Torture In The News

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Using Torture To Fight Terror
 

By Richard Cohen
Thursday, March 6, 2003; Page A23

Soon after the recent capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the al Qaeda operations chief, AOL reacted with alacrity: "Making A Terrorist Talk: If Not Torture, What's The Best Way To Break Him? Tell us."

One of the first to respond was a creative fellow who suggested that Muslim terrorists be placed with swine, since the eating of pork is forbidden. "Then we should give them a sex change operation." Ouch.

Sex change operations aside, the question remains whether the United States should ever resort to torture to pry what could be lifesaving information from suspected terrorists. Apparently, more than a few Americans think so. Among them is the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who would, however, involve the courts. In effect, the government would have to ask a judge for a torture warrant.

Dershowitz, no slouch as a civil libertarian, is a prominent member of the "get real" crowd. They argue that we are in a new kind of war and need new kinds of rules. This is especially the case when faced with the so-called ticking bomb predicament: What if a captured terrorist knew a bomb was about to go off somewhere? Should he be tortured to reveal what he knows?

An old boss of mine had a file he labeled "too tough." I put the ticking bomb scenario in a similar file I keep in my head, hopelessly caught between the late Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson's admonition about converting "the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact" and the horrible recognition that torture is not merely an interrogation technique, it is a descent into barbarity. Officially, at least, no nation condones it.

Of course, lots of nations practice it. Some of them, as it happens, are our allies. The Washington Post reported on Dec. 26 that the United States shipped -- "rendered," is the term of obfuscation -- some suspected terrorists to these countries to be, well, tortured. The information is then used by U.S. intelligence, which pretends ignorance. The Post named Jordan, Morocco and Egypt.

Here is what happened after The Post broke that story: nothing. The Bush administration naturally denied that it condones torture, and the American public, possibly busy returning Christmas presents, smartly moved on to the funny pages. Only some human rights organizations paid any attention, but they might as well have been yelling into the wind. No one gave a damn.

But we should. Just to be pragmatic, torture is not as effective as it's cracked up to be. Your average torture victim is likely to say anything to relieve the pain -- the truth, a lie or, if he happens to be innocent, whatever will please his jailers. Undeniably, though, there are times when torture does the trick. It has not been around all this time for no reason.

Now we must return to my fellow AOL subscriber and his modest proposal regarding sex change operations. What he intuited is that torture is not merely an interrogation technique. It is a form of punishment, harsh and irrevocable -- applied to the innocent as well as the guilty. "Whoever was tortured, stays tortured," wrote the late Jean Amery.

Amery, a resistance fighter, had been tortured by the Nazis. His hands were tied behind his back, a hook was lowered from the ceiling and he was raised by it. "All your life is gathered in a single limited area of the body, the shoulder joints," he wrote.

"Twenty-two years later, I am still dangling over the ground by dislocated arms." He ultimately committed suicide.

At one time, the authorities -- secular or religious -- had the unquestioned right to inflict such punishment. Much of Western civilization has amounted to the tough slog away from that understanding -- two steps forward, one back. Torture was central to Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, hardly ancient regimes. It is still practiced all over the world by despotic and desperate governments. Torture one person and you cow an entire population.

When it comes to torture -- especially its more benign variations (sleep deprivation, shaking, etc.) -- I would never say never. But those who counsel us to "get real" have a heavy obligation to confront a different kind of reality. Torture is a beast with a rapacious appetite. The sanctimonious French wound up using it indiscriminately in Algeria; the Argentine junta, faced with a terrorist threat as real as our own, also tortured on a grand scale.

Civilization is threatened not only by terrorists but also by the means we use to fight them. The torturer always thinks he's justified and, in the end, he's invariably proved right. After all, the difference between innocence and guilt is only a matter of time.

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Thursday, March 6, 2003

Other than torture or truth serum, American authorities have an array of options in extracting information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Captured Saturday in Pakistan, Mohammed was flown Monday to the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, the typical first stop for prisoners captured in the war against terrorism.

Mohammed, al Qaeda’s alleged leader of terrorist operations against the United States and the suspected brains behind the 9/11 attacks, may be tried eventually, but Washington’s first priority is collecting intelligence to prevent future attacks and capture Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders.

In criminal cases, investigators typically tempt their quarry to talk with promises of fairly obvious rewards — say early freedom or improved conditions. But Mohammed is a self-avowed terrorist driven by ideology and is unlikely to ever taste freedom again.

Different methods needed

U.S. authorities have found that traditional interrogation techniques have been ineffective on such prisoners. “You don’t deal with this guy the way we interrogate someone here,” said a top federal law-enforcement official.

High-profile prisoners such as Mohammed generally are held by the Central Intelligence Agency and interrogated in a third country, possibly Jordan in this case.

