Raven emailed me earlier asking if I’d seen a comment at my previous blogging gig regarding the Haspel nomination. I had not – I basically don’t go over there, but thought my answer would make a good post on her nomination. He specifically asked about this:
I do not know Gina Haspel. Although we were at the CIA at the same time. She just lasted longer than me. Some of my former colleagues refer to her as “Bloody Gina” for her role in the so-called Enhanced Interrogation program. What most of the world fails to understand about this period is that the CIA had zero experience with “interrogation” and found itself starting from ground zero in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks. The CIA operators, i.e., those men and women who operate overseas trying to recruit foreigners to spy for us, are trained in the art of recruitment. This is akin to picking up a woman in a bar and convincing her to have sex with you. It is not rape. It should not be forced nor coerced.
I have no idea who the author is – he started writing there under a pseudonym after I left, but his response doesn’t surprise me. His statement about the Agency’s ops folks being unfamiliar with how to do interrogations is also not surprising. I know some of the ops guys. I’ve crossed paths with them over the years, including in Iraq. Both the paramilitary ones and the recruiters/handlers. They’re sharp. They know their jobs, they’re not interrogators. There’s a difference between debriefing the people you’re handling and other assets and interrogating them. I know more of the analytical side guys. They’re also sharp, but they’re researchers and analysts. The Agency, in fact the US Intelligence Community (USIC) overall, has very few folks that have done fusion intelligence work – where their jobs required them to be collectors, investigators, researchers, and analysts all at the same time.* All of the interrogations should have been turned over to the FBI, which is trained in this, while the agency developed its own cadre who could do it right under the tutelage of retired FBI guys and then both sides could cover down without these problems.
My impression from listening to former agency folks talk about her nomination on the various TV shows and on social media is that there is some rank closing/thin blue line equivalent going on. The finally have the first DCI nominee who came up from within the agency – not a political appointee from outside – and they’re protective. They’re protective because she’s one of theirs. They’re protective because they know that they or their friends and colleagues could have been completely hung out to dry on this stuff while the people that came up with the policy and strategy and legal justification skated completely. They’re protective because they have a nominee who actually understands the Agency from the inside. So the closing of ranks is understandable.
Since I’m not read on to what she actually did, and what was actually done under her leadership, at the site in Thailand, I can only say I have concerns based on what’s been reported, which may or may not be completely accurate. We don’t know how much she pushed back. If after pushing back she went ahead in order to protect those she was leading. Essentially setting herself up for problems in the future to protect those she was in charge of and supervising. These are the things I’d want to know if I was either on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence or advising one of the Senators on the committee. Unfortunately, because this is all still highly classified and compartmented, given how the regulations are written, I don’t need to know.
In my professional life I’ve walked away from 2 different six figure jobs because I was asked to do things that I knew were professionally wrong. The first is a large part of why I left academia. In the case of the second time, in 2015, I walked away from a GS 15 equivalent position because what I was being asked to do wasn’t just professionally wrong and unethical – even though it was unintentional*, it was also both illegal and violating Federal and Department of Defense regs. I can only say I know what it cost me, I’ve basically been severely underemployed for the last 3 years. What we don’t know, and aren’t going to find out, is did she threaten to quit? Did she raise a stink? Did she push back and get changes she thought were needed? Was there actually some career risk involved? We don’t have those answers and even if the members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence get them, we are unlikely to ever be privy to them. I know what I’d do, or think I know based on past performance, in the situation she was in. From the reporting it isn’t what she did. But I also don’t expect everyone appointed to these positions to be me.
Stay vigilant!
Open thread.
* I have done this type of fusion or hybrid intelligence work because the US Army’s first culture program was built on the Special Forces small team model and required everyone on the team to be a collector/investigator, researcher, and analyst. In addition to this I was also the research director for my team and its team leader. One of the nicest comments we received in Iraq was from the sheikh of the Batawi tribe at one of our first interviews. I had decided that our social history project, that required semi-structured in depth interviews with as many sheikhs, imams (often the same folks), elites, and/or notables as we could get to talk to us would be covered under human subject protections guidelines. This was NOT required as we were technically a type of intelligence. But I felt it was important, especially as my brigade commander and my bosses back at the program wanted us to be able to publish some of our results. And I knew having some form of institutional review process was essential to that. Among the procedures we adapted was a human subjects protection release form from research I’d done before leaving academia, had it translated to Arabic, and provided it to the people we were interviewing. As they read it you could see them relax. Their postures would shift. The Batawi sheikh said: “I was worried you were CIA, but after reading this I know you’re not. The intelligence people would never be smart enough to do something like this”. My up to that point very skeptical Chief Warrant Officer 2 – who is a trained interrogator and criminal investigator – almost fell out of his chair when he heard that.
