The whole question of torture could have been avoided if the military had “just killed all these guys when they were captured on the battlefield,” when no one would have noticed, a former senior CIA officer told me over lunch today.
I set up an interview a few weeks ago with him to talk about the situation in Iraq. When we met today, naturally the subject of the Senate’s report on torture came up. He’s pretty hardline on military issues, as you’d expect.
In his view, torture is worse than killing people, because it doesn’t work, which was obvious before the release of the Senate report and further confirmed by it. A person being tortured will tell you anything you want to hear, even if it’s all lies, and a lot of the victims had to lie because they didn’t have valuable information to begin with.
“It doesn’t matter what tactics you use, you’re not going to get information if people don’t know anything and most of these Gomers didn’t know shit,” he said. “Who in the leadership was stupid enough to think they would? Why would these guys have detailed knowledge about plans and targeting? Even if they were hard-core jihadis who took part in operations, that doesn’t mean they would have knowledge of upcoming attacks.”
Once the U.S. went into “the business of interrogation,” U.S. allies in the “war on terror” were encouraged to hand over suspects — and they did, no matter how flimsy the evidence. Lots of others were turned in by bounty hunters. And of course we know that a lot of people falsely dimed out their personal enemies or political rivals.
Torture grew inevitably out of the militarization of the CIA that took place after 9/11, this former CIA officer said, when the agency was tasked with obtaining information to support battlefield needs. “That’s important but it’s tactical information and the military’s intelligence agencies should handle that,” he said. “The agency became more involved in interrogation than intelligence gathering. There’s a whole generation of young officers who think that intelligence gathering is getting information out of a guy shackled to a chair.”
The former CIA officer said he personally liked George Tenet “but he was a shitty DCI” and he is responsible for many of the agency’s post-9/11 failures. “The president should’ve demanded the heads of people. But to Bush, George [Tenet] was a good guy and it wasn’t his fault,” he said. “Fine, it wasn’t all his fault but it was partly his fault and there was no way the agency could move forward when the guys at the helm were all trying to escape responsibility for 9/11.”
At the same time, he said Senate Democrats are being totally disingenuous about their own role in tacitly condoning torture. They gave Bush a blank check when it was politically convenient and now they’re pretending to be shocked about what happened: “I’m familiar with congressional oversight and there’s no way people on the intelligence committees and in the leadership didn’t generally know what was going on. There’s no conceivable circumstances under which they wouldn’t have known. It’s like that scene from Casablanca, they had no idea. They’re lying.”
Photo: Lynne Sladky/AP
I really like what The Intercept is trying to do by establishing an independent outlet for journalism, but this “article” isn’t journalism. In my opinion, publishing this article and the many like them that I see peppering the site diminishes the actual journalism you are engaged in. This criticism is not disguised disagreement with the point of view: I think much of your coverage of the torture report and the issue more broadly is some of the best and most important taking place at the moment. But “I sat down with a guy who said we screwed up” just isn’t among those important pieces.
Just my opinion.
Quote: The whole question of torture could have been avoided if the military had “just killed all these guys when they were captured on the battlefield,” when no one would have noticed, a former senior CIA officer told me over lunch today.
So the CIA officer proposes to secretly murder war prisoners.
Shall we call this progress?
This article from Jeff Kaye is a must-read for anyone interested in knowing the roots of the current torture program revelations.
SSCI Report Reveals CIA Torture Program Originated in Same Department as MKULTRA http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/12/11/ssci-report-reveals-cia-torture-program-originated-in-same-department-as-mkultra/ via @firedoglake
Quote: ‘The whole question of torture could have been avoided if the military had “just killed all these guys when they were captured on the battlefield,” when no one would have noticed, a former senior CIA officer told me over lunch today.’
So the CIA officer wants to secretly murder war prisoners.
That confirms my view that the CIA is a criminal/terrorist organisation.
These sadistic practices were employed to achieve false confessions, period. Those at the top (Cheney’s Iran/Contra cabal) who ordered and oversaw its implementation were working to cover their own unspeakable crimes. Depraved beyond comprehension….our “leaders”.
…and their followers, the people who voted for them.
Obama and his supporters are just as pernicious. The claims he put an end to domestic torture are lies; I am living proof.
