JustOneMinute

Maybe They Could Have Skipped The Video...

ABC News reported on the role of psychologists Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell in developing the CIA enhanced interrogation program.  The always interesting Michael Goldfarb and the invaluable Gateway Pundit describe this as ABC having "outed" these two [And I knew I had seen that elsewhere - Matt Drudge is headlining this as "ABCNEWS outs 'torture' psychologists" and includes a supplemental link to an ABC story denouncing the Plame leak]. 

Well, the names have been out there for a while - Katherine Eban reported on this in Vanity Fair on July 17, 2007 and their names have been in many news accounts recently (see News Google).  The recently declassified Senate Armed Services Committee report on torture also names them repeatedly (sorry for the no-link but the Senate report is about a 15 meg .pdf which is crashing my PC.)

That said, showing their faces is not helpful.  Oh, well - maybe these guys can be enrolled in the AIG bonus recipient protection program.  At least until Obama needs to demonize someone new - the Chrysler creditor hold-outs come to mind.

RELATED:  All Ahmadinejad is doing is trying to develop a nuke so he can destroy Israel.  Maybe if he opened a hedge fund Obama would get tough on him.

Sullivan Comes Out In Favor Of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", Then Makes Stuff Up

It's an emotional cyclone today at the Daily Dish.  Barack Obama cites Sully's tribute to Winston Churchill, in which we are informed that only cowards like Dick Cheney torture, not heroes like Winston Churchill.  The highs!

Then Ben Smith busts Sully and Barack, with Churchill as collateral damage.  Based on a report in The Guardian, Lt. Col. Alexander Scotland led a torture center known as the London Cage during WWII.  It looks like Churchill and the Brits weren't above the rough stuff - the lows!

But Sullivan mans up:

The man who ran the center was trained in the German army in Namibia, and may have been acting independently. If Churchill or others at the highest levels of command knew about and approved of this torture, then they are complicit and equally guilty of these war crimes. But that is not at all clear from the historical record - and the notion that "Churchill tortured" goes beyond the facts as they appear.

Ah, well, as long as Churchill preserved deniability, it's all good.  Don't ask, don't tell.

Then Sullivan tries his hand at historical fiction.  First, he delivers two Wikipedia excerpts; the first is from the Guy Liddell diary of 1940 (Mr. Liddell was Director of B Division in charge of counter-espionage at MI5):

Liddell said in a diary entry that Scotland was "hitting TATE in the jaw and I think got one back himself." Liddell said: "Apart from the moral aspects of the thing, I am convinced that these Gestapo methods do not pay in the long run."  (Liddell was trying to run TATE as a double agent against the Germans - TATE had been captured parachuting into England and Liddell hoped to have him radio phoby reports back to his German handlers.)

The second relates to a Guy Liddell excerpt from 1943:

In 1943, allegations of mistreatment at the London Cage resulted in a formal protest to the Secretary of State for War by MI5 director Maxwell Knight. ^[33] The allegations were made by Otto Witt, a German anti-Nazi who was interrogated to determine if he was acting on behalf of German intelligence.

Now the creative bit, as Sullivan wraps this up for us,or at least, rationalizes it for himself:

When the head of MI5 is demanding the disciplining of Scotland, and insisting that torture doesn't work, we are in a very different situation than one in which the president himself has approved of torture in classified memos and the CIA director is insisting that the methods did in fact work and should remain as part of an official program of interrogation.

We are indeed!  Or would be, if this was what was happening.  Let's follow the Wiki footnote to the Guy Liddell diary excerpt cited from 1943 for some context:

June 26, 1943: The Witt case had blown up in a rather unpleasant way. Maxwell [a high ranking Home Office official] has written a letter intended for the S of S for War in which the Home Secretary expresses his grave displeasure and concern at the treatment of Witt at the London District Cage [of Colonel Scotland]. Witt has made a number of allegations about ill-treatment which have been denied. The only admission is that Wiesner slapped his face,. If the denials are accepted it seems an
incredible thing that two secretaries of States should be drawn into a matter which involves a lying little Nazi having had his face slapped by a Czech.

[. . .] the DG feels rather hot about it although we are not directly concerned since the incident did not take place on our premises.  At some stage in the proceedings it is alleged that Milmo or Sneath said that it was the British Govt’s view that it was better than nine innocent men should be executed than that one guilty one should escape. This statement was merely made to frighten Witt, but it is argued that information extracted in fear is of no value. I rather wonder what Maxwell would say if he read all the 020 reports. I am quite convinced that no physical violence is practiced at 020 but all sorts of threats are made without which in many cases one would not get at the truth. It all depends on the man you are dealing with. If the HO think that they can handle spies with kid gloves on, it is about time someone disillusioned them. I am going to suggest to the DG that he should see [Sir P J] Grigg personally about this case and try and get it back on more sensible lines.

Yeah, that sure sounds like MI5 was pushing hard to rein in Lt. Col. Scotland because they were worried that he is abusing prisoners.  Don't ask, don't tell, don't wear kid gloves.

If we are in "a very different situation" it is because the Brits didn't want to know what was being done elsewhere in London.  And this is heroism?

Ben Smith, With A Bullet

Ben Smith's debunking of the Obama-Sullivan myth-making about Winston Churchill and Britain's non-use of torture during WWII is climbing onto Memeorandum.  With a bullet.  Also a truncheon and some electrical devices.  I get to it eventually in this earlier post.

I see that Michael Tomasky of the Guardian has joined in, so the meme that Churchill tortured is lefty-approved.  Let me add that after twenty minutes with Google, I could only find the Guardian stories from 2005 (and derivative versions) with the news about the London Cage and Andrew Scotland.  Well, that plus courtroom allegations by a Nazi war criminal.

Who Would Think That?

I was listening to Obama explaining Chrysler's bankruptcy filing on the radio and was especially enchanted by his assurance that "This is not a sign of weakness."  Whoever would think so?

I lack a transcript but in his Big Finish Obama said something to the effect of, if we can all join together in a spirit of shared sacrifice, from the people on the factory floor to the board rooms to the Congress, we can bring better days and a better Chrysler...

Uh, hello, how about the US taxpayer?  Any props, exhortations, or acknowledgment of their role here?  Sorry, MY role?

The Congress - yeah, they have to sacrifice an endless stream of donations from the UAW.

I need a transcript.

HERE WE GO -  my emphasis:

Now, these are challenging times for America's auto industry and for the American people.  But I am confident that if we as a nation can act with the same sense of shared sacrifice and shared purpose that's been shown by so many of Chrysler's stakeholders, if we can embrace the idea that we're all in it together -- from the union hall to the boardroom to the halls of Congress -- then we will succeed not only with Chrysler, we will not only see our American auto industry rise again, but we will rebuild our entire economy and make the 21st century another American Century.

Cue the music!  I hear "We'll Lift You Up Where You Belong" swelling in the background as Larry Summers in his dress whites walks across a factory floor and lifts up a teary-eyed Robert Nardelli, then carries the Chrysler CEO out the exit while the onlooking stakeholders weep and cheer.

Too beautiful.

Some Enchanted Evening (With A Tortured Finish)

Obama's press conference could not have gone that well, because it is not on the front page of my Times.  Ben Smith breaks news from WWII, however, on torture and Winston Churchill.

Here is the Times transcript.  Their own Jeff Zeleney made news with a hard-hitting question about the Manhattan flyover... uhh, not exactly:

THE ONE:  ...Jeff Zeleny.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.

During these first 100 days, what has surprised you the most about this office, enchanted you the most about serving in this office, humbled you the most and troubled you the most?

The President was far too kind to answer that he was most enchanted by the Times probing, hard-hitting journalism.

Where is the video?  I bet Zeleny looks enchanting with his skirt and pom-poms.  Give him an "O" indeed... [I am looking for Zeleney in the video provided by The Captain.]

NOW WE KNOW WHY HE SENT BACK THE CHURCHILL BUST:

Ben Smith at The Politico busts Obama for self-deception on torture:

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. You've said in the past that waterboarding in your opinion is torture. And torture is a violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions. Do you believe that the previous administration sanctioned torture?

MR. OBAMA: What I've said -- and I will repeat -- is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. I don't think that's just my opinion; that's the opinion of many who've examined the topic. And that's why I put an end to these practices.

I am absolutely convinced that it was the right thing to do -- not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways -- in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.

I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British, during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, "we don't torture," when the -- the entire British -- all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. And -- and -- and the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts, and over time, that corrodes what's -- what's best in a people.

It corrodes the character of a country.

That almost surely comes from Andrew Sullivan; the article that should have inspired the return of the bust is from the 2005 Guardian:

The London Cage was run by MI19, the section of the War Office responsible for gleaning information from enemy prisoners of war, and few outside this organisation knew exactly what went on beyond the single barbed-wire fence that separated the three houses from the busy streets and grand parks of west London.

...

By examining thousands of documents stored at the National Archives, formerly the Public Record Office, as well as the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, the Guardian has established what happened to this prisoner, and many others like him.

The London Cage was used partly as a torture centre, inside which large numbers of German officers and soldiers were subjected to systematic ill-treatment. In total 3,573 men passed through the Cage, and more than 1,000 were persuaded to give statements about war crimes. The brutality did not end with the war, moreover: a number of German civilians joined the servicemen who were interrogated there up to 1948.

...

Within the National Archives are documents from two official inquiries into the methods employed at the Cage, one which heard evidence that guards were under orders to knock on some prisoners' cell doors every 15 minutes, depriving them of sleep, and another which concluded with "the possibility that violence was used" during interrogations.

There is also a long and detailed letter of complaint from one SS captain, Fritz Knoechlein, who describes his treatment after being taken to the Cage in October 1946. Knoechlein alleges that because he was "unable to make the desired confession" he was stripped, given only a pair of pyjama trousers, deprived of sleep for four days and nights, and starved.

The guards kicked him each time he passed, he alleges, while his interrogators boasted that they were "much better" than the "Gestapo in Alexanderplatz". After being forced to perform rigorous exercises until he collapsed, he says he was compelled to walk in a tight circle for four hours. On complaining to Scotland that he was being kicked even "by ordinary soldiers without a rank", Knoechlein alleges that he was doused in cold water, pushed down stairs, and beaten with a cudgel. Later, he says, he was forced to stand beside a large gas stove with all its rings lit before being confined in a shower which sprayed extremely cold water from the sides as well as from above. Finally, the SS man says, he and another prisoner were taken into the gardens behind the mansions, where they were forced to run in circles while carrying heavy logs.

"Since these tortures were the consequences of my personal complaint, any further complaint would have been senseless," Knoechlein wrote. "One of the guards who had a somewhat humane feeling advised me not to make any more complaints, otherwise things would turn worse for me." Other prisoners, he alleged, were beaten until they begged to be killed, while some were told that they could be made to disappear.

Churchill tortured Germans, Roosevelt interned Japanese-Americans, yet we endure.  Is the Guardian account plausible?  I suppose we could compare this to British treatment of the IRA.  FWIW, the commander of The Cage, Alexander Scotland, received a decoration from the Us and was never prosecuted by the British.

As to Sullivan's sense of history and ability to provide objective research, well, it's too bad no one alleged that Winston Churchill was the secret father of Trig Palin...

Now Ask Him If Stupidity Is Contagious

They told me that if I voted for McCain we'd have a Vice President who was a moron... and they were right!

Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that he would not recommend taking any commercial flight or riding in a subway car “at this point” because swine flu virus can spread “in confined places.” A little more than one hour later, Biden rushed out a statement backing off.