** The people that set up the program/research center where I was assigned, and had been running it for over a decade, had no idea there were laws and regulations prohibiting what they were doing in terms of research and analysis. This was ultimately the result of having career officers set up a research program rather than bringing someone in who was actually a professional researcher. For those of our readers, commenters, and/or lurkers who have served in the military this reality will not be surprising. The reason we have colonels, or captains in the Navy, is to set up and run programs. Not to necessarily know anything about the specific areas that are necessary for the programs to run correctly. They’re lower upper senior level administrators, not necessarily subject matter experts. And in this case I happen to be a subject matter expert in the Federal laws and DOD regulations on doing unclassified research and how it differs from the rules covering collection and analysis for intelligence purposes from previous assignments (see footnote 1). Unfortunately the people who set up the research center and who were still running it were not.
Adam L Silverman
Just an FYI: should anyone decide to get that article I link to, I apologize in advance for the extra commas. I have no idea who did the copyediting, I only know no one sent me a galley proof to review. I have the draft I submitted and it has the normal, penultimate, needs to be professionally copyedited and typeset for publication issues, but it doesn’t include not only Oxford commas, but Cambridge, St. Andrews, Strathclyde, London School of Economics, Kings College London, and Trinity College Dublin commas! I know I make typos. You have been warned!
lollipopguild
Thanks you for your posts.Most things are not as black/white as they appear to us or as we may want them to be.
Adam L Silverman
@lollipopguild: You’re welcome. My professional opinion is that torture doesn’t work and is ineffective. Unless you just want to inflict pain/damage on someone. I’m not condoning it or excusing it. And I’m concerned about the allegations. But I also know I don’t have enough information here.
Adam L Silverman
Ruh Roh!
Lapassionara
Thanks, Adam. Illuminating as always. I just do not want anyone associated with the CIA’s “interrogation” program to be in that position. It speaks volumes about Trump’s views, and will send the wrong message, in my view, to the rest of the world.
Adam L Silverman
More Ruh Roh!
Adam L Silverman
@Lapassionara: My guess is she was recommended by Pompeo who’d she been serving as the non political appointee deputy DCI. He liked her, trusted her, etc, so…
I don’t know her. Don’t know what she really did or didn’t do. But the senior CIA official who is currently a Deputy Director of National Intelligence would have been a better pick as she didn’t have the baggage.
lollipopguild
@Adam L Silverman: To certain people torture is “sexy”. It also can make “small” people feel “big”.
Yarrow
Thanks, Adam. Interesting insights.
Good to know how we’re regarded.
From the second tweet:
Jeez, these people are a bunch of cowards.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Trump likes the baggage.
oldster
“In my professional life I’ve walked away from 2 different six figure jobs because I was asked to do things that I knew were professionally wrong. The first is a large part of why I left academia.”
Man, that’s two big differences from my former career in academia.
1) no six figure salaries
2) no chance of doing something so bad that it would worth resigning over.
I mean–did I subject a lot of freshman to a lot of boredom? Yes.
But was it torture?
Come to think of it…they probably thought so at the time, yes.
But they were wrong, I tell you! It was just enhanced education methods!
Adam L Silverman
@Yarrow: Which is interesting, because the paramilitary ops guys I ran across in Iraq were very sharp. I think CIA was being used as a catchall for intelligence personnel.
rikyrah
Well well well ?
