Posted by Damozel | According to ABC News, the CIA is pretty upset with John Kiriakou. (ABC) They reportedly aren't going to prosecute him for revealing classified information, "cooler heads" having "prevailed, but that doesn't mean they aren't upset about it. (ABC). Based on what I've seen and heard so far I don't think---as some initially suggested---that Kirakou was a CIA surrogate foisted on the public to implant disinformation. I hate to admit it, but it never even occurred to me to wonder about this when I was writing my earlier post.
Partly this was because many of the things Kiriakou said appeared to me to be inimical to the public image of the CIA, the Bush Administration, and "the program." Mainly, though, the whole story struck me as a bit too much of a round unvarnished tale---too awash with sincerity and riddled with obvious logical inconsistencies---to be a deliberate attempt to influence public opinion.
But contra ABC news, I don't think he is a whistleblower either. I assumed when I wrote my earlier post (and still assume) that he came forward because he convinced himself it was the right thing to do or because he wanted to unburden himself in all his ambivalence or both.
That doesn't mean I don't take his assertions with a bushel or so of salt, since so much of what he said didn't make logical sense or fit with other reports by people who've looked more deeply into these issues than he has. But I bet if you gave him a polygraph every statement he makes would be revealed as (for him) a pure, sweet truth. But just because he was involved in this one interrogation doesn't make him an expert in agency policy or practice. He saw what he saw and he reached the conclusions that he reached, and his opinion of the upside (gets results if the person actually knows something) and downside (torture) of waterboarding is still just one man's opinion.
I also didn't take seriously his statement that waterboarding has only been used by the CIA in three cases. How would he know that? He only knows that he was told it was used in the one in which he was involved.
I inferred that the CIA wasn't best pleased when they responded to his interview with a laconic restatement of their official policy:
In a statement, the CIA reiterated its long standing position that "the United States does not conduct or condone torture. The CIA's terrorist interrogation effort has always been small, carefully run, lawful and highly productive"(ABC News)
Ah, but isn't that exactly what they'd say if they'd sent him to feed us disinformation? If they wanted us to think that he was a "whistleblower" so we'd believe him wouldn't they pretend to be in a swivet? Nah. I hope I'm not giving the CIA too much credit when I say that they surely wouldn't put their faith in the circulation of conspiracy theories. Such a tactic might work in a novel. In the real world, people's attention spans are much too short.
Kirakou acknowledges that he knew that he wasn't supposed to be talking to the media about any of this.
The CIA has not commented on specific interrogation techniques," its spokesperson said. "Disclosing classified information is a violation of the law."
While the use of waterboarding may be classified, its use by the CIA as an approved interrogation technique has been known publicly for at least two years and has been debated in Congress.
Kiriakou said he did not seek CIA approval to appear on ABC News but said he knew "the rules." (ABC)
UPDATE. In a comment he posted below, Charles from Mercury Rising disagrees. Charles is always pretty persuasive and I thought I'd incorporate what he said here.
If Kiriakou is not authorized to talk, why is he not in custody?
It's that simple question that is not answered.
It's entirely possible for CIA personnel to be furious at Kiriakou and also for him to be an agent of disinformation. Recall that the president has claimed absolute authority to declassify material, a power which he used to attack Joe Wilson. He could have contacted Kiriakou, told him that he was authorized to speak, and let him loose. Whether he is or is not an agent of disinformation is a matter of speculation, but the greater weight of evidence is at present more on the side that he is.
I do agree the public's attention span is short. What they will remember is Kiriakou saying that torture saved lives. A better propaganda coup for the Bush Administration could not be imagined. (comment; emphasis added)
Charles knows more about this sort of thing than I do, so I am going to make his comment my last word on the "disinformation" theory. My colleagues at BN-Politics tell me I am overly naive and too inclined to take things at face value and maybe this is yet another example Maybe that is what Kiriakou was doing. As Cockney Robin remarked in a note to me, it is a bit odd that he suddenly surged forward out of nowhere and for no apparent reason with his trustful dark eyes and guileless face. I still lean to my "officious intermeddler with bad conscience" theory of Kiriakou, but I don't want to be too credulous here. [UPDATE ENDS].
At War and Piece (which I found via Charles at Mercury Rising) Laura Rosen has some interesting information about the agency's response.
Marty Lederman at Balkinization (also via Rosen) questions why the information Kiriakou revealed is regarded as "highly classified" in any case. Good question. I've wondered this myself.
I don't condone disclosures of classified information. But it should be evident that this particular disclosure does no harm to intelligence operations. There is simply no justification at all for the classification of our government's legal views about what techniques are and are not legal, nor for classifying information about what the CIA has done to private persons. That doesn't mean it was proper for Kiriakou to violate his employment obligations. But it does mean that the classification itself was wrong, and that Congress start being a lot less credulous with respect to the categorical classification of this "program," especially facts about what we have done to these detainees.
The notion that discussing the techniques will tell the enemy what it should prepare for is a transparently flimsy excuse. OK, if there's some technique out there that the CIA is using that no one's ever heard of before, then fine, perhaps that should be classified (although as I explain below, even that does not make sense once you use the techniques, i.e., once you reveal them to the enemy). But none of the techniques in question here is unknown. They all have a very lengthy historical pedigree, and they have all been documented in excruciating detail, nowhere more than in Darius Rejali's new comprehensive tome, Torture & Democracy. The Army Field Manual has long discussed many of the techniques that the U.S. uses. The CIA's own KUBARK Manual is available online. The SERE techniques have now been well-rehearsed in public discussion. If anyone wishes to "prepare" themselves to withstand these techniques, it isn't difficult to figure out what they are....