...That contradicted more restrained advice from President Barack Obama and the federal government - and the last thing the White House wants to do right now is shut down the airline industry and big city subways out of mass panic.

Don't you hate it when the VP goes rogue?

And Byron York's Point Is...

Byron York notes a racial divide that is also pretty obviously a political divide.  From his new perch at the Washington Examiner:

The black-white divide in Obama's popularity

On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.

Asked whether their opinion of the president is favorable or unfavorable, 49 percent of whites in the Times poll say they have a favorable opinion of Obama. Among blacks the number is 80 percent. Twenty-one percent of whites say their view of the president is unfavorable, while the number of blacks with unfavorable opinions of Obama is too small to measure.

Get me Rewrite!

The Democrat-Republican divide in Obama's popularity

On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with Republicans than with Democrats, and his sky-high ratings among Democrats make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.

OK, does the "Rewrite" make any sense?  Of course Obama polls better among Dems.  Now yes, not all whites are Republicans.  But York (and the poll) is comparing blacks, who have been mostly Democratic for years, with a white pool that includes a mix of Democrats, Independents, and dead-enders (the Few, the Proud...).  It can't be a surprise that Obama polls better amongst the group that is weighted towards his own party.

If, I say IF Mr. York hoped to make a valid point, he would need to have the cross-tabs showing that Obama's position on some issue or set of issues was even more popular among black Democrats than among white Democrats (possible).  Then he would need to make the case that viewed objectively, the issue in question really does not and should not have a racial component.  He could then assert that blacks were supporting the man rather than the policy and suggest that if a white politician inherits that policy plank when Obama is no longer in office the support will be less than expected within his party.

A bad example would be the poll result showing that blacks think Obama should put more of a focus on education than whites do.  A good example would be,,, hmm, beats me.  Our policy towards North Korea maybe?  Offhand I don't see that as having a tilt where race, or some attribute where race might be a proxy (such as income) would make a difference.  And on p. 22, question 73 I note only a tiny black-white divide on the NoKo question, which might undernmine the York premise. 

DELIBERATELY OBTUSE?  Andrew Sullivan joins the crowd whose default position is "Must be racism!"  Here is the damning York excerpt:

Obama's sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.

And the astute analysis:

I'm with Benen. What can that last phrase possibly mean, except that African-American opinion does not count as much as everyone else's? Yglesias and Weigel pile one.

What could it possibly mean?  Gosh - how about, on some issue black voters support the man rather than the position, and if a white Democrat takes a similar position he will find less-than-expected support. 

Is any example involving blacks and Obama too fraught with emotion?  Well, suppose white evangelicals supported Bush's adventures in the Middle East because, although the issues were over their heads, they trusted a God-fearing Christian to do the right thing.  In such a scenario, neither McCain nor Romney could pick up Bush's banner, even if they backed the same policies.  One might say that Bush's position was less popular than it appeared.  [NPR said something very similar in Feb 2003, explaining that evangelicals support the war because of their trust in Bush].

On the other hand, evangelicals supported Bush's pro-life *policies*.  Any candidate who could demonstrate sincerity on the same issues would presumably get the same support. 

Not complicated.

[end of thread]

Wait 'Til They Find Out...

Wait until it is revealed that Christophe was a guest on the Manhattan flyover.

This from the Times is fraught with peril:

The president directed his deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina, to “conduct a review into how the decision was made to conduct the flight,” said Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, “to understand why the decision was made and to ensure that it never happens again.”

The review is focused on Louis Caldera, the director of the White House Military Office, who took responsibility for the matter.

Two senior administration officials said the review would determine whether Mr. Caldera, who served as secretary of the Army in the Clinton administration, would keep his job.

Blaming the military would be dumb, whether it is deserved or not.  If Caldera is viewed within the Pentagon as sufficiently non-military he will be fine as a scapegoat.  Otherwise, they need to look harder for a fall guy.

Obama Is Even Greater Then We Realize

Obama's press office puts out a release detailing his brilliance, patience, and insight into both the political process and the business of making cars.  My goodness, what a time-saver - in an earlier era we would need to see what Obama actually did and whether it worked, but the internet has speeded up everything.

For a new president, the automobile industry crisis has tested the boundaries of his activist approach and the acuity of his political instincts. As with so many issues in his action-packed 100 days in office, Mr. Obama confronted choices few of his predecessors encountered. His ongoing intervention in an iconic sector of the economy offers a case study in the education, management and decision-making of a fledgling president.

Tutored by veterans of past administrations, Mr. Obama, often after dinner with his wife and daughters, devoured briefing papers until midnight to master the intricacies of the auto industry. But he had advisers deal directly with the car companies and never spoke with the G.M. chief executive he effectively fired.

Methodical and dispassionate, Mr. Obama aggravated powerful players in Congress and the unions that helped elect him, then moved to assuage them. He encouraged internal debate but was forced to head off tensions as his treasury secretary and White House economic adviser maneuvered for position. In the end, he struggled with the proper balance between government power and market forces, a theme that has defined his first months in office.

He does it all.  After dinner!  More hagiography:

A half-hour into the meeting, an aide entered the Oval Office and slipped Mr. Obama a note informing him another meeting was to begin. The president told advisers he needed more time to decide Chrysler’s fate. He then headed off for a day consumed by a new strategy for Afghanistan, a threatened rocket launch by North Korea and the evacuation of a flooded Fargo, N.D. (“What is this, a ‘West Wing’ episode?” Mr. Axelrod recalled asking Mr. Emanuel.)

What kind of investigative journalism is this, anyway?  They are utterly silent on whether that Superman outfit gets scratchy or bunches up under his suit.

CLASSIC MOMENTS FOR WHICH THERE ARE NO MULLIGANS:

Mr. Obama grew irritated at the auto executives, who in his view had a long history of bad decisions. “What are these guys thinking?” Mr. Axelrod remembered Mr. Obama asking when the chief executives of Chrysler, Ford and G.M. flew to Washington aboard corporate jets to request a bailout.

Hmm.  What were they thinking?

Tom Friedman Delivers A Headscratcher

Tom Friedman seems to be completely confused about Obama's recent actions on the torture memos.  However, if his grasp of the facts is typical it explains a great deal of the controversy.

Weighing everything, President Obama got it about as right as one could when he decided to ban the use of torture, to release the Bush torture memos for public scrutiny and to not prosecute the lawyers and interrogators who implemented the policy. But there is nothing for us to be happy about in any of this.

After all, we’re not just talking about “enhanced interrogations.” Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, has testified to Congress that more than 100 detainees died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, with up to 27 of those declared homicides by the military. They were allegedly kicked to death, shot, suffocated or drowned. Look, our people killed detainees, and only a handful of those deaths have resulted in any punishment of U.S. officials.

Well, hold on - Mr. Wilkerson was detailing the military detention programe, which essentially operated under the Uniform Code of Militray Justice and was led by Rumsfeld, as Secretary of Defense.  It is true that, per the Senate Armed Services Committe report (see the Executive Summary), Rumsfeld opted to rely on the Aug 1 2002 Bybee memo prepared for the CIA program at one point, but by and large, the abuses and subsequent investigations whitewashes described by Wilkerson, including the 27 homicides (Wilkerson said 25 in his June 2008 House testimony), were carried out under military rules.  The coverage of the Armed Service report reinforces that point.

Mr. Friedman muddles along:

The president’s decision to expose but not prosecute those responsible for this policy is surely unsatisfying; some of this abuse involved sheer brutality that had nothing to do with clear and present dangers. Then why justify the Obama compromise? Two reasons: the first is that because justice taken to its logical end here would likely require bringing George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials to trial, which would rip our country apart; and the other is that Al Qaeda truly was a unique enemy, and the post-9/11 era a deeply confounding war in a variety of ways.

The President said he would give a pass to the CIA interrogators who relied on the OLC opinions.  Those people were not involved with the 25 homicides which ocurred at Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Gitmo under the military program other than, I suppose, as a source of inspiration to Rumsfeld.  (Wilkerson makes clear that the Defense Department tends to view the CIA as a strategic competitor rather than an ally.)

Nor, by and large, were the OLC lawyers.  Prosecuting Rumsfeld may or may not make political and legal sense, but it has nothing to do with the recent announcements coming from the White House.
However, I can see why, if Friedman believes that the the military and CIA programs are so closely linked, that he would be troubled by the President's approach on the CIA program.  I wonder how widespread that confusion might be?

I have seen many defenders of the CIA enhanced interogation program who were outraged by the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Why Are They Telling Me What I Was Telling You, Fox News Edition

Fox News reads the OLC memos, does some arithmetic, talks to some people, and comes to the same conclusion I reached on April 20.  Here is the breaking news from Fox:

Despite Reports, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Was Not Waterboarded 183 Times

The number of times Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded was the focus of major media attention  -- and highly misleading.

The New York Times reported last week [link] that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, was waterboarded 183 times in one month by CIA interrogators. The "183 times" was widely circulated by news outlets throughout the world.

It was shocking. And it was highly misleading. The number is a vast inflation, according to information from a U.S. official and the testimony of the terrorists themselves.

A U.S. official with knowledge of the interrogation program told FOX News that the much-cited figure represents the number of times water was poured onto Mohammed's face -- not the number of times the CIA applied the simulated-drowning technique on the terror suspect.  According to a 2007 Red Cross report, he was subjected a total of "five sessions of ill-treatment."

As I was saying...

As background, the New Yorker reported that KSM told the Red Cross he had been waterboarded five times.  If that figure is accurate, that is an average of about 36 applications per session, which could easily fit within the parameters noted above.

Fox News especially rouses my ire here:

Bloggers [link] who read the memos last week noted that the CIA's math "doesn't add up" -- meaning that the 12 long pours allowed in a day couldn't add up to the 12 minutes mentioned in the memo, and they could barely even guess how the detainees could have been waterboarded an astounding 286 times in one month.

The memos did not note that the sessions would be made up of a number of short pours -- the ones the U.S. official said lasted "a matter of seconds" -- and that created the huge numbers quoted by the New York Times: 183 on Mohamed, 83 on Zubaydah.

Pours, not waterboards.

Fox has reading the wrong blogs.  Geez, what kind of a broken down Right Wing Noise Machine are we operating here? 

Oh, well - maybe Fox will pick up on the problems in the Ali Soufan story - Mr. Soufan, a former FBI interrogator, wrote in the Times that the Zubaydah developed along traditional lines until the CIA introduced the rough stuff in August 2002.  However, the Department of Justice reports that the CIA was in charge of the interrogation almost from the outset and employed tactics that an FBI agent described as "borderline torture" right away; NY Times reporting agrees.  Something for Fox to chew on.

PILING ON:  Scott Shane of the NY Times nicely illustrated the confusion described by Fox:

But the same memorandum reveals in a footnote that Mr. Mohammed, captured on March 1, 2003, was waterboarded 183 times that month. That striking number, which would average out to six waterboardings a day, suggests that interrogators did not try a traditional, rapport-building approach for long before escalating to their most extreme tool.

Six sessions a day totaling five sessions.  Got it.

STILL IRKED:  A day may come when Fox News discovers "links", but this is not that day.

Making Movies

This is an interesting theory about yesterdays fly-by of Manhattan - they were putting together some footage which would be useful to George Lucas' upcoming film about the Tuskegee Airmen of WWII, known as the Red Tails.

