\u00a0You need to have on the payroll some very unsavory characters if, in fact, you’re going to be able to learn all that needs to be learned in order to forestall these kinds of activities. It is a mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena. I’m convinced we can do it; we can do it successfully. But we need to make certain that we have not tied the hands, if you will, of our intelligence communities in terms of accomplishing their mission.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It was the first notice that the policy of the United States was changing.\u00a0 Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, led an effort for a \u201cno holds barred\u201d approach to terrorists.\u00a0 \u201cBlack sites\u201d were established by the CIA to hold and interrogate captured terrorists, kept outside of the United States for the specific purpose of avoiding the jurisdiction of US Courts.\u00a0 Guantanamo Naval Base was chosen as the \u201cprison camp\u201d for the same reason: avoiding US Court jurisdiction, and therefore the rights and protections of the Constitution.<\/p>\n
In August of 2002 the \u201cdirty business\u201d was codified by a Justice Department finding on torture.\u00a0The finding, authored by John Loo (now a law professor at University of California, Berkley) drew a distinction between \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques\u201d and torture as defined by the Geneva Convention.\u00a0 Loo argued that there was a difference between the \u201cfeeling\u201d of extreme suffering and fear of death, and \u201cactual\u201d extreme suffering and fear of death.\u00a0 The finding was signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee (now a Federal Appeals Court Judge.)<\/p>\n
This then made waterboarding, feeding by \u201crectal infusion,\u201d solitary confinement and long term forced nudity \u201clegal.\u201d\u00a0 In a specific case where a terrorist was known to have a fear of insects, the Justice Department:<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201c\u2026advised the CIA that they could place the detainee in a box with an insect but that the CIA must \u2018inform him that the insects will not have a sting that would produce death or severe pain.\u2019”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The CIA conducted these \u201csessions\u201d at the black sites.\u00a0 They also brought \u201ccontractors\u201d in who had fewer restrictions, leading to the abuses at the Iraqi prison Abu Gharib where \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d led to rape, sodomy and murder.\u00a0 Eleven soldiers were court martialed and sent to military prison and the commander demoted from general to colonel.\u00a0 No other senior officers or civilians in the Defense Department were held accountable, though it certainly played a part in Rumsfeld\u2019s ultimate resignation.<\/p>\n
Gina Haspel, a career clandestine CIA operative has been nominated to lead the agency.\u00a0 She has almost unanimous support of former CIA employees, and has had a distinguished career, rising through the ranks from a reports officer to station chief, clandestine site supervisor, Director of Clandestine Services, and Deputy Director of the CIA.\u00a0 She is widely regarded as incredibly competent.<\/p>\n
It was during her oversight of the clandestine site in Thailand that she supervised the \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d of terrorists.\u00a0 It was as Deputy Director of Clandestine Services that she signed an order authorizing the destruction of videotapes of those interrogations, tapes already subpoenaed by Congress and that showed hundreds of hours of torture.\u00a0 She did both of these actions on the orders of her superior officers at the CIA.<\/p>\n
Haspel\u2019s nomination is controversial.\u00a0 While she followed the orders of her superiors, Senators now are asking why she didn\u2019t speak out against the torture that was going on under her command.\u00a0 They also are demanding why she was complicit in the destruction of the evidence of that torture. \u00a0It\u2019s appropriate for the Senators to ask these questions, but they are avoiding the bigger issue.<\/p>\n
While Haspel\u2019s nomination is in front of us, it isn\u2019t fair to use her as the vehicle to confront this national shame.\u00a0 The \u201cNuremberg Defense,\u201d (only following orders) is not acceptable, but it also is not acceptable to attack the \u201clittle fish\u201d while letting the leaders go free.\u00a0 Torture is wrong now, it was wrong then, and it doesn\u2019t work (ask John McCain.)<\/p>\n
WE, the United States, have never held the \u201cleaders\u201d of the enhanced interrogation plan accountable.\u00a0 WE have convicted soldiers, and demoted officers; but Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, then CIA Director George Tenet and President George W Bush have avoided responsibility.\u00a0 And WE, Americans, are of mixed view as well.\u00a0 WE have not really confronted that in our moment of peril, WE were willing to allow these actions.\u00a0 Cheney made it clear from the week of the attack that WE would do anything. \u00a0WE did.<\/p>\n
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What WE\u2019ve Done In the days after 9\/11, as the rubble in Manhattan smoked and the nation was in shock, Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on \u201cMeet the Press.\u201d\u00a0 Cheney was grim, and when moderator Tim Russert asked about the role of US intelligence in battling terrorism, he said the following: \u00a0You need to have … Continue reading “What WE’ve Done”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat WE've Done : Our America - 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