The Torture Memos

Last week, President Obama released four detailed memos from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) which were filled with graphic, detailed descriptions of the tactics used by the CIA against suspects detained in Guantanamo Bay and secret CIA prisons around the world. “Passages describing forced nudity, the slamming of detainees into walls, prolonged sleep deprivation and the dousing of detainees with water as cold as 41 degrees alternate with elaborate legal arguments concerning the international Convention Against Torture.” [NY Times]

By Christy Harvey, Mic Check Radio
April 17, 2009

Know Five Things
1. The Memos
Four memos were released by the Obama White House last week.

• a) August 1, 2002. Author: Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee to General Counsel of the CIA, John A. Rizzo. Length: 18 pages. Topic: The memo “gave the C.I.A. its first detailed legal approval for waterboarding and other harsh treatment.” [Memo] [NY Times]
• “Three others, signed by Steven G. Bradbury, sought to reassure the agency in May 2005 that its methods were still legal, even when multiple methods were used in combination, and despite the prohibition in international law against “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment.” [NY Times]
• b) May 10, 2005. Author: Acting Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury to Rizzo. Length: 46 pages. [Memo]
• c) May 10, 2005. Author: Bradbury to Rizzo. Length: 20 pages. [Memo]

• d) May 30, 2005. Author: Bradbury to Rizzo. Length: 40 pages. [Memo]

2. The Role of Doctors

• The memos made frequent mention of the role of doctors and psychologists in the “enhanced interrogation” sessions. “The documents show a steady stream of psychologists, physicians and other health officials who both kept detainees alive and actively participated in designing the interrogation program and monitoring its implementation.” [Washington Post]
• Other role: “Their presence also enabled the government to argue that the interrogations did not include torture.”
• The American Medical Association (AMA): According to AMA policies, doctors “must not be present when torture is used or threatened.” They are only allowed to treat detainees “if doing so is in their [detainees’] best interest” and not merely to monitor their health “so that torture can begin or continue.” [Washington Post]

• The International Red Cross (ICRC): “The interrogation process is contrary to international law and the participation of health personnel in such a process is contrary to international standards of medical ethics.” [New York Review of Books]

3. The Tactics: Waterboarding

• What It Is: Strapping a prisoner to a gurney inclined to an angle of 10 to 15 degrees and simulating drowning by covering his nose and mouth with a cloth and pouring water over his face “from a height of approximately 6 to 18 inches” for no more than 40 seconds at a time. One of the Memo specified there can be no more than two sessions within a 24-hour period.
• What really happened: “But a footnote to a 2005 memo made it clear that the rules were not always followed. Waterboarding was used ‘with far greater frequency than initially indicated’ and with ‘large volumes of water’ rather than the small quantities in the rules.” [NY Times]
• FireDogLake discovered, “According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.” [FireDogLake]

• Side Note: As proof that waterboarding is not torture, the memo congratulated interrogators for using a potable saline instead of fresh water for the sessions, reducing the odds of subsequent pneumonia.

4. The Results

• Although the memos stated the interrogation sessions were necessary “to detect and disrupt” possible terrorist threats, they also stated “there is limited data on which to assess their individual effectiveness” and “it is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program.”
• The Memos state that interrogators were unable “to distinguish detainees who had information but were successfullly resisting interrogation from those who did not actually have the information.”
• In March 2009, the Washington Post reported that “not a single significant plot was foiled as a result” of the torture of Abu Zubaydah and that any useful information he had “was obtained before waterboarding was introduced.” In fact, he provided the CIA with a number of “false leads.” “We spent millions of dollars chasing false alarms,” one former intelligence official told the Post. [Washington Post]
• In December 2008, Vanity Fair wrote that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, another detainee known to have been waterboarded, “produced no actionable intelligence,” according to a former CIA official. [Vanity Fair]

• In November 2008, Matthew Alexander (who led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006) wrote in the Washington Post, “It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001.”

5. What’s Happening Now

• President Obama released the memos last week, but said he would not prosecute the CIA interrogators for conducting the interrogations, saying, “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” [AP]
• In a separate statement, Attorney General Eric Holder wrote “it would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department. ... The President has halted the use of the interrogation techniques described in these opinions, and this administration has made clear from day one that it will not condone torture.” [DOJ]
• The Intelligence Community agrees with Obama: “The announcement appeared to be designed to soothe concerns expressed by top intelligence officials, who argued in recent weeks that the graphic detail in the memos could bring unwanted attention to interrogators and deter others from joining government service.” [Washington Post]
• The Washington Post also notes that these “carefully worded” statements “left open the possibility…that agents and higher-level officials who may have ventured beyond the strategies approved by Bush lawyers could face legal jeopardy for their actions.” [Washington Post]

• Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT): “This is why my proposal for a Commission of Inquiry is necessary. We must take a thorough accounting of what happened, not to move a partisan agenda, but to own up to what was done in the name of national security, and to learn from it.” [Leahy Office]

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Comments

1. we are not in a squeaky clean environment when it comes to interrogation, ask any WW11 vet what the Japanese interrogators
   routinely did to our men/not fit for print/so take the civil rights out of the equation and wake up

   — Stephen Zimdahl - Apr 25, 09:39 AM - #
   
   

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