When you’re staring at an ironclad complicity rap from a general public and liberal base looking for some sign that you stood athwart the black site gates and shouted, “Stop!” yet no such evidence exists or is forthcoming. When you’re putting the final touches on a report that somehow cost the taxpayers 40 million dollars, the content of which you characterize as shocking, brutal, and un-American, while looking for a way to extricate yourself and your colleagues from the role of enabler for that which will undoubtedly shock, albeit with intent. When your unanimous and full-throated full -throated opposition to the program you once supported hinges upon the notion that it was not only immoral, but ineffective – because because how can you explain shutting down a program, however objectionable, which was effective at pulling actionable intelligence out of high value Al Qaeda leadership detainees? When the President who signed the executive order shutting down the program, having actually seen the intelligence after being inaugurated and spoken with the leadership at CIA, changes his campaign trail characterization from “It didn’t work; people will say anything to make it stop ” to “Even if it did produce some information, we don ’t know if we could have gotten that information using standard techniques. ” When the famously Democratic former director of the th e CIA, Leon Panetta, states that the program provided valuable information used against Al Qaeda terrorists – but but is compelled to attach the Obama administration caveat that he also doesn ’t know whether we could have gotten the same information using different techniques.
When the only viable narrative remaining is that it was approved by Democrats briefed on the program, it had the full support of briefed Democrats until it (and the notion of their support) became public, those same Democrats then characterized it as ineffective and immoral, yet significant doubt remains after credible claims that information gathered in the program led to Bin Laden. When faced with all of that, what do you do? It all hinges on complicity, doesn ’t it? Your only possible recourse is to claim that your approval was based on faulty briefings – that that you were lied to by the CIA, and that the program you approved, supported, and paid for was vastly different than what was actually carried out in those black sites. Then, to tie up the pesky pesky effectiveness effectiveness issue, you’ve got to attack the information – find find a way to accentuate the t he negative and minimize the positive. But you’re going to need some some help. You can count on the media and various pundits to advance your position in an incurious and uncritical manner, but you’re savvy enough to understand that the media has been on board since 2005, yet you still find yourself in a relatively delicate position. So first, you’ve got to count on the silence of the briefers – you’ve got to hope that they are either still in the CIA employ and legally bound to remain silent, or at least more silent than t han you (whose silence is equally bound, yet unequally enforced). If they do find an avenue to challenge your claims of ignorance, you can then turn to the media to shut that down (“Of course they’re going to say that – their their reputation is on the line. They’ll say anything ….”). Same thing goes for former
Directors – attack attack the messenger, assassinate the character, question the motive, and let the media do the rest. Next, you’ve got to do do some leaking. leaking. Activate the Staff-Int Staff-Int channel to the media, get the story you want out there and let it ride. Leak the portions of of the classified report report you find most damaging to the program p rogram – and and beneficial to you. Get all of those former military interrogators and FBI agents out there fired up and ready to go – and and count on the media to not scratch too deeply the surface of their actual experience or motivation, or to ponder for a moment the notion that a former interrogator who has never employed enhanced interrogation techniques but has a book to sell would be an appropriate arbiter of the truth – an an expert – from from whom to report the “truth” about “torture.” What are they to do, these Democratic politicians facing the dilemma of damning a program they fostered in the secretive darkness of a top-secret post-9/11 briefing room, only to claim ignorance and dismay in the harsh light of the post-2005 Washington Post Post expose? How can they pull it off? In this case, they were presented a gift – a a life raft on which to float their conspiracy theories, half-truths and cherry-picked condemnations of a successful program they now have no choice but to destroy. They got their hands on millions millions of pages of top-secret cables, internal memos, emails and briefing documents from the beginning to the end of the program. Every word put to paper; every email argument over tactics and techniques; every mistake laid bare, examined, and rectified in official traffic; every doubt shared s hared with colleagues; every poorly-worded interrogation report; every disproven analysis of current intelligence; every start and stop along the
interrogation and debriefing debriefing spectrum of each detainee. In short, everything ever put on paper regarding the deliberations and day-to-day administration of a top secret, clandestine program involving the interrogation of Al Qaeda terrorists. So indulge me for a moment and briefly strip yourselves of any ideological or political bias here – step step away from any preconception or belief you may hold regarding the program, and give me your honest impression of what you would anticipate, faced with the above-described dilemma, the Democratic Senate Intelligence Committee staff may do with the entirety of CIA records and communications throughout the disputed interrogation program. They’re going to produce something shocking, brutal, and unAmerican, aren’t they? The staffers themselves will tell you that you can take the entirety of internal communications belonging to any government program in the history of government programs, flip a coin to predetermine a positive or negative outcome, and find enough supporting evidence to produce a convincing report characterizing the program as either the most or least productive and effective in all of government, depending on which side the coin landed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------. And I can guarantee guarantee with absolute absolute certainty that that it would take a lot less than 40 million dollars and five years for me to be able to dive into that document dump and come out with as convincing a positive narrative of the program as
