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catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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 Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2009 4:37 pm Post subject: CIA Official:No Proof Harsh Techniques Stopped Terror Attack |
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WASHINGTON - The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.
That undercuts assertions by former vice president Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials that the use of harsh interrogation tactics including waterboarding, which is widely considered torture, was justified because it headed off terrorist attacks.
The risks and effectiveness of waterboarding and other enhanced techniques are at the center of an increasingly heated debate over how thoroughly to investigate the CIA's secret detention and interrogation programs.
"It is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program," Steven G. Bradbury, then the Justice Department's principal deputy assistant attorney general, wrote in a May 30, 2005, memo to CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, one of four released last week by the Obama administration.
"As the IG Report notes, it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks. And because the CIA has used enhanced techniques sparingly, 'there is limited data on which to assess their individual effectiveness'," Bradbury wrote, quoting the IG report.
Nevertheless, Bradbury concluded in his May 2005 memos that the program had been effective, although the still secret reports by Inspector General John Helgerson had been disseminated a full year earlier.
Helgerson also concluded that waterboarding was riskier than officials claimed and reported that the CIA's Office of Medical Services thought that the risk to the health of some prisoners outweighed any potential intelligence benefit, according to the memos.
The IG's report is among several indications that the Bush administration's use of abusive interrogation methods was less productive than some former administration officials have claimed.
Even some of those in the military who developed the techniques warned that the information they produced was "less reliable" than that gained by traditional psychological measures, and that using them would produce an "intolerable public and political backlash when discovered," according to a Senate Armed Services Committee report released on Tuesday.
President Bush told a September 2006 news conference that one plot, to attack a Los Angeles office tower, was "derailed" in early 2002 - before the harsh CIA interrogation measures were approved, contrary to those who claim that waterboarding revealed it.
Last December, FBI Director Robert Mueller told Vanity Fair magazine that he didn't believe that intelligence gleaned from abusive interrogation techniques had disrupted any attacks on America.
The New York Times first reported Helgerson's inspector general's report in November 2005, but details of its contents have remained secret. A version of the report that the CIA turned over to the ACLU in May 2008 in response to a lawsuit consisted primarily of heavy black lines and notations of sections that had been redacted.
A CIA spokesman said Friday that he knew of no plans to release a more complete version.
Jameel Jaffer, the director of the ACLU's National Security Project, said the declassification of the Helgerson report is the subject of a court case before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
"We hope that we'll be able to negotiate a less redacted version of that report," Jaffer said, adding that the release of the Justice Department memos has increased pressure for more revelations.
"It's a crucial document," he said. "It will shed light on what kind of measures the CIA was using before August 2002" and whether they exceeded limits imposed by the Justice Department lawyers.
Two of the memos declassified last week, however, cite the IG report at least 34 times, often quoting it verbatim. Those citations provide the first glimpse of the spy agency's inspector general's analysis of the interrogation program.
The Bradbury memos that cite the inspector general's report reveal that officials at CIA headquarters insisted on the repeated waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, the first prisoner to undergo the technique, even after the interrogators on the scene sought to discontinue the technique. |
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66895.html |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2009 7:40 pm Post subject: |
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The premise of the article is foolish.
It can't be proved that it DIDN'T as well.
Basically we've got a few guys backpedalling, now a new adminstration is in power (like the FBI director) and saying well there's no evidence that it did foil an attack. Well there's no evidence that it didn't.
Before the BHL come in here, I am NOT condoning these harsh techniques, only pointing out that the conclusion is flawed.
As Bradbury points out "it is difficult to determine conclusively.."
And "because the CIA has used enhanced techniques sparely, there is limited data.." |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2009 8:25 pm Post subject: |
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| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
It can't be proved that it DIDN'T as well.
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Isn't it basically impossible to prove a negative? If there is no proof that it prevented an attack, it is reasonable to assume it was not effective in preventing an attack, not vice versa.
In other words, if medicine A has not been proven to prevent disease A, then it is reasonable to assume it doesn;t and to not administer that medicine for that disease.
