Tales of the Torture Administration: What Happened at the CIA Black Sites?

by Damozel | In an op-ed at The New York Times, Mark Danner -- author of Torture and Truth: Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror -- reminds us of the day on which George W. Bush "set out before the country America’s dark moral epic of torture, in the coils of whose contradictions we find ourselves entangled still."

ON a bright sunny day two years ago, President George W. Bush strode into the East Room of the White House and informed the world that the United States had created a dark and secret universe to hold and interrogate captured terrorists.

“In addition to the terrorists held at Guantánamo,” the president said, “a small number of suspected terrorist leaders and operatives captured during the war have been held and questioned outside the United States, in a separate program operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.”

At these places, Mr. Bush said, “the C.I.A. used an alternative set of procedures.” He added: “These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution and our treaty obligations. The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful.”

The six page piece on what happened at "the black sites" will do your brain in, even if you already knew the essentials.  The stories of what the Bush administration thought Americans were willing to give up to achieve a feeling of safety never get easier to process -- never mind stomach -- no matter how many times they are set before us.  For me, there's a visceral "no" each time that (I am thankful) prevents me from quite believing in what I'm reading, that puts some distance between me and the truth.  "This can't be true," it announces calmly.

The stories Danner tells in today's piece were were never intended for public consumption.  It was prepared by the International Committee of the Red Cross, monitoring compliance with the Geneva Conventions.  The Red Cross officials told those they interviewed that "“to the extent that each detainee agreed for it to be transmitted to the authorities,” to be given in strictest secrecy to officials of the government agency that had been in charge of holding them — in this case the Central Intelligence Agency, to whose acting general counsel, John Rizzo, the report was sent on Feb. 14, 2007."  (NYT)  Danner says: 

Indeed, since the detainees were kept strictly apart and isolated, both at the black sites and at Guantánamo, the striking similarity in their stories would seem to make fabrication extremely unlikely. As its authors state in their introduction, “The I.C.R.C. wishes to underscore that the consistency of the detailed allegations provided separately by each of the 14 adds particular weight to the information provided below.”

The stories recounted in its fewer than 50 pages lead inexorably to this unequivocal conclusion, which, given its source, has the power of a legal determination: “The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A. program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”  (NYT)

Do you want details?  Then you can read look them up yourself.  Danner remarks, halfway through this harrowing tale:

Reading the Red Cross report, one becomes somewhat inured to the “alternative set of procedures” as they are described: the cold and repeated violence grow numbing. Against this background, the descriptions of daily life of the detainees in the black sites, in which interrogation seems merely a periodic heightening of consistently imposed brutality, become more striking.  (NYT)

No doubt there will be some who consciences are not shocked by the specific scenes of brutality that Mr. Danner describes. 

[T]hese men almost certainly have blood on their hands. There is strong reason to believe that they had critical parts in planning and organizing terrorist operations that caused the deaths of thousands of people. So in all likelihood did the other “high-value detainees” whose treatment while secretly confined by the United States is described in the Red Cross report.  (NYT)

But even if you're the sort of person who thinks what Bush did in the service of making you feel more secure about your own skin was all right, Danner points out that 's still nothing but down side for those interested in justice for the guilty:

 From everything we know, many or all of these men deserve to be tried and punished — to be “brought to justice,” as President Bush vowed they would be. The fact that judges, military or civilian, throw out cases of prisoners who have been tortured — and have already done so at Guantánamo — means it is highly unlikely that they will be brought to justice anytime soon.

For the men who have committed great crimes, this seems to mark perhaps the most important and consequential sense in which “torture doesn’t work.” The use of torture deprives the society whose laws have been so egregiously violated of the possibility of rendering justice. Torture destroys justice. Torture in effect relinquishes this sacred right in exchange for speculative benefits whose value is, at the least, much disputed.  (NYT)

But here's what we -- and the rest of the world --- do know:

[T]he United States tortured prisoners and...the Bush administration, including the president himself, explicitly and aggressively denied that fact. We can also say that the decision to torture, in a political war with militant Islam, harmed American interests by destroying the democratic and Constitutional reputation of the United States, undermining its liberal sympathizers in the Muslim world and helping materially in the recruitment of young Muslims to the extremist cause. By deciding to torture, we freely chose to embrace the caricature they had made of us. The consequences of this choice, legal, political and moral, now confront us. Time and elections are not enough to make them go away.  (NYT; emphasis added)

There will be those -- naive, credulous, and above all cowardly -- who will never understand that what Bush did was wrong.  "Bush kept us safe," they repeat, as though nothing else in the world matters.  And to them I guess it doesn't. 

But those of us who believe our country was is founded on values superior to a craven desire for security over any moral principle than that will never stop demanding a response from those who claim to represent us.

Hilzoy writes:

An investigation is essential, if only to answer once and for all the question: how much actionable intelligence did we get from this, and how many wild goose chases did we send people off on? But prosecutions would be much, much better. Because our government should not be able to do this with impunity.

At Comments from Left Field, Kathy hopes that Danner's publication in The New York Times and -- in a more extended form --- at The New York Review of Books will serve as "a wake-up call to Congress and the White House." 

After all, she says,  "If we as a nation do not hold legally accountable those who designed, oversaw, and gave legal cover to this reign of terror, it will happen again — and this time all of us will be responsible." Furthermore -- and never mind whether it happens again -- those who fail to act will be signalling to the world on our behalf that they are willing to let those actions stand.

Protecting our history and legacy as a people requires us to feel the same fury at the violation of our principles as many now feel at the violation of their wallets.  Is "security" really all we're about in the 21st Century?  Has the Republic fallen that far from its founding principles and purposes?

So I'm waiting...waiting....waiting.

Memeorandum has more.

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The Torture Administration

Comments

[Bill]

Damozel,

It will be a measure of the new Administration to see whether it has the collective courage to clean the slate of these cases. There is no clear way forward after the horrors of the last Presidency's use of torture, is there?

Perhaps, however, the most humane way to deal with the issue and one that would certainly restore more of the country's lost credibility abroad would be to let the sunshine onto these crimes and allow a commission or Congressional committee access to the records.

Our nation will not soon recover from the deeds done in our name by this cabal. It's pretty disgusting stuff, but it needs to be accounted for.

[SteveIL]

'Indeed, since the detainees were kept strictly apart and isolated, both at the black sites and at Guantánamo, the striking similarity in their stories would seem to make fabrication extremely unlikely. As its authors state in their introduction, “The I.C.R.C. wishes to underscore that the consistency of the detailed allegations provided separately by each of the 14 adds particular weight to the information provided below.”'

What the hell does the ICRC actually know about terrorists and Al Qaeda? In fact, what the hell does this Danner actually know about Al Qaeda and the vermin that are in this group?

I think it is more likely these terrorists (not alleged either) rehearsed what they would say to gullible morons like those of the ICRC long before they got captured.

And the Bush-haters actually agree with the terrorists, because their hatred of other Americans blinds them to the lies of America's enemies. It is a sickness to be a member of the left in this country.