CIA interrogation files

[Old Dog New Trick]

Originally Posted by mark46th

Snip

These people have lost their morals, their sense of right and wrong.

Well, Sen. J. McStain, has now spoken on the floor about our wayward ways and how wrong they were. It's now evident that all the torturing he endured really did have a lasting impact on the mental capacity to think long term. Oh the horrors, why our forces that have undergone SERE training will probably all have PTSD someday from experiencing those SFOT called EITs.

Anyway, he said there was no actionable Intellegence gathered to find the perpetrators of 9/11. I thought 19 of them died, one was caught in America, the mastermind KSM was found hiding in Pakistan through collection of intelligence and interrogation of captured suspects and we just pinned the whole thing on OBL - who was finally found by the naming of a courier released through interrogation of multiple other likely associates that had all been captured at some point and thought they were giving up - non-valuable information?

Why does everyone know this guy? He's just the delivery driver!

[PSM]

Originally Posted by Old Dog New Trick

Why does everyone know this guy? He's just the delivery driver!

And he managed to deliver the son of the, then, CINCUSNAVEUR and later CINCPAC to the NVA. Job well done!

Pat

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by Beef

What's more important to the WH, the midterms or this president's landmark legislation, his only true legacy? Gruber was already "outed" in OCT. and the WH knew it was going to be an issue.

Despite the rancorous contemporaneous political debates over the current president's "legacy," it will not be determined for decades, and that determination will be made by historians and political scientists.

During the interval, the current president defined his priorities in his press conference following last month's midterms. By my reading of his statement and his responses to questions from the Fourth Estate, his priority remains the continued rehabilitation of the nation's economy.

IRT the Affordable Care Act, he again affirmed his willingness to participate in its reform but not its repeal. IMO, the president does not believe the GOP will be able to overturn the law. I don't believe that his confidence is misplaced. The man is an idiot. The legislation is deeply flawed. Yet, his opposition cannot get out of its own way and find ways to outmaneuver him. Their unwillingness to help reform the law is going to do more harm than good as we approach the 2016 election.

MOO, I think the initial response to the select committee's findings is excessively partisan and therefore ill considered. I believe that this partisanship is going to undermine the incoming majority's ability to restore balance between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government.

I continue to believe that the focus should be on institutional politics. The GOP would be more prudent politically and smarter to use the committee's findings as part of a broader conversation over the proper role of the CIA in matters of national security, the president's war powers, and the "ends justify the means" approach to GWOT. This approach would allow the GOP to exploit fractures within the Democratic Party as its rank and file membership continue to come (belatedly) to the realization that the current president is not a liberal.

IRT the defense of the CIA's methods offered in some posts in this thread, I would point out that those methods included the deception of elected politicians and appointed officials during Bush the Younger's presidency. Examples of this pattern of deception can be found in the executive's footnotes as well as the principal text. Is that really the type of government you want to have?

[Lighthouse]

This is terrible news. So many L.E.O's across the country are ready to resign because of this administration right before the same administration puts the whole country at risk. This would be depressing if it wasn't so infuriating.

[MtnGoat]

Originally Posted by Javadrinker

isn't it amazing how Constitutional rights are trampled by one Sen. Diane Feinstein, yet she yells the loudest when her own rights and her computers are "hacked'?
this person should be serving time in Leavenworth.

Yet the DemoRats can hack the computers they like and it's all okay. Piss on ALL of them.

[dennisw]

Although the timing of this report is not unimportant, I believe the threshold issue is the methodology used by this committee. To say they were partisan soft sells the issue. They were completely intellectually dishonest and to allow this committee's findings to stand or even be considered legitimate is a travesty.

In today's WSJ, former FBI director and Judge, Louis J. Freeh documents what others have already stated. The report and the committee are shams. Here are some of the highlights (http://www.wsj.com/articles/louis-j-...-14182596520):

First, let’s remember the context of the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when President George W. Bush and Congress put America on a war footing. While some critics in and out of government blamed the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for failing to prevent the terrorist attack, the 9/11 Commission later concluded that part of the real reason the terrorists succeeded was Washington’s failure to put America on a war footing long before the attack. Sept. 11, 2001, was the final escalation of al Qaeda’s war-making after attacking the USS Cole in 2000 and U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.

