‘If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong’

June 18, 2008

For those still concerned about U.S. torture policy, yesterday was not an encouraging day.

A senior CIA lawyer advised Pentagon officials about the use of harsh interrogation techniques on detainees at Guantanamo Bay in a meeting in late 2002, defending waterboarding and other methods as permissible despite U.S. and international laws banning torture, according to documents released yesterday by congressional investigators.

Torture “is basically subject to perception,” CIA counterterrorism lawyer Jonathan Fredman told a group of military and intelligence officials gathered at the U.S.-run detention camp in Cuba on Oct. 2, 2002, according to minutes of the meeting. “If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.”

The document, one of two dozen released by a Senate panel investigating how Pentagon officials developed the controversial interrogation program introduced at Guantanamo Bay in late 2002, suggests a larger CIA role in advising Defense Department interrogators than was previously known. By the time of the meeting, the CIA already had used waterboarding, which simulates drowning, on at least one terrorism suspect and was holding high-level al-Qaeda detainees in secret prisons overseas — actions that Bush administration lawyers had approved.

The new evidence, along with hours of questioning of former Pentagon officials at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday, shed light on efforts by top aides to then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to research and reverse-engineer techniques used by military survival schools to prepare U.S. service members for possible capture by hostile forces. The techniques — sensory deprivation, forced nudity, stress positions and exploitation of phobias, such as fear of dogs — would eventually be approved for use at Guantanamo Bay and would spread to U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the Abu Ghraib prison. Nearly all were later rescinded.

Of course, senators also got to hear from William “Jim” Haynes II, the Pentagon’s former top lawyer who signed off on those techniques (he was also, ironically, a one-time Bush judicial nominee). Regrettably, Haynes came down with an acute case of Alberto Gonzales Disease.

Over the course of just a few minutes, Haynes said, “I don’t recall seeing this memorandum before and I’m not even sure this is one I’ve seen before…. I don’t recall seeing this memorandum and I don’t recall specific objections of this nature…. Well, I don’t recall seeing this document, either…. I don’t recall specific concerns…. I don’t recall these and I don’t recall seeing these memoranda…. I can’t even read this document, but I don’t remember seeing it…. I don’t recall that specifically…. I don’t remember doing that…. I don’t recall seeing these things.”

And making the scandal significantly more painful, newly released materials also showed that lawyers candidly talked about curtailing abuse when Red Cross observers came around, and even tried to hide detainees from the humanitarian group.

The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.

“We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques,” Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who’s since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting that were made public Tuesday. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility — Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan — were using sleep deprivation to “break” detainees well before then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique. “True, but officially it is not happening,” she is quoted as having said.

A third person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world.

“In the past when the ICRC has made a big deal about certain detainees, the DOD (Defense Department) has ‘moved’ them away from the attention of the ICRC,” Fredman said, according to the minutes.

I remember a time — I believe it’s known as “pre-2001” — when the United States used to accuse countries which did this of being guilty of disgraceful human rights abuses.

I liked it so much more when we were the good guys.

I remember a time — I believe it’s known as “pre-2001″ — when the United States used to accuse countries who did this of being guilty of disgraceful human rights abuses.

You have such a Sept. 10 mindset!

  • “I don’t remember doing that”

    I’ve heard that waterboarding improves memory function, and apparently getting water into the ear canals cleans them out. And maybe getting zero sleep for a week would help. How about sitting in a freezing cell with blaring music for a few days? I’ll bet his memory actually improves.

    Of course I am kidding. But he would do all those things and more, to people who he only suspected of crimes. And he would do it gladly.

    What’s sad is that these criminals know that the only people who may ever hold them accountable will actually obey the law, and they knew it at the time, so they had very little to fear in breaking the law. The lopsided nature of the conflict between those who would desecrate the Constitution and those who defend it is disheartening. But maybe the prospect of a real investigation will loosen the tongues of the lower-ranking criminals, and maybe they will give up their bosses rather than spend years behind bars (as opposed to being tortured, which they gladly applied to their subjects).

    The “missing” emails simply must be obtained. There’s no way to really destroy that kind of thing if you really want to find it. Pelosi and Reid need to get off their asses and defend the constitution, or we will be left with one hell of a nasty precedent.

  • “…I liked it so much more when we were the good guys.”

