These are the words of Winston Smith, a protagonist of a well-known dystopian novel 1984 by George Orwell, which exposed its reading public to the pervasive totalitarian politics of constant warfare. As at the time of its publishing, it still persists to relate to the global issues of today, and not just on the matter of totalitarianism, but what can be seen from the quote, as well as, many other various articles that are circulating the newsfeed in this age of post-War on Terror. That is, the effectiveness of US counterterrorism strategy, specifically its use of torture in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) detention and interrogation programs.
These programs have been set up as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, involving four al-Qaeda hijacked airliners that were crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon outside Washington D.C., and in a field in Pennsylvania. This resulted in destruction and thousands of casualties, shaking the American citizens and the US defense and security establishment to their cores. Or, as Dianne Feinstein, the Chairman of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, called “the largest attack against the American homeland in our history”.
Apart from the immediate effects of thousands of casualties, mass destruction, and various closings, evacuations, and cancellations, what was begotten in this terror was the grand strategy dubbed the “Global War on Terror”. This defense and military campaign, which became the main focus of the 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS), not only affected the US domestically in its development of military strategy and national security policies. Above all, it was an international phenomenon that allowed the US to exercise its influence abroad, affecting millions around the globe.
Certainly, this strategy was proven to be successful in achieving certain objectives, most notably removal of several of prominent terrorist figures, such as Osama Bin-Laden, the founder and the head of Al-Qaeda terrorist organization that was claimed to be responsible for the 9/11.
However, in doing so, the US waged wars in numerous countries in the Middle East, as means of promoting peace and liberating millions of people from the brutalities of the terrorist regimes reigning the regions, like that of Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. However, in doing so, these wars resulted in over 1.3million casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan alone.
Keeping that in mind, the Global War on Terror, as a major strategic construct, is officially over. Needless to say, the US hasn’t abandoned its aggressive counterterrorism, but merely switched to smaller-scale combat operations.
Nevertheless, its legacy, specifically its more insidious and covert mechanisms are still an issue today, including the gruesome CIA interrogation and detention programs and its institutions. Particularly when taking into the account the arduous battle that has taken place between the CIA and the Senate (earlier this year) following the declassification and the subsequent public release of the “The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture” in the late December of 2014.
The report looks at the history and various abuses of the program used in interrogating the 119 unknown individuals who were held in custody by the CIA. As a result, the report goes on informing the public about the futility of torture methods. This can be seen as a useful resource for public awareness on the issue, since according to the 2014 survey by Amnesty International showed that around 45% of Americans were supportive of the use of torture in preventing terrorist attacks.
This may be attributed to the misleading representation on the effectiveness of the brutal practice by the media. For instance, through television series like 24, a popular political thriller serial drama about a man running the Counter-Terrorist Unit, and saving the nation in the fight against terrorism via the means of such methods like torture.
However, it’s not just the public in general that has become subject to the misconception regarding the efficacy of such torture programs. The White House, the Congress, the National Security Council, the Department of Justice, and the CIA Office of Inspector General have also been exposed to the falsified information concerning not only the effectiveness of the so-called “enhanced” interrogative techniques, but the nature of the interrogation process, and the significance of the detainees captured.
Take for instance, the CIA memorandum known as the “Effectiveness Memo” back in 2005, which advocated the efficiency of its techniques in producing intelligence, stating that “[we] assess we would not have succeeded in overcoming the resistance of Khalid Shaykh Muhammad (KSM), Abu Zubaydah, and other equally resistant high-value terrorist detainees without applying, in a careful, professional and safe manner, the full range of interrogation techniques”.
