The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Dangers of Torture Resistance Training at SERE

Will has expertly shredded the claim in the Bush torture memos that waterboarding and the rest of the abuse didn't do lasting damage to detainees, given that the same techniques were used safely by the U.S. military on its own troops, at its torture-resistance training program, SERE. David Morris, who graduated from SERE and wrote for Slate about how his mind disintegrated there, adds this debunking:

A study published in 2001 in Special Warfare magazine measured cortisol levels for SERE trainees and found the highest levels ever recorded—more than in people undergoing heart surgery for example. Research on PTSD shows that over time, high levels of circulating cortisol can lead to a form of brain damage, specifically to the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for the formation of certain types of memory and spatial navigation. This might explain why my sense of time while at SERE was so poor. Perhaps the brain loses its ability to accurately record what is happening under those conditions.

The Gordian Torture Knot

Like you, Emily, I was particularly interested to read Ali Soufan’s OpEd column in the Times today about the ongoing debates over the torture memos. Two things leapt out at me. First, the quote you already cited about traditional interrogation methods being as effective as water boarding. Second, and just as troubling, was this: Soufan contends that the CIA’s use of these techniques actually made it less likely that it could work with the FBI to stop another attack. As Soufan put it:

One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the CIA and FBI, similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.

If this is true, it’s ironic, since as you noted, Emily, some have argued that Soufan himself might have been able to prevent the 9/11 attacks, had the CIA not prevented him. The whole torture question strikes me as the inverse Gordian knot, those “intractable problems” that are solved with a “bold stroke,” as per the myth of Alexander the Great. Torture looked like the bold stroke, but if you accept Soufan’s points—as I’m inclined to—it just tangled us up in more knots.

Soufan Speaks

In the debate raging over whether the Bush administration's torture practices produced valuable intelligence, the voice I'm most interested in, so far, is that of Ali Soufan. He is the FBI detective whom the CIA may have blocked from stopping 9/11, one of the few Arab speakers in the bureau, the guy who was getting Salim Hamdan to talk, according to Jonathan Mahler's book, The Challenge—and then had to relinquish Hamdan in frustration when the government decided to prosecute him. He's an intelligence officer who was close to but not part of the CIA interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

Today Soufan tells us, in a New York Times op-ed, that torturing Abu Zubaydah got us nada. Soufan writes:

There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions—all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

And then he takes apart specific claims for intelligence gains, much as Tim did about the supposed busting of the Liberty Tower plot in L.A., by showing that the timelines don't work. The key information was gleaned by traditional methods before the torture began, or at least before it was approved in the DoJ memos. What now, Marc Thiessen and Dick Cheney? Ball in your court.

I Feel For Cheney

I never thought I'd write this sentence, but poor Dick Cheney. Last week's disclosure of the torture memos he fought to keep secret has forced him into the extremely uncharacteristic position of calling for more disclosure:

...they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort. And there are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally asked that they be declassified now.

Ah, secrets—if only Cheney had thought of declassifying these reports when he had the power to do it himself! It almost makes you wish he was vice president again, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, Jane Mayer reports at the New Yorker that the Senate Armed Services Committee's unredacted report (pdf), released Tuesday by Sen. Levin, shows that the CIA used torture before the first Bybee memo granted approval on August 1, 2002. Like I said the other day, I don't think prosecuting CIA agents for what they did in the months after 9/11 is the best way to go. But this kind of evidence of law-breaking could be hard for Eric Holder to ignore.

Then there's this from Dafna Linzer at ProPublica: dozens of former CIA prisoners have gone missing.
 

Maybe the Torture Memo Authors Shouldn't Go to Europe Right Now

Kerry, you're exactly right. The "ticking bomb" torture scenario is a fairy tale. That justification for torture assumes that my government—or any government—can be as omniscient as Jack Bauer's screenwriters. How very convenient to imagine that the government would somehow know all about a plot, including when the bomb will go off and who has the code to turn it off! Why am I ever supposed to trust the rulers of any country—Russia, Iran, Morocco, or the U.S.—to know, with 100 percent certainty, that they've arrested exactly the right person?

Meanwhile, it looks like the people behind the torture memos (which did not, as Emily noted, result in information about a ticking bomb or any other plots), will be investigated—whether here or in Europe.

Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon is known for attempting to extradite Pinochet from London for trial in Madrid ... and also for presciently indicting Osama Bin Laden and 34 other al-Qaida operatives in 2003. Unlike Gitmo's torture, Garzon's indictment actually led to long prison sentences, according to the BBC, for 18 people—including one person convicted for helping to plot the 9/11 attacks.

Now Judge Garzon has given the go-ahead to a criminal investigation of the Bush administration team behind the torture memos. Reuters says that the six indicted include "William Haynes II, former general counsel for the Department of Defense; John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who wrote secret legal opinions saying President George W. Bush had the authority to circumvent the Geneva Conventions; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Jay Bybee, Yoo's former boss at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; and David Addington, chief of staff and legal adviser to ex-Vice President Dick Cheney." Can Bush and Cheney be far behind?

Torture and Competence

Yesterday, in her taxonomy of torture defenders, Dahlia linked to this MSNBC clip in which Joe Scarborough bemoans our lack of support for the clandestine operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. Con Coughlin expresses a similar concern for the blow to the agency's morale here; Ex-CIA director Michael Hayden fears the release of the memos will introduce "institutional timidity," taken to be a bad thing. Thus we learn that the CIA is crippled by its need to answer to those it ought to protect. Left to their own devices—unconstrained by the demands of accountability—the good guys, who are probably very handsome, will roam the surface of the planet dragging bad guys from their respective holes. In Scarborough's words, the CIA operates most effectively when it is told, simply: "Go out and get the job done and dammit you keep my kids safe!"

I am struck by the romanticism of this vision, this willingness to place such faith in a government agency shorn of oversight. Scarborough clearly thinks it's morally acceptable to torture terrorists. But given that no one thinks it's OK to torture innocent people, why assume that the CIA can competently distinguish agents of terror from the general population? Recent history does not instill confidence. Ancient history does not instill confidence. One simply has to believe that the agents of this particular bureaucracy will not be subject to all the incentive-distorting forces that challenge every other bureaucracy.

Joe Scarborough is not a man known for his enduring faith in the capacity of American government to solve complex social problems. And I don't know where he would have gotten his idealized vision of the CIA—those taciturn, hyperacrobatic, brilliant, do-gooder patriots—if not from the Hollywood establishment he so despises.

Obama: Holder's Call

Could the Bush administration lawyers who wrote the torture memos really be on the hook, as I suggested Monday (and plenty of their critics have longed for)? President Obama left that door surprisingly ajar today. From his press conference:

With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws, and I don't want to prejudge that.  I think that there are a host of very complicated issues involved there.