This ex-CIA officer now feels a little bitter at being used by the politicians to enact this theatrical production. But US public demands a show, so the politicians themselves had no choice in the matter. Everybody uses everybody, so he should just suck it up. Of course the CIA gets blamed – that is their purpose in life – to give their political masters plausible deniability. In return, CIA operatives are granted immunity and anonymity.
Ditto.
Come now Benito. Has lying become so engrained as ex-CIA that you now so easily lie to yourself? You participated in your covert deceptions to satisfy your own perverse needs. P. S. — Sorry about your mother.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/12/politics/scalia-on-torture-death-penalty/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
God bless us and give us lots off nutty judges who can imagine a nuclear bomb being planted somewhere in a city. Speaks volumes of the rabid nature of the human mind – especially one honed with judicial acumen. ;-)
Lest the tremendous significance of such a change taking place within the U.S. Government be insufficiently regarded, consider the words of Arnold Toynbee, the eminent British historian and friend of the United States, as set forth in The New York Times of May 7, 1970:
“To most Europeans, I guess, America now looks like the most dangerous country in the world. Since America is unquestionably the most powerful country, the transformation of America’s image within the last thirty years is very frightening for Europeans. It is probably still more frightening for the great majority of th
e human race who are neither Europeans nor North Americans, but are Latin Americans, Asians and Africans. They, I imagine, feel even more insecure than we feel. They feel that, at any moment, America may intervene in their internal affairs with the same appalling consequences as have followed from American intervention in Southeast Asia.”
quote” For the world as a whole, the CIA has now become the bogey that Communism has been for America. Wherever there is trouble, violence, suffering, tragedy, the rest of us are now quick to suspect the CIA had a hand in it. Our phobia about the CIA is, no doubt, as fantastically excessive as America’s phobia about world Communism; but in this case, too, there is just enough convincing guidance to make the phobia genuine. In fact, the roles of America and Russia have been reversed in the world’s eyes. Today America has become the world’s nightmare. “unquote
Col. Fletcher Prouty
Any questions? The answers can be found here….
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/
and here…
http://www.globalresearch.ca/legal-imperialism-and-international-law-legal-foundations-for-war-crimes-debt-collection-and-colonization/5313891
Once you understand those, all you have left is to understand why you are a unwiting slave to it by virtue of the 16th Amendment and the Federal Reserve act of 1913.
If you don’t think you exist in a Matrix of the unthinkable…wait till AI is on the street.
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/STchp2.html
These people pointing the finger the Afghans were selling people who were meant to be terrorists, the Musharraf was disappearing and handover alleged terrorists. Most of missing were political dissidents. So a lot of the blame goes to our so called allies handing over people of little value. Another example was the night raids and detention in Afghanistan 80 percent had to be released it was people settling scores or for profit. So the DOD are saying the raids are a success and the CIA are saying that it is not. Yemen the drone program had to be reassessed because it was being used to settle scores. Same thing happened with the Phoenix Program. So our allies don’t have clean hands we were relying on their intelligence agencies.
A complete failure of leadership. This loose cannon would execute captured prisoners. Another worthy we are supposed to praise as a patriot.
Meanwhile, back at Camp Bucca, the US apparently incubated ISIS.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-inside-story
On point here as yet another refraction of US intelligence FUBAR, the Gomers at work. Story subhead: “One of the Islamic State’s senior commanders reveals exclusive details of the terror group’s origins inside an Iraqi prison – right under the noses of their American jailers.” Apparently they smuggled out their intel by writing it into the elastic of their boxer shorts. Apparently torture is also a waste of staff hours: while they were spending time, money and attention torturing a few wretches, they didn’t sift the other fish in the net.
Is this a great country or what?
It appears that the Nazification of America trickled up….waaayyyy up after WW II:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-white-houses-nazis-from-hitlers-germany-in-the-1930s-to-kiev-today-the-us-disturbing-partnerships-with-nazis/5382188
Compartmentalizing information…the “need to know” model was crucial to the success and ongoing coverup of the acts of 911. Its one reason no single grand whistleblower has ever appeared. That and the expectation of a very shortened lifespan. The odds of some random Jihadi knowing much about anything useful is about as likely as some US-based Sayan having the full plot in his/her hands.
Torture has been used for milennia – not as a means of information gathering, but as a propaganda tool. Populations are kept under control and “enemy plots” are born out of the tortured subject’s imagination. Cheney’s torture regime was a smashing success. He could take credit for “saving lives” that would never have been lost, and most Americans now believe “enhanced interrogations” keep them safe.