The Intelligence Committee’s majority report fails to acknowledge the Pearl Harbor-esque state of emergency that followed the 9/11 attack. One week after the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history, President Bush signed into law a congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which granted the president authority to use “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States.”

This joint congressional resolution, which has never been amended, was not a broad declaration of a “war on terror,” but rather a specific, targeted authorization to use force against the 9/11 terrorists and to prevent their future attacks.

Similarly, the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program, which included the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, was designed and implemented as the direct result of the president and Congress putting the country on a military, law-enforcement and intelligence war footing after 9/11. The program was carefully targeted and sought to apprehend the 9/11 terrorists and prevent them from striking again.

More important, the RDI program was not some rogue operation unilaterally launched by a Langley cabal—which is the impression that the Senate Intelligence Committee report tries to convey. Rather, the program was an initiative approved by the president, the national security adviser and the U.S. attorney general, backed by a legal opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which functions as the president’s outside counsel in such matters. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their closest advisers at the time have confirmed that they were unified behind the RDI program; they should have been interviewed by the Democratic majority in preparing the report on the CIA interrogations.

"The RDI program, including the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, was fully briefed to the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House intelligence committees. The Senate committee’s new report does not present any evidence that would support the notion that the CIA program was carried out for years without the concurrence of the House or Senate intelligence committees, or that any of the members were shocked to learn of the program after the fact.

Facts matter, including the fact that the Senate committee’s Democratic majority failed to interview the three CIA directors and three deputy directors, or any other CIA employee for that matter, who had briefed them about the program and carried it out.

Such a glaring investigative lapse cannot be fairly explained by the Democratic majority’s defense that it could make such crucial findings solely on the “paper record,” without interviewing the critical players. Nor does the committee’s other explanation for avoiding interviews make sense: The Democratic senators say they didn’t want to interfere with the Justice Department’s criminal inquiry into the RDI program, but that investigation ended in 2012 and found no basis for prosecutions. And no wonder: These public servants at the CIA had dutifully carried out mandates from the president and Congress.

CIA leaders and briefers who regularly updated this programto the Senate Intelligence Committee leadership took what investigators call “copious, contemporaneous notes.” Without a doubt, the Senate Intelligence Committee and congressional staffers at these multiple briefings also took a lot of their own notes. Will the committee now declassify and release all such notes so that Americans will know exactly what the senators were told and the practices they approved?

Sigaba wrote:

IRT the defense of the CIA's methods offered in some posts in this thread, I would point out that those methods included the deception of elected politicians and appointed officials during Bush the Younger's presidency. Examples of this pattern of deception can be found in the executive's footnotes as well as the principal text. Is that really the type of government you want to have?

It sounds to me that the elected officials were very aware of the CIA's tactics and practices, but you're right. I do not want the type of government which condones the practices undertaken by this committee. Allows the concocting of such a BS report while virtually ignoring all the rules of investigation and then releases said report for public consumption.

[ddoering]

But this report allows them to extend the "it's Bush's fault" all the way up to today and into the future. Hillary will use it for sure. ISIL would not exist if we hadn't done this. Bengazi would not have happened. Blah blah blah...

[WarriorDiplomat]

Originally Posted by Beef

You guys are really missing the Big Picture. Why release it TODAY? What else is going on today....? Oh, yeah, Gruber is testifying before Congress on "the stupidity of the American voter" and that stupidity's role in the passage of Obamacare. Which may have repercussions with SCOTUS.

Yes, it's a disease and Feinstein & friends have terminal cases, no doubt. But this is a play out of the Clinton handbook on distracting the public from "personal" crisis with something major and international. Unfortunately, the damage to our intelligence abilities will be significant.

You are damn right, Clinton was bad at ruses but I think Obama is the King his administration has done possible more than anyone I have seen. Even worse is the Presidents men and (women) are so incompetent that even a monkey can see what they are doing. Imagine the possibilities .....are saying the enemies as they watch this stupidity play out on every network on the planet.

[Sigaba]

FBI director and Judge, Louis J. Freeh documents what others have already stated. The report and the committee are shams.

