Four disturbing memos published by US President Barack Obama show just how far the CIA was prepared to go in justifying the techniques used to interrogate prisoners, writes PETER MURTAGH
MEMOS PURPORTING to give the US Central Intelligence Agency legal cover for assaulting and humiliating al-Qaeda detainees in custody and which have been published by US President Barack Obama make for exceptionally disturbing reading.
They take us to a dark place, a place represented best perhaps in literature. The clinical, matter-of-fact language of the memos describing what can, and what cannot, be inflicted on detainees, and what constitutes pain, mental distress and torture, and what allegedly does not, seems to be from the world of NS Rubashov (the anti-hero in Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon) or Winston Smith (the main protagonist in George Orwell’s 1984).
Both books explore, among other things, the depths to which humans can sink, the degree to which, when driven by blind observance to an ideology, man is capable of rationalising the infliction of pain on another. Both Rubashov and Smith fall foul of their respective totalitarian regimes, for reasons neither fully understands at least initially, and are swallowed up by the brutal machinery of interrogation and torture.
Something of this world emerges from these memos. There are four in all. Three, all dated May 2005, are signed by Steven Bradbury, then principal deputy assistant Attorney General, a position attached to the Office of Legal Counsel at the US department of justice. The other memo, dated August 1st, 2002, is signed by Jay Bybee, then an assistant Attorney General.
The memos were written in the context of the Bush administration’s reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America in 2001 in which 2,974 people were murdered by al-Qaeda. Each memo is addressed to John Rizzo, a lawyer with the Central Intelligence Agency, which sought guidance as to what was permissible under a US law, Section 2340A of title 18 of the United States Code which brings into US law the UN Convention Against Torture.
Bybee’s 2002 memo lays the foundations for all the memos and puts in writing earlier verbal advice to the CIA.
His memo concerns the interrogation of one detainee, Abu Zubaydah, whom the CIA describes as Osama bin Laden’s senior lieutenant, the manager of a network of training camps in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda’s co-ordinator “of external contacts and foreign communications”. Zubaydah, it is said, “wrote al-Qaeda’s manual on resistance techniques”.
Addressing the CIA, Bybee states in his memo: “ . . . you wish to move the interrogations into what you have described as an ‘increased pressure phase’.
“In this phase, you would like to employ 10 techniques that you believe will dislocate his expectations regarding the treatment he believes he will receive and encourage him to disclose the crucial information .”
The 10 techniques are described thus:
THE ATTENTION GRASP:"Consists of grasping the individual with both hands. One hand on each side of the collar opening, in a controlled and quick motion. In the same motion as the grasp, the individual is drawn toward the interrogator."
WALLING:" . . . a flexible wall will be constructed. The individual is placed with his heels touching the wall. The interrogator pulls the individual forward and then quickly and firmly pushes the individual into the wall. It is the individual's shoulder blades that hit the wall. During this motion, the head and neck are supported with a rolled hood or towel that provides a C-collar effect to help prevent whiplash. To further reduce the probability of injury, the individual is allowed to rebound from the flexible wall. You have orally informed us that the false wall is in part constructed to create a loud sound when the individual hits it, which will further shock and surprise . . ."
FACIAL HOLD:". . . is used to hold the head immobile. One open palm is placed on either side of the individual's face. The fingertips are kept well away from the individual's eyes."
FACIAL SLAP:"With the facial slap or insult slap, the interrogator slaps the individual's face with fingers slightly spread. The hand makes contact with the area directly between the tip of the individual's chin and the bottom of the corresponding earlobe." The purpose "is to induce shock, surprise, and/or humiliation".
CRAMPED CONFINEMENT:Placing the individual in a small box in darkness for up to two hours; in a larger box for up to 18 hours.
WALL STANDING:". . . is used to induce muscle fatigue. The individual stands four to five feet from a wall, with his feet spread approximately to shoulder width. His arms are stretched out in front of him, with his fingers resting on the wall. His fingers support all of his body weight. The individual is not permitt- ed to move or reposition his hands or feet."
STRESS POSITIONS:The two to be used on Zubaydah are ". . . sitting on the floor with legs extended straight out in front of him with his arms raised above his head" and "kneeling on the floor while leaning back at a 45-degree angle".