Exactly cw. Couldn’t agree more. The “Intelligence Community” is not an enlightened, democratic body. When it says it is saving lives, that shouldn’t be treated as if it has informational value. Secret Government is epistemologically benighted, by its very nature. It lacks necessary feedback, as a matter of course. The idea that we can reform “secret intelligence” but somehow keep the secrecy that breeds its violent stupidity is bitterly obtuse.
“I’m familiar with congressional oversight and there’s no way people on the intelligence committees and in the leadership didn’t generally know what was going on. There’s no conceivable circumstances under which they wouldn’t have known. It’s like that scene from Casablanca, ..”
If you live long enough, you get to see this kind of thing happen over and over again. Far more satisfying than Ray McGovern’s recent praise for Diane ‘prosecution is off the table’ Feinstein. Anyways, mistakes were made and lessons were learned. Now let the healing begin!
“And of course we know that a lot of people falsely dimed out their personal enemies or political rivals.”
Oh, rilly? I’ve read way too much about this whole fetid era……… and I’ve yet to read a well-researched article documenting this assertion. I believe it’s likely true. The grifting, opium lord-“allies” we relied on from ~2002 onward in Afghanistan pretty well guarantee it.
However, why not link to the documentary evidence? If it doesn’t exist, how about not making unsupportable statements in your articles?
Unsupported assertions are really flying thick and fast just now regarding these matters, and they’re getting kind of old. Which is exactly why they are being catapulted all over the “news”media — the more varied and robust the bullshit, the less thorough the “truth & reconciliation”.
…”However, why not link to the documentary evidence? If it doesn’t exist, how about not making unsupportable statements in your articles?
Unsupported assertions are really flying thick and fast just now regarding these matters, and they’re getting kind of old…”
Thank you. Noticed that in another article here, too.
This indeed a serious distortion. According to this piece, they dimed out their neighbors, co-workers and friends as well. That seems much more believable.
If there is any doubt as to whether the torturers knew what they were doing was illegal, this bit here where they are instructing their colleagues to not put anything about legality in writing, I find particularly informative:
“During one waterboarding session, Zubaydah became “completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.” The interrogations lasted for weeks, and some CIA officers began sending messages to the agency’s headquarters in Virginia questioning the utility — and the legality — of what they were doing. But such questions were rejected.
“Strongly urge that any speculative language as to the legality of given activities or, more precisely, judgment calls as to their legality vis-à-vis operational guidelines for this activity agreed upon and vetted at the most senior levels of the agency, be refrained from in written traffic (email or cable traffic),” wrote Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.
“Such language is not helpful.” “
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/12/09/set-release-report-cia-torture-tactics/aCznrj8OCs97G6NKdVIRnL/story.html
‘Shit, Howdy..’
Officer Anonymous: The whole question of torture could have been avoided if the military had “just killed all these GOMER guys when they were CAPTURED on the battlefield..”
Yet.
Officer Anonymous: 1. “U.S. allies in the “war on terror” were encouraged to HAND OVER suspects — and they did, no matter how flimsy the evidence.” 2. “Lots of others were TURNED IN by bounty hunters.” 3. “And of course we know that a lot of people falsely DIMED OUT their personal enemies or political rivals.”
note: Capitalized emphasis, mine.
Snowden still making sense:
RT – “The world cannot accept efficiency as an excuse for what is essentially “criminal behavior” on the part of the CIA, former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden told Amnesty International via a Paris-Moscow video link.
Snowden, who still resides in Russia under an asylum request, told Amnesty International that morality cannot be tossed aside for the sake of so-called “efficiency” when it comes to the activities of the CIA.
“A government could say that rape has a positive effect because we have a declining demographic crisis in the country… Efficiency has no place in the debate about right and wrong,” Snowden said, agreeing to the question about whether the US is in deep moral crisis. “
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ6w2Wn5rfg
Nazi tactics? Taught by whom? You might be able to bury shit, but you can’t do away with the stench.
You have to wonder if this CIA agent knows anything. Gitmo, for instance was mostly populated by people we bought; they wren’t caught on the battlefield, so there was no opportunity to kill them when they were caught. As for the militarization of the CIA after 9/11 he refers to, how about the CIA’s SAD division, whose paramilitary activities go back to Korea?
