New York Times: The Story Behind the Torture Administration's Use of "Harsh Interrogation" Methods

 image adapted from photo by Sasha Aikin (xander76), pursuant to CC license

by Damozel | Back in 2003, it seems, Bush made a seemingly benevolent and quite correct statement concerning the US attitude toward torture, which sent alarm bells ringing up and down the line in the CIA.  (New York Times)  ""The United States is “committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example,” Mr. Bush proclaimed, vowing to prosecute torture and to prevent “other cruel and unusual punishment.”" 

Naturally, he didn't mention that he'd authorized CIA interrogators to use "brutal tactics" on Al Qaeda detainees.  (NYT)  The proclamation was issued in support of the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.  And, the rest, as they say, is history:

Inside the Central Intelligence Agency, the statement set off alarms. The agency’s top lawyer, Scott W. Muller, called the White House to complain. The statement by the president could unnerve C.I.A. interrogators..., Mr. Muller said, raising fears that political winds could change and make them scapegoats.White House officials reaffirmed their support for the C.I.A. methods. But the exchange was a harbinger of the conflict between the coercive interrogations and the United States’ historical stance against torture that would deeply divide the Bush administration and ultimately undo the program.(New York Times)

That there were divisions within the Administration over how far even a neocon president should go is already known.  But this is food for thought:

The consensus of top administration officials about the C.I.A. interrogation program, which they had approved without debate or dissent in 2002, began to fall apart the next year. Acutely aware that the agency would be blamed if the policies lost political support, nervous C.I.A. officials began to curb its practices much earlier than most Americans know: no one was waterboarded after March 2003, and coercive interrogation methods were shelved altogether in 2005.

Yet even as interrogation methods were scaled back, former officials now say, the battle inside the Bush administration over which ones should be permitted only grew hotter. There would be a tense phone call over the program’s future during the 2005 Christmas holidays from Steven J. Hadley, the national security advisor, to Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director; a White House showdown the next year between Ms. Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney; and Ms. Rice’s refusal in 2007 to endorse the executive order with which Mr. Bush sought to revive the C.I.A. program. ...

The real trouble began on May 7, 2004, the day the C.I.A. inspector general, John L. Helgerson, completed a devastating report. In thousands of pages, it challenged the legality of some interrogation methods, found that interrogators were exceeding the rules imposed by the Justice Department and questioned the effectiveness of the entire program....

John B. Bellinger III, who, as the National Security Council’s top lawyer, played a role in discussions when the program was approved in 2002, by the next year had begun to research past ill-fated British and Israeli discursions into torture and grew doubtful about the wisdom of the techniques. Mr. Bellinger shared his doubts with his boss, Ms. Rice, then the national security adviser, who began to reconsider her strong support for the program.

Of course, we just saw Rice defend the administration's interrogation policies to a student from Stanford, but -- clearly -- she recanted and acted in this matter as a drag on the administration's progress toward further excesses.  The article suggests that this wasn't so much because she thought what they were doing was wrong as because she thought it might prove to be unjustifiable if subjected to public scrutiny.  

After the inspector general's report, and following the revelations about Abu Ghraib, the bill passed in 2005 by Congress following the revelations about Abu Ghraib banned cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.  At that point, CIA Director Porter Goss got really nervous and wrote to the White House to say that they'd carry out no further "harsh interrogations" (torture) without new DoJ approval. (New York Times)

Nobody knew it then, but the C.I.A.’s fateful experiment in harsh interrogation was over. The “enhanced” interrogation, already scaled back, would not be used again.

In other words, the interrogators weren't willing to face prosecution for their methods.  (New York Times)

Still, Mr. Cheney and top C.I.A. officials fought to revive the program. Steven G. Bradbury, the head of the department’s Office of Legal Counsel and author of the recently declassified 2005 memorandums authorizing harsh C.I.A interrogations, began drafting another memorandum in late 2006 to restore legal approval for harsh interrogation. Mr. Bradbury noted that Congress, despite the public controversy, had left it to the White House to set the limits.

Early drafts of the memorandum, circulated through the White House, the C.I.A. and the State Department, shocked some officials. Just months after the Supreme Court had declared that the Geneva Convention applied to Al Qaeda, the new Bradbury memorandum gave its blessing to almost every technique, except waterboarding, that the C.I.A. had used since 2002....

Forced as secretary of state to defend the C.I.A. program before angry European allies, Ms. Rice and her aides argued that it had outlived its usefulness.....

When Mr. Bush finally reauthorized C.I.A. interrogations with an executive order in July 2007, it reflected the yearlong lobbying of Mr. Bellinger and Ms. Rice: forced nudity was banned, and guidelines for sleep deprivation were tighter.

But Mr. Cheney and his allies secured other victories. The executive order preserved the secret jails and authorized a laundry list of coercive methods. Ms. Rice, several officials say, declined to endorse the order but chose not to block it.

When Mr. Obama was sworn in on Jan. 20, the C.I.A. still maintained a network of empty jails overseas, where interrogators were still authorized to use physical pressure. Within 48 hours, he banned the methods. (New York Times)

None of which explains Condi's furious, voice-quavering-with-fury reaction to the Stanford student who recently challenged the administration's position on torture.  Bush assured her, she said, that what they did was legal.  ""By definition, if it was authorized by the President, it did not violate our obligations in the Convention Against Torture," she Nixonishly declared.  Which in her mind -- I suppose -- made it so.  Between Condoleezza Rice and a gangster's moll, the differences apparently are not as wide as one might have hoped.

At Emptywheel, Marcy Wheeler is all kinds of skeptical about the continuing whitewashing of Goss and Rice.  "I guess the biggest conclusion we can draw from this article is that the torture apologists are going to continue turning on each other to try to exonerate their own roles in this process. And heck, if Dick Cheney and David Addington and Steven Bradbury end up holding the bag, I can live with that.," she concludes. 

Memeorandum has more.

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