by Larry C. Johnson (bio below)
From my op-ed written for, and published in, today’s Los Angeles Times (sub. required):
LARRY C. JOHNSON, a former CIA officer, was a deputy director of the State Department Office of Counterterrorism from 1989 to 1993.
I THINK Dick Cheney has been watching too many Hollywood flicks that glorify torture. He needs to get out of his undisclosed location and talk to the people on the ground.
I’m a former CIA officer and a former counterterrorism official. During the last few months, I have spoken with three good friends who are CIA operations officers, all of whom have worked on terrorism at the highest levels. They all agree that torturing detainees will not help us. In fact, they believe that it will hurt us in many ways.
These are the very people the vice president wants to empower to torture — and they don’t want to do it.
I have some experience of my own with “duress interrogation.” Back when I was undergoing paramilitary training at a CIA facility in 1986, my colleagues and I were interrogated to prepare us in case we were taken hostage.
At one point we were “captured” by faux terrorists. After being stripped naked and given baggy military uniforms, we entered a CIA version of Gitmo. We were deprived of sleep for 36 hours, given limited rice and water and forced to stand in place. Our interrogators — all U.S. military personnel — coaxed and harangued us by turns.
Those of us who declined to cooperate were stuffed into punishment boxes — miniature coffins that induced claustrophobia. …
Below, what happened next:
After 30 hours, one of my classmates gave me up in exchange for a grape soda and a ham sandwich.
The lesson of this training was that everyone has a breaking point. But our instructors were not recommending breaking detainees through torture. Instead, they emphasized the need to build rapport and trust with people who had information we wanted.
Two of my friends, one a classmate from hostage school, served in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Some Americans believe that the suicide attack on the World Trade Center justifies using all techniques to get information from terrorist suspects. But my friends recognize correctly that their mission is to gather intelligence, not to create new enemies.
If you inflict enough pain on someone, they will give you information, but what they tell you may not be true. You will have to corroborate it, which will take time. And, unless you kill every suspect you brutalize, you will make enemies of them, their families, maybe their entire villages. What real CIA field officers know firsthand is that it is better to build a relationship of trust — even with a terrorist, even if it’s time-consuming — than to extract quick confessions through tactics such as those used by the Nazis and the Soviets, who believed that national security always trumped human rights.
And that’s the point. We should never use our fear of being attacked as justification for dehumanizing ourselves or others.
Before the CIA gets all the blame for promoting the torture mentality, we ought to note that Hollywood’s hands are dirty as well. In last year’s “Man on Fire,” we saw Denzel Washington give a corrupt Mexican cop a plastic explosive enema. He also taped the hands of another errant cop to the steering wheel and began to snip off digits in an effort to find out the whereabouts of a kidnapped child.
I am not advocating that terrorists be given room service at the Four Seasons. Some sleep deprivation — of the sort mothers of newborns all endure — and spartan living conditions are appropriate. What we must not do is use physical pain or the threat of drowning, as in “waterboarding,” to gain information. Tough, relentless questioning is OK. Torture is not.
……………………………………………………..
Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm that helps corporations and governments manage threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism (as a Deputy Director), is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management. Mr. Johnson has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC’s Nightline, NBC’s Today Show, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. Mr. Johnson has authored several articles for publications, including Security Management Magazine, the New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. He has lectured on terrorism and aviation security around the world. Further bio details.
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Right on Larry and congrats on making the op-ed page of the LA times. Torture can never be condoned on any level.
Hollywood has a long tradition of showing “heroic” characters “forced” by desperation (and the necessity of building up the suspense in the plot) to resort to torture. The power of the script ensures that it always works. The hero resorts to desperate measures, but the bad guy cowardly relents, and gives up the necessary bit of information for the hero to save the day in time for the closing credits.
In the movies, torture works every time — unless, of course, it’s our heroic protagonist being tortured. HE will resist, and win in the end, all the more noble for sticking to his principles. Whereas it’s a given that the bad guys have none, and they cave in and tell the hero just what he needs to know.