I wonder how carefully Freeh read the executive summary or the cover letter. In regards to the latter, Section VI carefully documents the statements that Goss and Hayden made to the committee when they were DCIA. Why would / should they be reinterviewed after evidence of their inaccurate / misleading statements had been documented?

(And given Freeh's handling of the Penn State investigation, should he be throwing stones at anyone? http://m.espn.go.com/general/story?s...3&src=desktop?)

[GreenSalsa]

Terror, Torture, and Troubling Truths

While standing in line and getting coffee in a hotel lobby, the news reports are filled with sound bites and talking heads extolling heartfelt apologies, and grim faces saying words like, “Never again!” The lady in front of me blithely murmurs comments to her companion to the effect that the United States has become the terrorists and wistfully shakes her head as she stirs in creamer and sugar into her morning drink. It causes me pause for thought as I reflect on terrorism, torture, and the real troubling truths.

Terror

The recently released report by the US Senate, Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program, has awoken many Americans to the challenges, issues, and heated discussions that many security, defense, and intelligence professionals have had over the last 13 years. Thirteen years ago, this nation was subjected to an unprovoked attack that horrifically maimed, mutilated, and burned tens of thousands of Americans, not the least of which was the nearly 3,000 ordinary people who were deliberately and coldly killed. The perpetrators used the events of 9/11 to alter world discussion and intent, in order to stand on a platform of our dead to deliver their message of hate and intolerance. If this had been an attack perpetrated by a sovereign nation, Congress would have declared a state of War and resulting well established authorities, permissions, and actions would have been clearly and coldly laid before the entire defense and intelligence community to operate from, however, this was not the case.

Previous to 9/11 the response to terrorism was treated primarily as a law enforcement issue with the military and intelligence community supporting those efforts. Even though the entire US security apparatus was caught off guard, seasoned defense and intelligence professionals, looked to leaders and lawmakers for authorities and permissions needed to take the appropriate actions. While people may have an argument for President Bush’s slow actions in a Florida classroom that fateful day, those criticisms quickly fade, as the administration moved the military and intelligence communities into combat operations. As Jose A. Rodriguez, a 31 year veteran of the CIA, lays out in his Washington Post opinion piece, “…The interrogation program was authorized by the highest levels of the U.S. government, judged legal by the Justice Department and proved effective by any reasonable standard.” Furthermore, both Presidential and Congressional leaders alike were routinely briefed in an excess of over 40 times and the CIA had nearly unanimous support to defeat al-Qaeda.

Torture

Soldiers and combatants are protected from torture from the law of land warfare. Simplified, the law of land warfare applies to members of a nation’s military that are under command, wearing uniforms or distinctive insignia, carrying weapons openly, and conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. If any ONE of that criteria is missing, those “soldiers” are no longer protected by the law. To be absolutely clear, al-Qaeda nor any of its affiliates, are required to be protected under any measure of the law of land warfare, except for the fact that the US authorities unanimously extended that combatant status (unlikely that al-Qaeda or its affiliates would do the same to US Soldiers).

Torture has many definitions both legal and personal. Suffice to say, torture is the use of extreme pain coerce someone for something. Bluntly put, what was done to only 119 of the absolute worst out of the hundreds of thousands of “combatants” that military and intelligence officials have detained over the past 13 years is hardly torture. If we as a nation are going to start using sleep deprivation, exposure to hypothermia, and stress positions as the legal standard for “torture”, there are a lot of Rangers who need to be retroactively afforded POW status due to their training. If being forced to eat half cooked food, slapped while being stripped naked, and lying in your own excrement is the new definition for “torture”, then graduates of the Military Level C courses are also our newest class or victims. Frankly, the vast majority of most Special Operations Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines, are routinely and methodically “tortured” in the way of training for combat and are bewildered at the public uproar.

Too many American people, politicians, and pollsters have lost sight of the fact, that as George Orwell said, “the reason people sleep peaceably in their bed at night, is because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” It is a little more than frustrating to be sitting in a hotel coffee bar and listen to the average American opining and second guessing long term security officials who have put everything on the line year after year dealing with the abomination that radical Islam has produced. Especially, when the only “experience” the average person has is watching reruns of ABC’s “Alias” or using NBC’s “Law and Order” as a reference point. Now before this starts to sound like a quote from COL Jessup, in “A Few Good Men”, the overwhelming majority of military and intelligence officials expect oversight and understand civilian policy guidance, it would be nice though if there was just a little more perspective and latitude behind the accusations and second guessing.