It’s unclear exactly what rules the CIA follows in conducting interrogations, because the agency is closemouthed about such matters, other than denying that it uses truth serum or torture.

But judging from methods military interrogators say they are allowed to employ under international humanitarian law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the CIA has plenty of options.

Military interrogators say their prisoners can be lied to, screamed at and shown falsified documents in the hopes they might unwittingly confirm certain pieces of information.

Interrogators can also play on their prisoners’ phobias, such as fear of rats or dogs, or disguise themselves as interrogators from a country known to use torture or threaten to send the prisoner to such a place.

Prisoners can be stripped, forcibly shaved and deprived of religious items and toiletries.

The White House argues that al Qaeda prisoners are “unlawful combatants” and enjoy neither constitutional rights nor the protections of the Geneva Conventions, which govern treatment of enemy soldiers.

Bush administration lawyers acknowledge only one legal restraint: the United Nations’ Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the Senate ratified in 1994 after adding several reservations limiting its scope.

The treaty bars interrogators from inflicting “severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental” and prohibits transfer of prisoners to other countries that may practice torture.

Exceptions not acceptable

“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever may be invoked as a justification of torture,” the treaty says in a provision that the U.N. Committee Against Torture said remained in force even after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“The standard for any type of interrogation of somebody in American custody is to be humane and to follow all international laws and accords dealing with this type of subject,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. “That is precisely what has been happening and exactly what will happen.”

But because the treaty has no enforcement mechanism, as a practical matter, “you’re just limited by your imagination,” a U.S. law-enforcement official says.

In other words, as long as the pain and suffering aren’t “severe,” it’s permissible to use physical force and to cause “discomfort,” as some U.S. interrogators euphemistically put it.

Among the techniques: making captives wear black hoods, forcing them to stand in painful “stress positions” for a long time and subjecting them to interrogation sessions lasting as long as 20 hours.

U.S. officials overseeing interrogations of captured al Qaeda forces at Bagram and Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba can even authorize “a little bit of smacky-face,” a U.S. intelligence official says. “Some al Qaeda just need some extra encouragement,” the official says.

Avoiding certain countries

“There’s a reason why (Mohammed) isn’t going to be near a place where he has Miranda rights or the equivalent of them,” the senior federal law-enforcer says.

“He won’t be someplace like Spain or Germany or France. We’re not using this to prosecute him. This is for intelligence. God only knows what they’re going to do with him. You go to some other country that’ll let us pistol whip this guy.”

Initially, interrogators will aim to disorient Mohammed. “You deprive him of what he’s used to and comfortable with,” this official says.

“You deprive him of his surroundings. You move him. In this instance, you do that geographically, physically and emotionally. You put him someplace he’s unfamiliar with. You deprive him of food, water and sleep. You make morning night, and you make hot cold.”

Authorities are hoping they’ll get lucky. “He’s a fanatic but he could be a big baby,” the official says.

An additional trump card

U.S. authorities have an additional inducement to make Mohammed talk, even if he shares the suicidal commitment of the Sept. 11 hijackers: The Americans have access to two of his elementary-school-age children, the top law-enforcement official says. They were captured in a September raid that netted one of Mohammed’s top comrades, Ramzi Binalshibh.

When interrogators finish with Mohammed, he is likely to face a U.S. military tribunal, but that will probably be years from now.

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Mohammed being held at Afghan base

By DAN CHAPMAN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, is being held at the American military base at Bagram after his weekend arrest, a Pakistani official said Tuesday.

Pakistan Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said Mohammed was handed over Tuesday to U.S. authorities, who took the alleged No. 3 man in al-Qaida to their interrogation center at Bagram, the main American military base in Afghanistan.

The United States has refused to confirm Mohammed's whereabouts. He was arrested Saturday in a joint raid by CIA agents and Pakistani police in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Since then, his location has been the subject of conflicting reports.

Some said he was taken directly to Bagram Air Base after his capture in Pakistan, joining an unknown number of al-Qaida and Taliban suspects at a secret holding facility. Others said he spent the first few days in Pakistan, where he was questioned by Pakistani authorities.

U.S. military officials acknowledge the existence of the Bagram holding facility -- and a similar one at a U.S. base in the southern city of Kandahar -- but say little more.

U.S. officials vowed Monday that "all appropriate pressure" is being used to interrogate Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected top al-Qaida operative arrested last weekend in Pakistan.

Intelligence officials believe Mohammed may have knowledge of future terrorist attacks.

U.S. law prohibits the CIA, the FBI and other anti-terror agencies from using torture to induce confessions. The White House said Mohammed will be treated humanely.

But the legal and moral boundaries over what constitutes coercion have grown increasingly fuzzy since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.

Mohammed's arrest appears to show that the interrogations of hundreds of previously captured al-Qaida operatives are paying off.

