Drawbacks of Fighting Terrorism with Torture

Recorded from National Public Radio's "Morning Edition"

The Drawbacks of Fighting Terrorism with Torture
by Steve Inskeep

In a desperate drive to catch suspected terrorists before they can strike, the United States used torture and other harsh interrogation techniques. But that can often lead to more problems, including wild goose chases due to unreliable information generated under duress, the author of a new book says.

How the United States gathers intelligence, and how the White House directs the war on terrorism are just two of the subjects covered in Ron Suskind's book: "The One Percent Doctrine".

Suskind takes his readers into the interrogations of some of the most highly prized prisoners in the war on terrorism -- Abu Zubaydah, and the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

Suskind says pressure to generate intelligence came from the top. President Bush took a hands-on approach to monitoring interrogations after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"He was interested in a very specific, granular way all the time. He was constantly asking folks inside of CIA, 'What's happening with interrogations? Are these techniques working?' Can we trust what we get? The president ... is involved -- some people say too involved -- in the granular day-to-day grit of this war on terror."

That can often lead the government to conduct nonproductive searches, Suskind says.

In March 2002, amid criticism over the failure to capture Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders, Zubaydah, a suspected member of the terrorist group, was captured in Pakistan. President Bush touted Zubaydah as a key player, but U.S. intelligence officials considered him a lower-level "recruiter/travel agent," Suskind says.

"What that disparity drives is a ferocious interrogation protocol for Abu Zubaydah," Suskind says. Zubaydah, who had been shot three times during his capture, was helped back to health, then tortured, the author says.

"And this man, mentally unbalanced, clearly so, basically begins to talk about everything under the sun," Suskind says.

Zubaydah's tips that major U.S. landmarks were targeted for terrorist attacks proved to be largely unfounded.

"Virtually none of them were targets," Suskind says.

In an earlier conversation in this series, Harvard law professor and author Alan Dershowitz said torture can be useful in some cases. But Suskind disagrees.

"What the evidence shows is that there are cases in which some information that was valuable came from very, very harsh techniques," Suskind says. "On balance, what the evidence shows more clearly is that torture creates many, many more problems than it can ever solve. That in some ways, that information is probably costing too much."

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The torture memo by John Yoo shown in the video is available at (please note that it's a searchable PDF):

http://www.aclu.org/files/pdfs/safefree/yoo_army_torture_memo.pdf

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Vice-Admiral Gunn's testimony before the Senate is available at:

http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=3686&wit_id=7651

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A link to Vice-Admiral Gunn's complete testimony before Congress is available at the bottom of the "more info" drop down.

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(cont.) "The stakes are incredibly high. In the balance hangs the ability of the United States to maintain the integrity of our counter terrorism policy; improve intelligence cooperation with allies; support the human intelligence community in employing proven, effective methods for gathering actionable information; and re-establish the moral authority necessary to restore the United States as a world leader in upholding human rights."

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(cont.) "This Congress and the new Administration have a window of opportunity to conduct an examination that signals to the American people and to the world that the policies of the last seven years were an aberration and that the United States is invested in creating an effective, long-term strategy for counter terrorism and intelligence gathering which adheres to American principles and values and to United States and international law." (cont.)

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(cont.) "The Bush Administration's misguided embrace of torture, secret prisons and renditions to torture came at an enormous cost to our American values, our laws, and our counter terrorism efforts. Repairing our reputation as a nation committed to human rights and building a more sustainable framework for national security policy going forward requires a comprehensive examination of the policies and practices that sanctioned torture and abuse." (cont.)

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(cont.) "Did the use of torture spark terrorist recruitment, increase danger to our troops, and damage U.S. leadership and prestige? And did these costs outweigh the benefits? Might actionable intelligence have also been obtained by the non-coercive methods experienced intelligence interrogators experts recommend and employ? What strategic security gains could be reaped from shifting to a policy of complete, consistent and transparent compliance with human rights norms?" (cont.)

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Excerpts from Retired Vice Admiral Lee Gunn's testimony before Congress in early March of 2009.

"An independent commission could undertake the task of examining the facts and, in so doing, weigh the true effectiveness of the Bush administration's torture tactics. Did torture actually uncover actionable intelligence? Did it interrupt plans? And did it actually save lives? If so, what were the countervailing costs to our national security?" - (cont.)