The CIA has used torture sparingly..but other regimes have not. I'm sure there is enough data out there on the efficacy of torture. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2009 9:32 pm Post subject: |
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| JMO wrote: |
| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
It can't be proved that it DIDN'T as well.
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Isn't it basically impossible to prove a negative? If there is no proof that it prevented an attack, it is reasonable to assume it was not effective in preventing an attack, not vice versa.
The point is that there is an absence of proof either way. One could say that the Homeland Security Act/Patriot Act was a good thing because there has never been a terrorist attack since it was implemented. See what I mean?
In other words, if medicine A has not been proven to prevent disease A, then it is reasonable to assume it doesn;t and to not administer that medicine for that disease.
This is a faulty analogy. Medicine and disease are fairly quantitative issues, whereas this issue is a qualitative one.
The CIA has used torture sparingly..but other regimes have not. I'm sure there is enough data out there on the efficacy of torture. |
Not scholarly well-researched data. Sometimes it is efficacious, sometimes not. The biggest flaw as regards torture to gain information (aside from the moral issues) is that just about everybody has a breaking point, and after that is reached, most will admit to just about anything (regardless of whether it is true) so long as it stops the pain. |
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Interested
Joined: 10 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2009 10:13 pm Post subject: |
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Torture? It probably killed more Americans than 9/11
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The use of torture by the US has proved so counter-productive that it may have led to the death of as many US soldiers as civilians killed in 9/11, says the leader of a crack US interrogation team in Iraq.
"The reason why foreign fighters joined al-Qa'ida in Iraq was overwhelmingly because of abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and not Islamic ideology," says Major Matthew Alexander, who personally conducted 300 interrogations of prisoners in Iraq. It was the team led by Major Alexander [a named assumed for security reasons] that obtained the information that led to the US military being able to locate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qa'ida in Iraq. Zarqawi was then killed by bombs dropped by two US aircraft on the farm where he was hiding outside Baghdad on 7 June 2006. Major Alexander said that he learnt where Zarqawi was during a six-hour interrogation of a prisoner with whom he established relations of trust.
Major Alexander's attitude to torture by the US is a combination of moral outrage and professional contempt. "It plays into the hands of al-Qa'ida in Iraq because it shows us up as hypocrites when we talk about human rights," he says. An eloquent and highly intelligent man with experience as a criminal investigator within the US military, he says that torture is ineffective, as well as counter-productive. "People will only tell you the minimum to make the pain stop," he says. "They might tell you the location of a house used by insurgents but not that it is booby-trapped."
In his compelling book How to Break a Terrorist, Major Alexander explains that prisoners subjected to abuse usually clam up, say nothing, or provide misleading information. In an interview he was particularly dismissive of the "ticking bomb" argument often used in the justification of torture. This supposes that there is a bomb timed to explode on a bus or in the street which will kill many civilians. The authorities hold a prisoner who knows where the bomb is. Should they not torture him to find out in time where the bomb is before it explodes?
Major Alexander says he faced the "ticking time bomb" every day in Iraq because "we held people who knew about future suicide bombings". Leaving aside the moral arguments, he says torture simply does not work. "It hardens their resolve. They shut up." He points out that the FBI uses normal methods of interrogation to build up trust even when they are investigating a kidnapping and time is of the essence. He would do the same, he says, "even if my mother was on a bus" with a hypothetical ticking bomb on board. It is quite untrue to imagine that torture is the fastest way of obtaining information, he says.
A career officer, Major Alexander spent 14 years in the US air force, beginning by flying helicopters for special operations. He saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, was an air force counter-intelligence agent and criminal interrogator, and was stationed in Saudi Arabia, with an anti-terrorist role, during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Some years later, the US army was short of interrogators. He wanted to help shape developments in Iraq and volunteered.
