At least read the findings

I’m not going to pretend to have read the thousands of pages of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, published today. I haven’t made my way through more than a few pages of the executive summary (it is 600 pages long, I am told).

But I was struck over the weekend in Berlin when a colleague mentioned to me the photographic exhibit of German World War II atrocities located just inside the Brandenburg Gate, near a large and well-lit Christmas tree. It is only by acknowledging mistakes that governments can ensure avoiding them in the future.

The 20 findings and conclusions concerning the CIA program, which effectively ended more than eight years ago (or so we are led to believe) therefore merit my attention and yours, so here are the first ten (with a few random comments):

#1: The CIA’s use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.
It doesn’t say the program was useless. It doesn’t say CIA produced nothing or that the people doing the dirty work aren’t patriots. But it cites facts and figures indicating minimal results. This is fundamentally important, even if it has been known for years.
#2: The CIA’s justification for the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness.
Exaggerations of this sort are of course endemic, and not only in the CIA. When activities do not produce measurable results, it is easy to overstate what they produce and hard to refute, especially if the activity is cloaked in secrecy.
#3: The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others.
Ibid: when you are doing something secret, it is pretty easy to make it opaque. Of course “policymakers and others” might have asked more questions, but likely did not want to know.
#4: The conditions of confinement for CIA detainees were harsher than the CIA had represented to policymakers and others.
The committee goes on to say that the conditions were bad enough that they drove a number of detainees mad. It is not surprising you can’t get reliable information from people you’ve driven to distraction.
#5: The CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice, impeding a proper legal analysis of the CIA‘s Detention and Interrogation Program.
They presumably knew it wouldn’t pass muster, so why would they provide accurate information?
#6: The CIA has actively avoided or impeded congressional oversight of the program.
There is nothing more offensive to Congress than being scorned. Committees are perfectly capable of imagining being dissed. But in this case it looks likely that they were.
#7: The CIA impeded effective White House oversight and decision-making.
This is the Bush White House they are talking about, not the Obama White House, though I wonder if it was true of everyone in the Bush White House. Was Vice President Cheney really not aware of what was going on?
#8: The CIA’s operation and management of the program complicated, and in
some cases impeded, the national security missions of other Executive Branch
agencies.
Specifically the State Department, which was kept in the dark in ways that made its ambassadors look like fools in foreign eyes.
#9: The CIA impeded oversight by the CIA’s Office of Inspector General.
I hope you are not surprised.
#10:The CIA coordinated the release of classified information to the media, including inaccurate information concerning the effectiveness of the CIA‘s enhanced interrogation techniques.
No kidding. Keep it secret but make sure the journalists know how important it is. This is textbook Washington.
Numbers #11-20 tomorrow!
PS: Former CIA directors and deputy directors vigrously refute the Senate report in today’s Wall Street Journal. More on their perspective, which is interesting, tomorrow.
PPS: Here is the June 2013 CIA response to the Senate committee report.
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