[Ppnews] Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/

April 23, 2009


As the Shredders Hum

Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

By RAY McGOVERN

"The aim of torture is to destroy a person as a 
human being, to destroy their identity and soul. 
It is more evil than murder... "

-- Inge Genefke (1938) Danish Doctor & Human Rights Activist

Well, well. The New York Times has finally put a 
story together on the key role played by two faux 
psychologists in helping the Bush administration 
devise ways to torture people. We should, I 
suppose, be thankful for small favors.

Apparently, a NY Times exposé requires a 21-month 
gestation period. The substance of the 
Wednesday’s lead story on torture had already 
appeared in an article in the July 2007 issue of 
<http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/07/torture200707>Vanity 
Fair.

Katherine Eban, a Brooklyn-based journalist who 
writes about public health, authored that article 
and titled it “Rorschach and Awe.” It was the 
result of a careful effort to understand the role 
of psychologists in the torture of detainees in Guantanamo.

She identified the two psychologists as James 
Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who she reported 
were inexperienced in interrogations and “had no 
proof of their tactics’ effectiveness” but 
nevertheless sold the Bush administration on a 
plan to subject detainees to “psychic 
demolition”­essentially severing them from their 
personalities and scaring them “almost to death.”

In Wednesday’s Times, reporters Scott Shane and 
Mark Mazzetti plow much of the same ground. 
Please don’t misunderstand. They deserve 
considerable praise for finally pushing their 
article past the Times’ timorous censors, but 
let’s not pretend the startling revelations are new.

The Times ought to allow the likes of Shane and 
Mazzetti to publish these stories when they are 
fresh. Alternatively, the once-known-as 
“newspaper of record” might at least report the 
findings of the likes of Eban, rather than ignoring them for nearly two years.

It’s pretty much all out there now, isn’t it? Not 
only the Times’ better-late-than-never exposé, but also:

-The (leaked) text of the report of the 
International Committee of the Red Cross on the 
torture of “high-value” detainees;

-The too-slick-by-half “legal opinions” under Department of Justice letterhead;

-The findings of the 18-month investigation by 
the Senate Armed Services Committee highlighting 
that it was President George W. Bush’s dismissal 
of Geneva (in his executive order of February 7, 
2002) that “opened the door” to abuse of detainees.

The North/Gonzales Memorial Shredder

One issue of some urgency has been overlooked in 
the media, but probably not by those complicit in 
torture by the CIA and other parts of the 
government. That issue is the need to protect 
evidence from being shredded. There has been no 
sign that either Director of National 
Intelligence Dennis Blair or CIA Director Leon 
Panetta has proscribed the destruction of 
documents/tapes/etc. relating to torture, while 
decisions on if and how to proceed are being worked out.

Many will remember how Oliver North (when the 
crimes of Iran-Contra were being uncovered) and 
Alberto Gonzales (when White House involvement in 
the Valerie Plame affair was becoming clearer) 
made such good use of the days of hiatus between 
the announced decision to investigate and the 
belated order to safeguard all evidence from destruction.

One would think that Attorney General Eric 
Holder, or President Barack Obama himself, would 
have long since issued such an order. Indeed, the 
absence of such an order would suggest they would 
just as soon avoid as many of the painful truths 
about torture as they can. The issue would seem 
particularly urgent in the wake of Obama’s 
gratuitous get-out-of-jail free card issued to 
CIA personnel complicit in torture. They might 
well draw the (erroneous) conclusion that they 
have been, in effect, pardoned by the president 
and thus are within the law in destroying 
relevant evidence­to the degree that being within the law matters any more.

Better Shred Than Dead

And what about the president’s decision not to 
prosecute those in CIA who engaged in torture? What is going on here?

Retired U.S. Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who 
was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of 
staff, told Frontline on December 13, 2005 that 
“up to 100 detainees had died while in detention. 
Of that 100, some 27 have been declared 
officially homicides.” Those running Bush 
administration interrogations are no doubt aware 
by now that the War Crimes Act (18 U.S. Code 
2441) passed by a Republican-controlled Congress 
in 1996 provides that the death penalty can be 
given to those responsible for the deaths of detainees.