Dianne Feinstein and her staff have apparently produced a negative one. I would lead with the contemporaneous memorandum for record describing the 2002 briefing of Nancy Pelosi and others on the interrogation interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX and it ’s one of thousands routinely produced by the note-taker in every encounter with congress. I’m not allowed to describe it any further other than t han to say that it is compellingly at odds with the former Speaker ’s claims of ignorance, but if I were on a committee trying to write the definitive history of the interrogation program I would certainly consider this to be of principle import, as it speaks to the crux of the issue of which party is telling the truth about congressional support for the program in its early days. Whether or not this document, or a summary of it, is in the declassified SSCI report will say a lot about which side the coin landed on prior to this investigation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I would interview interview each debriefer debriefer who deployed deployed to a black site and questioned the detainees before, during, and after EITs were employed, and would publish each of their unedited opinions on the effectiveness of EITs.
I would examine the early days of the program and highlight the mistakes and hasty decisions made during that chaotic period, but would interview those involved to ascertain the reasons for, and lessons learned learned from, those mistakes. I would not allow those issues to be presented without context and follow-up. And I would clearly differentiate between the early days of the program, when the training and infrastructure was in its infant stages – when when the demand outpaced supply and the system raced to catch up to the challenge of implementing a multifaceted special access program on the fly – and and the mid-tolatter stages, ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I’ll wager that there is little to be found in the Senate report from 2004 onwards – another another test of which way the coin landed. I would produce an entire section on the -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- deliberative process of the efficacy of interrogation interrogation using enhanced enhanced measures. I would do so for personal reasons, because on a personal level, while I have no quarrel with reporters or cable TV pundits and hosts “reporting” or commenting negatively on the program (their job is to sell their paper or their t heir program – “ – “torture” sells), I do take issue with former intelligence officers or interrogators professing expert knowledge of techniques they have never used, and which most of whom have never witnessed. They entered the arena to sell themselves, or their books, or both, and during the process they made any number of statements regarding regarding the notion that ------------------------------------ ---------------------------------- was putting the lives of Americans, and American military personnel in particular, in danger. As they presented
themselves as “experts”, their words held meaning to those who hosted them on their programs or helped them sell their books, and they are as aware as I am that they are no such thing. They are opportunists opportunists who, almost almost uniformly, spent spent a relatively small portion of their professional lives engaged in standard interrogation – be be it criminal or intelligence-related – and they bundled their manufactured credibility and their personal opinion into a nice little self-righteous quote package, for sale to the highest bidder. bidder. I have no problem with the buyers – that that ’s business. I do have a problem with the sellers, sellers, and that ’s personal. I know one or two of them – an an Air Force Colonel often quoted on his opposition to, and disgust with, the techniques ------------------------------------ A former FBI agent widely recognized as the whistle-blower who was so offended and disturbed by what he saw at a black site that he informed his higher headquarters and took the next plane out of there. I worked with the Air Force Colonel when he was a Captain – he’d remember me if he saw me because he and I spent a good deal of time sharing an operations tent in the Hafr Al Batin desert of Saudi Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. I read in his biography that he was Chief of a joint/combined interrogation team during that war and have heard him describe his interrogations of Iraqis as an example of the effectiveness of Army Field Manual Manual interrogations. interrogations. If we met again, again, it wouldn ’t surprise him to hear that I was puzzled by that part of his bio, as I remember his role at JIF West a bit differently than does he. Perhaps “Joint Fusion Analysis Team ” would ring a bell. I would ask him to remind me of one occasion in which he, I, I , or any other interrogator encountered an Iraqi prisoner unwilling to provide whatever information information we desired. desired. He may
remember that I used to joke that it would be a more efficient use of our time to give them all a list of the top 10 Priority Intelligence Requirements and a tape recorder – all all we would have to do is interpret interpret and transcribe the tapes. Or maybe he wouldn ’t remember it that way – in in fact, I would ask him to describe each of the interrogations he conducted at JIF West. One would expect such passion and certainty regarding the singular effectiveness of interrogation with Army Field Manual techniques to be a consequence of tried and true operational experience in the field – certainly certainly if the speaker is prone to cite this experience experience as as validation validation of his testimony. testimony. So, yes, I would ask the good Colonel to remind me how many Iraqi prisoners he interrogated during this apparently seminal period in the development of his current role as an interrogation expert. His answer would say a lot about his memory. I met the