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| Questioning the Validity of CIA Interrogations
Written by Alex Burrola
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Wednesday, 11 November 2009 08:00
More details have begun emerging of the Central Intelligence Agency's method and mode as far as the interrogation of terror suspects since the 9/11 attacks. None of the facts emerging about interrogations or about the hasty and slipshod way in which the program was put together are complimentary towards the Bush Administration. Indeed, they simply further the already-existing notion in much of the public's mind of an intelligence community which was unable to, among other things, prevent or intercept 9/11, or produce accurate intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
blog comments powered by Disqus Enter the Barack Obama Administration, which has continually stated its desire to “look forward, not backward” and to press a domestic policy agenda in which health care reform is at the forefront. Obama is discovering however that this problem will shadow him as it did his predecessor, and could threaten to undermine what Obama had hoped to be four years of positive change. According to reports, President Obama has authorized the creation of a new interrogation unit, to be supervised and accountable to the National Security Council and to the White House, for the questioning of “high value detainees”. In addition while several techniques for interrogation permitted by the Bush administration have already been banned by Obama, the president is also directing new methods for questioning to be in line with those dictated by the U.S. Army Field Manual, a directive some are already criticizing as not harsh enough. But one of the biggest dangers lies in the continual and very public battering which the U.S. intelligence community has had to endure recently due to the gross mishandling of Washington under both Republican and Democrat chief executives. The agency faces what will no doubt be harsh scrutiny from a special prosecutor appointed by Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate CIA abuses. With CIA morale at such a low, seeing its mission dismembered and divided, and being threatened legally for doing its job, the American intelligence community is in grave danger of entering a period of impotence with serious national security ramifications. Obama's creation of an interrogation unit which answers to him recalls with disturbing echoes the internal security operation dubbed “the Plumbers” of President Nixon's Oval Office, who worked around the FBI and CIA to identify and neutralize security and intelligence leaks from the White House to the news media. The Plumbers’ other escapades had disastrous affects for the Nixon presidency and the role of intelligence. Certainly only time will tell if yet another independent security unit set up by the president would yield similar results. And for career intelligence service officers and operatives, it is disheartening to watch the CIA taken to task so publicly at the hands of the government it has expended so much for. The role of Holder's special prosecutor should be to identify and investigate the cause of any and all abuses which CIA agents and operatives may have been compelled into. But to enter into a witch hunt would be a catastrophic. Rather, solid and inflexible guidelines should be put into place, leaving no room for ambiguity, when it comes to the detaining and questioning of terror suspects. And the White House should assemble the top experts from within and outside the intelligence community to include the military, law enforcement, and foreign service to help create a reinvigorated and strong CIA well equipped and supported by its own government to keep the United States safe and secure, while at the same time it can honestly hold true to the sacrosanct ideas of human dignity and respect for the law that are at the core of what it means to be an American. |
