Interrogators, Interviewers, Intelligence Officials Letter to President on Senate Torture Report

[bigtree]

August 4, 2014
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama:

As current and former professional interrogators, interviewers, and intelligence officials who support the release of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s (SSCI) study of the CIA’s post-9/11 rendition, detention, and interrogation program, we welcome your public support for declassification of the study. We write today because we are concerned about reports that your CIA Director, John Brennan, is coordinating with the architects of the CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation” program – a program you ended – to mount a defense of the program in response to release of the report.

The CIA’s program prompted a public discussion about whether these “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs) produced reliable information. Some former government officials who authorized the CIA’s program after 9/11 claim that it helped disrupt terrorist plots, save lives, and even locate Osama Bin Laden. While some of the particular claims of success have been disproven by publicly available information, the broader assertion that the EIT program was effective is based on classified information unavailable to the public.

The SSCI study, which is based on a review of more than 6 million pages of official records, provides an important opportunity to shed light on the question of what was gained – and lost – through the use of EITs. Based on our experience, torture and other forms of abusive or coercive techniques are more likely to generate unreliable information and have repeatedly proven to be counterproductive as a means of securing the enduring cooperation of a detained individual. They increase the likelihood of receiving false or misleading information, undermine our nation’s ability to work with key international partners, and bolster the recruiting narratives of terrorist groups. We are not surprised that those who have read the intelligence committee study say that it concludes that the use of EITs produced little valuable intelligence.

We understand that the senior leadership of the CIA has different view of the meaning and significance of the official documentary record. Those views, and the views of the SSCI minority, should also be made public so that the American people have an opportunity to decide for themselves whether the CIA program was ultimately worth it. It would, however, be a disservice to the public if the CIA engaged in a concerted campaign to discredit the report’s authors and defend the EIT program. We were therefore disturbed to learn that one of the key proponents of the program, the former CIA director George Tenet, is reportedly coordinating with Director Brennan to attack the Senate intelligence committee’s study. These statements, combined with the recent revelation that the CIA intruded into the Senate intelligence committee’s computers despite Director Brennan’s assertions to the contrary, raise questions about the Director’s willingness and ability to clearly convey to those under his leadership at the CIA that he is in full support of your anti-torture policies.

While the architects of the CIA’s program may very well continue to defend it, we urge you to instruct the current leadership of the CIA to responsibly address the report’s findings and unequivocally stand behind your condemnation of torture.

Sincerely,
Mark Fallon – NCIS
Charlton Howard – NCIS
Brigadier General David R. Irvine – U.S. Army (Ret.)
Tim James – NCIS
Steven Kleinman – U.S. Air Force
Marcus Lewis – U.S. Army
Colonel Britain P. Mallow – U.S. Army (Ret.)
Mike Marks – NCIS
Robert McFadden – NCIS
Charles Mink – U.S. Army
Joe Navarro – FBI
Walt O’Brien – NCIS
William Quinn – U.S. Army
Haviland Smith – CIA
Lieutenant General Harry E. Soyster – U.S. Army


read: http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/Interrogator-Letter-President-on-SSCI-Declassification.pdf

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/interrogator-letter-president-ssci-declassification

[gratuitous]

1. "We understand that . . . the CIA has a different view"

Yeah, criminals often seem to think their lawless behavior squeezes under the legality bar because of some heretofore unknown loophole or exception. That's why we don't usually let people accused of crimes serve as their own judge and jury.

I do like the subtle framing of the letter in saying that both the majority and the minority reports should be released so that people can decide for themselves. Sort of like the nontroversy of the science of evolution versus a misreading of the Bible. Who can argue with "teach both sides of the controversy"? Surely not a lot of elected Republican officials.

[Vattel]

2. The thrust of this letter seems correct.

I do think, however, that we need to come to terms with the question of whether torture can be justified in a case where it does work. If one knows that someone has some piece of information, then torture IS a reliable method of extracting that information. That doesn't mean that a policy of torture is effective or useful. And just because torture can be effective doesn't mean that it is ever morally acceptable. But sometimes I think people are a little too desperate to believe that torture can never be useful let alone ethical.

[bbgrunt]

3. well, show us the cases where it worked.

You assume that it can be effective. I think this assumption is the source of your equivocation. Torture only gets you what you want to hear, not the truth.

