agent from 1997 to 2005.

Dan Coleman; The Torture Memos Are Not Just Sick, They're Full of Lies:
Coleman was with the FBI; says “I can give you two reasons why Cheney wants more torture memos…” www.alternet.org/rights/.../the_torture_memos_are_not_just_sick,_they're_full_of_lies:_a_closer_look_at_the_bybee_memo/

Jack Cloonan: How to Break a Terrorist
Foreign Policy: FPTV
Cloonan is a veteran FBI interrogator who spent 25 years as an FBI special agent and interrogated members of al Qaeda
www.foreignpolicy.com/extras/torture

CIA

CIA IG John Helgerson: CIA official: no proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks Washington — The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped ...
www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66895.html

Ray Close (VIPS) and Haviland Smith, both are retired CIA Station Chiefs who served in various senior positions in the Operations Directorate, including in Europe, the Middle East and (Smith) as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.
Two former top CIA officials on the efficacy of torture, by Stephen Soldz www.opednews.com/articles/Two-former-top-CIA-offical-by-Stephen-Soldz-090425-265.html

Military

Former Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora: Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are ‘first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq.’ thinkprogress.org/2008/06/17/mora-abu-ghraib-and-guantanamo-are-first-and-second-identifiable-causes-of-us-combat-deaths-in-iraq/

Air Force Col Steven Kleinman, senior intelligence officer: www.scribd.com/doc/6222229/Senate-Testimony-Col-Steven-M-Kleinman

Malcolm Nance: Why the Bush torture architects must be prosecuted
Nance is a former military intelligence officer and the Founding Director of the International Counterterrorism Center for Excellence at Hudson N.Y. and author of "The Terrorist Recognition Handbook - A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activity."
www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/04/19/2009-04-19_why_the_bush_torture_architects_must_be_prosecuted_a_counterterror_expert_speaks.html
Also at: tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/004617.php

Former U.S. Interrogator Mathew Alexander (pseudonym) author of Torture Policy Has Led to More Deaths than 9/11 Attacks
“I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq”
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802242_pf.html;
Sunday, November 30, 2008. Also on www.harpers.org/archive/2008/12/hbc-90004036 and www.alternet.org/waroniraq/109792/former_u.s._interrogator:_torture_policy_has_led_to_more_deaths_than_9_11_attacks/

Torture is Magic

cross-posted from Huffington Post
by Marty Kaplan

Why won't there be enough votes in the House and Senate to override Bush's veto of the anti-torture bill Congress sent him to sign this week?

The Administration's case against the bill -- which merely asks our intelligence services to follow the same interrogation rules already in the US Army Field Manual -- is breathtakingly lame. When Dana Perino told the White House press corps that the Field Manual is "perfectly appropriate... for young GIs, some so young that they're not even able to legally get a drink in the states where they're from," but not for trained intelligence agency "professionals... with an average age of 40," it's a wonder she wasn't asked a follow-up about how tall you have to be to ride the Constitution.

Maverick John McCain, joining the Republican herd voting against the bill, said that intelligence agencies need to use "additional techniques as long as they were not cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment." What "additional techniques"? Don't ask; don't tell. And why do they need additional techniques? What reason could persuade a victim of North Vietnamese interrogation techniques to abandon his principled stand against torture and side with the architects of Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and extraordinary rendition?

It's too easy to explain it as primary season pandering to the Republican right. And it's too simple to say that the GOP strategy this fall will be -- as it has been since the Cold War -- to bring out their base by depicting Democrats as too dewey-eyed to deal with the Devil.

The reason Republicans think the torture works for them, not just with their faithful, but also with independents and some Democrats, is their view that deep down, many if not most Americans really believe in the ticking-time-bomb scenarios they see in shows like 24. Even though the White House, citing national security, has offered not a single verifiable example of an act of terrorism prevented by "additional" interrogation techniques, they believe that Americans accept such a rationale. And even if torture doesn't result in reliable or actionable intelligence, as the Dean of West Point told the writing staff of 24, pleading with them to stop depicting it as though it did; even if 24 star Kiefer Sutherland was asked to give an anti-torture speech to West Point cadets, urging them to believe their teachers and textbooks, not a Fox TV series; even if a prisoner-of-war like John McCain, from the other side of his mouth, warns of the consequences to captured US soldiers of our own country's use of hypothermia, mock executions or sexual humiliation: despite all that, Republican political strategists believe that most Americans secretly believe that torture "works," and that even if it doesn't, the animals behind 9/11 deserve the same mercy they gave to their victims.