Well - this will never be admitted.  And the red-tailed photo of the trailing fighter may just be a trick of the light.  And Manhattan is a long way from Alabama, so why would it make any sense in the movie (where I assume it would be part of some epilogue saluting the proud legacy of the WWII heroes) to have a Red Tail escorting Air Force One?  On the other hand, some cinematic post script linking the current office holder with the men who blazed his trail would not exactly be unheard of as a Hollywood ending.  And Manhattan has got to be more visually interesting that the backwoods of Alabama.  (Apparently there was also a similar strafing scheduled for Washington DC which has been scrapped.)

But even though we all know the White House and Pentagon will deny it, I wonder if some reporter will ask?  They just might - NYC is the media capital of the world.  And besides, the Buck Stops Elsewhere; Obama is blameless in this.

Oh, well - WH press flack Robert Gibbs will play both outraged and dumb and the questioning will move on.

Now That Our Civil Liberties Are Safe Again

Now that the Reign of Witches has passed over, the Times can front-page a story with massive civil liberties implications and no one will care:

U.S. Steps Up Effort on Digital Defenses

By DAVID E. SANGER, JOHN MARKOFF and THOM SHANKER

This article was reported by David E. Sanger, John Markoff and Thom Shanker and written by Mr. Sanger.

When American forces in Iraq wanted to lure members of Al Qaeda into a trap, they hacked into one of the group’s computers and altered information that drove them into American gun sights.

When President George W. Bush ordered new ways to slow Iran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb last year, he approved a plan for an experimental covert program — its results still unclear — to bore into their computers and undermine the project.

And the Pentagon has commissioned military contractors to develop a highly classified replica of the Internet of the future. The goal is to simulate what it would take for adversaries to shut down the country’s power stations, telecommunications and aviation systems, or freeze the financial markets — in an effort to build better defenses against such attacks, as well as a new generation of online weapons.

Just as the invention of the atomic bomb changed warfare and deterrence 64 years ago, a new international race has begun to develop cyberweapons and systems to protect against them.

Not all of the Intertubes are overseas:

So far, however, there are no broad authorizations for American forces to engage in cyberwar. The invasion of the Qaeda computer in Iraq several years ago and the covert activity in Iran were each individually authorized by Mr. Bush. When he issued a set of classified presidential orders in January 2008 to organize and improve America’s online defenses, the administration could not agree on how to write the authorization.

A principal architect of that order said the issue had been passed on to the next president, in part because of the complexities of cyberwar operations that, by necessity, would most likely be conducted on both domestic and foreign Internet sites. After the controversy surrounding domestic spying, Mr. Bush’s aides concluded, the Bush White House did not have the credibility or the political capital to deal with the subject.

And what sort of capabilities are under review?

The most exotic innovations under consideration would enable a Pentagon programmer to surreptitiously enter a computer server in Russia or China, for example, and destroy a “botnet” — a potentially destructive program that commandeers infected machines into a vast network that can be clandestinely controlled — before it could be unleashed in the United States.

Or American intelligence agencies could activate malicious code that is secretly embedded on computer chips when they are manufactured, enabling the United States to take command of an enemy’s computers by remote control over the Internet. That, of course, is exactly the kind of attack officials fear could be launched on American targets, often through Chinese-made chips or computer servers.

Oh, well - as long as its only Russian or Chinese computers, and as long as these secret chips are only deployed overseas, its all good.

I'm not thrilled that the Times is reporting on (and leading with) our successful hacking of Al Qaeda, but maybe we tortured their PC or something.  As to the rest - as we approach lunchtime this story has scored a zero at Memeorandum.

A Headscratcher, Or, How Soon They Forget

The Times takes us back in time:

In late 2007, there was the first crack of daylight into the government’s use of waterboarding during interrogations of Al Qaeda detainees. On Dec. 10, John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who had participated in the capture of the suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002, appeared on ABC News to say that while he considered waterboarding a form of torture, the technique worked and yielded results very quickly.

Mr. Zubaydah started to cooperate after being waterboarded for “probably 30, 35 seconds,” Mr. Kiriakou told the ABC reporter Brian Ross. “From that day on he answered every question.”

His claims — unverified at the time, but repeated by dozens of broadcasts, blogs and newspapers — have been sharply contradicted by a newly declassified Justice Department memo that said waterboarding had been used on Mr. Zubaydah “at least 83 times.”

Well, Mr. Kirakou had left the scene and was relying on internal reports, so he may have made his statements in good faith.  But here is the puzzler:

Eight months after the interview, Mr. Kiriakou was hired as a paid consultant for ABC News. He resigned last month and now works for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Huh?  There are some staffers available to the minority but the bulk of the hiring is controlled by the majority party.  Either the Democrats hired this guy or agreed to work with him, which is interesting either way.

I Agree With David Corn

I agree with David Corn in believing that appointing a special counsel to poke at the terror debacle makes no sense.  Prosecutors are not looking for "the truth" - they are looking for crimes they can indict and successfully prosecute, and most of what they find ends up hidden behind grand jury secrecy rules and never presented in court.

That said, Corn and I differ here:

Fitzgerald, of course, was the tough and relentless US attorney who was named special prosecutor to investigate the CIA leak case. He spent years on that beat, trying to determine who in the Bush administration had done what relating to the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson's classified CIA identity. He investigated forcefully and thoroughly...

Fitzgerald didn't investigate "the Bush Administration" "forcefully and thoroughly" - he put the White House under a microscope and gave the State Department a pass.  Come on - Richard Armitage confessed early on to leaking the Plame info to Robert Novak, yet the forceful Patrick Fitzgerald never even looked at his appointments calendar for the preceding month to see what other reporters had been spending time with Armitage.  Oh boy, were there red faces when Woodward came forward after the Libby indictment.

Which was fair enough - Fitzgerald knew that the Plame leak was not, in itself, a crime, so he focused on probably perjury in the White House rather than puzzling over whether Ari Fleischer had leaked to John Dickerson and David Gregory or whether Andrea Mitchell had also received a leak from her State Department sources, which include Richard Armitage and Colin Powell. 

For Fitzgerald's purposes, the truth would have been a distraction.

The More They Talk The Better We Do

Gallup releases some interesting survey results:

PRINCETON, NJ -- A new Gallup Poll finds 51% of Americans in favor and 42% opposed to an investigation into the use of harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects during the Bush administration.

However, Gallup also notes that among respondents "following the story closely", 40% favor an investigation and 58% oppose it.  Looks like the JournoListes have their work cut out for them.  Some background:

Sixty-one percent of Americans say they are following news about this issue closely, including 26% who are following it very closely. Republicans and Democrats are about equally likely to be paying close attention to this matter.

A similar divide occurs on the second question:

"Based on what you know or have read, do you think the use of harsh interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects was justified or not justified?"

55% of all respondents say "Justified", versus 36% saying no.  But among the self-identified who claim to be following the story closely, 61% say harsh techniques were justified and 37% say no.  I'll guess that difference lacks statistical significance.

Gallup also provides some interesting cross-tabs:

Lots of representation in the "Bring it on" crowd that think the techniques were justified but favors an investigation anyway.

Well.  Gallup also has some interesting numbers on the partisan divide.  66% of Dems favor an investigation but 39% of Dems think the techniques were justified, as do 55% of Independents and 80% of Republicans.  Looks like the Dems need to re-educate their own party first, then engage in outreach to independents.

This Wouldn't Be Happening If Hillary Were In Charge...

Obama orders Lower Manhattan strafed, terrorized...

PILING ON:  Obviously the White House has internalized the notion that we no longer fact a terrorist threat.  Imagine their surprise on discovering the sensitivity of New Yorkers to airplanes and skyscrapers even in the Age of Obama, when the world loves us as we stand firmly on the moral high ground.

THE BUCK STOPS THERE:  Obama was furious, announcing "That's not the White House I knew".  Well, not yet, but any day now.

Just Shoot Me

Matt Yglesias wonders why women aren't killing men with the murderous abandon of yesteryear, as shown on the chart below:

Why ask me?  My sub-group is as homicidal as ever (in absolute terms); the real driver of these stats are less-murderous black women (or anyway, the partners of black men; work with me):

Matt linked to a post where the guess was that women have more choices and better access to domestic ciolence shelters.  OK.  I'll add my guesses:

1.  Is There A Doctor In The House?  Today, a higher level of murder attempts fail due to improved medical care.  And why does this favor men?  Let's invoke the notion that women attempt suicide (as , for example, a cry for help)  but men do it.  A similar dynamic may result in more men surviving a half-hearted murder try.  (Set against that - husbands get shot; boyfriends get stabbed.  A Point to Ponder.

2.  We are not getting better, we are getting older - the average age at marriage is higher now than formerly; young people are more violent, less stable, and generally drunk or high (I exaggerate - they aren't that unstable...)

3.  It's a triumph of Roe v. Wade and the collapse of marriage.  No, really - fewer people feel trapped in a nightmare of a marriage and move on without moving their partner on to the Final Destination.

4.  I forget...

5.  Mickey Kaus will want to credit welfare reform and Paul Krugman will attribute it to rising income inequality.  Or George Bush, both of them.  Mickey could be right!

6.  Someone somewhere has to cite rising illegal immigration, so why not me?  No, I have no idea why that would bring the numbers down.

OK, let's serious up.  This 1999 study explained the decline

in terms of three factors that reduce exposure to violent relationships: shifts in marriage, divorce, and other factors associated with declining domesticity; the improved economic status of women; and increases in the availability of domestic violence services.

They left out improved medical technology. 

Osama Is Dead

Pakistan's ISI announces their conclusion that Osama bin Laden is dead.  Although I don't speak Austrian, I believe a more complete translation of their announcement is "Osama is dead already, so go away and leave us alone".

It might work!  And if if does, look for Nancy Pelosi to announce the deaths of George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the authors of the 'torture memos'.

Timing Is Everything

Patterico and Marc Thiessen return to the Library Tower timeline puzzle - how did the arrest of Khalid Sheick Mohammed in 2003 disrupt a plot the leader of which was busted in 2002 - while the Wapo opens with the interrogation of KSM and grapples with whether the enhanced interrogation program saved lives.

Patterico and I are sharing the same page - there is no particular reason to assume that Khalid Sheik Mohammed dream of blowing up the Library Tower died with the arrest of four plotters in 2002; Al Qaeda had the obvious resources for another attempt.

Marc Thiessen, former Presidential speechwriter, adds some detail:

And not just in the released memos.  In his September 2006 speech revealing the existence of the CIA program, President Bush described specifically how the interrogation of KSM led to the capture of the key operatives in this attack.  This was the most carefully vetted speech in presidential history — reviewed by all the key players from the individuals who ran the program all the way up to the director of national intelligence, who personally attested to the accuracy of the speech in a memo to the president.  And just last week on Fox News, former CIA Director Michael Hayden said he went back and checked with the agency as to the accuracy of that speech and reported:  “We stand by our story.” 

In numerous subsequent speeches, President Bush said that the West Coast plot was disrupted because of the CIA program.   Each of those speeches was carefully reviewed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — and each time the DNI provided the White House with a classified memo stating that the contents of the speech was accurate and did not compromise sources and methods.  So the Director of National Intelligence has repeatedly affirmed the accuracy of the statement that the West Coast plot was disrupted because of the CIA program.  And Noah himself acknowledges in his post a CIA spokesman affirmed the accuracy of the story. 

So bottom line: The intelligence community says it is so.

Well.  Official reassurance plus common sense does not sum to proof (Even when it's Patterico's common sense, not to mention my own).  But the absence of common sense and a healthy skepticism for official pronouncements does not sum to proof either.  If a Truth Commisison could sort this sort of thing out without tipping our hand to the enemy I would be all for it.