And yet, the President Obama struck not an angry, 
but rather a defensive tone on the recent release 
of the four torture documents issued by the 
Mafia-style lawyers of the Justice Department. 
This seems rather odd coming from a professor of 
constitutional law. The president and his 
advisers have appeared almost apologetic in explaining/justifying the release.

In the face of Rush Limbaugh/Dick Cheney-type 
charges that the revelations endanger national 
security, the White House explains that most of 
the information was already in the public domain 
(in the recently leaked report of the 
International Committee of the Red Cross, for 
example). Hey, Mr. constitutional law professor 
and now president, how about the fact that the 
Freedom of Information Act requires your 
administration to release such information. How 
about acknowledging that you are just doing your 
sworn duty to enforce the law­or is that notion 
quaint, obsolete, or somehow passé these days?

Misplaced Loyalty or Fear?

It is highly unusual for the president to feel it 
necessary to visit CIA headquarters in Langley, 
Virginia. Vivid in my memory is the visit by 
President George W. Bush on September 26, 2001, 
just two weeks after intelligence/defense/policy 
failures permitted the attacks of September 11.

For some time it remained something of a puzzle 
why the president felt it prudent to appear at 
CIA with his arm around then-CIA Director George 
Tenet, endorsing his leadership without 
reservation and bragging about having the best 
intelligence service in the world. In retrospect, it was a Faustian bargain.

Former CIA Director and Medal of Freedom winner, 
George Tenet, can be forgiven for being somewhat 
apprehensive these days­especially in the wake of 
the article by Shane and Mazzetti. But let's 
leave aside for now the obviously heinous 
misdeeds­like running George W. Bush's global 
Gestapo complete with secret prisons and torture 
chambers, a criminal enterprise that Tenet 
shoe-horned into the operations directorate of the CIA.

Let's pick a case of simpler, more familiar 
white-collar crime­Scooter Libby-style perjury 
and obstruction of justice. Those who remember 
Watergate and other crimes will be aware that the 
cover-up constitutes an additional­and often more 
provable­crime, especially when it involves perjury and obstruction of justice.

Until now, Bush has managed to escape blame for 
his outrageous inactivity before 9/11 because his 
subordinates­first and foremost, Tenet­have 
covered up for him. Faustian bargain? Call it 
mutual blackmail, if you prefer the vernacular.

Tenet gave the president enough warning to 
warrant, to compel some sort of action on his 
part. But Tenet's lackadaisical management of the 
CIA and intelligence community was at least as 
important a factor in the success of the attacks of 9/11.

Tenet should have been fired after 9/11. But 
President Bush needed Tenet, or at least Tenet's 
silence, as much as Tenet needed Bush, or at least Bush's forgiveness.

What developed might be described as a case of 
mutual blackmail disguised as bonhomie. Bush was 
keenly aware that Tenet had the wherewithal to 
let the world know how many warnings he had given 
the president and that this could reduce Bush to 
a criminally negligent, blundering fool.

George W. Bush would have had to kiss goodbye the 
role of cheerleader/war president­and so much 
else. Thus, Tenet had become critical to Bush's 
political survival. And Tenet? All he needed was 
not to be blamed – not to be fired.

The bargain: I, George Bush, will keep you on and 
even praise your performance; you, George Tenet, 
will keep your mouth shut about all the warnings 
you gave me during the spring and summer of 2001. Tenet, it is clear, agreed.

On Sept. 26, 2001, the president motored out to 
CIA headquarters, puts his arm around Tenet and 
told the cameras, "We've got the best 
intelligence we can possibly have thanks to the men and women of the CIA."

Tenet Goes Bush One Better

In his sworn testimony of April 14, 2004, before 
the 9/11 Commission, Tenet outdid himself trying 
to honor his bargain with Bush. The commissioners 
were interested in what the president had been 
told during the critical month of August 2001.

Answering a question from Commissioner Timothy 
Roemer, Tenet referred to the president's long 
vacation (July 29-Aug. 30, 2001) in Crawford and 
insisted that he did not see the president at all in August.

"You never talked with him?" Roemer asked.

