Stuart Taylor Jr. wrote a fascinating article for The Atlantic (over a week ago). For it, he talked to Philip Zelikow. Zelikow is, of course, a former State Department official. As Stuart points out, Zelikow has opened “a window into how the Bush administration’s antiterrorism policy-making process went wrong.”
The years of revelations about White House pressure on the Justice Department to concoct far-fetched legal rationales for physically tormenting terrorism suspects, for wiretapping without warrants, and for implementing other Bush policies has obscured a still more fundamental flaw in the Bush policy-making process.
That flaw was the almost exclusive focus on what could be done to captives as a matter of law—as interpreted by aggressive advocates of virtually unlimited presidential war powers—rather than on what should be done as a matter of morality and policy, taking account of careful cost-benefit analysis and past experience.
The result was that while approving in 2002 and 2003 the use of “extreme physical pressure on captives” during interrogations, the CIA and the White House not only disregarded the lessons of history but also engaged in “little substantive policy analysis or interagency consideration.”
So said Philip Zelikow, a lawyer who was a senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from February 2005 until December, in a probing lecture for the Houston Journal of International Law on April 26.
The administration, according to Zelikow, pushed interrogators simply to “do everything you can [to break captives], so long as it is not punishable as a crime under American law.”
He also said: “My own view is that the cool, carefully considered, methodical, prolonged, and repeated subjection of captives to physical torment, and the accompanying psychological terror, is immoral. I offer no opinion as to whether such conduct is a federal crime; merely that it is immoral.”
Zelikow is – in my opinion – exactly right. Something does not have to be a crime for one to decide not to do it nonetheless. Not all immoral acts are illegal. That does not, however, mean that the government should go ahead and do what it wants to do. Interrogators are, obviously, always walking a fine line between that what is morally permissible and that which is not, but in some cases one can quite clearly say that interrogators have crossed the line / have acted immoral. A classic example of this is so-called waterboarding.
Perhaps there is a hole in the law which makes it possible for CIA interrogators to ‘waterboard’ terrorism suspects, but it being legal does not mean that they should actually do so.
A related article appeared at the Christian Science Monitor. CSM’s Alexandra Marks has the opportunity to “tour secret intelligence agency.” Alexandra writes:
The Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and 15 other federal agencies funnel information through the center. The data include government briefings, satellite photos, classified cables, phone conversations, even gossip and routine threats – tens of thousands of potential intelligence bits a day. Most of it is nonsense, called “noise” by the spies. But somewhere, amid all the chatter, there’s the occasional “signal” – something of import or interest. And when they find it, the NCTC thrums to life.
The center is the Bush administration’s attempt to prove that in the aftermath of 9/11, top officials got it: They need to “connect the dots” between national and international intelligence. And that’s where the dichotomy lies. This secret intelligence facility also turns out to be a tourist attraction of sorts – at least for reporters, lawmakers, law enforcement, and counterintelligence officials from around the world. It’s the public face of the nation’s “secret” counterterrorism efforts. Indeed, the NCTC comes complete with tour guides, photographers, and a gift shop full of the latest counterterrorism memorabilia – mugs, T-shirts, jackets, and even NCTC memorial coins…
Overall, more than 400 people work at the facility. Many spend 12 hours a day, four days a week sifting through information that reflects in some cases the worst of human nature. Occasionally, they get to see evidence of good, when an informer or citizen tips them off – often at great risk – about something terrible that might be coming.
It’s too early to know if the center will help make the country safer. The war on terror involves more than just rounding up billions of bits and bytes. The material has to be analyzed, the threats recognized and communicated, and all the various departments have to work together in responding – something that hasn’t always happened in the past.
Truly a very interesting article. Read the whole thing at the CSM.
One thing about the Christian Science Monitor: bloggers, myself included, link way too little to it. It is a great source for news; truly “fair and balanced,” and very well informed.
It deserves more credit than it gets.
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