Posted on 12/11/2014 5:00:50 AM PST by Kaslin
When the head of the CIA's torture unit decided to destroy videotapes of his team's horrific work, he unwittingly set in motion a series of events that led to the release this week of the most massive, detailed documentation of unlawful behavior by high-ranking government officials and intentional infliction of pain on noncombatants by the United States government since the Civil War era. Here is the backstory.
One of the reasons repeatedly stated by President George W. Bush for the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the maintenance of "torture rooms" by Saddam Hussein. While making this very argument, Bush was secretly authorizing CIA agents to engage in similar unlawful behavior for similar purposes: intelligence and deterrence. Bush sounded credible when he claimed that his administration adhered to federal and international legal standards.
He knew he could make that claim because the torturers were sworn to secrecy, as were their congressional regulators. The CIA charter permits Congress to regulate the CIA in secret. Congress has established two secret congressional committees, one from the Senate and one from the House, to serve as monitors and regulators of CIA activities. The stated reason for the secrecy is to keep our enemies from knowing what the CIA is doing. The effect of the secrecy has been a muzzled Congress, lied to by law-breaking and rogue CIA officials.
Until now.
When the Senate Intelligence Committee staff learned of the destroyed videotapes (a federal crime the Justice Department declined to prosecute) and reported that destruction to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the committee chair, she ordered an investigation to determine whether the CIA officials who had briefed her committee had told the truth. If they had been truthful, she reasoned, why destroy the tapes? In order to conduct that investigation, Feinstein ordered the CIA to make available to her committee's investigators whatever documents and digital data the investigators sought.
During the course of the investigation, Senate investigators suspected their computers had been hacked. When they brought those suspicions to Feinstein, she ordered another investigation, this one aimed at identifying the hackers. That investigation revealed that the CIA itself was spying on its own Senate investigators. When she approached CIA Director John Brennan about this, he denied it. When she went to the floor of the Senate -- where her vow of secrecy may lawfully be disregarded -- to reveal that the CIA had spied on her and her fellow Senators and their investigators, the CIA denied it. When she released incontrovertible evidence of CIA domestic spying, Brennan admitted that his agents had spied on their regulators (another federal crime the feds declined to prosecute), but claimed it was needed because the regulators had exceeded their authority in examining CIA documents.
All this put the original investigation of why the tapes of the torture had been destroyed and whether the CIA had been truthful to the White House and its congressional regulators into high gear. When the investigators' final report -- all 6,000 pages of it, much in lurid detail -- was completed, it was sent to the White House, which decided to release it. The CIA begged for redactions of agents' names and other identifiers, and a long process of negotiation ensued between the White House, the State Department, the CIA and the Senate. This week, Feinstein had had enough and decided to release the report with the then-agreed-upon redactions.
The report is damning in the extreme to the Bush administration and to the CIA leadership. It offers proof that the CIA engaged in physical and psychological torture, some of which was authorized -- unlawfully, yet authorized -- most of which was not. The report also demonstrates that CIA officials repeatedly lied to the White House and to Senate regulators about what they were doing, and they lied about the effectiveness of their torture.
If the allegations in the report are true, we have war criminals, perjurers, computer hackers and thugs on the government payroll. We also have dupes. The most politically successful argument the torture lobby has made is that we are all safer because of these dirty deeds. This Senate report refutes that argument by demonstrating that no serious actionable intelligence came from the torture.
All torture is criminal under all circumstances -- under treaties to which the U.S. is a party, under the Constitution that governs the government wherever it goes, and under federal law. Torture degrades the victim and the perpetrator. It undermines the moral authority of a country whose government condones it. It destroys the rule of law. It exposes our own folks to the awful retaliatory beheadings we have all seen. It is slow, inefficient, morbid and ineffective. It is a recruiting tool for those who have come to cause us harm. All human beings possess basic inalienable rights derived from the natural law and protected by the Constitution the CIA has sworn to uphold. Torture violates all of those rights.
What should we make of this report on government torture? In a free society in which the government works for us, we have a right to know what it is doing in our names, and we have a reasonable expectation that the laws the government enforces against us it will enforce against itself. But don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
I always seem to disagree with Nappy on questions of security. i.e. CIA and Black Ops. But, that’s me...
I completely agree. The lawyers who supposedly approved the torture should be disbarred.
Oh complete balderdash.
The good judge wants us to play by Marquis Of Queensberry rules. Our enemies have no such compunction.
In case she hasn’t heard, they practice torture and mass murder on a vast scale.