MORE:  The Politico provides background on House Speaker Pelosi's problem with this.  One wonders whether either Pelosi or Bush can remain in office as these new revelatons come out...

Big Labor

Mickey Kaus'  Socratic evaluation of card check is a Big Labor or love.

I Wouldn't Trust Him Any Further Than I Could Roll Him

TIME publicizes a Cato study authored by Glenn Greenwald.  Greenwald, a lawyer by training, is an advocate rather than analyst.  My experience with his blogging is that he will bend any quote and stretch any statistic to fit whatever agenda he is promoting that day.  Do I distrust him?  If Greenwald told me it was sunny outside and the sky was blue it would never occur to me to believe him unless I looked outside, and even if I saw blue sky I would grab an umbrella.  As a great man nearly said, Distrust but verify.  (Previous laughter ringing through the years.)

 In that spirit, let's see what TIME is going on about:

Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work?

Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.)

Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

Hmm - Portugal didn't actually "legalize" drugs either, as the headline but not the text make clear.

Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.

So did it work?  What would "work" mean, anyway, and would it be relevant to the US?  Portugal had a notable problem with heroin use but has always had a level of marijuana use that is low relative to the US or the European average.

The conclusion, as presented by TIME:

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

...The Cato report's author, Greenwald, hews to the first point: that the data shows that decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Since that is what concerns the public and policymakers most about decriminalization, he says, "that is the central concession that will transform the debate."

Within the Cato paper is data from a Portugese agency claiming that cannabis use peaked in 2001 and has fallen as of 2006 (see p. 12).  Other drug use has fallen as well.

On the other hand, here is a different study from 2005, "THE EFFECTS OF DECRIMINALIZATION
OF DRUG USE IN PORTUGAL, Dec 2007, Caitlin Hughes and Alex Stevens.  Their conclusion, subject to the caveat that reduced penalties may encourage more candid self-reporting, is that overall teen drug use, led by cannabis, rose from 1999 to 2003 (their data source is a quadrennial European-wide survey of teenage drinking and drug use. 2007 statistics are similar to 2003 for Portugal; cannabis use is down from 2003 to 2007 but both are higher than 1999.)  They wrote this in comparing the 1999 and 2003 data:

These figures suggest that, while cannabis use among young people may have increased, heroin use has decreased. The Portuguese authorities have recorded a reduction in the numbers of heroin users who are entering treatment for the first time. It seems that initiation into heroin use is falling, while cannabis use may be rising towards the levels experienced in some other European countries.

And crime?  Subject to caveats about European-wide trends, they wrote:

Nevertheless, the evaluation of the national strategy noted that the number of crimes that were “linked strongly to drugs” rose by 9% between 1999 and 2003 (Tavares et al. 2005).

Higher crime and higher recreational drug use - yeah, that will get the politicians on board.

Now, are these data sources more authoritative than the ones Greenwald selected?  How the heck would I know?  What I do know is that Greenwald would use the data that made his case, regardless of whether it was more authoritative or not. 

TIME quotes a couple of other experts who note that for lots of reasons Portugal's experience won't offer much guidance to the US.  I believe them, even though I am still not sure what Portugal's experience has been.

Too bad.  I'd like to believe this.

[end of thread]

Troop Withdrawals

The US is on schedule to withdraw combat troops from Iraqi cities by June.  City boundaries are being re-drawn so that current US bass are outside of them and units are being re-imagined as something other than "combat troops", but we are on schedule.

Counter-insurgency buffs will find this troubling (my emphasis):

While those principal Baghdad bases will remain, the United States military has been rapidly erasing its footprint everywhere else in Baghdad. The so-called troop surge added 77 small bases, known as combat outposts, patrol bases and joint security stations, spread throughout the city’s neighborhoods to get United States troops closer to the people. At the height, in 2007, there were nearly 100 such bases. All of them will have been turned over to the Iraqis by June 30, and many already have been, General Perkins said. He added that in many cases the Iraqis would choose not to use them for their own troops.

Presumably the US leaders have been generous with their advice and the Iraqis are proceeding wisely, but the obvious risk is that neighborhood security goes back into the wastebasket.

Swine Flu

The US is declaring a public health emergency, mainly to free up funds and commence preparing for the End Days.  Well, at least my worries about the Taliban dropping the Pakistani government and going nuclear have been moved to the back burner.  Hmm, maybe the Taliban could be decimated by the swine flu?  There's got to be a silver lining somewhere.

I'll Take "Breakthroughs In Artificial Intelligence" For $100

The answer will be announced Monday:

I.B.M. plans to announce Monday that it is in the final stages of completing a computer program to compete against human “Jeopardy!” contestants. If the program beats the humans, the field of artificial intelligence will have made a leap forward.

I.B.M. scientists previously devised a chess-playing program to run on a supercomputer called Deep Blue. That program beat the world champion Garry Kasparov in a controversial 1997 match (Mr. Kasparov called the match unfair and secured a draw in a later one against another version of the program).

But chess is a game of limits, with pieces that have clearly defined powers. “Jeopardy!” requires a program with the suppleness to weigh an almost infinite range of relationships and to make subtle comparisons and interpretations. The software must interact with humans on their own terms, and fast.

Indeed, the creators of the system — which the company refers to as Watson, after the I.B.M. founder, Thomas J. Watson Sr. — said they were not yet confident their system would be able to compete successfully on the show, on which human champions typically provide correct responses 85 percent of the time.

I applaud whatever confidence they have, because this seems like quite a mountain to climb:

The way to deal with such problems, Dr. Ferrucci said, is to improve the program’s ability to understand the way “Jeopardy!” clues are offered. The complexity of the challenge is underscored by the subtlety involved in capturing the exact meaning of a spoken sentence. For example, the sentence “I never said she stole my money” can have seven different meanings depending on which word is stressed.

I would guess the Jeopardy writers could deliver a show that would leave the machine at sea.  Metaphorically.

MORE:  Send Ken Jennings?  Send Betsy Newmark!

["end of humanity as we currently understand it" for $500]

Confirming The Obvious

Micheal Isikoff of Newsweek chats with former FBI Agent Ali Soufan and confirms that his recent op-ed in the NY Times represents an absurd misrepresentation of the Zubaydah interrogation. 

From the op-ed (my emphasis):

It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

Per the Inspector General (p.111), the CIA took over the interrogation at the outset in late March/early April and employed techniques that one of the FBI agents described as "borderline torture" right away.  Newsweek tells a similar story:

The arguments at the CIA safe house were loud and intense in the spring of 2002. Inside, a high-value terror suspect, Abu Zubaydah, was handcuffed to a gurney. He had been wounded during his capture in Pakistan and still had bullet fragments in his stomach, leg and groin. Agency operatives were aiming to crack him with rough and unorthodox interrogation tactics—including stripping him nude, turning down the temperature and bombarding him with loud music. But one impassioned young FBI agent wanted nothing to do with it. He tried to stop them.

...As Soufan tells the story, he challenged a CIA official at the scene about the agency's legal authority to do what it was doing. "We're the United States of America, and we don't do that kind of thing," he recalls shouting at one point. But the CIA official, whom Soufan refuses to name because the agent's identity is still classified, brushed aside Soufan's concerns. He told him in April 2002 that the aggressive techniques already had gotten approval from the "highest levels" in Washington, says Soufan. The official even waved a document in front of Soufan, saying the approvals "are coming from Gonzales," a reference to Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel and later the attorney general. (A lawyer for Gonzales declined to comment.)

Well.  Soufan's statement that "the harsh techniques were introduced later in August" is not accurate.

CYA At The CIA

The LA Times presents yet another example of Bush boldly setting a course and then failing to follow through on pesky details:

Reporting from Washington -- The CIA used an arsenal of severe interrogation techniques on imprisoned Al Qaeda suspects for nearly seven years without seeking a rigorous assessment of whether the methods were effective or necessary, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The failure to conduct a comprehensive examination occurred despite calls to do so as early as 2003. That year, the agency's inspector general circulated drafts of a report that raised deep concerns about waterboarding and other methods, and recommended a study by outside experts on whether they worked.

It is not the natural way of bureaucracies to second-guess a program embraced by the top people.

We get a modest hint as to the second CIA memo Cheney was attempting to see declassified to buttress his case that the enhanced interrogation program was effective:

White House National Security Council officials who saw the inspector general's report became concerned with its conclusions, current and former officials said. Stephen Hadley, then the deputy national security advisor, was particularly persistent on pushing the CIA director to follow up on the inspector general's recommendation.

Goss, who had taken the helm at the CIA four months after the inspector general's report was filed, eventually complied. But Helgerson had envisioned a group of experts, perhaps including specialists from the FBI; Goss turned instead to two former government officials with little background in interrogation.

Gardner Peckham, a national security advisor to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, produced the approximately 10-page document that praised the program. It concluded that the program was "very structured and very disciplined," said a former official familiar with its contents, but did not assess the effectiveness of various methods.

A separate report, submitted by John Hamre, a former deputy Defense secretary, was similar in scope and led to no significant alterations of the program. Hamre and Peckham both declined to comment.

The May 30 2005 OLC memo cites a March 2 2005 memo titled "Re: Effectiveness of the CIA Counterintelligence Interrogation Techniques" but that is not what Cheney requested.  Instead, he asked for a June 1 2005 memo that is apparently 13 pages long.

Both the Hamre and Peckham memos were described by Dana Priest in a Dec 30, 2005 story:

Gardner Peckham, an adviser to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), concluded that the interrogation techniques had been effective, said an intelligence official familiar with the result. John J. Hamre, deputy defense secretary under President Bill Clinton, offered a more ambiguous conclusion. Both declined to comment.

So, place your bets - I say that Cheney went with the more supportive Peckham memo, which means that the March 2 "Effectiveness" memo is by Hamre.  And do note that, however ambiguous it was, even the Hamre memo had enough ammunition for the author of the May 30, 2005 OLC opinion (if this line of reasoning is accurate).

[end of thread]

Sunday Open Thread

Away we go.

Andrew Sullivan - Dishonest, Or Just Dumb?

Andrew Sullivan seizes on a repackaging of yesterday's news to inform the world that the absence of proof equals the absence of evidence.  Just for starters, this will surely simplify the global warming debate - since the IPCC is the first to admit that they cannot prove that humans are contributing to global warming, we can now apply Sully-Logic to conclude that there is no evidence of any human influence at all, and nothing to talk about.  Andrew Sullivan, global warming denier - who knew?

Or closer to home, maybe Sullivan should announce that since he can't prove that Sarah Palin is not the mother of Trig Palin, he has no evidence to justify his endless, relentless inquiries and will Move On.  Hey, I am digging this Sully-Logic!

From the Daily Deep Thinker:

The CIA inspector general's report found no evidence that torture had given any information that would not have been found using legal and moral means.

And the inspiration for that absurd claim, with my emphasis:

"It is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program," Steven G. Bradbury, then the Justice Department's principal deputy assistant attorney general, wrote in a May 30, 2005, memo to CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, one of four released last week by the Obama administration.

"As the IG Report notes, it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks. And because the CIA has used enhanced techniques sparingly, 'there is limited data on which to assess their individual effectiveness'," Bradbury wrote, quoting the IG report.

I am pretty sure that if there was, per Sullivan, "no evidence", it would not have been so difficult to quantify the effectiveness of the program.