Look who has been talking to the Special Counsel
https://twitter.com/TPM/status/994300505861115904?s=19
Adam L Silverman
@oldster: The academic job was located in a business school in New York. Why the criminology program was in the B School I still don’t understand. As for what I was asked to do: the department chair wanted me to fix student grades, including student athletes. He was also running a pay for play scam with the masters programs. He’d supervise and approve masters degrees for criminal justice and security admin professionals, then hire them to adjunct, and in return he’d get consulting jobs with their departments and bureaus. He was also a gigantic bigot and a drunk! I wrote my letter of resignation after my second day on the job and carried it around with me for 8 months before I reached the point where I had no choice but to resign.
MomSense
I posted the correction propublica ran at the end of the dead thread on the Haspel hearings. If I were not in the hallway outside of the changing room where my kid is trying on 100 pairs of jeans, I would redo the link.
J R in WV
Adam,
Thanks so much for the knowledge and experience you bring to all of us here at B-J. The depth and breadth of your background, combined with Cheryl’s technical background in the NM labs makes our community as well informed as anyone not actually working for the security services or involved in oversight of those programs.
This is both comforting and scary, as you probably know. Be sure to let us know when in your professional judgement* we need to start working on temporary shelters from the oncoming exchange of special weapons.
*Folks, I know there is some disagreement over the spelling of this word, this is my selection, if you don’t like it, use the other speling (sic).
Radiumgirl
The purpose of torture is to solicit false confessions. Full stop.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: That’s a lot of jeans!
MomSense
@MomSense:
Might as well while I’m waiting. Hespel did not oversee waterboarding of Zubaydah
Frankensteinbeck
@lollipopguild:
And of course, inherent in every branch of conservative creed is that only cruelty gets results. It’s a philosophy of hate on all levels.
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
Tell me about it! He keeps asking me if I like these better than that other pair and I can’t remember the other pair.
Adam L Silverman
@J R in WV: Thanks for the kind words.
I think we’re fine. These folks are chickenshits at heart. When they can’t bully their way to what they want, they fold and move on. They’re also not the smartest of folks and they telegraph everything. They’re loud, they’re noisy, they’re clumsy, and they’re ham handed. What you’re most likely to see is simply an accelerated diminution of the US. The President and the people around him are going to deflate the US because they think they’re making the US great again.
Adam L Silverman
@Radiumgirl: Yep.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: That part I knew.
John Revolta
@Frankensteinbeck: You’ve got to be cruel to be (our) kind!
trollhattan
Well, I’m convinced.
debbie
It’s not just the torture, it’s the fucking destroying the videotapes. That is not all right, not at all. The interrorgators’ identities could have been blurred or obscured. I call bullshit on her nomination.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: I wear Wrangler relaxed fit. Doesn’t take long to buy a new pair of jeans. Though I did buy two pair of Duluth Trading jeans on sale about a month ago as I needed to get some smaller ones as I’ve redistributed some mass.
Omnes Omnibus
There are trained interrogators in other parts of the government. CIA could have sought to learn from them.
I would prefer that the job go to someone who is not connect to torture. It’s not like she is the only qualified person in the country.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: This concerns me a lot too.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Yep.
debbie
@MomSense:
The kid must be in a hurry.
mozzerb
@Adam L Silverman:
Saves time.
Adam L Silverman
This is bad!
More at the link.
Barbara
She basically refused to answer Jack Reed’s question about the uhh, “reciprocal” use of waterboarding or a comparable technique on our people. She yammered on (I can’t phrase it any other way) about all the risks and sacrifices undertaken by American agents and personnel abroad, so it seems to me like a very natural question — what if some other country decided to utilize those same techniques on Americans — what would her response be? I think the reason this question was asked is to pin her down so that she has some stake in not acquiescing again, if that’s what she did, to the use of waterboarding and the other torture techniques that they still won’t call torture. If it would be wrong, that is, illegal torture to do it to an American then it would be wrong for Americans to do it to other people. We didn’t have a problem with that view when it came to condemning Japanese military officials who subjected Americans to waterboarding in WWII.
If the idiot in the White House really is considering military action against Iran it is entirely foreseeable that Iranians might be in a position of capturing Americans with military or strategic knowledge of U.S. capability and plans in the region. How exactly will the U.S. be able to condemn the Iranian use of “enhanced interrogation” in the face of a potential invasion or attack on their own country by us?
These people really do belong in Hell. Defending it on the basis of careerism just makes it seem even worse. She seems like a really smart person who is eminently employable elsewhere. She didn’t have to defend torture.