FBI agent in an embassy and subsequently a bar in the Middle East. I found him to be a great great storyteller and an an interesting guy. I later learned of his his ill-fated engagement engagement with the CIA team interrogating Abu Zubaydah and have heard both sides of the story – his his on television and in his book, and the others through ----------------------- personal conversations with people who worked with him on site. While I find his story compelling, I always go back to that passage in the Department of Justice IG report on FBI participation in Al Qaeda interrogations (it ’s online – begins begins on page 67) in which his partner states that he remained at the black site and participated in the interrogations with the CIA after the agent left, because he ’d been through similar at the SERE course and because he could see that the CIA interrogators were “acting professionally” and acquiring valuable information. That didn didn’t make it into his book, at
least not in the clear language included in the t he IG report, but it should have. I have often wondered how how such a uniquely gifted American treasure could bear to leave the FBI and intelligence community and take his talents to the corporate world, when he must have known how badly he was needed on the battlefield. I saw his testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee – one one particular particular statement stands stands out. He said that he found it ridiculous that CIA interrogators could claim that their program was designed to obtain critical and timely intelligence when they put the detainee in sleep deprivation for days without engaging and attempting to gather information. That was all I needed to hear from this particular witness to understand that his expertise was overstated. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ In other words, while it may be obvious to some, I would point out to the FBI agent that sitting in front of an interrogator answering questions from morning to night is accomplished while the detainee is awake. As these experts can tell you, a good interrogator looks for the first lie and spends some time assessing the context of the lie. Does it minimize minimize or exaggerate? Does it protect inward or outward? Is it selfish and and self-serving, or is it noble noble and protective of of colleagues? Is it uttered under under stress, or freely, freely, with little prompting? prompting? Is it a mistake mistake that he attempts attempts to correct, or is it something he ’s thought about and plans to hold onto? What, exactly, did he believe believe he had to gain by telling telling that lie? Was it to hide, to avoid, avoid, or to misdirect? misdirect? Was it believable and delivered with conviction, or was it more hamhanded – more more obvious?
The answers to these questions help build a resistance snapshot of the subject (as well as a credibility benchmark) – and help guide the interrogator in determining how to exploit that lie to gain advantage over the subject – to to obtain a clearer understanding of what that individual is trying to protect. With or without EITs, how it is handled is crucial to the conduct of the interrogation, so getting the right answer about the motivation behind that lie is a studied, careful, collaborative task. I would ask those interrogation “experts” to reflect on their own bios, their descriptions of their own particular interrogation experience and expertise, their public descriptions of their knowledge of the effectiveness of EIT interrogations, and the motivation behind any inconsistencies, omissions, or exaggerations in all above. I think that you would find that the tendency amongst this group is to exaggerate their experience and expertise, a trait generally borne of insecurity, self-preservation, and ambition. I would next be interested in determining why such an individual would find find it necessary to exaggerate exaggerate or lie. While most people exaggerate their access or experience to convince others of their worth and stature, others simply do so out of habit. In all cases, though, the act of exaggeration or or deception is uniformly self-serving – the the lie is offered to advance a positive perception of the subject and his or her actions or opinions. The mere existence existence of the lie suggests that such a perception is unwarranted – it it is the interrogators job to discover why. It ’s always the first lie, though. though. After the first lie, a good interrogator knows where and when to look for the truth. Perhaps a good journalist should take a harder look as well.
With the aid of testimony from “experts” such as these, the committee is going to report that a program, -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- was, at best, an abject failure. failure. At worst, a criminal enterprise run by the CIA and the Bush administration, with support from a corrupt Justice Department. It will not will not find find that the Democratic members of the intelligence committees and congressional leadership who were briefed on the program had any hand in aiding and abetting the enterprise. To the contrary, it will find that any Democrat who supported the program only did so because they were misled and lied to by CIA briefers and management, and that those techniques to which they may admit approving were not administered in the manner in which they were briefed. Finally, they will find find that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the program was either completely ineffective, or that any information actually produced under the auspices of the program was collected despite, or in lieu of, the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. That ’s the only possible finding that will allow the Senate Intelligence Committee to trash the work of hundreds of CIA officers and contractors over a period of five years, which produced volumes of actionable intelligence from resistant Al Qaeda leadership detainees, and which operated under the full approval and consent of the congressional committees charged with oversight oversight of such programs. programs. It must be be ineffective, it must be incorrectly administered, it must include include lying by CIA briefers, and it must suggest suggest (though not necessarily conclude remember, they approved it) that the techniques used – remember, constituted torture.