Let's see - in the spirt of No Dead Horse Left Behind, Unbeaten, let me add another example - since OJ Simpson was acquited, it must be the case that there was no evidence against him at all, yes?  Marc Thiessen, quoting from a paragraph or so later in the same OLC memo, found lots of evidence of the effectiveness of the program, even if it was not proof.

Well.  Phillip Zelikow provided an adult explanation of the difficulties of sorting through these claims.  Just One Idea for Andrew - do some homework.

Cheap Shots

Now that Obama has bravely jeopardized our national security by releasing the OLC memos on enhanced interrogation, maybe he can muster comparable courage and release his own college transcript.

(No, I didn't hear that on talk radio but I am sure I could have.)

Why Are They Telling Me What I Was Telling You?

The McClatchy News Service finally takes a moment to read the OLC memos and leads with this:

CIA official: no proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks

WASHINGTON — The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.

That undercuts assertions by former vice president Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials that the use of harsh interrogation tactics including waterboarding, which is widely considered torture, was justified because it headed off terrorist attacks.

The risks and effectiveness of waterboarding and other enhanced techniques are at the center of an increasingly heated debate over how thoroughly to investigate the CIA's secret detention and interrogation programs.

"It is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program," Steven G. Bradbury, then the Justice Department's principal deputy assistant attorney general, wrote in a May 30, 2005, memo to CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, one of four released last week by the Obama administration.

"As the IG Report notes, it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks. And because the CIA has used enhanced techniques sparingly, 'there is limited data on which to assess their individual effectiveness'," Bradbury wrote, quoting the IG report.

Bah.  I had flagged that passage last Tuesday when penning "Releasing The Torture Memos - Be Careful What You Wish For, Mr. Cheney".  My first point:

However, the May 30 memo also included this caveat:

Second, it is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program.  As the [CIA Inspector General] report notes, it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks.  And because the CIA has used enhanced techniques sparingly "there is limited data on which to assess their individual effectiveness.

Well, now its news.  Grr.  If a blogger posts in the forest and no one reads it, is the Pope Catholic?

I am heading off to the woods to research the behavior of bears.

NOT A LOGICIAN:  The Daily Dish is utterly baffled by simple logic.  His take:

The CIA inspector general's report found no evidence that torture had given any information that would not have been found using legal and moral means.

Really?  The relevant passage, as cited above, does not claim there is "no evidence" in support of the enhanced interrogation program; it claims there is not enough to prove conclusively that enhanced interrogation was the only path to success.  Does anyone other than Andrew need an explanation of the difference?

Ahh, well - hewing to our motto of No Dead Horse Left Behind And Unbeaten, let me attempt an illustration - based on his offering post above and this howler from last week in which Sully defined torture as anything that prompts a captive to talk, there is certainly evidence to suggest that Sullivan is typing this tripe with his eyes closed.  However, there is not enough evidence to prove it conclusively.  Clear?

Take Your Vitamins

It's a beautiful Sunshine Vitamin day here.  My duty is clear.

[end of thread]

More On Torture

Condi Rice adviser Phillip Zelikow of the 9/11 Commission writes in the NY Times on torture.  His piece extends a 2007 speech he gave titled "Legal Policy for a Twilight War".  Scott Horton of Harper's characterized the speech as "a very careful waltz around the issue–acknowledging the administration’s legal arguments while presenting a soft personal challenge to them on moral grounds".

This from the Times is fascinating:

America inadvertently carried out an experiment in how best to question Qaeda captives. On the one side there was the C.I.A. effort, while on the other there was the military-run program against Al Qaeda in Iraq. The Iraq program, organized by the Joint Special Operations Command, was reformed after the Abu Ghraib scandals. It respected basic international standards. It used teams made up of experts from the military, the C.I.A. and law enforcement. The F.B.I. did not have to stay away, as it did from the C.I.A.’s “enhanced” interrogations.

Qaeda captives in Iraq were hard cases, often more seasoned in violence than captives taken elsewhere. Yet the program in Iraq was and remains highly successful. I was impressed when I observed it in 2005 as part of a wider look at our intelligence efforts. I know that Joint Special Operations Command leaders told the White House that they could interrogate captives effectively under the higher standards.

Interesting.  The CIA experience seems to point both ways.  From the OLC memos it appears that 28 of 94 high value detainees were subjected to enhanced interrogation, including three who were waterboarded.  So roughly 2/3 of the time the CIA was satisfied with the results of conventional interrogation techniques (if we can trust their reporting.)

On the other hand, Goldsmith suspended the enhanced interrogation program by revoking the OLC opinion after he took over there in 2003 [the OLC opinion was withdrawn in 2004]; Bradbury then re-instituted the opinions in 2005.  One wonders why?  Per different accounts the waterboard technique was not used after 2003, but it seems a reasonable guess that the CIA was pushing to have their other enhanced authorities restored.  Which suggests they found them to be useful in some cases.  [OK, I am hazy on this - per the SSCI narrative, the Aug 1 2002 opinion citing the President's wartime authority was withdrawn; the narrower Aug 1 opiion that was just released remained in force.  Let's say that I am puzzled as to just what was withdrawn and later restored.  The issue seems to be the applicability of Constiutional provisions to aliens held abroad. In any case, in July and August of 2004 the CIA was green-lighted on their enhancedinterrogation prorogram again, with an opinion to follow.]]

This Harvard study, "Educing Information" (372 page .pdf), includes a bit more on the high value interrogation program run by the Allies in WWII to which Mr. Zelikow alludes - see p. 14 of 372.

And with WWII on the agenda, apparently the Greatest Generation did engage in what might be considered prisoner abuse after the Allied victory.  The motivations were food shortages throughout Europe and a desire to enforce upon the German prisoners that their side had lost the war, not won it.  Victor Davis Hanson claims that impromptu wartime torture also occurred.

I can't shake the sense that Mr. Zelikow is hiding the ball here:

The Israelis and British also have a huge amount of painfully acquired experience in using those [alternative interrogation techniques], including in some cases where they really did have ticking bombs, either Palestinian or Irish. Neither of those countries can lawfully adopt the C.I.A. program revealed in the Justice Department memos; the Israeli Supreme Court has spoken to these issues in exceptionally eloquent opinions.

Well, yes, but how did they respond the CIA when asked what they would do if they could conduct interrogations in any manner they chose?  Did the CIA ask, and would Mr. Zelikow know?

And let's hear from former DCI and former Congressman Porter Goss, who argues that the release of the OLC memos harmed out national security:

Unfortunately, much of the damage to our capabilities has already been done. It is certainly not trust that is fostered when intelligence officers are told one day "I have your back" only to learn a day later that a knife is being held to it. After the events of this week, morale at the CIA has been shaken to its foundation.

We must not forget: Our intelligence allies overseas view our inability to maintain secrecy as a reason to question our worthiness as a partner. These allies have been vital in almost every capture of a terrorist.

The suggestion that we are safer now because information about interrogation techniques is in the public domain conjures up images of unicorns and fairy dust. We have given our enemy invaluable information about the rules by which we operate. The terrorists captured by the CIA perfected the act of beheading innocents using dull knives. Khalid Sheik Mohammed boasted of the tactic of placing explosives high enough in a building to ensure that innocents trapped above would die if they tried to escape through windows. There is simply no comparison between our professionalism and their brutality.

[end of thread]

Swine Flu - WHO Cares

If you are having trouble staying awake and staring at the ceiling all night, add the swine flu to your list of worries:

Swine Flu Could Cause Pandemic, WHO Says

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 25, 2009 11:08 AM

The swine flu virus that is responsible for an outbreak in Mexico and has been detected in the southwestern United States has the potential to cause a pandemic, a top international health official said today.

"It has pandemic potential," Margaret Chan, the director-general of the World Health Organization, told reporters during a telephone briefing. "It is infecting people."

Chan held the briefing after cutting short a trip to the United States so she could rush back to the WHO's headquarters in Geneva to convene an emergency meeting of special experts to decide what steps should be taken to contain the virus. It is the first time the committee has been called upon since it was created two years ago to handle disease outbreaks.

"The situation is evolving quickly," Chan said. "We do not yet have a complete picture of the epidemiology or the risk, including possible spread beyond the currently affected areas. Nonetheless, in the assessment of WHO this is serious situation that must be watched very carefully."

...

More than 800 cases and at least 62 deaths have been reported in Mexico, with most of the cases occurring in the country's sprawling capital of Mexico City. But cases have been reported elsewhere in the country, and at least eight cases have been found in California and Texas near the Mexican border.

Although the U.S. cases have been mostly relatively mild, the outbreak in Mexico appears to be striking young, healthy adults, conjuring images of the devastating 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. But the WHO has dispatched a team of experts to assist Mexican authorities, who have shut down schools, museums, libraries and advised residents to stay home.

More from Mexico from the AP.

[end of civilization/start of Zombie Flu]

At Least He Has Some Manners

Paul of the PowerGuys picks up Ben Smith's coverage of the Obama Waltz on the Armenian genocide which has now been downgraded to an "atrocity" in order to avoid offending Turkey:

Obama is fine with attacking his own country before any audience, but unwilling to keep his promise to "call a spade a spade" when it comes to Turkey.

Ouch.

[end of thread]

Oh, No, Mariano!

I was reviewing these Hall of Fame stats when Jason Bay ruined my night.

What's Interesting Is That Begala Is Smart Enough To Know His Argument Is Phony

Paul Begala makes a claim not supported by any of the evidence on offer, but relies on wordplay to claim victory in a dispute with Mark Hemingway of the NRO.  [A noted wordsmith can't spot the fallacy or do the research.  Surprise!]

Begala's claim is that "the United States executed Japanese war criminals for waterboarding".  His source is this Politifact article backing a similar claim by John McCain.  Politifact opens with this quote from McCain, who was expressing his opposition to waterboarding:

"I forgot to mention last night that following World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding," he told reporters at a campaign event.

The slippage is obvious - if war criminals who committed many bad acts including waterboarding were executed, McCain's statement would be accurate but Begala's would not be.

Politfact cites this article by jurist Evan Wallach, which reviews the history of waterboarding in US law, including the war crimes trials following WWII.  There is also a WaPo version and this summary.  Let me just present the start of the summary for a flavor of Begala's problem:

Wallach has found a number of instances in American legal history which document the consistent classification of waterboarding as a technique of torture — which is clearly an unconstitutional practice. Among Wallach’s examples are:

• The prosecution of members of the Japanese military for their treatment of Americans during World War II. Seitara Hata was just one Japanese soldier charged with a war crime for waterboarding; Hatara was sentenced to 25 years hard labor.

"Hard labor"?  Hit me with your best shot, pal!  Did Wallach find anyone that was executed whose main crime was waterboarding? I welcome assistance, but I found no such example in the Wallach paper or the NY Times archives (Trust but verify - I was exhausted but I cannot claim my search was exhaustive). 

Plenty of Japanese war criminals were executed, but plenty of horrific abuses were committed as well.  Just for example, this commission in Java cited the "water cure", electric shock, crushing of fingers, and a "scientifically graduated" method of beating that culminated with a cat-o-nine tails designed with metal flesh-tearing hooks as methods of torture.

You know we worry when our friends on the left send a meme out into the world alone and with no visible means of support.  Well - Begala made a positive claim; he ought to be able to provide a name.  Who did we execute whose primary offense was waterboarding in WWII?

Mr. Wallach will be pleased to hear the answer.  Or, quite possibly, my opthamologist will be pleased to see me again.

