Central Intelligence Anxiety
NEWS: How the Bush administration left the spooks to twist in the wind
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This winter, as politicians fulminated over the destroyed tapes of the waterboarding of Al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah, a former CIA operative told me that after 9/11 he was approached to take part in a special counterterrorism group authorized to use "enhanced techniques." He had "a moral problem with it," he told a superior, but he wanted to go after the bad guys; what should he do? "These enhanced techniques may make us feel good now, but one of these days they will leak," the superior told him. "They will hit the press, and there will be congressional investigations. And God forbid someone will go overboard and kill someone." So, the former operative turned down the job, "thank God."
After that, a division emerged between what a former senior Agency official described to me as the "SS crowd" and the "Wehrmacht crowd," the "hard edged" and the "smarter and better informed." He said, "People managed not to take assignments. There were senior people who would not go to meetings if they thought that extraordinary rendition or enhanced interrogation techniques were going to be discussed."
Sure enough, when public opinion finally shifted, the administration left the spooks to twist in the wind. "The Bush administration ordered it and approved it and then never came to the Agency's defense when it hit the fan," the former operative said. "The hypocrisy is breathtaking." That prompted a former CIA counterterrorism officer, John Kiriakou, to go on national television to point out that administration officials had been briefed in detail about the Zubaydah interrogation and others. For his trouble, Kiriakou now is reportedly the subject of an FBI investigation focused on whether he disclosed classified information.
What about Congress? "They have known for a long time that [the CIA] uses stress positions and hypothermia and waterboarding and sleep deprivation—and they haven't done anything about it," says Marty Lederman, a former Justice Department attorney who now teaches law at Georgetown University. "They don't disagree with it. And if they do disagree with it, what are they going to do about it? The default position is to have closed hearings, which is preposterous. The intelligence oversight committees are totally captured by the intelligence community."
Most of us have demons, and the demons are in the driver's seat more often than not. If you've tortured another person, the demon will definitely be driving.
What an irony, if these guys, who will need long courses of psychotherapy, if they want to stay half-way sane, are now being cut loose, presumably losing their benefits in the process.
And let's not talk about the victims, shall we -- and THEIR chances to find some resolution.
Say there was a train hurtling down a track toward two adults. Would you, at the switch, turn the train onto a track containing a defenseless child, to save the adults?
Say there was a bomb ticking, would you shoot a suspect in the knee to find out
where the bomb is?
Would you rather a RedPhone@3AM were answered by a hair-trigger hot-head, or by someone who gives due consideration?
There are so many unknowns that cannot be answered, except by going through the REAL situation. These artificially-constricted scenarios are just tv-fed "candy" morality. They have no real bearing on what an informed, moral human will do in a challenging situation.
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stop watching tv.
The only thing that this barbaric behavior does is produce is more enemies of America and further solidify the United States' role as the latest in a long line of imperialist bullies in the pages of history.
There is one more question for you, Chris: Why do you advocate torture when our own experts found out long ago that torture forces the intel source to answer in any manner that will stop the torture? What intel reason would one use to justify a method that has been demonstrably proved to create unreliable intelligence? What evidence has been brought forth to counter the previous conclusion? Has the administration yet to define what is meant by what is 'not' torture or any corrobating evidence that the 'enhanced' techniques were indeed successful? Chris, I have to assume that you comfortable with torture, even though under Patriot Act statutes you and your loved ones may be on the receiving end of these 'lawful' acts. And don't forget that under current War on Terror rules, you cannot sue the federal government if you were mistakenly picked up for some CIA questioning. While we're at it, let's hope you're for denying habeas corpus to anyone suspected of terroristic activities, because that linchpin of the Rule of Law in our country predicated on the inalienable right to fair treatment and representation before the state, i.e. the federal gov't, is at risk. Don't think for a second that these concepts-legalization of torture and suspension of habeas corpus-aren't related. I'm truly sorry ,but I don't recognize the country I served for so many years.
If it didn't work for the S.S. what would make the "intelligence" community or the administration think it will work for them?