SLEEP DEPRIVATION:The purpose "is to reduce the individual's ability to think on his feet and, through the discomfort associated with lack of sleep, to motivate him to co-operate". The CIA told Bybee that it "would not deprive Zubaydah of sleep for more than 11 days at a time and previously kept him awake for 72 hours from which no mental or physical harm resulted".
INSECT PLACED IN A CONFINEMENT BOX:Bybee's memo to the CIA continues: "You would like to place Zubaydah in a cramped confinement box with an insect. You have informed us that he appears to have a fear of insects. In particular, you would like to tell Zubaydah that you intend to place a stinging insect into the box with him. You would, however, place a harmless insect in the box."
In a surreal passage later in the memo, Bybee assesses whether this could amount to torture and notes that the harmless insect put into the box might be a caterpillar. To remain allegedly on the right side of the law, as Bybee assesses it, he writes: “. . . you must inform him that the insect will not have a sting that would produce death or severe pain. If, however, you were to place the insect in the box without informing him that you are doing so, then, in order to not commit you should not affirmatively lead him to believe that any insect could produce severe pain or suffering or even cause his death . . . so long as you the approach we have described, the insect’s placement in the box would not constitute a threat of severe physical pain or suffering to a reasonable person in his position. An individual placed in a box, even an individual with a fear of insects, would not reasonably feel threatened . . . if a caterpillar was placed in the box.”
WATERBOARDING:A person is bound to a bench, a cloth is placed over their face and water is poured onto it. The effect is simulated drowning. Bybee writes: "Once the cloth is saturated and completely covers the mouth and nose, air flow is slightly restricted for 20 to 40 seconds due to the presence of the cloth. This causes an increase in the carbon dioxide level in the individual's blood . . . stimulates increased efforts to breathe. This effort plus the cloth produces the perception of 'suffocation and incipient panic' . . . You have orally inform- ed us that this procedure triggers an automatic physiological sensation of drowning that the individual cannot control even though he may be aware that he is in fact not drowning."
Later, the memo goes into almost Jesuitical contortions of language and legal interpretation to find that, although waterboarding “constitutes a threat of imminent death”, prolonged mental harm, severe mental pain or suffering does not occur and so “the use of these procedures would not constitute torture within the meaning of the statute”. All of the other techniques are also found not to constitute the infliction of “severe physical pain”, “serious physical injury” or “suffering within the meaning of the statute”.
Extraordinarily, all assurances offered by the CIA regarding the conduct of its interrogations, its safety procedures and self-imposed limitations; all allegedly expert advice offered by the agency in support of its own assertions – all these are accepted without recorded challenge or demur by Bybee and his colleagues at the Office of Legal Counsel. His memo and the others are lettered with phrases such as “based on the facts you have given us” and “you have informed us that you have consulted with . . .” – the resulting assertions in all instances being accepted completely. The CIA, it seems, was judge and jury in its own cause . . .
A year after this memo was written, George Bush appointed Bybee as a US federal judge, a position he holds for life. Since publication of the memos, a debate has erupted as to whether, given the contortions Bybee advanc- ed to give the CIA clearance for what many would regard as torture or inhuman and degrad- ing treatment, he should remain on the bench. He has remained silent but others have spoken.
Former vice president Dick Cheney this week insisted that information derived from these techniques prevented further terrorist attacks on the US. But experience has shown that it is impossible to know whether information obtained by duress is reliable.
There is another voice in the background as one reads these memos, at least to this writer. It is that of Hannah Arendt, the German political theorist and writer. In 1961, Arendt attended the trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann, the man who implemented the Holocaust. Watching Eichmann in the dock and listening to the otherwise mundane tasks he and others acting on his orders carried out, she was struck by the ordinariness of it all – “the banality of evil”, as she wrote – the tendency of people not to think critically or independently, to obey orders, to carry out functions with no real consideration of their effects.
One of Barack Obama’s first acts as president was to order an end to the techniques described in the memos. Reading them, there is little sense of a moral compass at play among all the lawyers, medics and other professionals whose callings, one would assume, bound them to uphold not just the letter of the law but its spirit as well.
But for Obama, it would all be still going on.
Read the four CIA memos in full at irishtimes.com/ indepth