Authors: Aki Peritz,Eric Rosenbach
Find, Fix, Finish (12 page)
The US has been accused of rendering suspects to countries with dubious human rights records, including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Syria, and Libya.
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These countries are known to use techniques outlawed in the US to elicit information during interrogation, up to and including torture. The United Nations Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, guarantees that “no State party shall expel, return (‘re-fouler’) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”
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However, one former CIA analyst involved in the rendition program dismissed these efforts as a “legal nicety” and admits that interrogations performed by foreign officers “might yield treatment not consonant with United States legal practice.”
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These countries are known to use techniques outlawed in the US to elicit information during interrogation, up to and including torture. The United Nations Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, guarantees that “no State party shall expel, return (‘re-fouler’) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”
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However, one former CIA analyst involved in the rendition program dismissed these efforts as a “legal nicety” and admits that interrogations performed by foreign officers “might yield treatment not consonant with United States legal practice.”
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KSM’s journey from Pakistan to Bagram air base in Afghanistan, then to a disused airfield in Poland, and finally in 2006 to the Guantanamo Bay prison facility in Cuba was, according to US law, completely legal.
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The ability of US officials to transfer a suspect from a country—with permission from that country’s government but without adhering to strict extradition procedures—has been authorized by multiple White House directives since the mid-1980s, and Congress has been regularly briefed on this procedure.
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The ability of US officials to transfer a suspect from a country—with permission from that country’s government but without adhering to strict extradition procedures—has been authorized by multiple White House directives since the mid-1980s, and Congress has been regularly briefed on this procedure.
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In the weeks and months that followed 9/11, American intelligence officials scrambled to obtain accurate information on the nature of the threat and, more importantly, whether new attacks were going to be launched. According to former CIA director Michael Hayden, questioning detained al-Qaeda militants as they were captured worldwide quickly became the preferred method of eliciting vital intelligence information.
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Hayden believed that the intelligence gleaned from these captured militants was “absolutely irreplaceable” and formed “more than 70 percent of the human intelligence” that became the basis of at least one national intelligence estimate on terrorism.
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Hayden believed that the intelligence gleaned from these captured militants was “absolutely irreplaceable” and formed “more than 70 percent of the human intelligence” that became the basis of at least one national intelligence estimate on terrorism.
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The number of suspects rendered since 9/11 remains classified, but Columbia Law School adjunct professor Scott Horton estimated roughly 150 individuals were rendered between 2001 to 2005.
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In 2007 CIA director Hayden admitted as much: “apart from that 100 that we’ve detained, the number of renditions is actually . . . mid-range two figures.”
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Since most, if not all, of the individuals who were incarcerated in the Guantanamo Bay prison facility after 9/11 arrived there outside a formal extradition process, it stands to reason that they were obtained through rendition or in a rendition-like manner.
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In 2007 CIA director Hayden admitted as much: “apart from that 100 that we’ve detained, the number of renditions is actually . . . mid-range two figures.”
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Since most, if not all, of the individuals who were incarcerated in the Guantanamo Bay prison facility after 9/11 arrived there outside a formal extradition process, it stands to reason that they were obtained through rendition or in a rendition-like manner.
The US rendition program began to run into serious issues when, after 9/11, it became a favored tool to deal with terror suspects captured in foreign countries and so grew exponentially. While many rendered suspects were most likely part of terrorist groups, their subsequent legal-limbo status—whether ultimately detained under US custody or by a foreign country—has proven problematic for the US justice system, causing what one former lawyer at CIA’s Office of General Counsel called “a nightmare.”
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High-profile counterterrorism actions have political consequences. US officials could not have believed that the ramped-up use of a counterterrorism tool, especially one that has as many legally and ethically gray areas as rendition, would remain secret for long. They must have realized that KSM and others in the al-Qaeda constellation in American custody would have their day in court, exposing the rendition process, as well as the sizable logistical apparatus and international cooperation needed to carry it out.
INTERROGATING A TERRORISTKSM’s knowledge about the world of al-Qaeda was a gold mine for US authorities. According to declassified CIA intelligence from mid-2005, KSM began to spill secrets to his interrogators pretty quickly. “Uncharacteristic for most detainees, KSM almost immediately following his capture in March 2003 elaborated on his plan to crash commercial airlines into Heathrow Airport.”
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This information, in the words of one 2004 CIA analytical product, “shed light” on al-Qaeda’s “strategic doctrine, plots and probable targets, key operatives and the likely methods for attacks in the US homeland,” “dramatically expanded [the US] universe of knowledge” of al-Qaeda’s plots, and “provided leads that assisted directly in the capture of other terrorists.”
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This information, in the words of one 2004 CIA analytical product, “shed light” on al-Qaeda’s “strategic doctrine, plots and probable targets, key operatives and the likely methods for attacks in the US homeland,” “dramatically expanded [the US] universe of knowledge” of al-Qaeda’s plots, and “provided leads that assisted directly in the capture of other terrorists.”