Of course, all that said, supporters of the Bush enhanced interrogation program are not exactly presenting a winning argument by advancing the notion that waterboarding is not a capital offense but only merits decades of hard labor.  Still, we are pro-facts, not pro-torture.

MORE:  Mark Hemingway makes some of the points above in his own defense but misses the Wallach articles.

[end of thread]

Saving Our Souls

Paul Krugman on torture and the Iraq war:

Sorry, but what we really should do for the sake of the country is have investigations both of torture and of the march to war. These investigations should, where appropriate, be followed by prosecutions — not out of vindictiveness, but because this is a nation of laws.

We need to do this for the sake of our future. For this isn’t about looking backward, it’s about looking forward — because it’s about reclaiming America’s soul.

"America's soul"  Does a country have a soul that is separate from the citizenry?  I know we all deplore this mingling of Church and State, and I am also hazy on some of the details.  Will Pat Leahy of the Judiciary Committee perform a benediction?  Or will it be more like a ritual excorcism?

But snark aside, it's a terrific idea.  We should have a Truth Commission modeled after Truman's Internment Commission, which famously investigated the deplorable internment of Japanese-American citizens (as well as others of German and Italian descent) during WWII.  I don't know whether we will want to go so far as to pay reparations to the families of tortured terrorists (or to the terrorists themselves) but surely we can terminate the careers of some civil servants, military leaders, and Federal judges, as the Internment Commission did.  Truman brought us back from the brink when our souls were imperiled then; I know another Democrat can save us today.

DOUBLE-SNARK ASIDE:  I back the CW on this - Washington and the Obama agenda will freeze if Obama does not Move On.  So speaking as someone with no love for either Bush or Obama's likely agenda, I say to the Truth Commission idea, bring it on.  Nancy Pelosi being sworn in to lie about what she knew and when she forgot it - she has to be less dangerous to the country that way.

OK - as Andy McCarthy explains, it is no way to run a serious country and it may weaken us before our enemies.  But it would be wrong to give in to fear, and can we really put the risk of a few dead Americans ahead of the threat to Paul Krugman's soul?

I'm counting on my President to do the right thing.

McCARTHY'S BEST LINE:  Mr. McCarthy offered this on prosecutorial discretion:

And unlike the case of a congressional commission, it’s also within Obama’s power to pull the plug on a criminal investigation. Instead, he’s entrusting the matter to Attorney General Eric Holder, who responded to his boss’s abrupt turnabout by boldly promising to “follow the evidence wherever it takes us” —because, as he and Obama mindlessly repeat, “no one is above the law.”

...

Obama and Holder can’t pretend that this is not their decision to make, that the “rule of law” is a train on which they are mere passengers.

Not To Tell Cheney How To Do His Job, But...

Cheney's request to the National Archives for CIA files related to the effectiveness of the enhanced interrogation program has been released.  Per Greg Sargent, he is only asking for two files totaling twenty one pages:

One is dated July 13th, 2004, and numbers eight pages.  [Probably the assessment of the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed interrogation - see below]

The other is dated June 1st, 2005, and numbers 13 pages.

The CIA has redacted the detailed description of the documents because they’re classified. In total, Cheney requested all of 21 pages to support his claim that torture worked.

Presumably he has some idea what he is doing, but I would have been interested to see the CIA memo cited in the May 30 OLC memo, namely "Re: Effectiveness of the CIA Counterintelligence Interrogation Techniques", March 2, 2005".  I am pretty sure it would be on point, although for all I know the CIA prepared a quarterly report on that topic and Cheney asked for the June version.

Or, since guesses are free, maybe the CIA prepared a June 1 memo in response to the May 30 OLC opinion.

Or maybe I have no clue at all and will have to wait and see. But in that search for clues, I encourage folks to page through the two OLC opinions from 2005 to see what other CIA documents they cite.  That advice is especially extended to those not enjoying the first summer-like day here in the Northeast.

BINGO:  Per the May 30 2005 OLC opinion (p. 91 of 124) there is a CIA paper dated July 13, 2004 and titled "Khalid Shaykh Muhammed: Preeminent Source on Al Qaeda", aka "Preeminent Source".  It's quitting time, since I am betting that a May 30 2005 memo will not reference a June 1 2005 document.

MORE:  OK, Marcy Wheeler has too much free time also.

Barney Bubbles

When Barney says he was always worried about the housing market he isn't being frank with us.

TRADITION! OR, Truth, Get Your Boots On

Yesterday I noted a factually challenged op-ed in the NY Times.  Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent, was involved in the interrogation of Zubaydah, the first terrorist to be waterboarded.  Mr. Soufan, writing in the NY Times, claimed that "traditional" interrogation techniques were working well with Zubaydah and producing good intelligence until June but the CIA switched to a heavier hand anyway.

However, the Department of Justice Inspector General report on torture devoted a chapter to the Zubaydah interrogation.  Per that report (p. 100-111 of 438), the CIA adopted harsh tactics "within days", tactics so harsh (yet redacted) that one of the two FBI agents on the scne described that as "borderline torture" and both agents were recalled by June rather than be associated with the interrogation.

Here is Mr. Soufan:

It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

David Johnston of the NY Times wrote about this on Sept 10, 2006:

The events that unfolded at the safe house over the next few weeks [after the capture of Zubaydah]  proved to be fateful for the Bush administration. Within days, Mr. Zubaydah was being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques — he was stripped, held in an icy room and jarred by earsplittingly loud music — the genesis of practices later adopted by some within the military, and widely used by the Central Intelligence Agency in handling prominent terrorism suspects at secret overseas prisons.

So, what is the truth?  Did the DoJ Inspector general get it wrong?  Or are "traditional" FBI interrogations normally described by FBI agents as "borderline torture", and so harsh that FBI agents are not allowed to participate in them (I see a prisoner in an empty room...)?

Or is Mr. Soufan serving up the sort of dish that a certain audience is sure to savor uncritically?  Harsher techniques were introduced in August, but the techniques before then were surely harsh.

Let's sample reaction to the op-ed.  Dan Froomkin of the WaPo:

But to me, the most significant news of the day can be found on today's New York Times op-ed page, where former FBI supervisor Ali Soufan persuasively and memorably rebuts the misinformation being spread by those complicit in torture.

Fight fire with fire and misinformation with misinformation.  We can make up stuff faster than they can!  Mr. Froomkin includes this warning:

The point is this: Any assertions from these people should presumptively be considered misinformation.

By "these people" he means those on the other side from Mr. Soufan, of course.

Michael Winter at USA Today flagged the Soufan piece but did not assess it.

Spencer Ackerman had the best title (click to see) and looked truth in the face by researching the Zubaydah interrogation, but backed away.  From Mr. Ackerman:

Somehow, a SERE guy was part of the Abu Zubaydah interrogation as soon as CIA officials deployed to interrogate the detainee...

[O]thers present [at the interrogation] said he seemed to think he had all the answers about how to deal with Zubayda. Mitchell announced that the suspect had to be treated “like a dog in a cage,” informed sources said. “He said it was like an experiment, when you apply electric shocks to a caged dog, after a while, he’s so diminished, he can’t resist.” [as quoted on page 156 of Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side:]

This horrified the FBI agents on scene, Mayer reports. (”Science is science,” Mitchell retorted. Spoken like Sean Hannity!) They were eventually ordered to leave the interrogation, which became brutal.

Well, yet another source confirming that the interrogation was rough from the outset, which is why the FBI left.

Now to be fair and balanced, the Inspector General report says that the two FBI agents got an identification of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind of the 9/11 report while caring for Zubaydah in the hospital prior to the CIA involvement, so it is fair enough to say that they were getting results with a traditional technique.  However, that traditional technique was not employed up to June, as Soufan claims, nor were harsh techniques only applied beginning in August.  Per the IG, the CIA assumed control of the Zubaydah interrogation within "a few days" and made a quick judgment that they needed to "diminish his capacity to resist".

We will see whether anyone cares to have their talking points disrupted.

Mormons Don't Like Rock 'n Roll

Mormon crickets, that is.

TUSCARORA, Nev. -- The residents of this tiny town, anticipating an imminent attack, will be ready with a perimeter defense. They'll position their best weapons at regular intervals, faced out toward the desert to repel the assault.

Then they'll turn up the volume.

Rock music blaring from boomboxes has proved one of the best defenses against an annual invasion of Mormon crickets. The huge flightless insects are a fearsome sight as they advance across the desert in armies of millions that march over, under or into anything in their way.

But the crickets don't much fancy Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones, the townspeople figured out three years ago. So next month, Tuscarorans are preparing once again to get out their extension cords, array their stereos in a quarter-circle and tune them to rock station KHIX, full blast, from dawn to dusk. "It is part of our arsenal," says Laura Moore, an unemployed college professor and one of the town's 13 residents.

In flyspeck villages like Tuscarora, crickets are a serious matter. The critters hatch in April in the barren soil of northern Nevada, western Utah and other parts of the Great Basin, quickly growing into blood-red, ravenous insects more than 2 inches long.

Then they march. In columns that in peak years can be two miles long and a mile across, swarms move across the badlands in search of food. Starting in about May, they march through August or so, before stopping to lay eggs for next year and die.

In between, they make an awful mess. They destroy crops and lots of the other leafy vegetation. They crawl all over houses, and some get inside. "You'll wake up and there'll be one sitting on your forehead, looking at you," says Ms. Moore.

Here is the KHIX (Kicks?  K-Hicks?) website.  I bet they would welcome some playlist suggestions.

Try To Remember

Nancy Pelosi explains that, well, yes, she was in fact briefed on waterboarding in September 2002 but the techniques were theoretical at that point and not yet in use.

Back at the ranch, Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002, per the OLC memo (p. 121 of 124 here).

September, August, whatever - we want to look forward, even if that means we end up looking at yesterday.

MORE:  Maybe if she got the wax out.

PLAYING THE ACE:

[Pelosi] "merely" knew that WH lawyers had blessed the tactic as legal, and intended, of course, to use waterboarding in the appropriate case. But she claims she didn't know it actually happened, so she's... off the hook?

That's like a parent watching his teenager stocking the house with kegs and condoms and then claiming "Well, I didn't know he'd be having a party while we were away."

What do you think he was doing? Getting ready to make beer-filled condom-balloons?

[end of thread]

Setting Limits

Steve Chapman of Reason does not seem to have an appreciation for shades of gray in the torture debate.  His Big Finish:

And if effectiveness is the only gauge, why even debate whether these techniques fit the definition of torture? The problem with using "it worked" as an argument is that it justifies too much. By that rationale, we can justify subjecting enemy captives to every form of torture ever devised. We can even justify torturing and killing their spouses, siblings, parents, and children, right in front of them.

Cheney and others have yet to advocate going that far. But if they really believe what they say about the techniques we've used, here's a question they need to answer: Why not?

Well, "it worked" is one part of the argument.  If the enhanced interrogation techniques were ineffective they would have no justification at all, but the reverse does not follow.

And while decrying an absence of limits Mr. Chapman is incredibly hazy about his own:

Enforced sleeplessness, [Solzhenitsyn] explained, was favored because it was cheap, easy, and left no marks on the prisoner—not to mention that it was effective. Solzhenitsyn attested from bitter experience that "it is not really necessary to use a rack or hot coals to drive a human being out of his mind."

But American intelligence officials also learned something from the Soviets about manipulating language to conceal reality. When our enemies use methods like this, they amount to torture. When we do, they don't. A newly released 2002 memo from a Bush administration official authorized keeping prisoners awake because "we are not aware of any evidence that sleep deprivation results in severe physical pain or suffering."