In other words, Republicans are counting on magical thinking on the part of American voters. They may tell pollsters they're against torture on human rights grounds, on turnabout grounds, on pragmatic grounds, but in our heart of hearts, Americans (in the Rove/Cheney/Gonzales/Yoo view) believe that torture works, and that waterboarding is too good for terrorists.

There are good historical reasons to impute magical thinking to American voters. For going on 30 years now, the "ideas" that tax cuts produce increased revenues, that all government regulation is bad, that the unfettered market is the best way to deal with social inequity, that the Bible is literally true, that homosexuality is an evil lifestyle choice, that Vietnam was lost because dirty hippies made pansy Democrats overrule wise Generals: for more than a generation, winning electoral coalitions have been built on the denial, delusions, wishful thinking, cognitive dissonance, bread-and-circuses bewitchment, fundamentalist orthodoxy, political manipulation, and Hobbesean hard-wiring of the otherwise wise and wonderful American people.

It's only human nature to want an eye for an eye; it's human nature to think that some circumstances warrant torture, and that sometimes torture works. But as Madison wrote in Federalist 51, the genius of our democracy lies in protecting humans from human nature:

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."

Carrying out those "auxiliary precautions" -- the obligation of government to control itself, and to protect ourselves from the lesser angels of our own nature -- was why the Founders split power between the executive and legislative branches. Bush's doctrine of the "unitary executive," a two-word abrogation of the Constitution, dispenses with those precautions. If ever there were a reason to despair about the power of our system of checks and balances to subjugate the American beast that Madison warned against, it is embodied in the willingness of Senators like John McCain and Joe Lieberman to let Leviathan have its way.

NYT editorial on torture bill

Horrifying and Unnecessary

In the next few days President Bush is expected to again claim the right to order mistreatment of prisoners that any civilized person would regard as torture.

Mr. Bush is planning to veto a law that would require the C.I.A. and all the intelligence services to abide by the restrictions on holding and interrogating prisoners contained in the United States Army Field Manual. Mr. Bush says the Army rules are too restrictive.

What are these burdens? In addition to a blanket prohibition of torture, the manual specifically bans:

• Forcing a prisoner to be naked, perform sexual acts or pose in a sexual manner.
• Placing hoods or sacks over the head of a prisoner, and using duct tape over the eyes.
• Applying beatings, electric shocks, burns or other forms of physical pain.
• Waterboarding.
• Using military working dogs.
• Inducing hypothermia or heat injury.
• Conducting mock executions.
• Depriving a prisoner of necessary food, water or medical care.

(Continued here.)

Former intelligence officers: Mukasey must commit on waterboarding

'Waterboarding is inhumane, it is torture, and it is illegal.'

November 5, 2007

MEMORANDUM FOR: Chairman and Ranking Member Senate Committee on the Judiciary

FROM: Former U.S. Intelligence Officers

SUBJECT: Nomination of Michael Mukasey for Attorney General

Dear Senators Leahy and Specter,

Values that are extremely important to us as former intelligence officers are at stake in your committee's confirmation deliberations on Judge Michael Mukasey. With hundreds of years of service in sensitive national security activities behind us, we are deeply concerned that your committee may move his nomination to the full Senate without insisting that Mukasey declare himself on whether he believes the practice of waterboarding is legal.

We feel this more acutely than most others, for in our careers we have frequently had to navigate the delicate balance between morality and expediency, all the while doing our best to abide by the values the vast majority of Americans hold in common. We therefore believe we have a particular moral obligation to speak out. We can say it no better than four retired judge advocates general (two admirals and two generals) who wrote you over the weekend, saying: “Waterboarding is inhumane, it is torture, and it is illegal.”