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His debriefings also provided information used to capture and incarcerate al-Qaeda operatives in the US, including businessmen and explosives smugglers Sayfullah Paracha and his son Uzair, al-Qaeda operatives Saleh Almari and Majid Khan, and Iyman Faris, an Ohio-based truck driver who schemed to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch.
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A number of these men were captured and sent to Guantanamo Bay to await trial.
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A number of these men were captured and sent to Guantanamo Bay to await trial.
Despite its successes, the KSM interrogations are best known for the liberal use of brutal methods—enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) in CIA documents. The Obama administration’s attorney general would later refer to them as “torture” in his confirmation hearings. According to Amnesty International, KSM claimed that during his first week in the facility in Poland, he was “waterboarded five times, beaten including by having his head repeatedly banged against a wall and deprived of sleep and clothes and when not being interrogated, was forced to stand for prolonged periods, shackled to the ceiling and floor.”
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Even his food allotment was calibrated to get him to talk.
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Even his food allotment was calibrated to get him to talk.
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EITs used on KSM included the old Bolshevik technique described in
Darkness at Noon
of keeping the prisoner awake for 180 hours and the 1950s Chinese technique of waterboarding some 183 times.
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Why did US government employees—likely decent Americans worried about their mortgages, kids, and retirements—utilize methods that the attorney general of the United States would cite as worse than those used by the Khmer Rouge, the Inquisition, and the imperial Japanese army and were considered prosecutable offenses in World War II and Vietnam?
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Darkness at Noon
of keeping the prisoner awake for 180 hours and the 1950s Chinese technique of waterboarding some 183 times.
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Why did US government employees—likely decent Americans worried about their mortgages, kids, and retirements—utilize methods that the attorney general of the United States would cite as worse than those used by the Khmer Rouge, the Inquisition, and the imperial Japanese army and were considered prosecutable offenses in World War II and Vietnam?
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Someone must have never understood the overall purpose of interrogating a suspect. The goal of interrogations is to “obtain the maximum amount of usable information . . . in a lawful manner, in a minimum amount of time.”
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This is nothing new. In the Pacific Theater during World War II, the US Marine Corps established an interrogation program based on establishing rapport with captured Japanese prisoners. This program proved so successful that in June 1944 the Marines provided US commanders with the complete Japanese order of battle within forty-eight hours of arriving on the islands of Saipan and Tinian.
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In the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, CIA,
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military,
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and FBI
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teams have interrogated thousands of individuals without the use of coercive or harsh techniques.
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In the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, CIA,
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military,
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and FBI
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teams have interrogated thousands of individuals without the use of coercive or harsh techniques.
Prior to 9/11, the CIA had a checkered past concerning interrogation, and few officers had ever interrogated anyone. During the 1960s, the Agency published the KUBARK manuals that described various forms of coercion that can elicit information, such as “threats and fear,” “pain,” and “debility.”
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By the 1980s, as a means to improve foreign liaison relationships, the CIA dusted off the manuals—subsequently amended to state that certain practices are both illegal and immoral—to help train foreign interrogators under the euphemistic title of the Human Resource Exploitation program. According to the CIA’s inspector general, political sensitivities at the time caused the deputy director to forbid the use of the word “interrogation.”
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The CIA shuttered the whole program in 1986 after allegations surfaced that the Agency had trained certain Latin American intelligence services in the fine art of interrogation—with which CIA had little actual experience—that was then used to commit widespread human rights violations.
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By the 1980s, as a means to improve foreign liaison relationships, the CIA dusted off the manuals—subsequently amended to state that certain practices are both illegal and immoral—to help train foreign interrogators under the euphemistic title of the Human Resource Exploitation program. According to the CIA’s inspector general, political sensitivities at the time caused the deputy director to forbid the use of the word “interrogation.”
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The CIA shuttered the whole program in 1986 after allegations surfaced that the Agency had trained certain Latin American intelligence services in the fine art of interrogation—with which CIA had little actual experience—that was then used to commit widespread human rights violations.
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Then 9/11 happened and the White House pressured the Agency to crack heads and get answers. “The gloves came off,” as former CTC head Cofer Black famously quipped. But which gloves came off, and what did that mean from an operational perspective once al-Qaeda members were apprehended? Could government employees use the full range of methods handed down from antiquity on these individuals? Surely, there were legal and ethical redlines not to be crossed that would wall off what US interrogators could and could not do.
In the months following the 9/11 attacks, political leaders and the IC felt pressure to take steps necessary to prevent future—and possibly imminent—terrorist attacks. After receiving permission from the White House and the Justice Department, the CIA began using alternative interrogation techniques to gather intelligence from so-called high value al-Qaeda detainees—individuals like Abu Zubaydah and KSM.
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The subsequent disclosure of these techniques to the public fueled an ongoing debate over whether these interrogation techniques are effective and ethical.
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The subsequent disclosure of these techniques to the public fueled an ongoing debate over whether these interrogation techniques are effective and ethical.
The Agency went to the White House legal team for guidance. Ultimately, the case was decided by a team of lawyers in a small office in the Department of Justice: the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). OLC had the responsibility to provide “authoritative legal advice to the President and all the Executive Branch agencies.”
