The CIA's Willful Ignorance on Harsh Interrogations, By Robert Baer

[jefferson_dem]

The CIA's Willful Ignorance on Harsh Interrogations
By Robert Baer

Amid all the back-and-forth recriminations over the abusive CIA interrogations, one crucial fact is being overlooked; when the use of harsh techniques like waterboarding and prolonged sleep deprivation began in 2002, the CIA simply had no idea what it was doing.

The agency's officers in Vietnam who understood hostile interrogations were long retired. In the post-Cold War era spying had become a relatively genteel occupation — the best intelligence was obtained through persuasion rather than coercion. New CIA recruits were even counseled against using blackmail because the information it produced couldn't be relied upon. So it shouldn't come a surprise when we hear self-confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month. The CIA interrogator, who was once my colleague, knew nothing about the cumulative effect of the practice, or if there was a law of diminishing returns. (See pictures from inside Guantanamo Bay.)

And it's also no surprise, then, that CIA brass weren't exactly excited about this new directive. (Of course, it's also no surprise they would claim that now either.) One former CIA officer who was part of the discussions that led to the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah in 2002 told me that much of CIA management was dead set against the agency taking on the task. Among other objections, they felt that the military was better equipped to deal with interrogating prisoners of war; the military, after all, had its own interrogation school. But, as the message came down, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, apparently aware of the potential political firestorm that would result, had grown nervous about the Pentagon's initial involvement.

I asked the former CIA officer the question that former Vice President Dick Cheney wants more of a focus on these days — whether the abusive interrogations worked. To a degree, he said. Through the course of the interrogations of Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and other al-Qaeda prisoners the CIA learned a lot more than it knew before about al-Qaeda communications, its use of safe houses, codes, and the way al-Qaeda looks at the world. In other words, pretty much all low-level stuff. He said there were no dramatic confessions he knew of, the kind we see virtually every week in the popular TV show 24 that prevent a catastrophic attack in the nick of time.

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http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1893127,00.html

[EFerrari]

1. Yeah, right. Hey, Robert, between the Cold War and now

CIA did or oversaw PLENTY of torture in Mexico and in Central America. But, thanks for playing "Spot that CIA Apologist".