Torture, Torture-Lite, and the Predictability of Dick Cheney

When the news broke last week about the Senate Intelligence Committee’s release of the report on CIA torture of terror suspect detainees, outrage ensued. Politicians pounded their chests in indignation about how ‘this isn’t who we are as Americans.’ The words “American people” were uttered numerous times. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked pointed questions of the CIA’s then-counsel, John Rizzo, about the approval process for enhanced interrogation techniques like water-boarding. The New York Times reported that the report’s release put potential presidential candidates “in quiet mode”.  Others fretted about what this meant for American interests and citizens abroad, and whether there would be retaliation and imprisonment for those involved.

Watching CNN on the morning of the report’s release, I knew it would be a matter of time – a day or so – and then the reporting pendulum would swing the other way. Defenders of foreign policy, including CIA interrogation tactics and black sites, under then-President George Bush would surface. And sure enough, like clockwork, out came former Vice President Dick Cheney. The report was “full of crap”, Cheney told Fox News.  He called it “deeply flawed” and “a terrible piece of work” demonstrating how politicians – democrats – will get together to “throw the professionals under the bus.”

You gotta love Dick Cheney. And by “love” I mean marvel at the spectacularly unapologetic, non-introspective, non-self-doubting force of nature that is the former Vice President.

If you watched the Showtime documentary “The World According to Dick Cheney”, then none of this surprises you. When asked by “The World” filmmakers what he considered his main faults, Cheney paused for some seconds and then answered, “I don’t spend much time thinking about my faults.” Indeed, he is a man who would condone techniques from the CIA’s KUBARK manual and never lose a night’s sleep over it, if there were a chance that these practices could extract information useful to protecting the country.

Since the 9/11 attacks, issues like terrorism, torture and emergency preparedness have become more common in criminal justice curricula. When I teach Issues in Criminal Justice, I cover torture in a chapter by Andrew Moher and Elisa Massimino (“Does the United States have a right to torture suspected terrorists?”) that discusses the pros and cons of torturing. On the pro side, proponents argue that it’s a necessary evil (injuring and terrorizing individuals who play a role in killing Americans) that may prevent a greater evil (mass deaths of Americans). Former CIA investigator Jose Rodriguez notes that the techniques are designed to make the suspect uncomfortable, and that this is fair given their intentions and the need to keep the country safe from groups like Isis and Al-Qaeda. On the con side, torture is immoral and simply breeds more terrorists plotting against the U.S. Plus, it has been noted, people lie to make the pain stop. The utility of information obtained through the torture of suspects is currently a subject of debate.

If you saw “Zero Dark Thirty”, or even just the beginning of the movie, you have a sense of the nastiness of these techniques. Being stripped naked and chained up. Having loud music blasting constantly and bright lights shining at you so you can’t sleep. Given minimal food and drink. Being locked in a box in which you can neither sit, stand, or stretch out. The box was the one that got me. The box would make me crack.

Part of the problem is possibly that the definition of torture is actually a bit murky. Sure, it’s illegal under U.S. and international law, as per the Geneva Convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture (ratified by the U.S. in 1994), as well as the 8^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But what is it exactly? None of the techniques shown in “Zero Dark” will kill a suspect, and therein comes the distinction between torture vs. torture-lite. Traditional torture techniques like amputation and mutilation cause severe pain and possibly death. By contrast, torture-lite practices like sleep deprivation, moderate beatings, and exposing a person to extreme heat or cold will make them very uncomfortable, but not cause death or even (perhaps) severe pain. Thus, torture-lite could fall outside the realm of illegal practices. In other words, torture-lite practices exploit definitional ambiguities.

And then of course there is the practice of rendition, or shipping terror suspects to countries with looser policies on torture. The U.S. has shipped terror suspect detainees to countries known to torture, like Egypt and Pakistan. The benefit to the U.S. is that we can disavow knowledge of the terrible acts that occur in dungeon-like rooms, claim that our hands are clean, and still benefit from any knowledge that may be obtained.

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated on National Public Radio that “the conduct described in this [torture] report is not America.” I’m not so sure he’s right. It’s not who we like to think we are. We’re willing to give up certain things – privacy, a strong sense of right vs. wrong vs. justifiable conduct – after a terrible attack like 9/11. From a violent crime perspective, the U.S. also has much higher homicide rates than similarly developed nations. The torture report’s release offers the nation a chance to do some soul-searching about its heart of darkness, long after it is out of news headlines. 

This is how I intended to end this blog post, until I read two recent articles in www.nj.com by journalist Paul Mulshine: Two ex-CIA agents weigh in on 13 years of bad leadership under Bush and Obama and Don't believe waterboarding is torture? Watch this radio talker squeal. Mulshine is politically conservative, which made his opposition to torture surprising (to me). He and his ex-CIA acquaintances know more on the subject than I do - indeed, one of them has been tortured - so I'll defer to their wisdom. Among the points that Mulshine makes that are worth considering:

(1) True conservatives would never want to put that much power - to torture - in the hands of the government. Political conservatives favor less government, not more. To quote one of Mulshine's comments (to me), "if there was a justification for torture then Ronald Reagan would not have signed the anti-torture treaty." When I asked Mulshine what he thought of Alan Dershowitz's idea of a torture warrant to make torture legal and safe (relatively speaking), Mulshine referred to Dershowitz as "ultra-liberal". 

(2) When the CIA's torture/investigation program began, the CIA had little experience in conducting investigations. The FBI had much more experience. This opinion is from the two former CIA agents. 

(3) The torture program was designed by psychologists who didn't know much about the subject. Mulshine refers to the end result as a program of "staggering incompetence." 

Inexperienced operatives inflicting pain on captives to extract information. Winging it, essentially. Hoping it would work. Quite a different image than what we saw in "Zero Dark".