I think the neo-cons who are so enamored of torture have been watching too fucking much television.
And maybe Hollywood needs to come up with some different plot devices. Like the cars that always explode in a crash, the plot device of the hero ‘getting tough’ with the bad guys and getting what he needs so he can save the world in the nick of time… it’s deceptive and it’s dangerous to think the real world works as it does in the movies.
Very good observations … Hollywood does bear some responsibility. There’ve been some good articles in the past few months about this. I think it was Slate that criticized “24” (FOX TV) for its unrealistic and overused portrayal of torture.
Mel Gibson is one of the worst offenders, and it’s clear that he is obsessed with torture. I’d go so far as to say that he’s seriously mentally ill. See Braveheart, that Revolutionary war movie he did, Passion of the Christ, Payback, Conspiracy Theory, and Lethal Weapon — they all feature horrible torture scenes.
“South Park” does a brilliant send-up of his “fetish.” From “Passion of the Jew“:
or maybe just preachers and politicians whipping up their various flocks, but to me people seem more cruel today and more willing to be paranoid and more willing to let people (like New Orleaners) sink with no help. We haven’t helped Pakistan to the extent we might be capable in spite of their being our “allies”. How is that going to help us in the long run? The next target for the repubs will be immigrants, they have already signaled. And people are slavering over what kind of indignities they can impose on immigrants.
This is already a problem for some innocent people.
One of the major ‘claims’ for his torture in captivity was the coincidental connection he held to another telecom professional. The other guy had struck a deal with the govt in Pakistan to sell them cell phones and similar equipment. Evidently, this equipment was found in places of suspicious activity and the attempt was made to hold this guy responsible for what the Pakistani government did with that equpment after they bought it.
Beyond innocent mistakes that go uninvestigated the opportunity to destroy other’s lives for personal gain is open for abuse.
The Mel Gibson style “spiritual sadism” has been around since the very beginnings of organized religion. The zealots and the power hungry quickly become punishment-oriented in their quest for authority and their need to feel superior.
Gibson is a particularly obvious example of this dysfnuctional and pathetic pathology, but the entire rubric of reward and punishment that organized religion generally claims as within it’s own province to administer is the generator of such idiotic dogma and the cause of virtually all the atrocity perpetrated in the name of God.
Have any of you ever seen Ken Russell’s “The Devils“?
It’s about religion in the middle ages.
I was so, so sorry I saw that film. It haunted me for years. It gave me terrible nightmares. I couldn’t get the horrific images out of my head. So much torture and cruelty and perverse (!) sex acts.
Vanessa Redgrave was in it — she played a nun.
I never saw it, and based on your reaction and the info at the link you posted, I’m probably fortunate.
The diabolical and aggressive evil exemplified in the person of Richelieu is legendary. I remember reading a book about 30 years ago about all that happened during his reign of power/terror. (I forget the title but I’ll do some research and see if the internet will supply a “jog” to my memory.)
That’s the same concept that allows the end (times) to justify the means. I’ve tried discussing the situations over the past 4 years with friends and family members who express different levels of faith.
Clearly, the fundamentalist Evangelicals are the most dangerous in justifying things like voting for Bush to outlaw abortion….not admitting that his illegal war was killing/injuring tens of thousands of innocents.
If the Bible says the end will be, and the actions taken help to achieve the end then even if they were a mistake or fraud they are acceptable because of prophecy.
Innocents killed as collateral damage are considered sacrificed, not wronged,as another justification. If they weren’t ‘saved’ first then it doesn’t matter anyway. Their life after death would be the same which is salvation denied.
I’ve been so tempted to beat the pacifism into these if need be but consideration of anything other than the Bible says to them is out of the question.
Perhaps the biggest problem within the current evangelical dogma is how much of the scripture they purport to revere they must ignore inorder to support those few fragments that support what they want to believe.