Arriving in Iraq in early 2006 he found that the team he was working with were mostly dedicated, but young, men between 18 and 24. "Many of them had never been out of the States before," he recalls. "When they sat down to interrogate somebody it was often the first time they had met a Muslim." In addition to these inexperienced officers, Major Alexander says there was "an old guard" of interrogators using the methods employed at Guantanamo. He could not say exactly what they had been doing for legal reasons, though in the rest of the interview he left little doubt that prisoners were being tortured and abused. The "old guard's" methods, he says, were based on instilling "fear and control" in a prisoner.
He refused to take part in torture and abuse, and forbade the team he commanded to use such methods. Instead, he says, he used normal US police interrogation techniques which are "based on relationship building and a degree of deception". He adds that the deception was often of a simple kind such as saying untruthfully that another prisoner has already told all.
Before he started interrogating insurgent prisoners in Iraq, he had been told that they were highly ideological and committed to establishing an Islamic caliphate in Iraq, Major Alexander says. In the course of the hundreds of interrogations carried out by himself, as well as more than 1,000 that he supervised, he found that the motives of both foreign fighters joining al-Qa'ida in Iraq and Iraqi-born members were very different from the official stereotype.
In the case of foreign fighters � recruited mostly from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and North Africa � the reason cited by the great majority for coming to Iraq was what they had heard of the torture in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. These abuses, not fundamentalist Islam, had provoked so many of the foreign fighters volunteering to become suicide bombers.
For Iraqi Sunni Arabs joining al-Qa'ida, the abuses played a role, but more often the reason for their recruitment was political rather than religious. They had taken up arms because the Shia Arabs were taking power; de-Baathification marginalised the Sunni and took away their jobs; they feared an Iranian takeover. Above all, al-Qa'ida was able to provide money and arms to the insurgents. Once, Major Alexander recalls, the top US commander in Iraq, General George Casey, came to visit the prison where he was working. Asking about what motivated the suspected al-Qa'ida prisoners, he was at first given the official story that they were Islamic Jihadi full of religious zeal. Major Alexander intervened to say that this really was not true and there was a much more complicated series of motivations at work. General Casey did not respond.
The objective of Major Alexander's team was to find Zarqawi, the Jordanian born leader of al-Qa'ida who built it into a fearsome organisation. Attempts by US military intelligence to locate him had failed despite three years of trying. Major Alexander was finally able to persuade one of Zarqawi's associates to give away his location because the associate had come to reject his methods, such as the mass slaughter of civilians.
What the major discovered was that many of the Sunni fighters were members of, or allied to, al-Qa'ida through necessity. They did not share its extreme, puritanical Sunni beliefs or hatred of the Shia majority. He says that General Casey had ignored his findings but he was pleased when General David Petraeus became commander in Iraq and began to take account of the real motives of the Sunni fighters. "He peeled back those Sunnis from al-Qa'ida," he says.
In the aftermath of his experience in Iraq, which he left at the end of 2006, Major Alexander came to believe that the battle against the US using torture was more important than the war in Iraq. He sees President Obama's declaration against torture as "a historic victory", though he is concerned about loopholes remaining and the lack of accountability of senior officers. Reflecting on his own interrogations, he says he always monitored his actions by asking himself, "If the enemy was doing this to one of my troops, would I consider it torture?" His overall message is that the American people do not have to make a choice between torture and terror.
How to Break a Terrorist: The US interrogators who used brains, not brutality, to take down the deadliest man in Iraq, by Matthew Alexander and John R Bruning (The Free Press)
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2009 10:51 pm Post subject: |
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I prefer to wait for the report itself rather than listening to a journalist tell me what he thinks I should think about it. We do not even know for certain whether the CIA's inspector-general even looked at the same issue in its investigation as this journalist wants to talk about.
I trust journalists even less than politicians and lawyers. |
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ManintheMiddle
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 3:09 am Post subject: |
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More wishful thinking from the Leftist OP. The key word is "conclusive."
And there are other officials who are saying just the opposite, btw. |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 3:23 am Post subject: |
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| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
The point is that there is an absence of proof either way. One could say that the Homeland Security Act/Patriot Act was a good thing because there has never been a terrorist attack since it was implemented. See what I mean?