We may have to resort to extraordinary measures to counteract their evil. For defending our country, apologies are not offered nor needed.
An inhumane enemy deserves no quarter from us. If you don’t understand that, Judge Napolitano, you’re in the wrong business.
America confronts an enemy that does not abide by civilized rules of warfare. We need to do and should do - whatever is necessary to defeat our enemy.
Yawn. The terrorists are lucky I wasn’t running the program. I witnessed several VERY successful interrogations during the Southeast Asia War Games that saved many US lives. 10 minutes with KSM and he would of been asking for his mommy.
Not a bad article, but this part is stupid. The decapitators are not "retaliating" for our misdeeds, they're playing by the rules of a 1400 year old game.
The sharia and jihad of ISIS is simply what sharia and jihad always were, prior to a roughly century and a half period in which Muslim leaders tried to appear as if they were conforming to "civilized" norms.
The mask is off now, and ISIS has simply reverted to "normal" Muslim behavior.
If the allegations in the report are true, we have war criminals, perjurers, computer hackers and thugs on the government payroll. We also have dupes... All torture is criminal under all circumstances -- under treaties to which the U.S. is a party, under the Constitution that governs the government wherever it goes, and under federal law... What should we make of this report on government torture? In a free society in which the government works for us, we have a right to know what it is doing in our names, and we have a reasonable expectation that the laws the government enforces against us it will enforce against itself. But don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
Not a good argument, IMO.
Hussein tortured wives and children in front of their husbands/fathers to get information, or simply to inflict anguish.
Should we do the same simply to demonstrate that we can be as evil as the enemy?
To be sure, war and intelligence are dirty businesses, but IMO there are some lines Americans should not cross, regardless of the consequences. There are, of course, legitimate arguments about where that line should be drawn.
Here’s the reason: For a very long time, Americans have prided ourselves on being “the good guys,” appropriately IMO. We fought and defeated Nazis and Commies, and believed we deserved to win because we were the good guys.
If we accept any and all methods as legitimate, what sets us apart from Nazis, Commies and Islamists who do the same? Simply that we’re us?
I want America to win, but I also want us to remain the good guys, which we can’t do by simply imitating any and all behavior of our enemies. I want us to deserve to win.
What statute (passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by a President) was broken?
When your enemies are barbarians you have to use barbaric tactics. The niceties of civilization do not apply.
Right...but only since 2009. /s
Making the murderers of 3,000 innocent Americans uncomfortable isn't torture.
Under the Geneva Convention every one of these scum bags should already have been hung.
I completely agree, but you must remember that, in our Constitutional system "we" = "The representatives of the People of the United States in Congress assembled".
Our war fighters would be on much stronger ground if Bush had asked for, and gotten, THIS:
Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the irregular forces of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Pakistan which has thus been thrust upon the United States is hereby formally declared; and the President is hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against these irregular forces and the governments that tolerate them; and, to bring the conflict to a successful termination, all the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.
I’m not saying we should ever forcibly interrogate innocent people. No one endorses that.
But if a “ticking bomb” terrorist has information that could save lives, we certainly can and should use all means to extract that information from him.
He is going to use our humanity to murder our fellow citizens and we should not treat him as someone deserving of compassion. In fact, just the exact opposite.
Evil people don’t deserve kindness as in our place they would show us none. Islamic terrorist psychopaths understand only the language in which they address to those unfortunate enough to fall into their hands.
The mercy of a fool means the fool is not long for this world. We can pride ourselves on being the good guys but we must not make the mistake of thinking our enemy is in any way honorable and deserving of respect.
Hanged, but let's not quibble.
Every detainee at Guantanamo should have been dangling from a rope at 11:59am on January 20. 2009.
The “detainees” at GITMO should have been transferred to Isle de Vieques and used as gunnery practice targets for the USN.
Not Al Qaeda terrorists hell bent on slaughtering thousands of Americans.
Here, go get some intel from terrorists.
The Judge should tell that to the 3000 Americans slaughtered in cold blood by Islamic terrorists without their rights being read to them and without even the benefit of a trial.
They were peremptorily sentenced to death because they were American. He is defending the basic inalienable rights of brutal scum who do not recognize us as human beings protected at all by natural law.
Under the law of Allah there are Muslims and there are slaves. Those who refuse to submit are dead. Judge’s Napolitano’s liberal pieties will find no hearing in many parts of the world.
When and if anything done to the terrorists exceeds what was commonly done to our own soldiers and airmen in the SERE schools, then I might listen.
But we treat our own soldiers and officers in these courses far rougher than we have ever treated sources of intelligence.
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