The following letter was written by Tom Twetten, the former Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA, to the omsbudsman at the New York Times. It is in regard to an article that the Times wrote about the extraordinary rendition planes:
I have read your June 19 article, which attempts to reply to and reassure your unhappy readership. Before you pat The New York Times on the back too heartily, I request that you consider a few more points. Your reporters and editors have a bias toward publishing all interesting news. As you say, sensible people can disagree on where the line should be drawn on national security issues. In this case, your readership (and I ) believe you strayed well over the line. My bias is that of a former C.I.A. operations officer.
Your reporter, having lived in the U.S.S.R., equates that totalitarian government with “excessive secrecy” by his own government. He then proposes that an aggressive press will “improve the effectiveness of intelligence agencies.” You will want to be careful about that word “excessive,” because your reporter will next decide that in a free society, he is the arbiter of what is “excessive.” And his bias will lead him to want to print anything that he can ferret out, then justifying his actions as uncovering “excessive.” In the case of the aircraft, the problem is clear from his article. It is the difficulty of having aircraft do secret work in a free society. It wasn’t “excessive” secrecy; it was too little.
The question of interrogation and rendition is an important one to debate. You may not be in a position to judge how valuable rendition has been to damaging Al Qaeda and its like-minded terrorist allies. The Times could yet focus on this issue in a responsible way. But the aircraft in question might be used for many purposes. They might even be secret, without being “excessively secret”, and all uses are now put at risk by The New York Times.
Your reporter and editors might also consider that there is still a group of persons who want to bring another 9/11 type of apocalyptic terror to New York City. It is a larger, albeit less well organized group, because of our actions in Iraq. Your first line of defense against another Qaeda atrocity is the C.I.A. Consider the president’s claim that about 75 percent of the former leadership of Al Qaeda is now dead or in custody. Have your reporter do a little research on those individuals. I think you will find that the operations officers of C.I.A., in cooperation with others in the intelligence community, are responsible for all ranking Qaeda operatives who are no longer capable of terrorist actions in New York City or elsewhere. And those C.I.A. operatives, in some cases, used the same aircraft that you eagerly expose to get the job done.
It isn’t good enough to say that if The New York Times can put these details together, surely Al Qaeda can do so. You have simply made it easier for a larger number of terrorists by showing them how.
The second loser as the result of your expose is the United States taxpayer. I would assume the nature of your article will require changes in C.I.A. sources and methods. That will take time away from operatives who should be focused on Al Qaeda. American operations officers are placed at more risk by the specificity of your unnecessary detail. These operations officers are United States citizens dedicated to our protection, and their security is important to the nation.
I am not reassured, as you are, by the lack of a C.I.A. response to your summary. How much detail (not how often) has The Times deleted from your stories on sensitive intelligence matters at the request of the intelligence community since 9/11? Is it 1 percent? Could it be as high as 5 percent? Has it occurred to The New York Times that you might no longer be considered a responsible interlocutor? Commenting on a summary from your reporter carries a high risk of further erosion of C.I.A. sources and methods. It is another one of those national security judgment calls. It should give you pause, not reason for justification, that C.I.A. chose silence.
You have not given your readership a “broad picture,” to use your words. Instead you have given them more detail than they want. You have written a “thoughtful” article, as you like to say to your readership that is protesting. You have made the work more difficult for hard-pressed officers who are in the front lines against our most vicious, Al Qaeda, enemies.
The above are my views only. They should in no way be construed as those of C.I.A., from which I retired 10 years ago.
Respectfully, Thomas A. Twetten
Retired deputy director for operations, C.I.A.
Twetten makes some compelling points. But I ultimately disagree with him. The problem is not the use of airplanes by the CIA. The problem is the deeply immoral use of torture by proxy. The New York Times is exposing the methods of the CIA because the methods need to be debated. If these planes were being used to fly prisoners to America for interrogation, and that interrogation was in accordance with American law and treaties, then there would be no compelling reason to reveal the methods, airfields, cover companies, etc. But that is not the case. The New York Times is reporting on an ongoing crime being committed by our intelligence services. When our government breaks the law, it should not expect the deference of our most important news organizations.
I absolutely agree, but its been getting it until recently. I would like to know why one day!
but on to the artcle, I agree with you. The author here seems to be making the same old worn out complaint that if we give the bad guys too much info it will damage N security. Conveniently leaving aside the thought that if we don’t have open discussions and talk about issues thoroughly we might not have a Nation worth keeping.
I find that the use of the word “responsibility” is pretty ironic here.