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Ok, but a good starting point when there is an absence of evidence either way is to say that it has not been proven, wait for more evidence and be open to the situation changing.
Proving a negative is basically impossible and is an unreasonable goal.
| Quote: |
| Not scholarly well-researched data. Sometimes it is efficacious, sometimes not. The biggest flaw as regards torture to gain information (aside from the moral issues) is that just about everybody has a breaking point, and after that is reached, most will admit to just about anything (regardless of whether it is true) so long as it stops the pain. |
Actually I think I'm coming round to this point of view as well. Or at least as follows..
'Torture doesn't work except in highly specific situations where you are certain that the person has the info you are looking for and he is the right personality to break'.
Of course I don't trust any government or military agency to know they have the right person or to use it at the right time. Therefore before you even get to moral reasons, it should not be allowed. I might be willing to allow it in certain cases if the president and maybe head of opposition party(if there is such a thing in the US) sign off on it publicly.
I'm not sure if it is true that every person has a breaking point..
| Quote: |
| Truth is, it's surprisingly hard to get anything under torture, true or false. For example, between 1500 and 1750, French prosecutors tried to torture confessions out of 785 individuals. Torture was legal back then, and the records document such practices as the bone-crushing use of splints, pumping stomachs with water until they swelled and pouring boiling oil on the feet. But the number of prisoners who said anything was low, from 3 percent in Paris to 14 percent in Toulouse (an exceptional high). Most of the time, the torturers were unable to get any statement whatsoever. |
and
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| It's surprising how unsuccessful the Gestapo's brutal efforts were. They failed to break senior leaders of the French, Danish, Polish and German resistance. I've spent more than a decade collecting all the cases of Gestapo torture "successes" in multiple languages; the number is small and the results pathetic, especially compared with the devastating effects of public cooperation and informers. |
Those are from a very interesting article from the washington post. It seems to indicate in the article that there is good data on torture and its effectiveness.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/13/AR2007121301303.html |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 3:22 pm Post subject: |
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| JMO wrote: |
| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
The point is that there is an absence of proof either way. One could say that the Homeland Security Act/Patriot Act was a good thing because there has never been a terrorist attack since it was implemented. See what I mean?
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Ok, but a good starting point when there is an absence of evidence either way is to say that it has not been proven, wait for more evidence and be open to the situation changing.
Which was kinda of my point when I said it is impossible to tell either way.
Proving a negative is basically impossible and is an unreasonable goal.
| Quote: |
| Not scholarly well-researched data. Sometimes it is efficacious, sometimes not. The biggest flaw as regards torture to gain information (aside from the moral issues) is that just about everybody has a breaking point, and after that is reached, most will admit to just about anything (regardless of whether it is true) so long as it stops the pain. |
Actually I think I'm coming round to this point of view as well. Or at least as follows..
'Torture doesn't work except in highly specific situations where you are certain that the person has the info you are looking for and he is the right personality to break'.
Of course I don't trust any government or military agency to know they have the right person or to use it at the right time. Therefore before you even get to moral reasons, it should not be allowed. I might be willing to allow it in certain cases if the president and maybe head of opposition party(if there is such a thing in the US) sign off on it publicly.
I'm not sure if it is true that every person has a breaking point..
| Quote: |
| Truth is, it's surprisingly hard to get anything under torture, true or false. For example, between 1500 and 1750, French prosecutors tried to torture confessions out of 785 individuals. Torture was legal back then, and the records document such practices as the bone-crushing use of splints, pumping stomachs with water until they swelled and pouring boiling oil on the feet. But the number of prisoners who said anything was low, from 3 percent in Paris to 14 percent in Toulouse (an exceptional high). Most of the time, the torturers were unable to get any statement whatsoever. |
and
| Quote: |
| It's surprising how unsuccessful the Gestapo's brutal efforts were. They failed to break senior leaders of the French, Danish, Polish and German resistance. I've spent more than a decade collecting all the cases of Gestapo torture "successes" in multiple languages; the number is small and the results pathetic, especially compared with the devastating effects of public cooperation and informers. |
Those are from a very interesting article from the washington post. It seems to indicate in the article that there is good data on torture and its effectiveness.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/13/AR2007121301303.html |
Where are the citations for these quotes though?
