CIA Director Admits to Waterboarding

While you were busy with Super Tuesday, CIA Director Michael Hayden was acknowledging to Congress that the CIA actually has used waterboarding on three “high value” detainees.

Until Hayden’s comments before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence today, no senior U.S. intelligence official had publicly acknowledged the technique.

Hayden, who prohibited the practice of waterboarding by CIA agents in 2006, confirmed that his agency waterboarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim Nashiri, in efforts to compel the men to talk. He told senators the agency believed at the time “that additional catastrophic attacks were imminent.” The men told CIA interrogators things that “led to reliable information,” Hayden told reporters after the hearing…

The CIA chief asserted to reporters later that Mohammed and Zubaydah had provided roughly 25 percent of the information the CIA had on al Qaeda from human sources….Some intelligence officials who reviewed reports based on those interrogations have challenged the idea they provided useful information.

So was Bush misled about the use of these techniques or did he lie to the American people when he said “We don’t torture“? Or do we not mind being lied to anymore?

But of course, whether Bush was prevaricating depends on your definition of torture. The Director of Intelligence, Michael McConnell, recently said that the definition of torture should be simple: “”Is it excruciatingly painful to the point of forcing someone to say something because of the pain?”" (BBC News)

Applying that test, he conceded—or certainly seemed to concede—that waterboarding qualifies as torture. “”If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful!”" McConnell exclaimed. “”Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture.”" When asked if waterboarding would be torture if used by the government, he wasn’t sure. (BBC News)

But McConnell did seem sure about one thing: if it is ever determined (he doesn’t say by whom) that waterboarding is torture, “”there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it.”" Of course, this isn’t going to happen to anyone any time soon. Both McConnell and Mukasey, while quite sure they would consider waterboarding torture if it were happening to them, are still unable to decide that it is torture as applied to a suspected terrorist. No amount of expert testimony appears to be sufficient to tip the scale.

At the time a presidential finding was signed in 2002 approving the use of harsh interrogation techniques including waterboarding, one of the CIA’s most senior officials registered his objections to the technique, which a senior intelligence official failed to acknowledge today when he stated on the condition of anonymity that the current debate over the use of the technique is troubling to intelligence professionals. In fact, a number of intelligence professionals, current and former, object to the use of the technique. (ABC)

On the other hand, though Mukasey and the Bush Administration aren’t sure that waterboarding is really torture, they have put into place a new procedure that would change Hayden’s current “no waterboarding” policy by allowing it in the future only with permission from the president and after everyone in the chain of command (if that’s the right phrase) has asked for, and received, permission to use it from the next person up.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey, whose department is investigating the destruction of the agency’s tapes of those interrogations, has refused to rule out the future use of waterboarding. But Mr. McConnell, in his testimony on Tuesday, said that new procedures were in place to limit authorization for using the technique: General Hayden would have to notify Mr. McConnell, who would have to ask Mr. Mukasey, who in turn would have to obtain the president’s approval before authorizing a waterboarding. (NYT)

Wait. It sounds as if McConnell is saying that waterboarding will now require the president’s approval. But I must just be confused from having sat up all night watching the primary results. If waterboarding is torture, how can the president’s approval make it okay? Surely even the president can’t authorize the CIA to disobey the law. Which takes us back to the question of whether it is torture and to that 2002 presidential finding that “enhanced interrogation techniques”—including waterboarding— are permissible in certain circumstances. I remember that I didn’t know at the time what waterboarding was.

Anyway, it seems that Hayden is imploring Congress not to “limit” the CIA in its interrogation techniques. I am not sure what he means, but here is what he said:

“One should not expect them to play outside the box because we’ve entered a new period of threat or danger to the nation, OK? So there’s no wink and nod here,” he said. “If you create the box, we will play inside the box without exception.” (ABC News)

Maybe I’m just tired and bleary eyed from staying up all night to watch the primaries because that can’t be right. It almost sounds as if he is asking Congress not to make any laws that would require the CIA not to further violate existing law. After all, we are bound by our treaty obligations.

The previous use of torture three times equals—unless I’m too tired to tally them up correctly—three previous violations of the law. Isn’t somebody somewhere in the administration alreadyin trouble for that? Or does that not happen until someone proves to Mukasey and McConnell and Hayden beyond any shadow of any reasonable or unreasonable doubt that waterboarding is torture? And if that happens, would they argue that the law shouldn’t apply retroactively even though it was in place when the waterboarding occurred?

I can’t parse this through. I am going to bed. All of this sounds as if it comes straight out of Orwell, which can’t be right. Can it? Perhaps I am dreaming now. Doubtless when I wake up sometime around noon today it will all make sense.