I happen to agree with you both totally. I think when push comes to shove, it is the rendition thing that is not good. I want to know why we have to do such a thing? Why can not we find a place in our own debriefing areas to do the interogation. I find it hard to believe that we have to ship them off to other countries that do torture to get this job done. It is a known fact that torture is not a way to get credible evidence anyhow. I did agree with this man on all areas of rebuke.
In light of your remarks, Boo, I dug up my Daily Kos diary, “Outsourcing Torture: Secret History (FBI v. CIA)” — written when BoomanTribune.com was just a TWINKLE in your eye! — and reposted it today, over yonder.
In the section that begins:
Even early advocates of the CIA’s rendition program are having trouble with the “unintended consequences of the Administration’s radical legal measures.” One of the critics is Michael Scheuer, a former C.I.A. counter-terrorism expert who helped establish the practice of rendition, and who left the agency in 2004 and published the best-seller “Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror,” originally with the pseudonym Anonymous. …
… I use Jane Mayer’s and Richard Sale’s descriptions of the origins of the rendition program, which was authorized by Bush and approved by Richard Clarke.
Mayer’s description is key for its detail of how the Clinton administration began the practice of rendition. Sale’s comments are especially concise:
THE DISTINCTION is that the Bush administration went hog wild with the practice, producing what Yale law prof. Harold Koh so thoughtfully called “rights-free prisoners.”
All juris prudence — especially the prudent part — went out the window. With the busy sorcerers Yoo and Gonzales stirring up magical new concoctions, the rights-conscious attorneys in the State Dept. didn’t stand a chance.
Now, I don’t like it that Richard Clarke and Bill Clinton used rendition. It’s highly likely that those detained — because they were sent to Egypt, with which we had a specal deal — were tortured.
But they were at least given legal rights.
It was a horrible precedent and one that Clarke, one wishes, had foreseen. He probably just couldn’t imagine that we’d have a renegade administration that would ignore the rule of law.
I meant to type:
authorized by <strike>Bush</strike> CLINTON and approved by Richard Clarke.
in which capacity he planned the bombing of the residence at Tripoli in an attempt to kill Khadafy that apparently killed one of the Libyan’s daughters. There are many that believe the subsequent bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie Scotland was in retaliation for the bombing of Tripoli.
here.
The letter writer makes a case based on the assumption that this practise of “rendition” is a beneficial weapon in our arsenal against terrorist networks. He also seems to believe that if the government organization carrying out this deplorable policy can’t manage to keep it’s own activities secret that somehow the press is supposed to shoulder that responsibility for maintaining cocealment.
First of all, the idea that the CIA couldn’t have found an effective way to conceal their detainee delivery system mechanisms is ludicrous. If they can successfully overthrow governments, they can devise stealth transport for presumed bad guys they want to have tortured.
Secondly, the fact that this loathsome practice is know to the terrorists is viewed by many of it’s supporters as a primary component of it’s effectiveness. They reason that if terrorists know that if they get caught by the US alive it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to a Duncan Hunter style gourmet resort in the tropics, it might dissuade them from carrying out their insidious agenda.
To me it seems pretty clear that the Bush regime wants the bin Laden gang to know about this program. And because of this, they had to be lax in some way for the info to get out. It strikes me that the tracking of the aircraft itineraries is just an unfortunate byproduct of this laxity in the security of the program, and that it’s completely wrong to try to hold the press accountable for error.
I think you are right that part of our rendition and torture policies were always intended to intimidate. But it doesn’t explain why we ACTUALLY tortured people. We have dead bodies on our hands…so it’s not a fake campaign.
If you try to think about how the CIA might be able to fly around the world without leaving a trace, I think you’ll find it’s much harder than you think at first.
It could be done, but it could quickly become prohibitively expensive. There is a reason they use lear jets and not cargo planes. Speed and Cost.
Lastly, I can’t see any benefit to outsourcing torture, especially since we have decided to engage in it ourselves. And rendition was supposed to be used for countries that do not have extradition treaties, not for snatching Italian citizens off the street. So, the press have every right to expose this behavior. It should be stopped.
Please don’t misunderstand the thrust of my comments. I am categorically opposed to this whole scheme, and most especially to the “torture” it facilitates. Not only does this sort of behavior diminish and demean the integrity of the nation and the character of it’s people, it’s clear that torture is pretty much the “least effective” method of extracting accurate information from detainees. So even if it weren’t repulsive, it would still be illogical, (typical of many of the insane, Bush perpetuated schemes).
As for the difficulties of stealth air transport, you’re probably right that it’s more difficult than I imagined. But, considering that the CIA has a huge “black budget”, and that the Pentagon budget is roughly half a trillion $$$, surely they could have conspired to find a way. A simple matter of changing tail registry numbers every so often could have made the tracking of this whole enterprise much more difficult. Combining air transport with ground transport could likewise have foiled many attempts to track who was going where.