...The former is obviously untrue as well as dishonest: Solzhenitsyn makes that clear. So do numerous U.S. government reports accusing various regimes of violating human rights through such forms of torture as sleep deprivation. Likewise, the U.S. government used to take a negative view of waterboarding. But apparently we only object when we're not the ones doing it.

Is that really all Mr. Chapman took from his study of the OLC memos?  Let me pose the same riddle I posed earlier today - is all sleep deprivation "torture"?  How about four hours?  How about for four days?  (I think we will all conced four weeks is torture).  Does Mr. Chapman recognize any limit at all, or do prisoners have some heretofore unrecognized Universal Right to Naptime?  (And does that right extend to Presidential advisers?)

And if Mr. Chapman is bold enough to pick a limit, as the OLC lawyers were asked to do, why is he right?  Why can't we decide, in the fullness of time and with the benefit of hindsight, that Mr. Chapman is a lawless torturere for having opined that. e.g., forty-eight hours of sleeplessness can be inflicted when every right-thinking person knows the correct limit is thirty-six?

I wonder what the OLC should have done when faced with the question of when and whether sleep deprivation crosses the line into torture.  The safe course would have been to find a Universal Right to Naptime, but I don't know how realistic that would have been.  And I am curious to see how Mr. Chapman chooses. 

Levels Of Enhancement

Ali Soufan, an FBI interrogator of Abu Zubaydah, joins the torture debate on the NY Times op-ed page and explains that the Bush era enhanced interrogation techniques were unnecessary and ineffective.  Torture doesn't work, and Mr. Soufan is today's darling of the reality-based community.  However, based on earlier Times reporting and the DoJ Inspector General report Mr. Soufan is, well, misleading us. 

So, the Times has run an op-ed that dovetails with their current agenda but is contradicted by other strong evidence and their own reporting - does anyone think we will see a clarification or follow-up?  Neither do I. 

Eventually patient readers will also find my rebuttal to Marcy Wheeler and Andrew Sullivan, who claim that these latest revelations bring down the whole legal structure crafted by the OLC memos.  Not to jump ahead, but since the Soufan story is bogus, conclusions based on that story are also shaky.  It's castles on sand and another day in reality-world.

Let's start with Mr. Soufan:

One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.

It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

I guess there are different levels of "traditional" techniques - the DoJ IG report (p. 111 of 438) makes it clear that the FBI had concerns about the CIA-led approach from the outset, with one of the agents describing it as "borderline torture". 

What "borderline torture" techniques are we talking about?  The DoJ IG report has redactions, but this is from David Johnston, writing in the Sept 10 2006 Times:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 — Abu Zubaydah, the first Osama bin Laden henchman captured by the United States after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was bloodied and feverish when a C.I.A. security team delivered him to a secret safe house in Thailand for interrogation in the early spring of 2002. Bullet fragments had ripped through his abdomen and groin during a firefight in Pakistan several days earlier when he had been captured.

The events that unfolded at the safe house over the next few weeks proved to be fateful for the Bush administration. Within days, Mr. Zubaydah was being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques — he was stripped, held in an icy room and jarred by earsplittingly loud music — the genesis of practices later adopted by some within the military, and widely used by the Central Intelligence Agency in handling prominent terrorism suspects at secret overseas prisons.

The Times returned to Zubaydah last week and apparently believed that the unenhanced enhanced techniques were controversial:

His interrogation, according to multiple accounts, began in Pakistan and continued at the secret C.I.A. site in Thailand, with a traditional, rapport-building approach led by two F.B.I. agents, who even helped care for him as his gunshot wounds healed.

Abu Zubaydah gave up perhaps his single most valuable piece of information early, naming Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, whom he knew as Mukhtar, as the main organizer of the 9/11 plot.

A C.I.A. interrogation team that arrived a week or two later, which included former military psychologists, did not change the approach to questioning, but began to keep him awake night and day with blasting rock music, have his clothes removed and keep his cell cold.

The legal basis for this treatment is uncertain, but lawyers at C.I.A. headquarters were in constant touch with interrogators, as well as with Mr. Bybee’s subordinate in the Office of Legal Counsel, John C. Yoo, who was drafting memos on the legal limits of interrogation.

Well.  One hopes the actual interrogations were done in compliance with FBI guidelines, even if the treatment of the prisoner was "enhanced" a bit on an extra-curricular basis outside of the interrogation room.  From the May 30 2005 memo (p. 94 of 124) I infer that the proponents of enhanced techniques scored this as a win for their techniques.  And since per the DoJ IG report the FBI withdrew its agents in May and June because of the harsh CIA techniques, we are left wondering just what sort of "traditional" FBI interrogation Mr. Soufan normally conducts. 

Switching gears, let me summarize the argument offered by Ms. Wheeler and enthusiastically endorsed by Andrew Sullivan.  The OLC legal opinion offered by Bybee included the caveat that "The interrogation team is certain that he has additional information that he refuses to divulge" and warns that

We also understand that you do not have any facts in your possession contrary to the facts outlined here, and this opinion is limited to these facts. If these facts were to change, this advice would not necessarily apply.

To continue the argument, the interrogations were taking place with both FBI and CIA agents present; therefore, the CIA had to know, as Mr. Soufan did, that the prisoner was cooperating; therefore, the legal opinion is based on a false premise and collapses.  Or so says Ms. Wheeler, with a strong second from Sully. 

To which I say, well, maybe, if the Inspector General and the Times reporting is all wrong.  The Johnston 2006 story included this:

After Mr. Zubaydah’s capture, a C.I.A. interrogation team was dispatched from the agency’s counterterrorism center to take the lead in his questioning, former law enforcement and intelligence officials said, and F.B.I. agents were withdrawn. The group included an agency consultant schooled in the harsher interrogation procedures to which American special forces are subjected in their training. Three former intelligence officials said the techniques had been drawn up on the basis of legal guidance from the Justice Department, but were not yet supported by a formal legal opinion.

In Thailand, the new C.I.A. team concluded that under standard questioning Mr. Zubaydah was revealing only a small fraction of what he knew, and decided that more aggressive techniques were warranted.

At times, Mr. Zubaydah, still weak from his wounds, was stripped and placed in a cell without a bunk or blankets. He stood or lay on the bare floor, sometimes with air-conditioning adjusted so that, one official said, Mr. Zubaydah seemed to turn blue. At other times, the interrogators piped in deafening blasts of music by groups like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Sometimes, the interrogator would use simpler techniques, entering his cell to ask him to confess.

“You know what I want,” the interrogator would say to him, according to one official’s account, departing leaving Mr. Zubaydah to brood over his answer.

F.B.I. agents on the scene angrily protested the more aggressive approach, arguing that persuasion rather than coercion had succeeded. But leaders of the C.I.A. interrogation team were convinced that tougher tactics were warranted and said that the methods had been authorized by senior lawyers at the White House.

Mr. Soufan says that "I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August."  As we have seen, something like harsh techniques were already in place.  But what happened in July?  This high value target of so much attention was left to rock out to the Red Hot Chili Peppers while shivering in his underwear?  Probably not.  Based on the DoJ IG report the Times story is roughly accurate.

If Mr. Soufan is credible at all then there were divisions within the original CIA team, some members were convinced a tougher approach was warranted, and Bybee was working with them.  Or perhaps after the fact some CIA officials involved in the interrogation decided that someone else must have been responsible.  CYA at the CIA.  Go figure.

And do note that ater the fact the FBI team may have been absolutely correct in their assessment of Zubaydah's compliance but that does not mean that the CIA people requested the legal guidance in bad faith.

MORE ON THE INSPECTOR GENERAL REPORT:

Mr. Soufan makes an interesting claim in his op-ed:

Fortunately for me, after I objected to the enhanced techniques, the message came through from Pat D’Amuro, an F.B.I. assistant director, that “we don’t do that,” and I was pulled out of the interrogations by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller (this was documented in the report released last year by the Justice Department’s inspector general).

 Well, if the DoJ Inspector General's report is reliable, the Soufan story is full of holes.  Starting at p. 110 of 438, we see that two FBI agents, Gibson and Thomas (pseudonyms) were involved in the Zubaydah interrogation.

The CIA showed up and took over quickly.  Thomas had objections to their techniques, which he described as "borderline torture", and left somewhat thereafter.  Gibson was authorized (or instructed) to leave but hung around until early June, several weeks after Thomas left.  So let's tentatively infer from that that "Gibson" is Mr. Soufan (the story hardly changes if "Thomas" is Soufan.)

The first and most important point is that the FBI was troubled by the CIA techniques from the outset, not only after August 1.  The current op-ed imagines that there was a long period of "traditional" interrogation, but that is contradicted by the IG report.

Secondly, per page 111, "Gibson", (probably Mr. Soufan), told the CIA was told by the CIA upon their arrival that Zubaydah was only providing "throwaway" information and that they "needed to diminish his capacity to resist".  Thomas expressed concern about the CIA techniques, calling them "border-line torture"; "Gibson" "did not express as much concern" as Thomas.  From which we conclude that somebody from the FBI CIA side thought that more could be gleaned from Zubaydah.

When "Gibson" got home he told FBI Counter terrorism AD D'Amuro that he had no moral qualms about the CIA approach, that they were behaving professionally, and that he had endured similar treatment in SERE school.

Well.  If Mr. Soufan is Thomas, then there were obvious divisions even within the FBI; if he is Gibson, there are apparent divisions within himself.

Eventually, after a series of meetings in Washington, the FBI learned about the OLC opinion and decided to withdraw from the enhanced interrogation process.

OOPS:  When I summarized the IG report above I had the CIA calling for tougher treatment (as did the Johnston story), but in the version directly above I had "Gibson" of the FBI making that suggestion, which is both wrong and irrelevant.

[end of thread]

Scott Shane Does Some Homework

Apparently mortified that mere bloggers had read the OLC memos more carefully than a big-time reporter, Scott Shane of the Times digs into the details in assessing the effectiveness of the Bush enhanced interrogation program.  His result is surprisingly even-handed:

Last week’s release of long-secret Justice Department interrogation memorandums has given rise to starkly opposing narratives about what, if anything, was gained by the C.I.A.’s use of waterboarding, wall-slamming and other physical pressure to shock and intimidate Qaeda operatives.

Senior Bush administration officials, led by Vice President Dick Cheney and cheered by many Congressional Republicans, are fighting a rear-guard action in defense of their record. Only by using the harshest methods, they insist, did the intelligence agency get the information it needed to round up Qaeda killers and save thousands of American lives.

Even President Obama’s new director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, wrote in a memorandum to his staff last week that “high value information came from interrogations in which these methods were used,” an assertion left out when the memorandum was edited for public release. By contrast, Mr. Obama and most of his top aides have argued that the use of those methods betrayed American values — and anyway, produced unreliable information. Those are a convenient pair of opinions, of course: the moral balancing would be far trickier if the C.I.A. methods were demonstrated to have been crucial in disrupting major plots.

And the politics:

For both sides, the political stakes are high, as proposals for a national commission to unravel the interrogation story appear to be gaining momentum. Mr. Obama and his allies need to discredit the techniques he has banned. Otherwise, in the event of a future terrorist attack, critics may blame his decision to rein in C.I.A. interrogators.

But if a strong case emerges that the Bush administration authorized torture and got nothing but prisoners’ desperate fabrications in return, that will tarnish what Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have claimed as their greatest achievement: preventing new attacks after Sept. 11, 2001.