Boo hoo! There is nothing new, other than some guy’s perspective! It’s not gonna change anything!
How many Snowden / Manning it’s gonna take to find out who actually supplied the terror plot and flight path calculation to al-qaeda to hit the twin towers on 9/11?
Never mind “hitting them”. The question is, “How did they BLOW UP three towers on 9/11 when only two were hit by planes? (WTC 1,2 and 7).
I recall the fire-fighters being interviewed, “There was not so much as a phone, a desk, a computer, a lamp….nothing! in the rubble!”
Had only “the planes” brought down the towers the floors would have simply pancaked onto each other leaving a mighty tower of phones and desks and computers and lamps and bodies….
There’s a better Casablanca metaphor for the Senate Democrats.
You had to bite on the Casablanca reference, didn’t you!!!
It’s still the same old story. Only Maj. Strasser now works for us.
Conway’s Law
What is the communication structure of spooky (secrete-lawless) organizations?
SNAFU Principle
That isn’t how they conduct the torture research or what type of information is being collected, recorded, or ‘reprogrammed. The missing 90% of the report and the 99% of what wasn’t written down may account for the misunderstanding..
Some of the commenters here might find this NYT piece interesting….
**http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/us/politics/cia-first-planned-jails-abiding-by-us-standards-.html?ref=world
So, the choice is either kill or torture. The Empire does not take POW’s. Why do we then react in horror when a jihadist decapitates a westerner? They follow the same principles – torture or kill. Difference is they do it in a much smaller scale and they don’t redact the evidence…
Failure to extract relevant, truthful information from a subject is not a waste of time from the torturer’s perspective because of the pleasure derived from the activity. I have seen this first hand, in the eyes of men and women.
The photo is funny. It looks like some royalty is lying down and two slaves are carting him along.
They should have photoshopped out the shackles that seem to be inconveniently showing up in the picture.
” The agency became more involved in interrogation than intelligence gathering.”
This statement is far more accurate in characterizing the true nature of what went on in these abuses than the gentleman may ever know.
Two premises:
1) No actionable intelligence was ever obtained from the abused persons as a direct result of the tortures.
2) What can be inferred from the torture tactics used, both as revealed in the Torture Report and as revealed in the images of Abu Ghraib that forever changed how the world sees America, is that the abuses were not only characterized by extreme torture but also deliberately intended to demean and humiliate.
The first point speaks not to a program that sought to gain any information but failed to produce any actionable intelligence – although the latter is true and cited by many – but more to a program that WAS NEVER MEANT as a mechanism for intelligence extraction to begin with, although it was falsely promoted as having that objective. The true purpose of the torture program – mind control experimentation – could not be admitted to, because of its diabolic nature. And do a false wrapper was used.
According to a memo by then CIA director Dulles to then President Hoover, NO INTELLIGENCE is really sought from the subject of mind control torture for brainwashing, although he is not to know it. Interrogation, brutal interrogation, and not intelligence gathering, is a critically important feature of this process and interrogation is most brutal. Indeed, the agency will become involved in interrogation than intelligence gathering, as the gentleman in this interview accurately observed.
The second point, points to the tactics normally reserved for mind control torture for brainwashing. According to the memo, the torture used in mind control for brainwashing is so severe as to cause a disintegration of the personality which is soon followed by total submission, a mental state allegedly entered into by Zubaydah, according to the torture report. Zubaydah physically responded to mere eyebrow raising; snapping a finger got him to do something else. This is classic mind control and is as far removed from intelligence gathering as day is from night. At this point it is fair to say that the mental state of the man was so altered as to be incapable of yielding any information, useful or not.
The second point also betrays a mind control torture feature: humiliation. Rectal feeding is sexual humiliation at its worst, with the potential – if enough pressure to drive the liquid food is used – to actually drive fecal matter all the way up the alimentary canal, and straight into the mouth of the subject.
Both extreme forms of torture and humiliation can result in personality disintegration, hardly a state of mind you need your subject to be in if you expect to extract coherent, reliable and actionable information.
9/11 provided a golden opportunity for the sadistic orgies, and the Moslem was the object whose brain would be attempted to be forcibly transformed. Or destroyed. As Zubaydah’s obviously is today.
