Reflections on the CIA Torture Report

Since the release of the CIA torture report on Dec 9, 2014, I kept resisting the idea of reading that document for many obvious reasons. But after its frequent mentioning by the Afghan president Ashraf Ghani during his U.S. visit in April 2015, I finally summoned the courage to take a look at the more than 500-page Executive Summary, the only presently unclassified part of the 6,700-page complete report.

Despite the claims of the CIA, almost everyone else, including President Obama calls the CIA enhanced interrogation techniques, “torture.” As the main author and investigator of this report, Senator Feinstein says, “it is my personal conclusion that, under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured. I also believe that the conditions of confinement and the use of authorized and unauthorized interrogation and conditioning techniques were cruel, inhuman, and degrading. I believe the evidence of this is overwhelming and incontrovertible” (p.4). Restoring hope for the humanity, and attempting to save America’s tainted image in the world, to the extent that this can be done after the fact, President Obama ended this program through Executive Order 13491 on January 22, 2009, which required the CIA to “close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and… not operate any such detention facility in the future” (p.171). The only interrogation technique allowed, after this Executive Order, was those in the Army Field Manual.

What I found most disturbing about the so-called “enhanced interrogation technique” was the hiring of two contract psychologists (James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen), who were trained in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) school, a special training mandatory for U.S. Air Force officers, to help them survive and resist should they get captured by the enemy. Together, the two psychologists did much of the dirty work for CIA, and after 2005 they formed a company, Mitchell Jessen and Associates, for the complete outsourcing of the program, for which they received in excess of $180 million. The two contracted psychologists devised torturous practices by reverse engineering SERE principles, which included 12 specific techniques, namely the attention grasp, walling, facial hold, facial slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positioning, sleep deprivation, waterboard, use of diapers, use of insects, and mock burial. Among these, waterboarding has received significant attention in the media, as Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, the mastermind of 9/11 was waterboarded at least 183 times. But I think other practices are no less disturbing and humiliating. Examples of other practices mentioned in the report, but not part of the above 12 practices, include rectal rehydration (yes that is disgusting beyond words!), exposing to cold (in which at least one detainee reportedly died), stripping detainees naked, shackling with hands above the head for hours, etc. Sometimes detainees were subjected to torture simply for not addressing their interrogators as “sir.”

Much of the detention and rendition in several known and unknown “black sites” or detention centers around the world, were implemented in fear of and aimed at preventing another attack. The process obviously included detaining many wrongfully, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. For example, a young unemployed Afghan man, Gul Rahman, simply shared a name with a target and was detained for his mistaken identity. In fact, he had himself approached a U.S. military base seeking employment and was detained as a result, but “DNA results later showed conclusively that the Afghan in custody was not the target” (p.133). Ironically, in one stance, the wrongful detainees including two men who were actually CIA informants, but because their sent messages to CIA were not translated until after they were detained and tortured, they were subjected to a taste their own medicine, one to which they were setting up indirectly subjecting many other people. A few of these lucky mistaken cases were later released, with minimal compensation. Perhaps one of the largest compensations went to a German detainee, Khalid al Masri, who was released in May 2004 with “14,500 Euros, as well as his belongings” (p.129). I call this probably the largest compensation because the compensation for others were not spelled out, but simply called “minimal.” The officers involved in the mistakes were never reprimanded, because such mistakes were accepted as part of the package. In fact, regarding the CIA wrongfully detaining innocent individuals and rejecting accountability for the mistakes of officers involved, a notification said “with regard to counterterrorism operations in general and the al-Masri matter in particular, the Director believes the scale tips decisively in favor of accepting mistakes that over connect the dots against those that under connect them” (p.129).

Rather than building on these details, I would prefer to discuss the reactions to the document and their potential implications. We know, or at least can know upon reading further, those reactions published in the public domain. But there is a whole another set of reactions that one cannot, for all intents and purposes, be practically even identified, but are extremely important nonetheless. I would put those reactions along a continuum. On the one end of this continuum lie those completely siding with those commonly known as “terrorists” or Islamic extremists. For the terrorists, the extremists, and their sympathizers, this report is but just one instance of successfully removing the cover hiding the “West’s” injustices, against which they (the terrorists) have long waged a holy war. This is the perfect fuel for their fire, as it just validates their simplistic message that the West is out there to get the Muslims. On the eve of releasing the report on Dec 9, 2014, there was obviously expected backlash by angry and shocked Muslims around the world and the US embassies had taken all precaution against it. But while the much feared short term backlash is important, what should be even more worrying is the longer term impact of exposing such graphic details that could reach the hands of the media savvy extremists. We wouldn’t be surprised, therefore, if we see a dramatic rise in their recruitment rates and the garnering of even more support from those on the ideological fringes. For example, it suffices for them to show the video of one crying man, one of many wrongfully detained innocent individuals, as broadcast by the media to literally creating a whole new generation of uninformed but emotionally charged and mentally brain-washed ready-to-die brave hearts.