Troubling Truths

What is troubling is that none of Directors of the CIA, or the Detention Program Leaders were ever interviewed for this report. Equally concerning is nowhere in the 528 pages of this report is there any recommendations on what is specifically is wrong and what should change. What does cause real concern is when Michael Hayden, former Director of the CIA, said in an interview with Michael Hirsh, that in the early days of the program, things were being made up as they went along. Understanding that the full report is not public and that information is unavailable to the author, this should be the most troubling of all the facts heard to date.

As alluded to earlier, most Special Operations Forces undergo extremely challenging and rigorous training, both physically and mentally. What is specifically surprising is that the CIA failed to utilize those experiences and skill sets found in courses like the Unites States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) course. Without going into great detail, the course places Soldiers in an emotionally and physical taxing environment where the student is put well outside the comfort zone of the vast majority of Americans. While in this environment, students are methodically subjected to various interrogation techniques and stressors that are quite similar in nature to the captives held by the CIA. The course was established by the legendary COL James “Nick” Rowe based off of his experiences as being a captive for 5 years in Vietnam. The schoolhouse utilizes various techniques, tables, and personnel to monitor both the students AND the instructors to maintain control to avoid a Stanford Prison scenario. The inclusion of these personnel in the CIA’s program would likely have greatly reduced the learning curve and might have avoided some of the mistakes that were made.

In summary, what is frustrating is the short attention spans and accusations by the very people who should be grateful for what the Special Operations and Intelligence communities do on their behalf each and every day. This is not to say we don’t need oversight, policy, or guidance, we do. But it also needs to be understood that our enemy will not be defeated on the deck of the Missouri in Tokyo Bay or on one of Dick Wolf’s sets on “Law and Order”. To put this in perspective, all of this hype and hysteria is being generated over people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who personally decapitated Daniel Pearl. These are the modern Nazis of our times. It will require rough men, working in the shadows, doing sometimes really ugly things in order to give the truly bad guys nightmares and dissuade them from further action. To be crystal clear, the terrorists are the bad guys. They will maim, enslave, rape, and kill the average American; Democrat, Republican, White, Black, Asian, Christian, Jew, Atheist, or Muslim. They don’t care one wit about the contents of this report; they were dancing on the streets when the Twin Towers burned and they are working to do it again. The only troubling thing to come out of this report is that it appears the Intelligence community didn’t reach out to their brothers across the road; I only wish they had—we would have had your back.

[Box]

...never let facts interfere with a good report.

[Old Dog New Trick]

GS, a little polishing and editing and it's ready for a full page "op ed" piece in the WSJ or Washington Post.

Very well put!

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

[Old Dog New Trick]

This whole episode of partisan politics and retaliation for perceived wrongs (CIA spying on oversight committee) and a complete lack of leadership at all levels of government. Shows only one thing.

"Weakness!"

It also begets the question that in the future the importance of battlefield risk to capture high value targets should be weighed against the importance of their usefulness.

Since most of them truly are only useful idiots before their capture; bigger bombs should be used to insure complete target destruction.

[GreenSalsa]

Originally Posted by Old Dog New Trick

GS, a little polishing and editing and it's ready for a full page "op ed" piece in the WSJ or Washington Post.

Very well put!

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Thanks.

Actually since I have retired, I am now writing under a pen name (other than GreenSalsa ) and actually have been published. What ticked me off was when I submitted this rough draft to my editor, they were aghast and refused to print because I was essentially making the argument we should have done more.

Looks like I will need to reevaluate my relationship with my current publisher.

I weep for what my country has de-evolved into...

[NF_NYC]

For those who haven't seen it yet, here's an interview with the "The Architect of the CIA's Enhanced Interrogation Program," released just two days ago.

Link => http://youtu.be/MmNUi0itl-8?list=UUZ...0BI-djXOlfhqWQ