The true reasons for the classification here are two, I think. First, the agency understandably does not want to reveal to the world that it has committed crimes and that the U.S. has systematically breached the Geneva and Torture Conventions. Understandable, but not a legitimate reason for classification. Second, I suspect that even if some techniques are in fact internally conceded to be unlawful, the agency wishes to preserve the illusion that it might use those techniques, thereby establishing an uncertainty that might cause detainees to talk, because they're fearful of what the agency might be willing to do. In other words, it preserves the ability of the agency to tell a detainee the if he doesn't talk, he might be waterboarded, or his children might be killed, even though such techniques are, in fact, impermissible. This, too, is an illegitimate reason for classification, however. It is not acceptable in a democracy to have legal limits that are kept unknown so that persons might be fearful that no such limits exist. (CIA Agent Reveals Highly Classified Interrogation Techniques and, Inexplicably, the Sky Does Not Fall; emphasis added)
At No Quarter , intelligence expert Larry Johnson has posted what I'd call a definitive article on waterboarding and on the Kiriakou interview.
He points out that the media reporting obscures two key facts: (1) Kiriakou wasn't present for al Zubaydah's interview; and (2) none of the information revealed by Zubaydah involved attacks within the U.S. (Waterboarding and Torture).
Johnson believes that any "enhanced interrogation" would not have been carried by CIA personnel. "CIA case officers are not trained in “interrogation”. They are trained in recruitment. Recruiting and debriefing sources is more akin to romancing someone. You are not looking for a one night stand, you want a relationship."(Waterboarding and Torture) He believes that any such interrogations would have been carried out by military personnel or government contractors. "Why? Because the military did train interrogators at Fort Huachuca and they were familiar with enhanced interrogation methods, including waterboarding."(Waterboarding and Torture)
Johnson:
In this regard it is worth noting that waterboarding is torture as defined in the Convention Against Torture & Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The Convention defines torture as:
. . . any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
Johnson also points out other relevant provisions of the Geneva Convention:
- Article 2 - No Exceptional Circumstances Warranting Torture
- Article 3 - No State Party shall expel, return (”refouler”) 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.
- Article 4 - Acts of Torture Are Criminal Offenses
- Article 10 - Education & Information Regarding Prohibition on Torture Provided in Training
- Article 16 - Each State to Prevent Acts of Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. (Waterboarding and Torture)
He therefore concludes:
Since the United States is a signatory to this Convention, it is not up to President Bush to declare waterboarding is okay. It is not. It is torture. Plain and simple.(Waterboarding and Torture)
Getting back to Marty Lederman's point, and the Kiriakou interview, it would seem to this citizen of the Republic that it is likewise not up to the CIA or the Bush administration to declare the use of such illegal techniques "highly classified," i.e., a state secret. If our representatives authorized or instructed the CIA to use methods that violate international law, the public---and especially the public's representatives, not just whichever members of the "Gang of Eight" shamefully authorized or assented or didn't object to the use of such techniques---have a right to know this.
We have the right to know this because we citizens are ultimately, individually and collectively, accountable for the actions of our government. That is what it means to be a citizen of a republic.
POSTSCRIPT. Johnson contradicts the common cant that waterboarding is a practice that has always been relegated---in the words of WaPo---to totalitarian regimes. It was used by the US in the Philippines between 1898-1902 and also at least once during the Vietnam War. (Waterboarding and Torture).
The following is from a letter quoted by Johnson:
[A] photograph (see below) appeared on the front page of the Washington PostThe Washington Post ran the photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding. The caption said the technique induced “a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk.” The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier. showing a U.S. smiling officer in Vietnam participating in the waterboarding of an alleged North Vietnamese cadre. On Jan. 21, 1968. (Waterboarding and Torture).
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LINKED
If Kiriakou is not authorized to talk, why is he not in custody?
It's that simple question that is not answered.
It's entirely possible for CIA personnel to be furious at Kiriakou and also for him to be an agent of disinformation. Recall that the president has claimed absolute authority to declassify material, a power which he used to attack Joe Wilson. He could have contacted Kiriakou, told him that he was authorized to speak, and let him loose. Whether he is or is not an agent of disinformation is a matter of speculation, but the greater weight of evidence is at present more on the side that he is.
I do agree the public's attention span is short. What they will remember is Kiriakou saying that torture saved lives. A better propaganda coup for the Bush Administration could not be imagined.
Posted by: Charles | December 12, 2007 at 09:23 PM
Thanks for your comments, Damozel.
I'm the first to say that my suggestion that Kiriakou is an agent of disinformation is speculative. It's certainly true that the message he put out ties the president to the torture and also that once the message is out, it can spin differently than the disinformers desire. Hence the concept of blowback.
You might want to read the comment thread at the Larry Johnson threads for the comments of "Retired," who claims to be a former CIA field operative. He demurred at my suggestion that Kiriakou was a disinformation agent, but compared him to a fly cast perfectly out. In other words, someone who believes everything he is saying, yet is not there by his own initiative.
That's pretty much what I suspect. The storyline is just too perfect to be real.
Posted by: Charles | December 15, 2007 at 12:51 AM
If waterboarding is done properly, it is absolutely an effective interrogation technique.
Here is an authentic demonstration -- believed to have been leaked by the military, or the agency:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEejbqfHs80
Follow closely.
Posted by: Thomas Hampton | December 17, 2007 at 06:25 PM