"No," Tenet replied, explaining that for much of 
August he, too, was "on leave."

That evening, a CIA spokesman called reporters to 
say that Tenet had misspoken, and that he had 
briefed Bush on Aug. 17 and 31, 2001. The 
spokesman played down the Aug. 17 briefing as 
uneventful and indicated that the second briefing 
took place after Bush had returned to Washington.

Funny how Tenet could have forgotten his first 
visit to Crawford. In his memoir, “At the Center 
of the Storm,” Tenet waxed eloquent about the 
"president graciously driving me around the 
spread in his pickup and me trying to make small 
talk about the flora and the fauna."

But the visit was not limited to small talk. In 
his book Tenet writes: "A few weeks after the 
August 6 PDB was delivered, I followed it to 
Crawford to make sure the president stayed current on events."

The Aug. 6, 2001 President's Daily Brief 
contained the article "Bin Laden Determined to 
Strike in the US." According to Ron Suskind's The 
One-Percent Doctrine, the president reacted by 
telling the CIA briefer, "All right, you've covered your ass now."

Clearly, Tenet needed to follow up on that. Was 
Tenet again in Crawford just one week later? 
According to a White House press release, 
President Bush on Aug. 25 told visitors to 
Crawford, "George Tenet and I" drove up the canyon "yesterday."

If, as Tenet says in his memoir, it was the Aug. 
6, 2001, PDB that prompted his visit on Aug. 17, 
what might have brought him back on Aug. 24? That 
was the day after Tenet had been briefed on 
Zacarias Moussaoui training to fly a 747 and 
other suspicion-arousing information.

The evidence is very strong that Tenet told Bush 
chapter and verse. The extraordinary lengths to 
which Tenet has gone to disguise that has the 
former CIA director skating very close to perjury – if not over the line.

Real Terrorists: Moussaoui and Reid

A note on Moussaoui: despite strong encouragement 
from FBI special agent/attorney Coleen Rowley at 
the time, the government never interviewed 
Moussaoui for information on a possible “second wave” of 9/11-type attacks.

Moussaoui knew Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber who 
almost downed an airliner on its way from London 
to the U.S., and might have provided forewarning, 
if he were asked in the three months between 9/11 
and Reid’s attempt in December 2001. Given what 
amounted to a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy, there 
is no telling, so to speak, what intelligence 
might have been elicited from Moussaoui.

It gets worse: it appears Reid was not 
effectively interviewed either. The nonchalant 
handling of Moussaoui and Reid greatly diminishes 
the credibility of arguments that torture was 
felt to be necessary because of the overweening 
fear of follow-up attacks. The administration 
claims it had to pull out all the stops­while in 
reality it failed to take rudimentary steps to 
acquire information from known terrorists already in U.S. custody.

Obama’s Faustian Bargain?

In a recent article on torture, I asked what 
might be holding the Obama administration back 
from appointing an independent prosecutor to 
investigate all this, so that as a nation we 
could hold to account any proven guilty and put 
this shameful chapter of American history behind us once and for all.

A reader replied in an email offering this answer 
to what is holding the administration back: “John 
D. Rockefeller, IV, and the Democrats who knew 
[about the torture] and did nothing.” The sender 
signed the email: “Kathleen M. Rockefeller Uncowardly Cousin.”

The disclosures in the Shane/Mazzetti article, 
and plenty of other evidence suggest that this 
may not be far off the mark. The fact that so 
many Democratic leaders had complicit knowledge 
of the torture is no doubt one of the powerful forces working on our president.

Maybe, just maybe, the president insisted on 
releasing the torture memos with a view toward 
determining whether Americans really care, 
whether we would be appropriately outraged­so 
outraged that we would put inexorable pressure on 
him to hold everyone, repeat everyone, accountable.

Ray McGovern was an Army officer and CIA analyst 
for almost 30 year. He now serves on the Steering 
Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for 
Sanity. He is a contributor to 
<http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html>Imperial 
Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, 
edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. 
Clair (Verso). He can be reached at: 
<mailto:rrmcgovern at aol.com>rrmcgovern at aol.com

The original version of this article appeared at Consortiumnews.com.




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