And like I said that's only once the breaking point is reached. With unskilled torturers, that may never happen or not happen for a very long time.
As regards the use of torture, in certain "24" situations where time is critical it might be allowed. If someone had a nuclear device hidden somewhere in say NYC and torture was the only thing that made him talk...I wouldn't lose too much sleep over that. But less critical information can and should be gathered more humanely. |
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catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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| Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2009 6:42 pm Post subject: |
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| ManintheMiddle wrote: |
More wishful thinking from the Leftist OP. The key word is "conclusive."
And there are other officials who are saying just the opposite, btw. |
Yet, no evidence has been given. Still waiting of course. |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2009 2:34 am Post subject: |
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| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| JMO wrote: |
| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
The point is that there is an absence of proof either way. One could say that the Homeland Security Act/Patriot Act was a good thing because there has never been a terrorist attack since it was implemented. See what I mean?
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Ok, but a good starting point when there is an absence of evidence either way is to say that it has not been proven, wait for more evidence and be open to the situation changing.
Which was kinda of my point when I said it is impossible to tell either way.
Proving a negative is basically impossible and is an unreasonable goal.
| Quote: |
| Not scholarly well-researched data. Sometimes it is efficacious, sometimes not. The biggest flaw as regards torture to gain information (aside from the moral issues) is that just about everybody has a breaking point, and after that is reached, most will admit to just about anything (regardless of whether it is true) so long as it stops the pain. |
Actually I think I'm coming round to this point of view as well. Or at least as follows..
'Torture doesn't work except in highly specific situations where you are certain that the person has the info you are looking for and he is the right personality to break'.
Of course I don't trust any government or military agency to know they have the right person or to use it at the right time. Therefore before you even get to moral reasons, it should not be allowed. I might be willing to allow it in certain cases if the president and maybe head of opposition party(if there is such a thing in the US) sign off on it publicly.
I'm not sure if it is true that every person has a breaking point..
| Quote: |
| Truth is, it's surprisingly hard to get anything under torture, true or false. For example, between 1500 and 1750, French prosecutors tried to torture confessions out of 785 individuals. Torture was legal back then, and the records document such practices as the bone-crushing use of splints, pumping stomachs with water until they swelled and pouring boiling oil on the feet. But the number of prisoners who said anything was low, from 3 percent in Paris to 14 percent in Toulouse (an exceptional high). Most of the time, the torturers were unable to get any statement whatsoever. |
and
| Quote: |
| It's surprising how unsuccessful the Gestapo's brutal efforts were. They failed to break senior leaders of the French, Danish, Polish and German resistance. I've spent more than a decade collecting all the cases of Gestapo torture "successes" in multiple languages; the number is small and the results pathetic, especially compared with the devastating effects of public cooperation and informers. |
Those are from a very interesting article from the washington post. It seems to indicate in the article that there is good data on torture and its effectiveness.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/13/AR2007121301303.html |
Where are the citations for these quotes though?
And like I said that's only once the breaking point is reached. With unskilled torturers, that may never happen or not happen for a very long time.
As regards the use of torture, in certain "24" situations where time is critical it might be allowed. If someone had a nuclear device hidden somewhere in say NYC and torture was the only thing that made him talk...I wouldn't lose too much sleep over that. But less critical information can and should be gathered more humanely. |
Well the article mentions a book, the sources are probably listed there.
I'm not sure what you mean by unskilled torturers. Do you mean that they hurt the victim too much? The victim could go into shock before he even speaks? I suppose that is possible.
The numbers in the article if correct are staggeringly low though.
I'm not sure if 24 situations really exist. Also what would be to stop the unscrupulous from exaggerating the threat.. |
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