Barbara
@trollhattan: Yeah, just like she doesn’t believe he would ask her for her personal loyalty.
trollhattan
@debbie:
Am informed mine now instagrams pics to mom from inside the changing room rather than walking out and modeling. Kids.
Have not experienced this because 1. women’s dressing room pics on dad phone and 2. am much tighter with the credit card than mom. I ga-ron-tee dad would not plunk down actual money for jeans that had a belt sander taken to them before going on the rack.
J R in WV
@Radiumgirl:
Quoted
For
Truth!!
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
One is not permitted to use “nuance” and “Bolton” in the same area code, much less the same sentence.
Lulymay
@trollhattan:
What a repugnant non-answer to a very good question.
Major Major Major Major
I can’t believe the author of that piece literally used the example of how “good germans” followed orders to defend her.
mozzerb
@J R in WV:
Arguably, the purpose of torture is to solicit bullshit confessions, in the technical sense that whether they’re actually true or false is a matter of indifference.
debbie
@trollhattan:
What about the jeans pre-caked in mud or the jeans that have so much cut out that there’s only a waist, pockets, and seams? Apparently, they’ve sold out and there is a waiting list.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Now you know why 1) I don’t write there anymore and 2) I don’t even go and lurk there.
Corner Stone
@Radiumgirl:
The purpose of torture is to torture. Full stop.
evodevo
@mozzerb: LOL
Shana
@Adam L Silverman: You’re clearly not the parent of a teenage girl.
lollipopguild
@debbie: I can still remember as a kid (60s-70s) when my school system dress code made us wear dress pants and “good” shoes (no sneakers) because bluejeans and red ball jets were not good enough to wear to school.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: @trollhattan: @debbie: Could be worse…
randy khan
The linked piece is . . . interesting. His big concern is that she might have lied on her polygraph when asked if she was a lesbian back when she was hired. Honestly, that wouldn’t be on my list at all.
Adam L Silverman
@Shana: I have two lab mixes. And I’m also raising a 75 year old Jewish mother. Raising parents is hard!!!//
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: and the real problem is that she may have lied about being gay in the 80’s.
One must wonder why you ever did write or lurk there ?
Adam L Silverman
@randy khan: It was a stupid rule at the time. It isn’t even a concern anymore.
Shana
@trollhattan: We instituted the Price of Cool at one point with our kids. We were willing to pay $X for an item of clothing. Anything over $X came out of their own money. Worked pretty well.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@J R in WV: I replied to your comment over on the OTR thread, I sometimes reply late to later comments.
Shana
@Adam L Silverman: Yeah, mom may be harder than teenage girls. I feel for you.
trollhattan
@debbie:
Uhhhh. [dad-headdesk]
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: It was a stupid rule at the time. It is not even an issue anymore. And rightly so.
trollhattan
@Shana:
Great idea! Does it work?
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
One of those pics reminds me it’s time to plant tomatoes.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: there’s a twisted logic—if it’s forbidden you can be blackmailed—but the way to address that isn’t by forbidding it and then screening!
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: The person whose site it is trained me. When I first started writing there it was nothing like it is now. He, the other front pagers he’s invited, and his commenters have gone from center right to makes Attila the Hun look like a Scandanavian style social democrat over the past 6 years or so.
Cacti
The nicest thing you can say about Gina Haspel is that she assisted in the destruction of evidence of war crimes, and employed the Adolf Eichmann defense as justification.
But does that make her a bad person?
Fucking A right it does.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: The US is a weird place.
Ohio Dad
I’m not sure why the Haspel testimony has generated so much angst on the left. Considering that her would-be boss has said that he likes waterboarding and would like to see more and harsher tortures, I think a replacement nominee would be far worse. After all,
* Haspel is experienced, and following the most common deputy-to-director promotion route.
* She said unequivocally that Russia had interfered in our elections. This took gumption.
* Her double-talk in the hearings is often typical of CIA people, when they justify their work.
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman: @debbie:
He picked some AE slim fit with random holes in them. Of course I performed the obligatory in my day the holes in our jeans were wear and tear from all the chores we did every day. Then I adjusted the onions on my belt before I paid the cashier.