And I should know. Pls go read:
http://freedomfchs.lefora.com/topic/7442322/nanodevices-in-sensory-overload-mind-control-torture
Most of “these guys” who were tortured weren’t “captured,” they were kidnapped. And most of “these guys” were never on any battlefield. They were in their homes or places of work or on their farm or getting groceries at the street market and so forth. He even said that himself later in the conversation: “Once the U.S. went into “the business of interrogation,” U.S. allies in the “war on terror” were encouraged to hand over suspects — and they did, no matter how flimsy the evidence. Lots of others were turned in by bounty hunters. And of course we know that a lot of people falsely dimed out their personal enemies or political rivals.”
This former CIA officer is just yet another pompous insider so full of himself that he can’t see beyond his monstrous ego.
If you, Ken Silverstein, have some impression of him that you’d care to share, I’d be interested to read it from you.
Agreed. This piece is kind of warped without that kind of impression or any kind of challenging of the ex-CIA agent’s assumptions (or history), instead just passing off insider “wisdom” like this:
Torture grew inevitably out of the militarization of the CIA that took place after 9/11, this former CIA officer said, when the agency was tasked with obtaining information to support battlefield needs. “That’s important but it’s tactical information and the military’s intelligence agencies should handle that,” he said. “The agency became more involved in interrogation than intelligence gathering. There’s a whole generation of young officers who think that intelligence gathering is getting information out of a guy shackled to a chair.”
****
First of all, the chain of reasoning here is extremely obscure. How do these thoughts lead to one another? It’s far from clear. Secondly, why should I believe someone who thinks torture “inevitably” grew out of anything? Or that tactical information to support illegal wars of aggression is “important”?
The Intercept can do better.
Grew out of anything, that is, other than a culture of utter contempt for norms of human rights and international law. In that sense, I suppose it was inevitable. But that attitude on the part of the CIA and the US government generally far predates the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
Elsewhere Glenn Greenwald has been (rightly, IMO) sharply critical of using anonymous sources when not explaining why they need to remain anonymous. I think that applies here: why grant the former CIA officer anonymity here? Who is he/she, or why should her/his identity be kept secret?
This person reiterates the case that torture doesn’t work, which is a message I’m glad to see out there. And I agree congress is likely downplaying how much they were really told. So the message (except for the “we should have just killed them all” part) is fine, it’s just the means of reporting that I’d criticize here.
The fingerpointing continues. Yes, Congress has cleverly covered its ass by emphasizing that CIA officials lied about the methods and the number of victims during Congressional hearings. But Congress didn’t order the CIA to do this, and Congress didn’t commission legal opinions that it was okay to torture captives (whether battlefield POWs or folks sold to us by bounty hunters). Congress has an oversight role after the fact; Congress doesn’t issue the orders. Bush-Cheney signed and issued the orders. Bush-Cheney commissioned legal opinions from tame lawyers to make it all supposedly legal. And Cheney is on record saying (not under torture) that the CIA didn’t lie to the White House about what was being done.
Perhaps did not “order” the CIA to torture, but when various members of Congress like Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein were “advised” of what was going on I did not see them calling a presser to out the criminals.
Which means they are complicit in the torture.
And let’s be clear. Any discussions of “why” they tortured or “how” they tortured or “when” they tortured or “where” they tortured are beside the point.
Torture is an American and an international war crime. Period.
The only questions now should be: When will there be a full and open investigation into the torture with subpoena power, and if the individuals involved are found to be guilty then how and when will they be prosecuted and if convicted what will their sentences be?
These are the only questions we should be considering right now with the full force of Constitutional and international law.
Let the chips fall where they may.
“The whole question of torture could have been avoided if the military had “just killed all these guys when they were captured on the battlefield,”
I suspect that is exactly why drone murder was escalated under Obama.
Wow. You’re right, that would explain it. Smh. What a mess the gov’t has made for ALL Americans. WHAT A MESS!
“What a mess the gov’t has made for ALL Americans.”
Can’t agree more.
Our problem is the US is supposed to be a gov’t of the people, by the people, etc. This is the best we have to choose from? Torture or drone them, or just lock ’em up and throw away the key. Totally lawless.
But dead guys don’t talk. Only living guys talk. Torture doesn’t work, but there are other ways that do work. The CIA was stupid to go the torture route. But why would we be surprised that the CIA would do something stupid. Par for the course.
Precisely.
I notice that this scumbag tries to whitewash George W. Bush, by blaming the CIA for Bush’s own sneering, deliberate ignorance.