The spiritual bankruptcy inherent in their hypocrisies is undeniable. No one has denigrated the purported teachings of Christ as much as the current crop of self-serving, arrogant hucksters who are the acknowledged leaders of the so-called “evangelical movement” in the US. Whether they’re dismissing the central tenent taught by Christ to look after and help the least amongst you by preaching the virtues of selfishness from their embarrassingly self-indugent mega-church pulpits, or advocating for the death and destruction of others in the name of advancing their own God, or assuming upon themselves the arbitrary authority to impose their own beliefs on others and to punish those who don’t comply, these creatures don’t have a single spiritual bone in their bodies. They are completely corrupted.
As a disclaimer, I don’t practise christianity as a religion and I don’t believe that the person referred to as Jesus was the “savior”. I do, however appreciate the value of some of the teachings, but it is those individual teachings themselves to which I ascribe the value, not that they may have a Christian aspect to them. It’s theprinciple and the value that empowers the religion, not the other way around; one more basic point the zealots never seem to grasp.
If you inflict enough pain on someone, they will give you information, but what they tell you may not be true. You will have to corroborate it, which will take time.
This is an excellent point and a good talking point for discrediting the caveat that even many on the left seem willing to accept: “What if the threat is imminent? What if there’s a bomb set to go off? Isn’t torture justified then?” If you hurt someone badly enough they will tell you anything to make the pain stop. That doesn’t mean what they tell you will be true or useful. Torture is a great way to get false confessions. False confessions don’t stop ticking time-bombs.
Today, on Democracy Now:
A Deadly Interrogation: Can The CIA Legally Kill a Prisoner?
We speak with journalist Jane Mayer of The New Yorker as the Senate rejects demands for an independent commission on torture and the US military. We look at whether CIA agents are being allowed to kill detainees in their custody.
Glad to see this posted here, and glad to see it anytime where someone says “torture doesn’t work”. It doesn’t.
Never been a CIA officer, I know nothing about that line of work. But I’ve interrogated hundreds of murderers, child molesters and yes even kidnappers. And what you say is 100% correct. We always got the most information, the most confessions, the best and more accurate information by developing rapport with the subjects.
Some cops yell and scream and shine the bright lights. Those cops solve a hell of a lot fewer cases than the ones who sit quietly, listen, ask direct questions and develop a kind of pseudo “friendship” with the subject. I’ve seen people confess to multiple murders after we bought them a simple chicken dinner. No yelling required nor needed.
Torture DOES NOT WORK. Period. Forget the inhumanity of it, it doesn’t even work!
Amen to this article
Pax
Fascinating, soj. “a simple chicken dinner”
btw: Dick The Torturer came out of his hole today to salute a dead soldier at Arlington. What a guy.
Sounds too simplistic to be true but it is nonetheless. A $3.99 chicken dinner from Church’s was far, far more useful as an “interrogation device” than any whips or water boarding ever could be.
A voluntary confession or 3 weeks of trying to build up a case on shaky witness statements and a handful of physical evidence. Worth the 4 bucks in my mind. And mind you these are murderers I’m talking about, just as “hardcore” as any terrorist.
Pax
First of all, those who break the law will generally not be caught (I learned that in sociology class)
Second, common criminals (at least in argentina) always hve a system to alert his buddy’s. For example they will set up a time to meet. All they have to do is take the beating for a while and send the to where they have to go 5 or 10 minutes after a certain time. By the time they get there, all proof is gone, and there is no one to be found.
Or they will send the cops to an address just a block away. that will alert their buddies and they will dissapear.
And these are not hard core terrorists, who bhave been trained and prepared to withstand torture and interrogation.
Torture does work, but only with average Joe.
Larry’s point that “Cheney . . . watching too many Hollywood flicks that glorify torture [and] needs to get out of his undisclosed location and talk to the people on the ground” is well taken.
In the last few days, I’ve seen a number of comments regarding something he did in the run-up to Gulf War One. Apparently, Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, was trying to tell General Schwartzkopf how to do his job, using descriptions that sounded like Civil War troop movements.