As to why Bush & Co actually believe in torture, I can only suggest this. The entire agenda of the Bush regime revolves around the use of fear and intimidation to manipulate others in order to achieve their objectives. Fear is their number 1 ingredient. Fear is pretty much the only active ingredient they have driving their insane agenda. And because fear is the basis of how they function, torture is a natural preference for them. When they see their “enemies” suffering, they think it means they’re winning.
An absurd philosophical perspective to be sure, and history proves it’s guaranteed to fail, but this won’t deter them from doing more damage in the meantime.
More than that. I think this
is also intended as intimidation for domestic consumption. The patriot act, denial of rights to citizens, destruction of the Bill of Rights, terror alerts, all the neo-fascist paraphernalia of twisted minds. They have to be able to keep the masses in line in order to carry out their various schemes.
Unquestionably, fear is their central weapon in their assault on the public mind domestically as well. It’s the same for the evangelical fascists. They employ a kind of rhetorical terrorism to scare people into compliance and support for their lunatic agenda.
Once you scare people you can very easily weaponize their ignorance, and once that ignorance is weaponized, you can get people to commit all manner of crimes and misdmeanors against their fellow man; you can get them to behave in ways diametrically opposed to their own best interests.
Creatures like Dobson, Cheney, Falwell and Bush would not even be blips on the radar screen were it not for the fear they’ve deliberately created in the minds of the populace. Take away the fear and these bums are nothing
about flying around the world without leaving a trace…
I wish I could remember in which diary I included this info, but I can’t … anyway, there’s a huge network of aircraft acifionados who track every plane traveling the skies, and they share information. I know that sounds weird, but they really do. They tracked one of the CIA planes … and that’s all I remember at the moment.
planespotters. They keep track of and document everything. And I’m sure the intelligence services do as well. They’d have to buy a plane from Fed Ex to disguise what they’re doing.
Rendition makes everyone less safe, especially coupled with torture and/or legal black holes. Snatching people off the streets or from their homes and spiriting them away in darkness fuels terrorism, it doesn’t stop it.
There is no finite number of terrorists, does this fella think the CIA can snatch and torture them all? He certainly doesn’t consider the number of terrorists created for each person snatched and tortured. Given that rendition and torture are at a minimum counter productive, it sure is mighty handy that the government can keep its cloak of secrecy and still report that “we’re winning the war on terror.”
It throws out the window all the safeguards afforded by laws.
In the lengthy interview of the retired FBI agent by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, it’s clear that giving arrested persons their rights and access to an attorney actually helped the investigation and interrogations.
Absolutely. The redition defenders use the “you can’t handle the truth” line. But the truth is that we are violating our own laws for practices and policies that actually make us less safe, not more safe.
If lawless rendition, detention and torture are not in the interest of national security AND violates our laws and treaties, there is every reason to expose the practice and the policies.
Sorry, folks, but I believe you are giving far too much credit to Twetten. His letter is one of the most appalling and sanctimonious apologies for torture I have ever read. All of his points amount to little more than bellyaching that the NYT exposed these crimes.
Oh, sure, he suggests that the topic is fair game, but note how he says it: “The Times could yet focus on this issue in a responsible way.” The tone is exceedingly qualified. He is in fact saying: “Once you’ve accepted all the prohibitions I’ve outlined on discussing this topic, it might still be possible to say something helpful about the practice of rendition.” Obviously, he’s not confident there’d be much left to discuss once the topic died the death of his many qualifications.
And I get so sick & tired of this business from ex-spooks: “If you guys keep spilling the beans, then more planes will be flying into our skyscrapers.” That logic is maybe two to three steps from proposing abolishing a free press. In fact, abolishing a free press would make us safer if we followed Twetten’s logic.
Besides, it’s insulting to our intelligence. Does he really expect us to believe that many people throughout the Middle East w/ ties to terrorist organizations don’t know that USA’s prisoners are unwilling frequent flyers to several of the regional torture chambers? Who the hell does he think he is fooling w/ that shit?
I believe this is the proper response from “taxpayers” to Mr. Twetten: “Fuck you, Twetten. I don’t pay my taxes so that my government can fly people, terrorist or not, to a variety of torture chambers. I don’t appreciate how it probably endangers me and my family more by understandably pissing off people in the Mid East who know about it. And I also don’t appreciate it because it WRONG. And, frankly, I am just as frightened by assholes that come along and defend these kinds of horrors as I am of Islamic terrorists. Both types are little more than sociopaths.”