Also don’t attempt the floss if you have any hip or lower back problems. Lucky for me it was only my pride that was injured when my kid laughed at me.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
I don’t believe we did enough to renounce torture after Bush. Let Haspel keep her job, but don’t put her in charge. Torture is a war crime.
MomSense
@Ohio Dad:
I think she’s horrible but if her nomination fails, the next one will be worse. This whole administration is Be Worst.
Ohio Dad
@Ohio Dad:
Don’t get me wrong: I have problems with the CIA and have had them for a long time. The CIA is certainly not going away in these days of Trump, Bolton and Pompeo and, given that, there are a lot of worse choices than Haspel, who didn’t cause much of a stir when she was Deputy Director.
BC in Illinois
@trollhattan:
From a Republican Debate, April, 2016
[I have lost the original link, but Bret Baier of Fox news was asking the questions.]
Ms. Haspel, the President who appointed you says that if he gives you the order to torture, you will torture. What in your past gives any indication that you will refuse that illegal order?
Barbara
@Ohio Dad: I would like an on the record admission that use of these techniques was not just “misguided” or “counterproductive” but bad and immoral. I understand the reluctance to say that they were illegal, but the slippery slope needs to be reversed once and for all so that the next person who is put in this position won’t have an excuse.
debbie
@trollhattan:
More like peaches, no?
Ohio Dad
@Barbara:
Not only did the President* not say that the practices were not bad or immoral, he said they were good and should be used more often. Haspel’s failure to say that torture is bad and immoral seems to be generating more buzz.
Shana
@trollhattan: Yeah, it worked. If it had to be their money they were much less likely to spend it.
As a child of the 80’s (or rather a young adult) I was very anti-labels too. I managed to successfully convince the girls that there was no reason they needed to spend money to advertise for someone else.
TenguPhule
Haspel refused to deny that she wanted to continue or expand use of torture in the CIA from 2005-2007 during the confirmation hearing.
TenguPhule
@Ohio Dad:
Prefer GOP is forced to nominate an even worse nominee with bad publicity so that CIA is justified in ignoring the appointee.
Lee Hartmann
had no idea there were laws and regulations prohibiting what they were doing in terms of research and analysis.”
You mean they had no idea they were doing something morally repugnant and horrific. That’s why they had to destroy the tapes, because it was just okey-dokey and there was no reason for the rest of the world to see what they had done.
That picture of Mark fucking Warner shaking her hand with both of his made me throw up in my mouth.
PJ
@Adam L Silverman: From my reading, the main goals of torture seem to be: 1) to break the victim, so that he or she will do or say whatever you want (viz. tortured US POWs in Korea and Vietnam), and even maybe act as your agent (as the CIA is supposed to have wanted to create with many alleged Taliban and Al Qaeda members); 2) to inflict suffering and humiliation on the victim, as a way of establishing the torturing entity’s dominance over the victim and the victim’s group, and so as to cause fear and acquiescence in the victim and the victim’s group in the future. Obtaining the truth about whatever a victim might know is irrelevant. In light of these goals, torture can be very effective.
Adam L Silverman
@Lee Hartmann: All academic style research funded by the US government must abide by human subject protection rules. This means an institutional review for risk to the research subjects, as well as informed consent. Intelligence work is excluded from these laws and regulations.
Torture is a separate issue. It is illegal under US law regardless of what John Yoo thinks. Destruction of materials that are required to be preserved is also illegal.
Steve in the ATL
@J R in WV:
Welcome to the pie filter, devil spawn!
Adam L Silverman
@PJ: if you don’t care about getting accurate information, then yes.
Ella in New Mexico
@Adam L Silverman: thank you again for your reasoned and informed post above. It’s incredibly helpful for those of us here who often need reassurance that the entire fucking country is not just falling apart at the seams with corruption and evil.
I don’t know if you had time in your busy day to actually see them, but while doing some homework today, I got to watch the hearings. I was totally prepared to find Haspel to be a terrible and unfit nominee, given Trump’s track record, but I thought she gave some important context to the reports surrounding the debate regarding the destruction of the torture tapes, corrected the dates for the record of her reported role in creating/overseeing torture programs as well as the “ran a black site and tortured Abu Zubaydah” accusations. I felt she stated unequivocally that she is in no way a moral or professional supporter of torture, that it is consensus it did not work, and intends to never again be used by CIA operatives. A lot of folks disagree, but I wonder if we’re all operating with the same information.