Any other result – any any other result whatsoever – will will be unacceptable to the liberal base of the party compiling the report, and will be equally unacceptable to the politicians who have staked their reputations – and and their excuses for providing support and funding to the program - on every conclusion listed above. Anything less would be be a failure, and failure failure is apparently not an option, based on the selective leaking witnessed thus far. We got to this point because a group of radical Muslims convinced themselves that their religion allowed for, and in some cases mandated, the murder and maiming of others to purify the world of non-believers. non-believers. It became their daily daily bread, their life’s calling, and the measure measure of their manhood. The most powerful country in the world reacted by making it our mission to kill or capture every like-minded human being walking the same earth, and by all accounts we took that t hat mission seriously. To help facilitate that decision – to to put names and faces on bad guys, to gain an understanding of their leadership, planning, logistics, tactics, and management, to collect every scrap of information available available ------------- to track them down down and kill or capture them – the the CIA proposed that interrogators begin using enhanced enhanced techniques to draw out that information. information. The President agreed, and the heads of the Senate and Congressional Congressional Intelligence committees agreed as well. No matter how many times the last part of that sentence is stated and ignored, it is still a fact. The CIA interrogation program operated in secrecy for close to three years, during which time it became the principal source
of information used to kill and capture Al Qaeda leadership and operational personnel, as well as the principal source of information on attack plans, both active and aspirational. The intelligence community (both domestic and international) was happy to receive, evaluate, assess, and make use of that information. The intelligence committees were were supportive and and satisfied with the results, and the means used to obtain those results. The terrorists knew nothing whatsoever whatsoever about about the program – they they had no idea where their colleagues had been taken, nor were they aware whether or not, or how, they were being interrogated. interrogated. The program was was working, the consumers were happy, and the overseers were in full accord with the program managers. Then the 2005 Washington Post article hit the press, and everything changed. It became predictably, predictably, heartbreakingly heartbreakingly political. The politicians formerly in support of the program made the political calculation that explaining their support for enhanced interrogation was more damaging to their reputation than lying about it and relying on the inability of those they once supported to publicly reveal their private, and official, surrogacy. They counted on the media and their own public relations shops to develop strategies to counter any versions of the truth that might leak out, and they they dug in. Interrogations were suspended, the program was opened up for redesign-bycommittee, and the inexorable slide into ineffectiveness and -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let me attempt attempt to put this in perspective. perspective. If you are so set in your beliefs that you cannot consider for a moment the possibility that you may not have all of the information i nformation necessary to make an informed decision, stop reading now because nothing I write write will change your mind. If not, consider the following: I have been an interrogator for over half of my life – --------------------years as an active, engaged interrogator – and and I have worked at the highest operational level almost every step along the way. I speak Arabic and Persian Persian Farsi. I was a Senior Interrogator Interrogator in the principle, theater-level interrogation facility during the first Gulf War, then t hen ran interrogation operations in Mogadishu, Somalia during the Black Hawk Down days Down days – I I was on the last plane out of Mogadishu Mogadishu in March 1994. 1994. I then spent 7 years posted at embassies in the Middle East, debriefing everything from visa applicants to walk-in sources to defectors, scientists, suspected terrorists, and any other potentially-valuable source that popped up in the Middle East during during my tenure. In the Iraq war, I ran interrogation and debriefing operations on the Iraqi High Value Detainees (the ‘Deck of Cards’ government, military, intelligence and scientific personnel captured during the war). I debriefed and debunked two separate Ahmed Chalabi-inspired Chalabi-inspired provocateurs, and was the t he first to brief General Franks on the absence of WMD in Iraq while standing in my operations center at Baghdad International Airport in early-May 2003 – after after years of absolute certainty that Iraq was in possession of, and hiding, WMD throughout the country. At no time in my career have I ever cared a whit about what I was going to discover during an interrogation or debriefing – my job was to use whatever skills I possessed to assess the subject and the information on its merits, and to accurately communicate whatever intelligence information I collected,