Well.  I don't see how a "strong case" is going to emerge and be credible following Blair's new positioning.  Continuing:

Within the agency, the necessity, effectiveness and legality of the interrogation methods have been repeatedly subject to review. The agency’s inspector general, John L. Helgerson, studied the program in 2004 and raised serious questions. According to former intelligence officials, that led to separate reviews by an internal panel headed by Henry A. Crumpton, a veteran counterterrorism officer, and by two outsiders, Gardner Peckham, who had served as national security adviser to Newt Gingrich, and John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary.

Some of this material is excerpted in the OLC memos.  For instance, the Inspector General report is cited in this passage:

Second, it is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program.  As the [CIA Inspector General] report notes, it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks.  And because the CIA has used enhanced techniques sparingly "there is limited data on which to assess their individual effectiveness.

As to specific attacks, there is a timeline puzzle with the Library Tower attack cited by the CIA.  Mr. Shane picks up on a different detail:

The Justice Department memorandums released last week illustrate how difficult it can be to assess claims of effectiveness. One 2005 memorandum, for example, asserts that “enhanced techniques” used on Abu Zubaydah and Mr. Mohammed “yielded critical information.”

But the memorandum then lists among Abu Zubaydah’s revelations the identification of Mr. Mohammed and of an alleged radiological bomb plot by Jose Padilla, the American Qaeda associate. Both those disclosures were made long before Abu Zubaydah was subjected to harsh treatment, according to multiple accounts.

One of those accounts was provided yesterday by an FBI interrogator who was there:

Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.

Hmm - that is not consistent with earlier Times reporting.  The fully enhanced techniques were employed in August (so they say) but David Johnston had this in 2006:

The events that unfolded at the safe house over the next few weeks [in the early spring of 2002] proved to be fateful for the Bush administration. Within days, Mr. Zubaydah was being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques — he was stripped, held in an icy room and jarred by earsplittingly loud music — the genesis of practices later adopted by some within the military, and widely used by the Central Intelligence Agency in handling prominent terrorism suspects at secret overseas prisons.

A recent Times article has a similar timeline and includes this:

Abu Zubaydah’s own account, given in 2006 to the International Committee of the Red Cross, corroborates that what he called “the real torturing,” including waterboarding, began only “about two and a half or three months” after he arrived at the secret site, according to the group’s 2007 report.

 Ambiguous.  Zubaydah did talk during the initial low-level coercive phase, so it is probably being scored as a success for enhanced interrogation on that basis.  Zubaydah was captured on March 28 and Padilla was arrested on May 8.

All that said, Mr. Shane fails to draw an important distinction here and finds a contradiction where none may, in fact, exist:

In an interview with Vanity Fair last year, the F.B.I. director since 2001, Robert S. Mueller III, was asked whether any attacks had been disrupted because of intelligence obtained through the coercive methods. “I don’t believe that has been the case,” Mr. Mueller said. (A spokesman for Mr. Mueller, John Miller, said on Tuesday, “The quote is accurate.”)

That assessment stands in sharp contrast to many assertions by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who on Fox News on Sunday said of the methods: “They did work. They kept us safe for seven years.”

Four successive C.I.A. directors have made similar claims, and the most recent, Michael V. Hayden, said in January that he believed the methods “got the maximum amount of information” from prisoners, citing specifically Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief 9/11 plotter.

The OLC memos make it clear that deterring attacks was the lesser benefit of the enhanced interrogation program.  The real value was in learning the names, leads, motivations, and the organization of Al Qaeda.  For instance, information from Khalid Sheik Mohammed led to the arrest of Hambali, a leader of the group responsible for the Bali bombing.  That may or may not have disrupted a specific attack (Hambali was working on the Library Tower attack and his first team was arrested prior to KSM's arrest and interrogation), but the arrests clearly had value.  Put it this way - would capturing Bin Laden have value even if it did not disrupt a specific attack?

Mr. Shane does include this:

Many intelligence officials, including some opposed to the brutal methods, confirm that the program produced information of great value, including tips on early-stage schemes to attack tall buildings on the West Coast and buildings in New York’s financial district and Washington. Interrogation of one Qaeda operative led to tips on finding others, until the leadership of the organization was decimated. Removing from the scene such dedicated and skilled plotters as Mr. Mohammed, or the Indonesian terrorist known as Hambali, almost certainly prevented future attacks.

Hmm, the Library Tower again...

But which information came from which methods, and whether the same result might have been achieved without the political, legal and moral cost of the torture controversy, is hotly disputed, even inside the intelligence agency.

This was not a process where sensible double-blind experimentation was possible.

Mr. Shane ends with an interesting catch:

On Mr. Mohammed, the record is murkier. The [May 30 2005] memorandum says that “before the C.I.A. used enhanced techniques,” Mr. Mohammed “resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, ‘Simply noting, ‘Soon, you will know.’ ”

But the same memorandum reveals in a footnote [p. 121 of 124] that Mr. Mohammed, captured on March 1, 2003, was waterboarded 183 times that month. That striking number, which would average out to six waterboardings a day, suggests that interrogators did not try a traditional, rapport-building approach for long before escalating to their most extreme tool.

OK - KSM was captured on March 1, so traditional techniques didn't get much play.  As to "six waterboardings a day", I worked through the arithmetic here.  Briefly, the interrogators were allowed no more than two sessions per day over no more than five days within a thirty day period.  The "183" figure refers to separate dousings of water onto KSM; that could occur multiple times in a session, subject to other limitations.  Conceivably, KSM could have been waterboarded over five days late in March.

That said, it does not appear that traditional techniques were employed for more than two or three weeks at most.

If You Are Thinking Ahead To Mother's Day...

What mom wouldn't be thrilled to show off a picture of her and Bare Chested Barry at the beach?  Modest photoshopping skills needed, but c'mon - it's for your dear old mum...

Send Better Lawyers

Kevin Jon Heller, an authority on international law, is utterly unconvincing in his effort to analogize the OLC 'torture memos' to the Nuremburg trials.

There is, however, another NMT case that does provide significant support for prosecuting the authors of the OLC memos: United States v. von Weizsaecker et al., better known as the Ministries Case, in which a number of government ministers, state secretaries, and high-ranking members of the Nazi party were convicted of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.  The critical defendants are Ernst von Weizsacker himself, who was the State Secretary in the Foreign Office, and Ernst Woermann, who was the Undersecretary of State and head of the Political Department in the Foreign Office.  The two defendants, who were the Nazi government’s primary legal advisers, were convicted of crimes against humanity for approving SS actions that they knew violated international law.

How did the court reach its verdict?

First, it concluded that Woermann — and by implication von Weizsaecker, his superior — knew that the deportations violated international law (pp. 497-98)...

...Second, the Tribunal held that because the defendants knew that the deportations violated international law, they had an absolute duty as the Reich’s legal advisers to object to the deportations when the SS asked them to assess their legality (pp. 958-59):

...The parallels between the Foreign Office’s role in the SS deportations and the OLC’s role in the CIA’s torture regime are uncanny.  Nothing is lost if we simply substitute “Yoo, Bybee, and Bradbury”  for “Woermann and von Weizsaecker,” “OLC” for “Foreign Office,” and “torture” for “deportations.”

"Nothing is lost"?  Nothing is lost except the whole logic of the argument.  Bybee and Yoo were perfectly aware that some behaviors would be prohibited (e.g., mock executions) and others would pass muster easily (e.g., the belly slap and the attention grasp).  The question challenging them was how to draw lines with behaviors that shade from white to gray to black.

For example, is sleep deprivation torture?  Surely it depends on the duration; four hours of sleep deprivation isn't torture; four days might be; four weeks surely would be.  The OLC authors made a good faith attempt to set medical criteria and draw a line.  Certainly someone might revisit their conclusion years later and conclude that their line went too far.  However, that would be very different from concluding that they had deliberately ignored the law in setting the line and "knew" that the practice they had approved was illegal.  In which case, the Ministries precedent has no weight at all.

The same argument would apply to waterboarding.  Bybee noted that 26,829 servicemen were subjected to SERE training, including waterboarding, from 1992 to 2001.  Well, either the US routinely tortures its servicemen, or, as with sleep deprivation, at some level of intensity waterboarding is less than torture.  Bybee opted for the second choice and allowed waterboarding subject to medical monitoring and strict guidelines.  Again, his judgment is subject to second-guessing but the Ministries argument does not work.

The Times has more on the utter improbability of prosecutions of the OLC legal team:

Efforts to prosecute the high-level Bush administration officials who created and authorized the interrogation program in 2002 — like Vice President Dick Cheney; the C.I.A. director, George J. Tenet; the defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld; and Alberto R. Gonzales, who was then White House counsel — also “would be extremely difficult,” said Eric Posner, a University of Chicago law professor.

It could create a partisan firestorm that Mr. Obama, who has said he wants to concentrate on fixing the economy and on other parts of his agenda, would prefer to avoid for political reasons. And, like the interrogators, the policy makers could argue that government lawyers assured them the program was legal.

“The political officials would say they believed what they were doing was lawful, and a jury could very easily believe that,” Mr. Posner said.

The shield against prosecution provided by the Bush legal team’s assurances has led some critics to focus on the role played by the lawyers themselves, like Mr. Cheney’s counsel, David S. Addington; Mr. Rumsfeld’s counsel, William J. Haynes II; and the authors of the Justice Department memorandums: John C. Yoo, Jay S. Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury.

Legal specialists from across the ideological spectrum have criticized those memorandums, especially a set written in 2002 by Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee, who is now a federal judge. Some have accused the lawyers of deliberately writing down a false reading of the law to enable policy makers to violate it with impunity.

But there is little precedent for prosecuting government lawyers who provided arguably bad legal opinions. Moreover, Mr. Yoo, the memorandums’ principal author, had espoused idiosyncratic views about presidential power before joining the Justice Department, so it would be difficult to prove that he did not believe what he was writing.

They do crack open the window a bit:

One thing could change that dynamic, however. The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility has been investigating the work of lawyers who signed off on the interrogation policy, and is believed to have obtained archived e-mail messages from the time when the memorandums were being drafted.

If it turned out that the lawyers initially concluded that aspects of the proposed program would be illegal, then reversed that conclusion at the request of policy makers, then prosecutors could make a case that the officials knowingly broke the law.

Hard to believe we will see an easy example of that.  Seriously - are these guys dumb enough to write "Wrong answer, try again." in an email sure to be archived?  What we might get, however, would be emails presenting new information or revised guidelines and asking for a re-think.  Problematic! 

To return to my previous example, suppose Bybee initially concluded that four days of sleep deprivation was torture.  Dick Cheney, through Addington, then sends some psychological study or other purporting to demonstrate that subjects can easily recover from fifteen days of sleep deprivation, and implores Bybee to reconsider.  Bybee then re-draws the line at eleven days.  Is he now a criminal?  Was the change made in good faith or in response to pressure from above?  (OK, or both?)   Is Cheney a war criminal for trying to reason with and educate his attorney?

Earnest libs already know the answers, of course.  The rest of us will await more information.

How Did That Oil Get To Alaska?

Maybe it drained out of Joe Barton's now-empty head.

Temporary Suspensions Of Sarbanes-Oxley

I don't suppose it has the common law drama of suspending habeas corpus but it is interesting to read in the WSJ that then-Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Bernanke unilaterally suspended Sarbanes-Oxley in order to keep the Bank of America takeover of Merrill Lynch on track.  More at Clusterstock (including a transcript excerpt) and from the AP.