[Mb-civic] Ray McGovern: Torture in Our Name

[Mike Blaxill]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110405Y.shtml

Torture in Our Name 
    By Ray McGovern 
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Friday 04 November 2005

    Wednesday's article by the Washington Post's
Dana Priest regarding CIA-run secret prisons
abroad and the intense maneuvering this week in
Congress over whether to legislate another ban on
torture have again brought the issue of torture
front and center. The next several days will show
whether Congress has slipped its moral mooring.

    Seldom have moral lines been so clearly drawn
as they are on the issue of torture - the
morality of which, until recently, was not
controversial. I thought we knew, as a country,
where we stood on torture.

    The immediate issue is whether American armed
forces and intelligence personnel should be
permitted or forbidden to torture detainees. Very
shortly, lawmakers on Capitol Hill will have to
decide whether to approve a blanket ban on
torture that applies to all US personnel, to
limit the ban to the Defense Department (thus
exempting the CIA), or to duck the issue entirely
by dropping an amendment offered by Senator John
McCain to the defense appropriations bill that
would ban "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment
or punishment of persons under the custody or
control of the United States government."

    That amendment passed the Senate on October 5
by a 90-9 vote. But immediately Vice President
Dick Cheney, with CIA Director Porter Goss in
tow, descended on McCain pleading for an
exemption for the CIA. The proposed exemptions
stated that the measure:

Shall not apply to clandestine counterterrorism
operations conducted abroad, with respect to
terrorists who are not citizens of the United
States, that are carried out by an element of the
United States government other than the
Department of Defense ... if the president
determines that such operations are vital to the
protection of the United States or its citizens
from terrorist attack.
    You Mean Cheney/Bush Seek Authority to
Torture?

    It's not that they seek such authority. They
believe they already have it - and do not want
Congress messing with what they see as the
president's authority as commander in chief. The
context for the White House position is key. The
words are stuck in a quagmire of gobbledygook,
but what the administration has already
authorized is clear.

    After the publication in spring 2004 of the
photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib, the
administration released a raft of documents with
a rhetorical flourish claiming the documents
showed that there was no policy allowing the
abuse of prisoners. The whole thing was rather
surreal; the documents showed just the opposite.
It was as though the White House thought we
couldn't read.

    Most striking was a memorandum of February 7,
2002, signed by President George W. Bush, on the
treatment of al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees. That
memorandum records the president's unilateral
determination that the Geneva Convention on
prisoners of war "does not apply to either
al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees." The determination
was of dubious validity because there is no
provision in the Geneva Conventions that would
countenance a unilateral decision to exempt
prisoners from Geneva protections.

    I will spare you most of the torturous
language offered by the president's lawyers.
Suffice it to say that paragraph 3 of his
February 7 memorandum contains a gaping loophole
that, in effect, authorizes torture:

As a matter of policy, the United States Armed
Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely
and, to the extent appropriate and consistent
with military necessity, in a manner consistent
with the principles of Geneva. (Emphasis added.)
    How Did We Stoop So Low?

    President Bush and Vice President Cheney set
the tone. According to counterterrorism chief
Richard Clarke, it began on the evening of 9/11.
Immediately after the president's 8:30 p.m. TV
address to the nation, he met with Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Clarke in a bunker
under the East Wing of the White House. In his
book, Against All Enemies, Clarke describes the
president as "confident, determined, and
forceful:"

I want you all to understand that we are at war
... any barriers in your way, they're gone. Any
money you need, you have it ... I don't care what
the international lawyers say, we are going to
kick some ass.
    The vice president tipped his hand to Tim
Russert during an interview on NBC's Meet the
Press on September 16, 2001. The conversation
centered on the US response to 9/11. After
discussing military capabilities, Cheney shifted
focus:

We also have to work, though, sort of the dark
side ... A lot of what needs to be done will have
to be done quietly, without any discussion, using
sources and methods that are available to our
intelligence agencies ... it's going to be vital
for us to use any means at our disposal ...
    Alluding to restrictions on US intelligence
gathering, Russert asked, "Will we lift some of
those restrictions?"

Oh, I think so ... It is a mean, nasty, dangerous
dirty business out there ... we need to make
certain that we have not tied the hands of our
intelligence communities in terms of
accomplishing their mission.
    ... and Interrogations?

    At a joint hearing of the House and Senate
intelligence committees on September 26, 2002,
Cofer Black, then the head of the
Counterterrorism Center at CIA, emphasized the
need for "operational flexibility," adding that
intelligence operatives cannot be held to the
"old" standards. Addressing interrogation, Black
said:

This is a highly classified area, but I have to
say that all you need to know: there was a
before-9/11 and an after-9/11. After 9/11 the
gloves came off.
    There is fresh evidence that within days of
9/11, Bush and Cheney told then-CIA director
George Tenet to set CIA interrogators free from
the customary restrictions. In her November 2
article on the mini-gulag system of secret
CIA-operated prisons overseas, Dana Priest
reported that on September 17 - that is, the day
after Cheney's comment on NBC about working "the
dark-side" - Bush signed a secret "finding"
giving the CIA broad authorization to disrupt
terrorist activity, including permission to kill,
capture, and detain al-Qaeda members anywhere in
the world.