regardless of how it may impact or affect anyone or anything militarily, personally, politically, or professionally. I was good at what I did as a result of years of practical and real-time application of every aspect of the interrogation/debriefing interrogation/debriefing protocol. protocol. There is no magic to a professional debriefing or interrogation – it it is a matter of preparation, tactical flexibility, thorough questioning, and consistent follow-up. follow-up. I learned what I found to be be most effective on dozens of disparate source profiles through trial and error, and and then through repetition. I conducted thousands thousands of mundane, intricate debriefings on any variety of subjects, and hundreds of more consequential interrogations and debriefings of detainees and prisoners during wars and conflicts throughout the years. During my 20 years in the military, I never so much as raised my voice during the conduct of thousands of interrogations/debriefings. interrogations/debriefings. I ran my operations operations by the book, and taught those who worked for me that there was absolutely zero wiggle room in the Geneva Conventions or the Army Field Manual. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In the case of the thousands of debriefings and interrogations I conducted during my time in the military, the military interrogation options I had available to me at the time were sufficient to get the job done. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------There is simply no comparison. comparison. Not by the FBI guy who tells us that establishing rapport and finding common ground is the key to opening up the the KSMs of the world. world. Not by the Air Force interrogator who tells us that the “informed interrogation approach”, showing the detainee that you understand him and are knowledgeable of his religion and his personal situation are the magic that will make all of our interrogation wishes come true. Not by the CIA desk officer who decided decided that his inability to gather intelligence from his detainee using the standard techniques proved that the detainee held no
intelligence value. value. Not by any of those otherwise otherwise intelligent individuals who somehow became experts in the use of techniques they’d never employed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I have often read and heard over the last few years that the conduct of the CIA interrogation program served as a principle recruitment tool for Al Qaeda and, more specifically, put American troops in danger of mistreatment and torture upon capture. Putting aside the fact that the program was was secret until 2005 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- it is the second accusation which defies all intellectual reason.
First, all of our enemies over the last several decades routinely torture, kill, or maim their their prisoners as a matter matter of course. It ’s simply what they do. do. Our more recent enemy, enemy, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated brethren, have proven themselves to be amongst the most brutal captors in the history of captivity. captivity. (The majority of this this piece was written written in early 2014, before the name “ISIS” was known to anyone outside of the the intelligence community). They tortured and and beheaded captives before the interrogation program was initiated, while it was being secretly carried out, and after it was revealed revealed publicly. There was no strategy shift shift upon revelation of the CIA interrogation program to switch tactics from establishing rapport and bonding with their captive to sawing off his head. head. It was always about the sawing off of heads. It still is. That said, some have suggested that our use of enhanced techniques put our country in the delicate position of demanding fair treatment of our prisoners while at the same time using harsh techniques on Al Qaeda detainees. They wonder what ’s to stop our enemies from using the same tactics we used, and what right we would have to ask them to stop. I would submit that the immediate adoption of the entire CIA interrogation program by every combatant entity currently engaged in any war or battle in any corner of the world would be the greatest thing that ever happened to modern detention and prisoner/hostage/deta prisoner/hostage/detainee inee well being. Were the Secretary-General of the United Nations to propose and enforce the adoption of the CIA interrogation program and conditions of confinement on every battlefield on earth, the number of lives improved and saved would qualify him for a Nobel Peace Prize. There would be no more torture – yes, yes, I mean actual torture. No detainee would ever be subjected subjected to
any treatment more severe than that we inflict on our own American servicemen servicemen every every month in SERE training. All prisoners and detainees would be adequately fed, clothed, housed, and given health and dental care. care. There would be no beheadings, no beatings, no cutting off of hands, fingers, ears, or noses. noses. No starvation starvation of prisoners. No slow deaths from from disease and dysentery. dysentery. No snuff films, or propaganda propaganda videos featuring staged staged confessions or abuse. No beating of the undersides of feet, feet, or genital mutilation. mutilation. There would be no rape, no sexual abuse, and no blackmail of families. So I would ask those who express concern that the t he rest of the world will follow our lead – especially especially those who are rolling their eyes at my suggestion above - to consider the facts about the standard tactics being carried out by warring factions all over the world today, and ask themselves which protocol they would rather be in place were they to become the captive – ours or theirs? Speaking as a retired soldier who was considered “high risk ” and trained in the SERE course, I would welcome the implementation implementation of the CIA interrogation protocols by any enemy I may encounter, because I would know that whatever they did to me would be monitored, measured, and carried out over a finite period period of time. I would know that they would never cause me severe injury or death. death. I don’t know that about any of our current enemies, so I would gladly accept the CIA interrogation protocol as the world standard. At present, due to the shuttering of the program and the subsequent spotlight put on any and all interrogations carried out by US interrogators anywhere in the world, the safest place on earth for a terrorist to be is in the hands of the US military, FBI, justice department, department, or intelligence intelligence services. services. Along with