I posted my first impressions and thoughts a few threads down. Coming from the perspective of a person who actually works in the general business of NatSec, I wonder if you could take a look and at the back and forth exchanges that were had down there and give us your thoughts? https://balloon-juice.com/2018/05/09/haspel-hearings-open-thread/#comment-6867945
Adam L Silverman
@Ella in New Mexico: sure, once I’m done at the gym. So it’s gonna be a bit!
PJ
@Adam L Silverman: From what I’ve read about Afghanistan and Guantanamo, the CIA used torture not to get accurate or actionable information, in any real sense, but to obtain statements which would support US policies or strategies, and which would justify holding the captives as prisoners and the torture inflicted on them (since many (most?) of them were not members of the Taliban or Al Qaeda and many had been turned in just to obtain reward money). A secondary goal seemed to be to turn victims into their agents. As you say, no actionable intelligence was obtained by the CIA from torturing captives. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-cia-torture-report-what-you-need-to-know/
Mnemosyne
@Ella in New Mexico:
I think this is the part that’s bothering most of us:
Trump is already on record saying that he would order the CIA to torture people, so that’s a completely bullshit answer. That’s an answer that allows her to say later that she was just following orders like a good little Nazi.
Immanentize
@Adam L Silverman: please also read the various comments responding to some of the over-credulous comments supporting Haspel.
Work out well.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: The part that is bothering me is that she ran a black site where people were tortured.
BC in Illinois
From Senator John McCain:
Now, technically this will only change his vote from “absent” to “absent and opposed,” but I agree:
TenguPhule
@Omnes Omnibus:
The part that bothers me even more is that she’s refusing to deny that she wanted existing torture programs continued or expanded at some point between 2005-2007.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s not totally clear that she ran the black site while torture was going on, or if the CIA sent her there to clean it up afterwards. She may have been part of the cover-up crew after the torture crew moved on. Still bad, but a slightly different bad than actively participating in torture.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
And equally disqualifying.
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Of course. But we need to be factually correct so we don’t get automatically dismissed. Initial reports were incorrect when they said that Haspel was in charge of the facility while torture was going on, but she did assist in covering that torture up once she arrived.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: She seems to have been put in charge of the place after Abu Zubaydah was tortured there. There has been no refutation that I have seen of the claims that she was in charge there when Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was tortured.
JEC
It’s important to remember that the genesis of the CIA torture program was a specific, conscious decision by President Bush to assign the interrogation mission to the CIA instead of to the FBI. At the time, CIA had literally zero interrogation capability in-house; the Agency hadn’t been in the “interrogating captives business” since the Vietnam war era. FBI, on the other hand, had an extensive interrogation capability, including staff with specific experience successfully interrogating Muslim extremist terrorists and their supporters. (September 11 was, after all, the second attack on the World Trade Center towers). Had the Bush White House felt any urgency whatsoever with respect to the gathering of intelligence about Al Qaeda or related groups, it would not have assigned the mission to the agency which would require at least a year to spin up even a minimal capability in the area. It is simply not plausible that the CIA’s interrogations program was created with any bona fide intelligence gathering objective.
Moreover, when the CIA sought outside contractors to assist it in developing its new interrogation capability (in itself a reasonable enough move) it didn’t select experts in eliciting true, actionable information from uncooperative informants…i.e. experts in interrogation. Instead, it contracted with experts in techniques for maximizing the distress experienced by torture victims. Again, this is simply not at all consistent with a bona fide intelligence gathering objective.
Nothing about the program’s creation or design suggests any interest whatsoever in gathering intelligence on Al Qaeda or affiliated organizations.
On the other hand, everything about the program’s history suggests that its goal was torture itself. CIA was chosen over FBI because the latter would have been reluctant to torture detainees, while CIA Director Tennant would do literally anything to keep his job. The program itself was designed from the ground up not as an intelligence gathering operation, but specifically as a torture program, developed by torture experts, and crafted to maximize the suffering of victims.