Such claims compromised a major arguing point provided by the CIA in justifying their interrogation and detention program, while also providing a range of examples of “critical intelligence” attained “after applying enhanced interrogation techniques”, e.g. the Karachi Plot (a plan to destroy the US Consulate of the Karachi city in Pakistan), the Heathrow plot (a terrorist scheme to detonate liquid explosives, packed on board airliners travelling from the UK to the US and Canada, masked as soft drinks), and many more. However, in reality, detainees who were subjected to torture revealed nothing, produced fabricated information, or disclosed information that had been already discovered through traditional, non-violent interrogation means.
In fact, 7 of the 39 CIA detainees known to have undergone the CIA’s torture programs divulged no intelligence while in custody.
The aforementioned figures are not surprising, considering that at least 26 of the 119 known detainees were wrongfully held and did not meet the legal standard of detention as recognized in the September 2001 Memorandum of Notification (MON). It is also useful to note that these numbers represent only the known fraction of the individuals detained by the CIA, for the CIA failed to keep an accurate and comprehensive number of individuals it had detained or subjected to its enhanced interrogation programs. This means that 119 is the least number of the people held in the CIA custody.
The officially known number of those who was involved in the torture were given inhumane treatment, far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others. The interrogations as mentioned in the report entailed waterboarding, sleep deprivation up to 180 hours and nudity, often in conjunction with slaps and “wallings” (slamming detainees against a wall), and sometimes even mock executions (e.g. Russian roulette). Moreover, despite the warnings given by the medical personnel that the techniques could exacerbate the physical injuries of the detainees, the CIA continued their severe interrogations, as in the case of Abu Zubaydah whose bullet wound (incurred in his capture) deteriorated as a result.
Thus, the report not only revealed the brutality and ineffectiveness of the CIA torture, but made the public question the validity of torture as an information source. Similarly, as in the case of Orwell’s 1984, Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent of considerable experience in al-Qaeda interrogations, commented on the inadequacy of coercive interrogation, saying that “When they are in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them. That means the information you’re getting is useless.”
Scientifically speaking, “A variety of factors such as stress, fatigue, distraction, and intoxication can impair the capacity to retrieve and perceive memories accurately” as it has been observed by the Intelligence Science Board in their book Educing Information, containing multiple essays, references and studies on the “science and art” of both interrogation and intelligence gathering. This demonstrates that the increased intensity of the CIA enhanced interrogation techniques is in fact detrimental to the effective intelligence gathering that could actually benefit the anti-terrorist forces.
It has also been noted that “in most U.S. law enforcement interrogations” they aim to “obtain a confession rather than to educe information”, which not only induces the interrogators to use more pressure, but acts also influences interrogator’s inferences and judgements about the detainee’s guilt. In short, the CIA’s interrogations of the detainees, even if they are mere suspects, can potentially make them terrorist organization’s key operatives.
More importantly, according to studies such as Tjosvold and Sun, 2001, “coercion creates a competitive dynamic that facilitates rejection of the other party’s position where persuasion creates a cooperative dynamic that facilitates greater openness to the other party’s position and productive conflict resolution”. Hence, persuasion may be the key to the more effective and humane alternatives for the intelligence gathering, which in turn would also restore US’s impaired moral standing within the international community. For example, when a State Department annual report (2005) criticized China and other nations for human rights violations, China dismissed the criticisms, accusing the US for using a “double standard” in judging other countries’ behavior.”
Nonetheless, despite the public release of Committee Study report in 2014 and Obama’s executive order 13491 of January 2009, which limited the CIA’s custody time and interrogation techniques, the issue of torture and its use in the US counterterrorism strategy is still alive and intact. Possibly more so than before, given that the newly-elected president, Donald Trump believes it to be an effective and necessary tool in fighting terrorism as he repeatedly expressed his support it throughout his campaign, starting from February this year,
“Torture works. OK, folks? … they asked me the question: What do you think of waterboarding? Absolutely fine. But we should go much stronger than waterboarding.”
In contrast, given the evidence and arguments in this paper, I conclude that torture is an infringement on basic human rights, ineffective intelligence gathering, and detrimental to the US relations within the international community; and therefore should not be used.