"The evidence shows they're moving up the food chain," said Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, a defense-oriented think tank near Washington. "They've captured or killed about one-third of the people they determined were most critical to al-Qaida, and there haven't been any more coordinated attacks in the United States."

U.S. officials say more than 3,000 suspected al-Qaida members and supporters have been detained worldwide since Sept. 11, 2001. Many remain incarcerated in spartan conditions at Bagram. Some have been ferried to a U.S. detention center at Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean.

Roughly 650 men from 43 countries are imprisoned at the U.S. military jail at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Others remain jailed in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, whose governments are known to allow torture.

Mohammed most likely faces grim conditions at Bagram. Al-Qaida operatives and Taliban commanders are held captive there in a cluster of metal shipping containers behind layers of concertina wire. Considered "enemy combatants," they are not granted due process of U.S. law nor certain anti-torture safeguards allowed internationally recognized prisoners of war.

Little is known about their treatment. But Cofer Black, while he was head of the CIA Counterterrorist Center, testified in September before House and Senate intelligence committees that agents have greater leeway to coerce information.

"This is a very highly classified area," Cofer reportedly said. "But I have to say that all you need to know: There was a before 9/11, and there was an after 9/11. After 9/11, the gloves come off."

Mohammed, who may know details about possible future terrorist activities as well as the whereabouts of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, could face a variety of interrogation tactics.

Al-Qaida prisoners have typically been shackled or duct-taped to stretchers for transport. Hoods, blindfolds or blacked-out ski goggles keep them from discerning their location. Heads and beards are shaved. Prisoners are isolated upon arriving at detention centers.

John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" captured in Afghanistan, was blindfolded, stripped naked, bound to a stretcher and held inside a metal shipping container with limited food and medical attention, his lawyer said. He was later transferred to the USS Peleliu and confined to the brig without being told his family had hired counsel, the lawyer added.

Some attorneys and human rights officials complain that prisoners may be forced to stand or kneel for hours. Bright lights are never extinguished. Loud music blares. Sleep is denied, sometimes for days, to begin breaking a prisoner's resistance.

The so-called "stress-and-duress" techniques represent the milder forms of torture that may be used in interrogation. Eugene Kontorovich, a George Mason University law professor who studies the constitutionality of investigative techniques, speculates Mohammed is now being subjected to psychological unpleasantries.

"They're probably playing up the fact that his friends have ratted him out, that it's all over," Kontorovich said. "What we think of torture is not necessarily the most effective way of getting information. People can be trained and determined to resist it. And there are ways of breaking down people's resolve more effectively than beating them."

Interrogations will typically begin with questions to which the interlocutors already know the answers, in an effort to gauge truthfulness. Proper responses and valuable information bring rewards like better food or living conditions or money. Improper responses can bring out the "bad cops" and more unsavory interrogation methods.

Mark Mansfield, a CIA spokesman, said Monday the intelligence agency does not employ terror techniques. He declined further comment on interrogation methods, or on the fate of Mohammed.

At least one suspected terrorist died at Bagram on Dec. 4 after being interrogated, U.S. officials said. They said the prisoner died of natural causes. They refused to identify his name or country of origin.

Abu Zubaydah, one of the top al-Qaida members in detention, was shot in the groin last March during his capture in Pakistan. U.S. officials hinted that his painkillers had been selectively administered, according to The Washington Post. He is said to be cooperating, and his information has led to the arrest of other al-Qaida members, the Post reported.

While the U.S. government forbids torture, its allies aren't always bound by similar constraints. Often, the CIA will turn a prisoner over to Jordan or Saudi Arabia and allow its secret services to seek information by whatever means they may use.

"It's fairly well-known among experts in the field that the best way to deal with [reluctant prisoners] is to have friendly nations deal with them," said Robert Friedmann, a professor of criminal justice at Georgia State University who studies international security issues. "So, the U.S. is not the one doing the [torture], and it's no violation of the law."

The U.S. State Department, in its annual human rights report, denounces countries that allow torture. In 2001, the State Department reported that "the most frequently alleged methods of torture [in Jordan] include sleep deprivation, beatings on the soles of the feet, prolonged suspension with ropes in contorted positions and extended solitary confinement."

Carroll Bogert, a spokeswoman for Human Rights Watch, said it is illegal for the United States to hand over suspects to regimes that allow torture.

"Over many centuries, civilization has developed a taboo against torture," she said. "If the U.S. disregards that taboo, it weakens protection for people all over the world. Thousands of innocent people will suffer -- not just a few truly awful people. The U.S. can get the information it needs without resorting to outlaw techniques."

--  Staff writer Dave Hirschman contributed to this article.

