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.

Comments

[Jane]

So on Fox they are reporting that COngress was briefed on the interrogations more than 30 times, and had the authority to stop them any time.

Show trials might indeed be more effective than an election.

Let's start with San Fran Nan

[BR]

Thank you, TM, for the analysis.

I suppose all this attention by the Obama camp on past administration practices also helps to deflect attention from his own actions, like the latest outrageous tapping of Rosa Brooks:

Pentagon aiding Senators investigating interrogation of terrorist suspects, 4/23/09, by Jim Kouri:

"Meanwhile, Los Angeles Times columnist Rosa Brooks is being tapped by President Barack Obama to serve as a Pentagon advisor on issues of national security. Brooks is expected be an advisor for Michele Flournoy, the Undersecretary of Defense.

"Many believe that Obama’s selection is an indication of his disinterest in protecting the American people since Brooks possesses a reputation as being a left-wing, anti-military journalist with connections to multi-billionaire radical activist George Soros.

"Brooks also possesses a reputation for being an outspoken It is a well known fact that she has been an apologist for Islamic terrorists and has criticized the counterterrorism efforts of the United States and Israel! Rosa Brooks used to work as an advisor for George Soros’s Open Society Institute. Soros is the anti-American billionaire who had been actively financing and supporting the attacks on President Bush and conservatives in general."

[verner]

Shane:Removing from the scene such dedicated and skilled plotters as Mr. Mohammed, or the Indonesian terrorist known as Hambali, almost certainly prevented future attacks.

Then why are we arguing about the nit picking details?

Case Closed.

[verner]

Shane: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."

Quote from KSM "Soon you will know."

Again, case closed.

I'm surprised after an answer like that they would wait even ONE day.

[verner]

As I've been stating repeatedly, we need to call for clarity over that 183 number, because a bunch of dolts are going to take it to mean that KSM had 183 sessions of multiple pours, and that's very different from what we're actually talking about.

[bad]

Scott Shane... Is this the same reporter who had so many struggles with reporting on Obama, Bill Ayers, and the Chicago Annenberg challenge?

As I recall he was nasty to Dr. Steve Diamond.

[sbw]

When they were children, my offspring could polish of "183 sessions" without reloading their Super Soakers.

[verner]

Have we noticed how these people are avoiding the obvious, and straining with every fiber of their being to make this look good for the floundering Obama administration?

Quel Supris!

[clarice]

Very good TM--I am writing a piece for PM on the memos and it occurred to me that people who have to use the evidence with such great selectivity and are already moving the goalposts, probably do not have such a great argument.
hoekstra and Cheney have girded their loins ao Rahm in his tutut and O in his swim trucnks better suit up fast.

[verner]

Earth to Press corp. Because of the very strict guidlines they had to document how many times they poured water on his face, thus the 183 number. DUH

The terrorists told the absolute truth about everything to the IRC, except for KSM, who lied and said he was only water boarded 5 times instead of 183.

Suckers.

[clarice]

It's hard to keep track--5 x 183x--when you're having fun.Oh, and i want to hear Leahy bitch in hearings that we were just like the Nazis when we released the photo of a hairy KSM in his underwear.

[clarice]

**Hoekstra and Cheney have girded their loins so Rahm in his tutu and O in his swim trunks better suit up fast***.

[Jane]

I want to hear the reason Leahy didn't express any outrage when it was happening.

[clarice]

Anyone have an response to this?

April 21, 2009

Statement by the Director of National Intelligence
Mr. Dennis C. Blair

I recommended to the president that the administration release these memos, and I made clear that the CIA should not be punished for carrying out legal orders.
I also strongly supported the president when he declared that we would no longer use enhanced interrogation techniques. We do not need these techniques to keep America safe.

The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.

# # #

[bad]

Clarice, wasn't that particular statement released **after** Blairs earlier statements that said we got good info from the techniques used?

As I recall, this was seen as an after the fact toeing the line sort of thing.

[verner]

Clarice, my message to Blair was PUT UP OR SHUT UP

He makes this broad brush statement with absolutely no substantiating date--and popularity polls taken on the Arab street don't count.

On the contrary, we are now measurably WEAKER. What intelligence agency is going to trust us, or cooperate with us under Obama? They run the risk of having some Soros connected neo-marxist appointee outing their stuff to the NYTs and getting hauled in front of a judge at the Hague.

[Jane]

AKA cowtowing bad.

[anduril]

"...there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means."

I love intellectual rigor. In this case, however, it approaches rigor mortis.

And tell that to the Clinton admin retreads in the WH, who by all accounts were big into renditions to countries that didn't need to waterboard people 6x/day for a month to get the information they wanted. Well, this will all come out. Unless Pelosi and a few others decide discretion may well be the better part of foolhardiness.

[bad]

Fancy Nancy has PROMISED their will be hearings.

'Course we all know how much a Nancy promice is worth...

[clarice]

Thanks--I saw this after i wrote my article--figured it was nonsense and just wanted to get the benefit of some folks whose judgement I trust before i decided it didn't warrant a reopening of my argument and a revision of the memo.

Later and thanks..

[Jane]

Mr President is apparently meeting with both leaders of Congress. Let us guess that he is begging them to not hold hearings.

[verner]

Jane, that's the impression I got when he said he would veto them yesterday.

