[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]
The Attorney General has opened an enquiry into the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a Bush administration euphemism for torture.
If it is to go forward, this process should have two distinct components. The first is an examination of which, if any, CIA officers exceeded the parameters of those “enhanced interrogation techniques” legally permitted and approved by Bush administration lawyers and officials. Anyone found to have done that should be held accountable.
The more important component is: who approved the use of those techniques and whether they truly were legal. CIA Director Leon Panetta has come out in opposition to any such enquiry because he is reportedly fixed on trying to restore a reasonable degree of morale in a very important, but otherwise accused, abused and badly used organization.
President Barack Obama has stated on a number of occasions that he would prefer that his administration look forward, rather than backward, implying his own lack of enthusiasm for inquiries into the past practice of torture. This may well reflect his own enthusiasm for the congressional bipartisanship he seeks, but has found illusory.
Democrat members of Congress, who share none of the president’s responsibilities to actually govern, would like to go after the people in the Bush Administration who got the torture ball rolling, using a search for truth to further discomfit the leaderless Republicans.
The CIA interrogators who were involved in the enhanced techniques, some of whom have commented on the likelihood that such techniques would probably become public and cause them trouble, probably would like the entire issue to go away.
Republicans, particularly those members of Congress who avoided the consequences of having supported eight years of Bush policies and were, however improbably, reelected in 2008, would also most certainly like the issue to disappear. Such an inquiry would at minimum push the Republicans farther into the political wilderness.
Finally, it seems pretty clear where President George Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney and former CIA Director George Tenet would come to rest on the issue.
During the early years after 9/11, the Bush administration quite deliberately set about getting enhanced interrogation techniques accepted and employed by the intelligence community. Only two US Government organizations had any real experience with interrogation, the Military with POWs and the FBI with criminals. The military is said to have refused any such activity in order to protect their own troops from torture at the hands of any enemy. The FBI is said to have told the Bush administration that they would not participate because such techniques did not produce valid information.
So the Bush Administration apparently approached the CIA with its submissive Director George Tenet and found a far more willing audience. This was probably because over the years, the CIA has not been involved in interrogation. The name of the game for CIA was always debriefing people who wanted to talk to them, not interrogating those who did not. That’s police and military business. So, the enhanced interrogation techniques ended up in the hands of those government employees who knew least about what they were being asked to do!
If there is to be any sort of real justice, there has to be a complete investigation. That investigation has to cover not only what was done, but who approved it either explicitly or tacitly. Tacit approval appears to have been at work in Abu Ghraib and it should not be overlooked in any ongoing investigation. Only working stiffs in the field were punished for Abu Ghraib.
Now we have CIA in the hot seat. They may well deserve to be there, but the real issue isn’t whether or not those CIA interrogators who employed “enhanced interrogation techniques” should be investigated with a view to determining their guilt or innocence. The issue really is: who was involved in the approval of torture and bears the guilt for what appears to have happened.
If any investigation is to be successful, it has to look at the approval chain at minimum and at maximum, it has to look at the atmosphere created at the highest level of the administration in power at the time. The prevailing climate after 9/11, as represented by the actions and comments of Vice President Cheney, is equally as important as whatever normal chain of command is involved in the approval process.
Anything less would be a waste of time.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He is a longtime resident of Brookfield who now lives in Williston.
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