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	Posted on Tue, Mar. 04, 2003
	U.S. might come close to torture Questioning of al-Qaida suspect said to be intense By Shannon McCaffrey, James Kuhnhenn and Martin Merzer KNIGHT RIDDER TRIBUNE   WASHINGTON - The intense interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged architect of the Sept. 11 attacks on America who is now in U.S. custody, is likely to stop just short of torture, U.S. intelligence experts said Monday. And the man who boasted about dispatching suicide bombers and hijackers on missions of mass murder might cave in without much pressure, they added. "Sometimes the ones at the top are the ones that break the easiest," said Sean McWeeney, former chief of the FBI's office for International Affairs. "Guys at the top are rarely the tough guys," said one congressional intelligence analyst. Working against the clock and driven by fear of an imminent threat, the FBI and CIA labored feverishly Monday to question Mohammed and analyze a treasure-trove of information seized as he was captured Saturday in Pakistan. The question that quickened their efforts: Will Mohammed's capture - and the knowledge that he is being interrogated - chase Osama bin Laden and his terrorist cells deeper into hiding or propel them into quicker action? "Obviously, there is urgency," said a federal law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The desire is there to head off another attack that could claim more lives." One senior administration official told Knight Ridder that Mohammed was "an extremely sloppy terrorist" whose e-mail notes and other communications with al-Qaida operatives already were under close examination. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and other U.S. officials said indications that Mohammed was plotting ghastly new attacks against Americans had contributed to their decision to boost the nation's terrorism alert to the second-highest level last month. "Some of the concerns we had that caused us to raise the threat level were attributable to the planning he was involved in," Ridge said. When the Bush administration raised the terrorism threat level, officials warned of attacks against the United States or U.S. interests on the Arabian peninsula. The State Department did not issue new travel warnings Monday, but spokesman Richard Boucher advised Americans abroad to "take appropriate precautions and be careful" because new attacks could be triggered by Mohammed's arrest. Some terrorism experts scoffed at the suggestion that Mohammed's arrest would hasten terrorist attacks. They said al-Qaida may have a difficult time replacing him as a central coordinator of terrorist planning, financing and attacks. "Their means of communications have been compromised," said Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at the Rand Corp. "It has a tremendous disruptive effect." Close bin Laden aide One of bin Laden's closest aides, Mohammed, 37, boasted that he planned the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen and a long list of other assaults on U.S. military, diplomatic and civilian targets. His capture was described by many experts as the most significant success thus far in the war against terrorism. "I told the American people this is a different kind of war against al-Qaida," President Bush told a small group of reporters Monday, "that we're going to have to hunt them down one at a time, and over the weekend they saw what I meant." Authorities said they recovered a vast amount of equipment and data - cell phones, computers, disks and documents - during Saturday's arrest of Mohammed and two other alleged terrorists in a house in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The house is owned by the Qadoos family, which has ties to that nation's largest religious party, officials said. CIA agents are looking for leads to al-Qaida sleeper cells and terrorist operations that might already be under way, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The officials said the surprisingly sloppy Mohammed: • Used the Qadoos family computer to send and receive e-mails from other al-Qaida members, apparently in the belief that because the family has ties to Jamaat Islami, Pakistan's largest religious party, and because one member of the family is a military officer, the computer wouldn't be monitored or searched. • Tried to communicate with his two young sons after they were picked up in a raid on the Karachi apartment that netted fellow Sept. 11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh. Those communications were monitored and helped lead authorities to Mohammed, the U.S. officials said. • Tried to communicate with other known al-Qaida members or their relatives who were under electronic surveillance. Despite suggestions by Pakistani officials that Mohammed was still in that country, knowledgeable sources confirmed that he has been taken by a U.S. aircraft to a third country for interrogation. The CIA also has identified the third man arrested Saturday in Pakistan, who turned out not to be al-Qaida security chief Said al Adel, as intelligence officials initially thought. Instead, the arrested man is an Egyptian who was in charge of financing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, said a law enforcement official, who also requested anonymity. The Egyptian is not on the FBI's list of 25 most-wanted terrorists, the official said. As for the nature of Mohammed's interrogation, nearly all experts agreed that it would be vigorous and unrelenting. "What you want is information because that could save millions of lives," said former CIA Director James Woolsey. 'Soft' terrorists? White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said questioners would be "humane" and would honor international law. Outside experts said the interrogation was likely to stop just short of outright torture. "I don't see a constitutional right to have eight hours of sleep," said Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA officer and ex-deputy director of the U.S. State Department's Office of Counterterrorism. "You shouldn't subject someone to freezing, but they don't get to wear mink coats, either. You use sleep deprivation and a reward system." He and other experts said U.S. interrogators have access to a psychological profile of Mohammed and will appeal to his legendary vanity and self-importance. They also said the highest-ranking terrorists often fold the quickest. "These guys aren't operationally hard," said a foreign diplomat. "They are soft people."

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