Should be start with the genie out of the bottle, dye is cast, reaping the whirlwind kind of analogies yet?

[clarice]

I did update the memo for this --Goss says releasing the memos crossed a red line.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/04/goss_obama_decision_crossed_a.asp>Red line

[clarice]

Oh, great the SecDef is a dumb cluck--he says he supported the release of the memos in large part cause he figured they'd leak out anyway.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/23/AR2009042302446.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR>Where are those bomb shelter blueprints?/a>

[verner]

It's good to see Stephen Hayes' bi line on this issue.

[bad]

Good for Goss!!

[The Strategic MC]

"Anyone have an response to this?..."

Kinda covered all of his bases didn't he?

I believe that this is called CYA. Ever heard of it?

Deeny is also trying to be a good team member and is helping the Obama Admin by getting back on message.

[PaulL]

The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means.

It's possible that if we had just extended the hand of friendship to KSM, given him some love and respect, he would have told us what we wanted to know. There's just no way of knowing, darn it!

[Ignatz]

-The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means.-

Rubbish.
We resorted to 'enhanced interrogation' when they quit talking, so it apparently could not have been obtained by other means from them.
If we subsequently obtained the same information from other sources we would in fact know that we did.

So there is a way of knowing whether we could have obtained this info by other means, and we know that we didn't.

[bad]

David Frum is sticking up for Jane Harmon. LUN

[The Strategic MC]

"Denny is also trying to be a good team member..."

[bad]

bye bye italics

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Deeny is also trying to be a good team member and is helping the Obama Admin by getting back on message.

And besides, Rahm knows where the DNI lives.

[bad]

Chaco, d'ya 'spose he's gotten a dead fish yet?

[Jane]

Verner,

WEll since the President was in the COngress when the briefings are given, I think he should be held accountable. And we should start with him, since the buck stops there.

[bad]

I don't know Jane. He'll be able to point out his attendance record and say, "What are the odds"?

[Jane]

Makes no difference because he is Mr. Accountability! And he got paid.

[MayBee]

The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.

Two things

1- Did any foreign intelligence agencies refuse to work with the CIA or did any of our allies refuse to accept CIA intelligence because they were disgusted with our methods?

2- Is it possible the loud and constant cries of "CIA Black Site Torture Prisons!", "Gitmo Torture Camp", and "Torture memos!" hurt our reputation with our enemies, rather than the actual techniques used?

[MayBee]

our reputation (not our reputation with our enemies).

[bad]

Nancy is claiming she as NEVER told about waterboarding.

Maybe it was called overseas spa treatments in the presentation.

[MayBee]

Ha!

[bad]

Nancy claims Congress was never told about enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding.

Will any Republicans step up and say, "hey I remember that briefing"

[sbw]

"Cowtowing" is pulling a ruminant with a chain, as opposed to pulling someone's chain.

[Jane]

Hoekstra already has.

Now someone needs to come up with a tape.

[bad]

Nancy's press conference included all kinds of specific details for someone who said yesterday (or the day before) that she couldn't recall a briefing.

Supposedly, they were told we had certain techniques, and statements from legal saying the techniques were legal, but Congress was never told they were used.

Or something like that... Seems pretty nuancy to me...

[Jane]

"Cowtowing" is pulling a ruminant with a chain, as opposed to pulling someone's chain.

Yeah it didn't look right to me either.

[bad]

Besides Hoekstra....

You can never just trust the word of a Republican, one must verify....

[clarice]

Obama couldn't have been there, they were given on the very days he was listening to Wright's sermons--not the bad ones though..

[Jane]

Yup Clarice,

I'm pretty sure that's not an excuse tho - because his ace staff was there to brief him on it.

[bad]

Politico has a Pelosi "never heard" story.

LUN

This at the end is hilarious:

Pelosi says members who receive classified intelligence briefings are powerless to act on them -- or even discuss them with staff.

As a consequence, some members simply skip the meetings, so they aren't "hamstrung" by confidentiality requirements.

ha ha ha ha ha I feel so much better now.

[Cecil Turner]

His result is surprisingly even-handed:

That part is. But I'd note you can't read the memos without stumbling over the word SERE on practically every page (okay, every other). And yet Mr Shane can't seem to find it at all. Why is that, I wonder?

[Jane]

Unbelievable.

She lies thru her teeth and of course there are no consequences.

What form of government is this anyway?

[Jane]

Unbelievable.

She lies thru her teeth and of course there are no consequences.

What form of government is this anyway?

[Dorothy Jane]

The form of govt that makes you wistful and scared kind, Jane...

[bad]

FOX:

A criminal investigation into Freddie Mac accounting practices is underway. The CFO who committed suicide was going to be questioned in the course of the investigation. He went to Human Resources on Tuesday about taking some time off. He was to take a week off starting Tuesday night.

He was found dead early Wednesday morning.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

What form of government is this anyway?

The kind Churchill said was eight times better than any other.

Frightening, isn't it?

[Free Radical]

I think Jane meant 'kowtowing.' 'Cowtowing' is a Southern olympic event.

[cathyf]

Which is distinguished from "calf tagging" which is a midwestern staple. (At least until PETA finds out.)

[Brent]

Hello. That's very nice site but I've seen this before here http://text.inguaro.com/03bfda399e17276090dd8ccb71efe58f/d808c46a022c989badff49307711a679
d808c46a022c989badff49307711a679