Judge Mukasey's refusal to comment on waterboarding, on grounds that it would be “irresponsible” to provide “an uninformed legal opinion based on hypothetical facts and circumstances,” raises serious questions. There is nothing hypothetical or secret about the fact that waterboarding was used by U.S. intelligence officers as an interrogation technique before the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004. But after Alberto Gonzales became attorney general in February 2005, Justice reportedly issued a secret memo authorizing harsh physical and psychological tactics, including waterboarding, which were approved for use in combination. A presidential executive order of July 20, 2007 authorized “enhanced interrogation techniques” that had been banned for use by the U.S. Army. Although the White House announced that the order provides “clear rules” to govern treatment of detainees, the rules are classified, so defense attorneys, judges, juries --and even nominee Mukasey --can be prevented from viewing them.

Those are some of the “facts and circumstances.” They are not hypothetical; and there are simple ways for Judge Mukasey to become informed, which we propose below.

Last Thursday, President George W. Bush told reporters it was unfair to ask Mukasey about interrogation techniques about which he had not been briefed. “He doesn't know whether we use that technique [waterboarding] or not,” the president said. Judge Mukasey wrote much the same in his October 30 letter, explaining that he was unable to give an opinion on the legality of waterboarding because he doesn't know whether it is being used: “I have not been made aware of the details of any interrogation program to the extent that any such program may be classified and thus do not know what techniques may be involved in any such program.” Whether or not the practice is currently in use by U.S. intelligence, it should in fact be easy for him to respond. All he need do is find out what waterboarding is and then decide whether he considers it legal.

The conundrum created to justify the nominee's silence on this key issue is a synthetic one. It is within your power to resolve it readily. If Mukasey continues to drag his feet, you need only to facilitate a classified briefing for him on waterboarding and the C.I.A. interrogation program. He will then be able to render an informed legal opinion. We strongly suggest that you sit in on any such briefing and that you invite the chairman and the ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to take part as well. Receiving the same briefing at the same time (and, ideally, having it taped) should enhance the likelihood of candor and make it possible for all to be --and to stay --on the same page on this delicate issue.

If the White House refuses to allow such a briefing, your committee must, in our opinion, put a hold on Mukasey's nomination. We are aware that the president warned last week that it will be either Mukasey as our attorney general or no one. So be it. It is time to stand up for what is right and require from the Executive the information necessary for the Senate to function responsibly and effectively. It would seem essential not to approve a nominee who has already made clear he is reluctant to ask questions of the White House. How can a person with that attitude even be proposed to be our chief law enforcement officer?

We strongly urge that you not send Mukasey's nomination to the full Senate before he makes clear his view on waterboarding. Otherwise, there is considerable risk of continued use of the officially sanctioned torture techniques that have corrupted our intelligence services, knocked our military off the high moral ground, severely damaged our country's standing in the world, and exposed U.S. military and intelligence people to similar treatment when captured or kidnapped. One would think that Judge Mukasey would want to be briefed on these secret interrogation techniques and to clarify where he stands.

The most likely explanation for Mukasey's reticence is his concern that, should his conscience require him to condemn waterboarding, this could cause extreme embarrassment and even legal jeopardy for senior officials --this time not just for the so-called “bad apples” at the bottom of the barrel. We believe it very important that the Senate not acquiesce in his silence --and certainly not if, as seems the case, he is more concerned about protecting senior officials than he is in enforcing the law and the Constitution.

It is important to get beyond shadowboxing on this key issue. In our view, condoning Mukasey's evasiveness would mean ignoring fundamental American values and the Senate's constitutional prerogative of advice and consent.

At stake in your committee and this nomination are questions of legality, morality, and our country's values. And these are our primary concerns as well. As professional intelligence officers, however, we must point to a supreme irony --namely, that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation practices are ineffective tools for eliciting reliable information. Our own experience dovetails well with that of U.S. Army intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. John Kimmons, who told a Pentagon press conference on September 6, 2006: “No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that.”