On the other end of this spectrum lie those siding with the United States in general and even the CIA in particular for not just justifying the acts of torture by keeping the American people safe and averting further attacks, but more importantly for still continuing to be the torchbearers of justice, truth and freedom. After all, it was still an American Senator, Dianne Feinstein, the Senate Intelligence Committee chair, who initiated the investigation five years ago and brought it to fruition. One can just imagine what she went through pulling this off the ground, because as we know, it took her almost five months of negotiations with the White House, who was more an ally and less of an opponent to her endeavors, to let the report be released to the public. I truly believe she is fully deserving of all the credit that she has received and will continue to receive for the courage, bravery and perseverance she demonstrated, because we all know it is not easy to speak truth to power or attack the monster, which is exactly what she and many others did in this instance as they have done in many other instances in the past. All of this is testament to the presence of another side, one that the manipulative leaders of the extremist groups, don’t want the masses to know, just as warmongers on the right don’t want the voice of the many millions of so called “moderates” to be heard by the general public in the West.

Even within the report, it is not hard to see traces of “humanness” within CIA agents. As gory, inhumane and disturbing as the interrogating techniques were, there were people, including CIA officers, who were extremely uncomfortable with and disgusted by the horrific practices they witnessed. The report talks about many detesting the idea, some even crying as torture took place, thus indicating that even some of the most impervious and thick-skinned people do have some traces of empathy in them. It was this humanness of some that resulted in this and other instances of whistle blowing, which will hopefully help achieve the main purpose of the report, which was for this to never happen again.

Dreaming of a day when the significantly large masses in the middle take the center stage from the minority of extremists on the far right and the far left.

A call for the return of sanity in thinking about Yemen and the entire Muslim world

Many countries, especially Muslim majority countries in the Middle East, these days are contemplating (although some have already arrived at their utterly thoughtless and even un-Islamic conclusion of siding with one group vs. another) their position in regards to the crisis in Yemen, following the flee of the Yemini president to Saudi Arabia after the uprising of the Shia-led Houthis. With Iran supporting the Houthis and Saudi Arabia and their allies supporting the ousted president, Yemen has practically turned into a battle-ground between extremist Shias and Sunnis, a division that has its roots in Islamic history, but not in the Quran, the book that all Muslims, including Shias, Sunnis and every other off-shoot, believe in and revere immensely. 

At the end of the day, the Shia-Sunni divide, like many other things, is as big or small as you make it. If one looks for differences, there surely are uncountable differences, just as there are differences WITHIN each of these two group. But if one looks at the similarities, there are many overarching similarities, which I argue are much more pivotal to the Islamic belief than the hairsplitting differences, the magnitude of which is far from equally distributed among each group. E.g. not all Shias attribute the same level of divinity to the Imams, just as not all Sunnis interpret a given Hadith in the same manner. The common themes, which should unite all parties, is the belief in one and the same God, one and the same prophet, one and the same Quran, the five pillars, etc. Now thinking Muslims have to decide if is it worth going to war and killing each other on the basis of the claim that one group differs in their devotion to a certain companion of the prophet, while turning a blind eye to all the fundamental common elements briefly mentioned above. 

Back to present, these days many other Muslim majority nations are asking themselves the tough question that once Bush had famously asked, whether they are with the Saudis or against them. I argue the right question to ask is not which side of the line one stands on, but to question the line itself, its existence, its politics, and most importantly the consequences of choosing a side, which requires much needed soul searching than being put forward as simplistically as was Bush’s question on the eve of the US invasion of Afghanistan after the tragic event of September 11. Just as in retaliation to the events of 9/11 the US alone has lost nearly as many soldiers as were killed during 9/11 - not to mention the multi-trillion dollar cost of war, the astonishing suicide rates of US soldiers and PTSD among the survivors, the lives lost of the other coalition forces during the last decade, the thousands and millions of innocent Afghan lives lost and those continuing to get killed and maimed, etc. – the choosing of sides in the crisis in Yemen and the rest of the world for that matter, will not have significantly different results. We often forget that golden lesson that violence begets violence and we often forget that at the end of the day, it is ordinary human beings who pay the most in such conflicts. Both the Houthis and the Saudi-led airstrikes continue to take way someone’s father, mother, sister, brother, child or other family members. A recent BBC article reports on the killing of at least 62 children by Saudi air strikes. 

The world leaders, and especially the Muslim world leaders, need to stop falling in the trap of choosing sides in war and ultimately being held (at least in front of the God that they claim to believe in) responsible for the tragic consequences of war, and instead choose peace. Yes, it is as simple as that to a sane person.