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Veteran Intelligence Officers on Torture
By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (about the author) Page 2 of 4 page(s)
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 two detainees were waterboarded at least 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;
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