three hots and a cot, the modern terrorist captive is also afforded the assurance that he has no obligation or expectation whatsoever to answer questions posed by the interrogators. He enters the interrogation room comfortable c omfortable with the knowledge that his secrets are safe within him, as long as he can avoid falling under the spell of a rapport-building interrogator exploiting their common interests, comparing their higher-level educational aspirations for their children, and showing the appropriate level of understanding and compassion to convince him that giving up those secrets is just the righteous thing to do. Absent the embracement embracement of that bonding exercise, he is fully authorized to sit in complete silence, or tell the interrogator to go fuck himself, without consequence. This, my friends, is why we kill people with drones. We have nowhere to hold them, no way to compel them to give up information, and no desire to repeatedly highlight our newfound inadequacies by capturing high value terrorists and quite publicly failing to obtain any information information from them. them. So we kill them, and their secrets die with them. t hem. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would wonder aloud if the American people believed that KSM, or Abu Faraj Al Libi, or Ramsi Bin Al Shib had the right to to not give up information on terrorist programs, personnel, personnel, and attacks. If we as a country believed believed that a terrorist has that right – that that an acceptable conclusion to an interrogation could be zero information, regardless of the circumstances or the expected value of the information retained by that terrorist – then then we did the right thing by shutting down the program, because such a conclusion was unacceptable in our program.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------But we need to own that determination. We need the the politicians responsible for codifying codifying that right to make it clear to their constituents that the interrogation program produced information that will no longer be available to the intelligence community, but that this state of play is acceptable to them because they consider enhanced interrogation to be immoral and un-American. Not ineffective – but but in their t heir minds immoral and un-American. Not only will that never happen, but the Senate Intelligence Committee report will find a way to pick apart the program – probably by focusing on missteps in the early stages – to to the extent that they will render any information gained through enhanced interrogations to be inconsequential or of no interest to the intelligence community. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- they will surely do everything they can to minimize the successes and focus on the failures, because any conclusion which suggests any degree of effectiveness will ruin their narrative – they they’ll then have to own it. We then need to shut down the US military SERE program, as the same immoral and un-American tactics used in the CIA program are used on American service-members every day. Regardless of how often that fact is stated and ignored, it is as true today as it will be tomorrow – we we use the same techniques on each other. If Senator Feinstein Feinstein and her colleagues are are to be believed, we are torturing soldiers every day at SERE.
I learned a lot at SERE, both as a student and as a temporaryduty interrogator. interrogator. As a student, student, I learned that that I could resist, resist, and occasionally manipulate, a talented interrogator during my numerous “soft-sell” interrogations – the the rapport-building, weknow-all, pride-and-ego up/down, do-the-right-thing approaches. I had my story story relatively straight, straight, and I simply stuck to it, regardless of how ridiculous or implausible the interrogator made it sound. He wasn’t doing anything to me – there was no consequence to my lies, no matter how transparent. I then learned the difference between “soft-sell” and “hardsell” by way of a large interrogator who applied enhanced techniques promptly promptly upon the uttering of my first lie. I learned that it was infinitely more difficult for me to remember my lies and keep my story straight straight under pressure. pressure. I learned that that it became difficult to repeat a lie if I received immediate immediate and uncomfortable consequences for each iteration. It made me me have to make snap decisions under intense pressure in real time – and and fumble and stumble through rapid-fire follow-up questions designed to poke massive holes in my story. I learned that I needed to practically live my lie if I were to be questioned under duress, as the unrehearsed details are the wild-cards that that bite you in the ass. I learned that I would rather sit across from the most talented interrogator on earth doing a soft-sell than any interrogator on earth doing a hardsell – the the information I had would be safer because the only consequences to my my lies come in the form form of words. I could handle words. Anyone could. Ask any SERE Level C graduate which method was more effective on him or her – their their answer should tell you something about the effectiveness of enhanced techniques,