    Amen

    I also liked when the entire country was a “free speech zone,” we condemned the attack of countries not threatening another country, and making fortunes by way of your fellow countrymen sacraficing their life & limb (AKA “War Profiteering”) was a BAD thing.

    As far as I’m comcerned, the crimes committed by these Republicans warrants the total destruction of that political party.

  • Sickening. I have to question the morality of anyone who votes Republican in this particular election.

  • Adding punctuation to the reason that all of this is abhorrent (or should be) it this from the unfortunately all too imitated Mr. Giuliani:

    The reality is there seems to be more concern about the rights of terrorists, or alleged terrorists, than the rights that the American people have to safety and security.

    If the distinction between those “alleged” to be criminals (even one as poorly defined as ‘terrorist’)and those proved to be criminals is lost on this former prosecutor, it should not be on most Americans. Which is to say nothing of the idea that no crime justifies such treatment. If people are all hot to live in a country where the police can arrest you without charge and hold you indefinitely, I suggest they move to China or Zimbabwe

  • Franklin (5) I have to question the morality of anyone who votes Republican

    Yes, and don’t accept ignorance as an excuse!

  • And despite report after report, we can still have the deplorable Congressman Dana Rohrabaxher justifying torture as something equivalent to hazing, with his almost obsessive use of the phrase “panties on the head”.

    Here’s the response released by Debbie Cook, Mayor of Huntington Beach, running against this bizarre eccentric who is still convinced that if we don’t torture enough people, your family will die at Disneyland.

    At a time when we need a serious discussion and thorough review of the allegations of torture coming out of Guantanamo Bay, Congressman Rohrabacher has used his position of trust to make jokes and liken the interrogations to nothing more than a frat party.

    We need a representative in Congress who will approach the serious issues facing our country with decorum and common sense, instead of cracking jokes. Torture is not to be taken lightly especially when the prestige and moral authority of the United States government is at stake.

    The voters of the 46th district deserve a Member of Congress who works hard, has a good grasp of the issues before them and who is taken seriously by their colleagues. That’s how you get things done in Congress.”

  • let’s waterboard these clowns and let them tell us it’s not torture.

  • Cheney needs to be waterboarded with Bushit, Laura and Mary watching. Mary can then serve cookies and they can all have a laugh about how ridiculous all those peace-nicks are for thinking water-boarding is such a cruel and degenerate thing to do. Bushit’s kids can be present to get gift ideas for the next session which would include a second boarding of Turd Blossom. What fun.

  • I remember a time — I believe it’s known as “pre-2001″ — when the United States used to accuse countries who did this of being guilty of disgraceful human rights abuses.

    And there was a time when the United States took people who did things like this and put them on trial at Nuremburg, where “I was only following orders” was ruled not a valid defense.

    Come 2009, we’re going to need to arrest a lot of American military and CIA people and send them to the Hague, since – unfortunately – the American justice system is one of those national justice systems that have demonstrated an inability to successfully prosecute war crimes – which is why the International Court was created.

  • I would remind Franklin and Always Hopeful that those who approve of “enhanced interrogation” (torture) are clearly the same who refer to themselves as the “moral majority” (heathens). So don’t go questioning the morality of those who would fight for your right to prevent homosexual marriages and to impeach President’s who might dally with a dolly. Because some morality is just better than other morality.

  • General Taguba: “There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes”

    So these days GENERALS are saying Bush should be arrested, yet impeachment is off the table?

    We truly live in bizarro-world.

  • Franklin – I see your

    “I have to question the morality of anyone who votes Republican in this particular election”

    and raise you an

    “I have to question the morality of anyone who did not support impeaching George Bush in the past few years”

  • >And making the scandal significantly more painful, newly released materials also showed that lawyers candidly talked about curtailing abuse when Red Cross observers came around, and even tried to hide detainees from the humanitarian group.

    Ah, Theresienstadt.

    At least when Reagan was president, those males closest to him underwent urine tests to show that the tests weren’t so degrading. Apparently voluntarily. (Nancy didn’t; that wouldn’t have been ladylike.) If Reagan’s aides could prove on their own persons that a urine test isn’t so bad, why can’t Bush’s aides prove on their own persons that all these other things are not so bad?

    As for Fredman, he’s undermining the McCain campaign. Of course if the detainee dies you’re doing it wrong, because you can’t make a dead man talk. But If anything short of death is not torture, then McCain wasn’t tortured in POW camp.

    And as for Haynes, he has Gonzales-itis.

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