And we should never forget that, in order to implement this revenge-fantasy, suspected Al Qaeda operatives were systematically kept out of the hands of professionals who might actually have been able extract accurate, actionable intelligence from them, such as FBI interrogators. We will never know the extent of the harm to American security interests done by the Bush Administration’s decision to prioritize revenge over real intelligence gathering.
Lapassionara
@JEC: Thank you. This genie is never going back in the bottle, is it?
J R in WV
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
OK, Thanks for the heads up… I’ll take a look soonest. Ceviche is setting in the fridge, waiting to be ripe, when I’ll add tomato and such finishing ingredients.
Barbara
@JEC: Never forget that George Bush was the guy who joked about Karla Tucker’s plea to commute her execution.
Ella in New Mexico
@Mnemosyne: I understand. Had I not heard the entirety of the hearing, including the context of each Senator’s questioning, I’d be right there with you.
Maybe we should have pushed Obama to be more aggressive in fully purging the intelligence community of all of the people who were around then. Why didn’t he choose to do that? Maybe because confronted with inside information, he realized things are far more complex than the rest of us know. One thing I DO think is that if we had an equivalent candidate, NOT associated with that disgusting era, it would be a fantastic way to state just how stupid the Bush administration was to ever veer into torture territory.
Apparently, right now, we won’t be getting that candidate. And seriously, I’m thinking given Trump’s track record, she’s as good as we’re gonna get. Given her testimony today, all politics aside right now, I’m just being realistic and hoping for the best.
Ella in New Mexico
@Omnes Omnibus: and what was frustrating today was that each of my Dem Senators had a chance to pursue the question of what she actually DID oversee chose instead to ask her the softball “do you personally, morally, think it’s ok to use torture and would you do if if Trump told you to” instead of digging into the details that might actually tell us what she REALLY believes.
Adam L Silverman
@Ella in New Mexico: That is a thoughtful comment. There is always context for this stuff. That doesn’t justify unethical, immoral, or illegal behavior, but the context helps us understand what actually happened.
Adam L Silverman
@PJ: Yep.
Adam L Silverman
@Immanentize: If it were me, with what I know from the news reporting, I’d advise a no vote.
Adam L Silverman
@BC in Illinois: This is an excellent statement.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: My understanding is she was in charge their when they brought KSM in. And my understanding, from the reporting, is they did a number on him.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article209722184.html
Adam L Silverman
@JEC: No arguments here.
Adam L Silverman
@Lapassionara: Yes and no. What was done can’t be undone. But it also doesn’t have to be repeated in the future.
waysel
This is what I found most disturbing: Haspel refused to say that she would inform the committee if Trump asked her for a pledge of loyalty.
Barbara
@Ella in New Mexico: I don’t know whether that was true in the public session. My sense is that a lot of the context would have been in the form of classified information.
Ella in New Mexico
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for taking the time to look. I respect your opinion a great deal. Given I think she’ll be confirmed, I really wish we all knew the true, full story of Gina Haspel’s real beliefs and actions during those years. I naively hate that these hearings are so full of bullshit and pure political maneuvering that we can’t get a sense of the real facts. And I wish we had a less tainted candidate for this post, as you indicated above.
Even so, call me Pollyanna. I’m gonna try and remain positive…;-)
Ella in New Mexico
@Barbara: I hope they did it in the closed session.
NotMax
Long read, but contains lots of info regarding Haspel’s time spent with interrogations and her connection to the destruction of those 92 torture videotapes at Pro Publica.
And therein is the rub. Just as the military operates under civilian command, agencies such as CIA and FBI as best practice ought to be headed by skilled people brought in from outside.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: While a lot of it is murky, it seems to me that the al-Nashiri waterboardings were during her tenure. That is enough to disqualify her in my eyes.
Matt
You misspelled “contemptible”. Every one of the people involved in the torture scheme should either be rotting in prison for the rest of their lives or eating a gun before the marshals show up to take them there.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: No argument here.
TerryC
@Adam L Silverman: Adam, a number of years ago a friend of mine told me she knew the CIA agent who destroyed the interrogation tapes and she told me, “Someone should ask about the tape transcripts, which were not destroyed.” Don’t know if she was making it up or not.