whether you agree agree with them or not. In my case, I learned that that enhanced techniques made me want to tell the truth to truth to make it stop – not not to compound my situation with more lies. The only thing that kept me from telling the truth t ruth was the knowledge that at some point it had to end - that there were more students to interrogate and only so many hours in a day. Absent that knowledge, knowledge, I would have caved. caved. That said, I was not very proud of the mistakes I made which brought me to the brink of caving. I realized that those those mistakes, in a real-world situation, would have opened a number of doors I would have prefered remain shut. As a TDY interrogator in the SERE course, I learned that t hat the toughest, meanest, most professional special operations soldiers on earth had a “breaking” point. Every one of them. And of all the soldiers I interrogated, all of the significant using as many “breaks” came during hard-sell interrogations – using enhanced techniques as necessary to convince the soldier that continuing to lie would result in immediate consequences. It worked – time time and again, it worked. I did have some success during the “soft-cell” interrogations, but those came only as a result of tricks, ruses, or lies – I I was able to gain some short-term advantage as a result of these tactics, but by doing so had burned any credibility I may have had with that particular subject. subject. Consequently, other other than my initial breakthrough, my clever manipulation had effectively poisoned any any subsequent engagement engagement with with the subject. The lesson I learned was that whatever I hoped to gain from “leading with a lie ”, it had better include the mother lode, because I wasn’t likely to get another realistic shot at it after pulling the rug out from under the subject.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the SERE course, it was our job to show them them that they would all break, and to teach them how best to resist, delay, manage, and recover from that inevitable occurrence. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------One of the most prevalent criticisms of the efficacy of the program – which which is expressed time and again by individuals opposed to the use of EITs – is is that “people will say anything to make it stop.” Each time I hear that phrase glibly tossed about by the politicians, pundits, and “experts” describing their opposition to EITs, I am left with the same thought: thought: Only if you let them. I wonder if it is truly that that drastic an intellectual leap leap to consider for a moment the notion that the professional interrogators employing employing those techniques would be acutely aware of that possibility, possibility, and prepared to counter it? If every former-interrogator, former-interrogator, FBI agent, politician, administration official, columnist and man on the street opposed to EIT interrogation can cite this notion as a central tenet of their ineffectiveness argument, argument, can we not reasonably conclude that t hat a CIA interrogator actually employing those techniques would be equally attuned to signs of such behavior? I realize that much of this criticism stems from the revelation that one of the early detainees in the program lied about his
knowledge of Iraqi government links to Al Qaeda and subsequently admitted that he did so to “make it stop. ” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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In order to take an objective look at the use and purpose of EITs, you have have to accept some some uncomfortable uncomfortable truths: first, every aspect of our lives are guided in a large part by the concept of consequences – we we obey traffic and other laws not simply out of a sense of communal decency, but out o ut of fear of consequences. consequences. The absence of consequences renders renders any law unenforceable, unenforceable, and ultimately unheeded. unheeded. Many of the critics of the program have described various cases wherein they have been able to convince an otherwise resistant subject to provide information – but but they then go on to explain how they either tricked or deceived the subject, or offered to work with the subject to improve their situation. Perhaps they offered a lesser lesser charge, or a good word to the prosecutor, or immunity for one or more of the lesser charges, or transfer to a better cell, or a better facility, or to a different different country. Perhaps they implied or allowed a subject to believe that their participation would be rewarded with release from from confinement. confinement. There is always always an incentive, either real or implied, for whatever level of compliance gained gained by the interrogator. Any interrogator who tells you any different is a liar. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------That high-level detainee would no more have voluntarily sat down across from a debriefer and provided his list of Al Qaeda couriers without having been conditioned to do so than he would have walked ---------------------------------- and asked to speak to the CIA debriefer. debriefer. It simply would not have have happened without incentive, and his incentive was to not go back to enhanced techniques. Period. Love it or hate it, that ’s the way it worked. Go back and take a look at the difference between Candidate Obama’s characterizations of the efficacy of the interrogation program versus President Obama ’s version. version. Candidate Obama repeatedly stated that enhanced interrogation was not only immoral and un-American, but it didn ’t work. work. People will say anything to make it stop. stop. Every leading interrogator and intelligence professional will tell you that “torture” never works – it it produces bad intelligence. intelligence. That was Candidate Candidate Obama.