Speaking out so precisely and unequivocally took uncommon courage, because Kimmons knew that just across the Potomac President Bush would be taking quite a different line at a press conference scheduled to begin as soon as Kimmons finished his. At the White House press conference focusing on interrogation techniques, the president touted the success that the C.I.A. was having in extracting information from detainees by using an “alternative set of procedures.” He said these procedures had to be “tough,” in order to deal with particularly recalcitrant detainees who “had received training on how to resist interrogation” and had “stopped talking.”

The Undersigned
(Official duties refer to former government work.)

Brent Cavan
Intelligence Analyst, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA

Ray Close
Directorate of Operations, CIA for 26 years --22 of them overseas; former Chief of Station, Saudi Arabia

Ed Costello
Counter-espionage, FBI

Michael Dennehy
Supervisory Special Agent for 32 years, FBI; U.S. Marine Corps for three years

Rosemary Dew
Supervisory Special Agent, Counterterrorism, FBI

Philip Giraldi
Operations officer and counter-terrorist specialist, Directorate of Operations, CIA

Michael Grimaldi
Intelligence Analyst, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA; Federal law enforcement officer

Mel Goodman
Division Chief, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA; Professor, National Defense University; Senior Fellow, Center for International Policy

Larry Johnson
Intelligence analysis and operations officer, CIA; Deputy Director, Office of Counter Terrorism, Department of State

Richard Kovar
Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director for Intelligence, CIA: Editor, Studies In Intelligence

Charlotte Lang
Supervisory Special Agent, FBI

W. Patrick Lang
U.S. Army Colonel, Special Forces, Vietnam; Professor, U.S. Military Academy, West Point; Defense Intelligence Officer for Middle East, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); founding director, Defense HUMINT Service

Lynne Larkin
Operations Officer, Directorate of Operations, CIA; counterintelligence; coordination among intelligence and crime prevention agencies; CIA policy coordination staff ensuring adherence to law in operations

Steve Lee
Intelligence Analyst for terrorism, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA

Jon S. Lipsky
Supervisory Special Agent, FBI

David MacMichael
Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council, CIA; History professor; Veteran, U.S. Marines (Korea)

Tom Maertens
Foreign Service Officer and Intelligence Analyst, Department of State; Deputy Coordinator for Counter-terrorism, Department of State; National Security Council (NSC) Director for Non-Proliferation

James Marcinkowski
Operations Officer, Directorate of Operations, CIA by way of U.S. Navy

Mary McCarthy
National Intelligence Officer for Warning; Senior Director for Intelligence Programs, National Security Council

Ray McGovern
Intelligence Analyst, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA; morning briefer, The President's Daily Brief; chair of National Intelligence Estimates; Co-founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

Sam Provance
U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst, Germany and Iraq (Abu Ghraib); Whistleblower

Coleen Rowley
Special Agent and attorney, FBI; Whistleblower on the negligence that facilitated the attacks of 9/11

Joseph Wilson
Foreign Service Officer, U.S. Ambassador and Director of Africa, National Security Council.

Valerie Plame Wilson
Operations Officer, Directorate of Operations

Torture teaches another lesson

An Iraq Interrogator's Nightmare

By Eric Fair
Friday, February 9, 2007; Washington Post

Aman with no face stares at me from the corner of a room. He pleads for help, but I'm afraid to move. He begins to cry. It is a pitiful sound, and it sickens me. He screams, but as I awaken, I realize the screams are mine.

That dream, along with a host of other nightmares, has plagued me since my return from Iraq in the summer of 2004. Though the man in this particular nightmare has no face, I know who he is. I assisted in his interrogation at a detention facility in Fallujah. I was one of two civilian interrogators assigned to the division interrogation facility (DIF) of the 82nd Airborne Division. The man, whose name I've long since forgotten, was a suspected associate of Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammad, the Baath Party leader in Anbar province who had been captured two months earlier.

The lead interrogator at the DIF had given me specific instructions: I was to deprive the detainee of sleep during my 12-hour shift by opening his cell every hour, forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes. Three years later the tables have turned. It is rare that I sleep through the night without a visit from this man. His memory harasses me as I once harassed him.

(The article is here.)