When the Prisoners Start Policing the Wardens
There’s another point, too, that I have to make. And it’s just not the tactical effect of this technique or that. It’s the broader effect on CIA officers.
I mean, if you’re a current CIA officer today — in fact, I know this has happened at the agency after the release of these documents. Officers are saying, “The things I’m doing now — will this happen to me in five year because of the things I am doing now?”
And the answer they’ve been given by senior leadership is the only answer possible, which is, “I can’t guarantee you that won’t happen, but I do know it won’t happen under this president.”
Now, think what that means. The basic foundation of the legitimacy of the agency’s action has shifted from some durability of law to a product of the American political process. That puts agency officers in a horrible position.
So I think the really dangerous effect of this, Chris, is that you will have agency officers stepping back from the kinds of things that the nation expects them to do. I mean, if you were to go to an agency officer today and say, “Go do this,” and, “Why am I authorized to do this?”
And I say, “Well, it’s authorized by the president. The attorney general says it’s lawful. And it’s been briefed to Congress.” That agency officer’s going to say, “Yeah, I know, but I see what’s going on here now. Have you run it by the ACLU? What’s the New York Times editorial board think? Have you discussed this with any potential presidential candidates?”
You’re going to have this agency on the front line of defending you in this current war playing back from the line.
I understand where Hayden is coming from with these remarks, but my inevitable response is: listen, if there is anyone I want critically evaluating the implications of their actions, it’s CIA agents.
Americans often puff their chest and speak loudly about being the freest nation on the planet and I generally don’t disagree with that estimation, at least on a gross level of analysis. But one would be remiss in failing to acknowledge that there are a myriad of subtle, and in some senses not so subtle, ways in which the bureaucratic technocracy of our modern nation-states undermines our freedom (small “f”) while still reinforcing and protecting our Freedom (big ‘f”). The degree to which said technocracy spells out and cultivates an intuitive deference to symbols and centres of authority in our social hierarchy is surprisingly (perhaps not so) ubiquitous.
It is in calling out and challenging these vortexes of power when they extend beyond the acceptable limits of their scope that freedom-fighters from both the liberal and conservative persuasions are at their best. But all too often, the omnipresence of bureaucratic dominance has filtered into our every day lives in such a fashion as to dull the edges of those ideological scythes to a frightening degree. It is this ingrain, institutional, and knee-jerk deference to authority that I can’t help see running throughout every argument that Hayden trots out on this front. [Read more →]
April 22, 2009 5 Comments
(Don’t) Stop the ACLU!
April 20, 2009 2 Comments
The Torture Memos
(Updates below and continuing as more reactions come in…)
You can read the memos here. Sullivan has some initial thoughts up here:
I do not believe that any American president has ever orchestrated, constructed or so closely monitored the torture of other human beings the way George W. Bush did. It is clear that it is pre-meditated; and it is clear that the parsing of torture techniques that you read in the report is a simply disgusting and repellent piece of dishonesty and bad faith. When you place it alongside the Red Cross’ debriefing of the torture victims, the fit is almost perfect.
The legal memorandum for the CIA, prepared by Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, reviewed 10 enhanced techniques for interrogating Zubaydah, and determined that none of them constituted torture under U.S. criminal law. The techniques were: attention grasp, walling (hitting a detainee against a flexible wall), facial hold, facial slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, insects placed in a confinement box, and waterboarding.
April 16, 2009 58 Comments