[Vattel]

4. We did learn some facts through torture, but I don't really want to argue that point.

What we agree on, I hope, is that it should never be used. Our use of torture has been a great recruiting tool for our enemies; torture is typically less effective (or at least no more effective) than non-violent means of extracting information; when used frequently, innocent people end up being tortured; etc. Torture should be unambiguously criminal regardless of who does it. And that is where Obama and Congress have failed us. Instead of amending the War Crimes Act and the Torture Act to make waterboarding, etc., clearly and unambiguously criminal, Obama settled for a mere executive order prohibiting torture. What a wasted opportunity.

[bbgrunt]

7. well I agree with you here, but I still think your

original statement about the possibility of it being effective is simply wrong. You say we did learn some facts through torture. Please validate this statement if you insist on repeating it.

[Vattel]

10. okay, here's a quote from an article at a progressive site:

The argument that torture works cannot simply be dismissed. During World War II, for example, the Gestapo used torture with considerable effectiveness on captured agents working for Britain's Special Operations Executive, the top-secret organization dedicated to sabotage and subversion behind Axis lines. A number of agents, unable to withstand the pain or, in some cases, even the prospect of pain, told their captors everything they knew, including the identity of other agents, the arrival time of flights, and the location of safe houses. During France's brutal war in Algeria, the colonial power used torture effectively. As historian Alistair Horne, the author of the classic analysis of the French-Algerian war, "A Savage War of Peace," told me in a 2007 interview, "In Algeria, the French used torture -- as opposed to abuse -- very effectively as an instrument of war. They had some success with it; they did undoubtedly get some intelligence from the use of torture." That intelligence included information about future terrorist strikes and the infrastructure of terror networks in Algiers.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2009/04/23/torture-works-sometimes-its-always-wrong

Even in these cases alternatives to torture may well have been as effective or more effective.

[bbgrunt]

12. thank you for providing that link. It is a well

constructed article about the immorality and ineffectiveness of torture even under the so called "ticking time bomb" possibility. I do believe that these statements about "they had some success with it" while referring to the Nazis and the French are so general that they fall in the category of historical myths.

We do not really know if the information that was claimed to be obtained by torture was obtained by other means such as spying or paying off corrupt individuals. The claim that it was learned through torture may easily be an effort to protect those involved in torture or those who willingly cooperated. It is also an easy justification for brutality under the stress of conflict.

I do not dispute that people break under torture. The relevance of the information that is secured this way however, can never be fairly judged. A broken person will tell you anything to stop the torture whether they know useful information or not. That only means that you'll never know if the information is true. It is bound to be true in some cases, but you can only determine that after acting on it and numerous other pieces of information that turn out to be untrue.

While torture is a great dramatic device in cinema and novels, its efficacy has yet to be confirmed in reality. There is, for example, not one shred of evidence that all the torture we engaged in after 9-11 yielded any definable intelligence that we did not already know.

[Vattel]

13. We basically agree bbgrunt. my worry is that if anti-torture people like you and me

get too extreme by claiming that torture never extracts information or something like that, we give pro-torture people a chance to ignore the big picture and nit-pick on the details. As a policy for acquiring information in the war on terror, torture is an unmitigated disaster even if we did extract some information through torture. Al Qaida has used our torture as a very effective recruiting tool, innocent people have been tortured, other interrogation methods would have produced far more usable information, respect for international law has suffered, and so on.

[bbgrunt]

14. I appreciate your concern, Vattel,

but once you accept that torture can yield useful information, the opposition will torture you with arguments about how far you are willing to go in drawing your line about torture. Instead I'd rather dispute their contention that it is ever effective.

[Vattel]

16. Good point. It is a trade-off.

[TheKentuckian]

8. I think you confused some 24 episodes with reality.

[nilesobek]

5. The reason torture is so counter productive is because

if the enemy knows he will be tortured then he will never be taken alive. Our society, our military, our government has been through this before in ww2. Sure, American atrocities happened, but there was never an organized torture program. Professional interrogators were language experts and interacted with the prisoners in various ways that did NOT include, "moderate pressure." There are plenty of biographies of interrogators from that period to draw on. We were the good guys, who didn't need to torture, our way of life even being so persuasive to the prisoners.

We are making ordinary enemies fanatically committed with this ill advised torture strategy. Fail.

[Vattel]

6. I totally agree with you.

For the reasons you mention and others as well, torture is the worst technique we could possibly use to gather intelligence.

[Uncle Joe]

9. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, bigtree.

[JEB]

11. So besides being illegal and immoral and destructive to our moral standing,

it doesn't work. Perfect choice for Bushco.

[tk2kewl]

15. .