    Authorization for "rendering" detainees to
other countries for interrogation, as well as the
establishment of secret prisons abroad, were
probably subsumed under that broad presidential
finding. Still, one can assume that Tenet and,
indeed, the president himself would seek
reassurance that they would be legally protected
from prosecution in the future. And this would
account for the flurry of lawyerly activity in
early 2002.

    Why were then-White House counsel Alberto
Gonzales and David Addington, then counsel to
Vice President Cheney (and recently appointed to
replace I. Lewis Libby as chief of staff) and
their counterpart attorneys at Justice and
Defense at such pains to square the circle to
make torture "legal?" Addington reportedly took
the lead in drafting the famous memorandum sent
by Gonzales to the president on January 25, 2002,
which described as "quaint" and "obsolete" some
of the Geneva provisions, and reassured the
president that there was "a reasonable basis in
law" that, if he exempted Taliban and al-Qaeda
detainees from Geneva protections, he could still
avoid possible future prosecution for war crimes.
And so, Bush signed the February 7 memorandum,
and Tenet's hired thugs could feel more at ease
employing so-called "Enhanced Interrogation
Techniques" - including "water-boarding," during
which a detainee is repeatedly brought to the
point of drowning.

    In her report, Dana Priest made it clear that
only the chair and ranking members of the House
and Senate intelligence committees were briefed
on the secret prisons, and this is probably what
happened with respect to other quasi-legal
activities as well. But there is a problem.
Members of Congress, however much they may enjoy
being privy to real secrets and as prone as many
are to give intelligence activities a wink and a
nod, cannot make illegal activities legal. And
that's the rub.

    Enter the Straight Man

    When John McCain, who knows torture up-close
and personal, decided to force the issue by
offering an amendment to the $453 billion defense
appropriation bill, he and the 89 other Senators
who voted for the amendment threw down the
gauntlet. That bill includes about $50 billion
for operations in Iraq. The issue is now joined.

    If you have read down this far, it will come
as no surprise that Cheney is leading the fight
against the amendment. It is an unseemly
spectacle. Here we have a novice on things
military - with multiple draft deferments to
escape the war in Vietnam - importuning McCain, a
highly decorated officer and torture victim, to
allow torture to continue in Iraq and elsewhere.
No matter. Cheney had already descended on McCain
and other Senators last July and tried to twist
their arms to put the amendment aside. They
rebuffed him, and did so again last week when he
and CIA chief Porter Goss made a quixotic attempt
to amend the McCain amendment.

    This was too much for a handful of CIA
professionals. When they protested, they were
reminded by Goss's staff that he is "on record"
forbidding the use of torture by CIA officers.
More gobbledygook. This disingenuous reply came
even as the Goss/Cheney duo lobbied the Hill to
modify the McCain amendment so there would be no
legal problems for CIA personnel engaging in
torture - or for the CIA director who condoned
it.

    Lawmakers have been meeting this week to seek
ways to reconcile the two versions of the defense
bill. The fate of the McCain amendment, which is
only in the Senate version, hangs in the balance.
Recent maneuvering among House Republicans
suggests a newfound squeamishness regarding
torture. On the McCain amendment they appear
reluctant to march in lockstep with the
Cheney/Bush administration and bear the
opprobrium of, in effect, voting for torture.

    Following the example of Senate majority
leader Bill Frist, who pulled the defense
authorization bill off the floor last July rather
than force Senators to choose between McCain and
torture, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert has
bought time by delaying a vote. He has been
warned by many of his Republican colleagues that
they will side with McCain. So Hastert needs time
to try to find some way to avoid black eyes for
Cheney and the president - blacker still, if the
administration follows through on its threat to
veto any bill that includes a blanket ban on
torture. Hastert may, in fact, find some
face-saving solution. Three of the nine
Republican Senators who voted against the McCain
amendment reportedly are on the Senate/House
conference committee. What emerges will be a
moral barometer. It will be interesting to see if
the barometer keeps falling.

    Shepherds Awake!

    ... and speaking of moral barometers: one
hopeful sign came Wednesday with word that the
president's own United Methodist Church's Board
of Church and Society, in an almost unanimous
vote, issued a strong statement against torture,
urging Congress to create an independent,
bipartisan commission to investigate detention
and interrogation practices at Guantanamo, Iraq,
and Afghanistan. There are reports that Methodist
bishops may issue a similarly strong statement
next week.

    Until now, the lukewarm mainstream churches
have not been able to find their voice - a
throwback to the unconscionably passive stance
adopted by the Catholic and Lutheran churches
co-opted by Hitler in the 1930s. Let us hope that
other churches, synagogues, and mosques start
tuning in to what is going on and bite the
bullet, like the Methodists.

    Otherwise, our government's view will
prevail. As described by one former CIA lawyer,
that view is:

The law of the jungle; and right now we happen to
be the strongest animal.
    On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld turned
down a request by UN human rights investigators
to meet with detainees at Guantanamo, where at
least 24 hunger strikers are being force-fed.
Rumsfeld said the US would grant such access only
to the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC). Last year the ICRC accused the US
military of using tactics "tantamount to torture"
at Guantanamo.

    Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, is
co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity (VIPS). He now works for Tell the
Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church
of the Saviour in Washington, DC.