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After 9/11, the office was charged with determining the government’s stance on the legality of coercive interrogation techniques.
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In 2002, through a series of classified memoranda, OLC drafted findings stating that the CIA’s enhanced interrogation methods were permitted, providing legal cover to interrogators utilizing enhanced interrogation techniques.
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After 9/11, the office was charged with determining the government’s stance on the legality of coercive interrogation techniques.
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In 2002, through a series of classified memoranda, OLC drafted findings stating that the CIA’s enhanced interrogation methods were permitted, providing legal cover to interrogators utilizing enhanced interrogation techniques.
All of these memos were subsequently retracted, but at the time they provided legal justification for enhanced interrogation techniques. For example, an August 2002 memo gave approval for specific coercive techniques, including waterboarding, on grounds that they were not “specifically intended” to cause “severe physical or mental pain or suffering.”
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Furthermore, three May 2005 memos found that waterboarding and other harsh techniques, whether individually or in concert, did not violate the federal criminal prohibition against torture since the CIA had implemented certain safeguards and limited the techniques. However, a footnote in one of the memos admitted that, according to the CIA’s inspector general, these rules were not always followed.
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Furthermore, three May 2005 memos found that waterboarding and other harsh techniques, whether individually or in concert, did not violate the federal criminal prohibition against torture since the CIA had implemented certain safeguards and limited the techniques. However, a footnote in one of the memos admitted that, according to the CIA’s inspector general, these rules were not always followed.
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In addition to this enhanced interrogation regimen, President Bush also authorized the creation of a secret CIA prison system specifically designed for the detention and debriefing of high value al-Qaeda members like KSM.
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The program reportedly involved the operation of “black sites” in eight foreign countries where high value al-Qaeda detainees were held incommunicado and subjected to coercive interrogation techniques.
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The Agency also reportedly operated a prison in northern Afghanistan where, in November 2002, a detainee of little intelligence importance froze to death after a CIA case officer ordered prison guards to strip him naked and chain him to a concrete floor overnight.
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Due to popular pressure and the
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
Supreme Court ruling, the Bush White House closed these legally dubious sites in 2006 and transferred the remaining prisoners to the Guantanamo Bay military complex.
ARE COERCIVE INTERROGATIONS EFFECTIVE?69
The program reportedly involved the operation of “black sites” in eight foreign countries where high value al-Qaeda detainees were held incommunicado and subjected to coercive interrogation techniques.
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The Agency also reportedly operated a prison in northern Afghanistan where, in November 2002, a detainee of little intelligence importance froze to death after a CIA case officer ordered prison guards to strip him naked and chain him to a concrete floor overnight.
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Due to popular pressure and the
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
Supreme Court ruling, the Bush White House closed these legally dubious sites in 2006 and transferred the remaining prisoners to the Guantanamo Bay military complex.
Anecdotal experiences of some in the intelligence and law enforcement fields claim that physical pressure on detainees is, at least in the short run, an occasionally effective means to generate data. For example, during the brutal conflict between France and the terrorist Front de Libération Nationale in Algeria in the 1950s, the commander of the French paratroopers routinely and successfully used torture to extract information, crushing the enemy, at least temporarily.
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More recently, the lead police officer who in 1993 and 1994 solved a series of bomb blasts in and around Bombay after a brutal sectarian bloodletting was quite open about his methods to elicit intelligence. In
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
, Suketu Mehta describes how the officer, when presented with a detainee, cracked the case:
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More recently, the lead police officer who in 1993 and 1994 solved a series of bomb blasts in and around Bombay after a brutal sectarian bloodletting was quite open about his methods to elicit intelligence. In
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
, Suketu Mehta describes how the officer, when presented with a detainee, cracked the case:
The suspect is deprived of sleep for a whole week. Usually, neither party has that luxury. So another method is to take two ends of an old style telephone wire and apply it to the arms or the genitals; a portable dynamo is whirled, and a powerful electric current is generated . . . fear of death is the most effective. During the bomb blasts I just took a few of the suspects to Borivali National Park and fired a few bullets past their ears.
But with many of these suspects, ordinary violence wouldn’t work. There had to be special methods.
Those who have no fear of death also have no fear of physical pain. For them we threaten their family. I tell them I’ll plant some evidence on their mother or their brother and arrest them. That usually works.
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Nonetheless, coerced confessions have also led to poor analytical outcomes and disastrous policy decisions. Psychologists and other specialists commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board issued a report in 2007 claiming there was little evidence that harsh interrogation methods produced better intelligence than traditional interrogation techniques.
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When asked in 2008 whether any attacks on US soil had been thwarted due to enhanced interrogation techniques, FBI director Robert Mueller replied, “I’m really reluctant to answer that . . . I don’t believe that has been the case.”
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When asked in 2008 whether any attacks on US soil had been thwarted due to enhanced interrogation techniques, FBI director Robert Mueller replied, “I’m really reluctant to answer that . . . I don’t believe that has been the case.”
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