President Obama told told a slightly different story. During his his 100-day press conference in April 2009, President Obama used an entirely different construct when responding to a question about shutting down the interrogation program: “I am absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do -- not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment , but because we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are. ” He went on to say, “But here's what I can tell you -- that the public reports and the public justifications for these techniques -- which is that we got information from these individuals that were subjected to these techniques -techniques -- doesn't answer the core question, which is: Could we have gotten that same information without resorting to these techniques? And it doesn't answer the broader question: Are we safer as a consequence of having used these techniques?” Finally, this: “And so I will do whatever is required to keep the American people safe, but I am absolutely convinced that the best way I can do that is to make sure that we are not taking shortcuts that shortcuts that undermine who we are. ” Note the difference – it it ’s important. important. After being briefed by by serious people using actual intelligence information gained from the EIT interrogation i nterrogation program, President Obama knew that he could not continue with the t he “it never works ” campaign rhetoric as President – to to do so would have been insulting and objectionable to the national security team who briefed him, and would would be a lie. So…”we don’t know if we could have collected the same information using standard techniques ”
became the talking point for every administration official on the subject of EITs. I know. I know that we couldn’t have collected the same information using standard techniques because I was an expert in using standard techniques – I I used them thousands of times over two decades – and and the notion that I could have convinced the detainees -------------------------------------- to provide closelyheld information information without the use use of EITs is laughable. There is zero chance. Zero. But let ’s indulge those who use the same construct as the President (“we don’t know..”) for for a moment. Let ’s assume that to be the truth – that that we really don ’t know if we could have collected the same information using standard techniques. Were that to be the standard for assessment of the viability or effectiveness of the program, or of any venture, than the following must be similarly considered:
Although we may have gained some benefit by dropping atomic bombs on Japan to bring about the end of WWII, we don’t know that we couldn ’t have saved the world using different tactics, so history should show that this was a mistake. mistake. We understand that those who who developed and implemented the plan were under enormous pressure – we we didn’t know at the time if we were going to be able to win the war – but, but, in retrospect, it was unnecessary and un-American. un-American. We should have continued to fight using conventional warfare. “The character of our country has to be measured in part not by what we do when things are easy but what we do when things are hard.”
While the operation by the Navy Seals to kill Bin Laden was a success, we don ’t know that the Pakistanis wouldn’t have conducted an equally successful raid with less risk to our forces, so, in retrospect, it was probably a bad call to violate the sovereign borders of another country to accomplish our objective. Consequently, we’re discontinuing the use of the Navy Seals in such operations, and we ’ll let the Pakistanis take care of raiding High Value targets from now on.
While we deployed our Air Force to attack targets in Libya in response to Qaddafi ’s threat to attack civilians in Ben Ghazi, we don’t know that he would have actually done so, nor do we know that NATO couldn’t have accomplished the mission on their own, so, in retrospect, conducting military air strikes on a sovereign country without the approval of congress was probably a bad call. The hard way way would have been to go to congress and obtain their consent.
I realize that at least half of the people reading above will immediately immediately point out that the alternatives noted don ’t include actions as controversial and, in their minds, immoral, as the interrogation program, but the fact remains that no matter how you look at it, it was legal – as as legal as each of the operations described above. If it weren’t, the President would have included that rather substantial marker in his explanation for closing it down – it it was immoral, maybe occasionally effective, but illegal, so I ’m shutting it down. He never said that – although although he and the Attorney General both stated that they believed water boarding to be torture. Yet they never charged anyone or passed a law banning
water boarding or any of the other techniques when they had control of of all three branches of government. government. Why not? Either because they didn ’t have a case, or because they didn’t want to – either either way it would have been a hard choice. choice. The easy choice was to simply call it it torture, declare it declare it ineffective, and count on the media and the public to simply believe it. They waited until March of 2008 to pass a bill banning the techniques, fully aware that President Bush would veto such a bill. bill. Which he did. Consequently, the program program has never been declared illegal by either a US court of law or through congressional congressional legislation signed into law by a president. Rather, the program was shut down through President Obama’s executive order in January 2009 – an an order that the next President could rescind with the stroke of a pen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------So in lieu of bringing charges or holding court proceedings to officially determine the legality of actions taken by anyone associated with the program, which they were aware that they would lose, they decided that the appropriate venue for criminal allegations and indictments of character and honor was through official statements and
public denunciations of the despicable nature of these unAmerican acts, and those immoral un-Americans who carried them out. It ’s easy to call enhanced interrogation torture without having to prove it, and easier still to attack the character and competence of those who used them, particularly when secure in the knowledge that they cannot publicly defend themselves. Not because those un-American torturers torturers don’t want to defend themselves, but because those un-American torturers are not allowed to defend themselves. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Someone should ask that FBI interrogator if he would fall for his own approach approach techniques if he were a detainee. If his answer is no, what are we prepared to risk in the t he hopes that anyone else would? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