Some pages later in his book, the general gently lets slip that Cheney sent him a bon voyage gift: the tapes of the Ken Burns series on the Civil War.
Cheney may or may not be marginally smarter than Geedub, but he is clearly every bit as out of touch with reality.
Cheney is Chicken-hawk, armchair warrior, as are the rest of his neo-con cohorts. In the run-up to this war, 3 and 4 star generals were handed papers on military strategy written by Newt Gingrich. In their initial plan, they wanted to send 40-70,000 troops into Iraq. Anthony Zinni warned that they were planning for “Bay of Goats.” So they got rid of Anthony Zinni. The only reason we had the initial troop-strength we had was some hard maneuvering on the part of career military who had enough political muscle to make that happen. But, numerous military officials were cut off at the knees (Shinseki, for one) for knowing more about warfare than the insane cabal that has hijacked our national security apparatus. Iraq is what happens when a bunch of non-warriors tell experienced generals to sit in the corner while they theorize in an echo chamber. This is a war planned by don Quixote like dreamers, who have learned the same lesson an unfortunate Terry Gilliam learned when he tried to make a movie of that book: Sometimes the windmills fight back.
this cabal never had a plan to “win” the war because it wasn’t really a war to start with and their plan was to keep the battle going indefinitely to make as much money as possible.
Point..just how long do our soldiers go through basic training? Isn’t it something like six weeks? Here we are almost three years later and how many Iraqi troops are in there fighting? They say 100,000 but we all know that isn’t true. But let’s say it is true. If we have 160,000 troops isn’t it time to bring at least 100,000 home and they would still have the same amount of troops as we have there? Why are these Iraqis not trained yet to maintain the security of their “free” country? Because Cheney/Haliburton would stop making money and the “rights” to oil profits.
Just Say No to Torture and This Occupation!
If you look at the PNAC stuff, it’s pretty plain. Iraq is the “pivot” from which to expand our “benevolent hegemony” through-out the mideast. The plan was to set up permanent bases in Iraq, which we’ve done, secure the oil infrastructure, which we haven’t done, and proceed to “democratize” all those other barbaric, oil producing countries.
Good posts, alohaleezy and Recordkeeper. It was something yesterday to hear John Kerry on the floor of the Senate detail his plan for getting out of Iraq … one of the things he recommended was closure of all permanent bases. (I can’t imagine that powers-that-be ever allowing that, and I wonder what would happen to a candidate who proposed that.)
Thank you again Larry. It sickens me that we have criminals as leaders right now. I can’t imagine what benefits Mr. Cheney thinks he is getting out of torture. All we know he’s gotten so far is phony info on connections between Al Queda and Iraq. How much you want to bet that was the result of torture and the victim telling his tormentors what they wanted to hear.
Larry (Of the 3 stooges?) How utterly stupid. Sleep Deprivation is torture. Period.
Who are these people that are being given the sleep deprivation, imprisonment and difficult living conditions? Are they guilty? Have they done anything? Who decides? Is there are court in the world that would impose sleep deprivation on someone who is simply suspected by someone as possibly maybe having done something or other or maybe kinda has plans to do something, sort of.
You don’t even know if the people you are humanely torturing have even done anything. You advocate and call people terrorists and then advocate sleep deprivation (which is torture) and spartan living conditions to see if they are.Most of the people at Gitmo are innocent by all accounts. If they had money and lawyers they might be able to do something about it. It is rascism at Gitmo and ideological madness.
If this is a nation of laws then all people have rights. But you Larry seem to think that if we think someone is a terrorist (meaning subhuman arab or subhuman hispanic) they can be tortured humanely to determine their guilt or innocence.
I am enraged at you and your CIA Madness.
Please tell me what good the CIA has ever done. Then if there is, balance that out with all the destruction the CIA have done. I can think of nothing the CIA has done that is beneficial. I’m sure there’s a lot it all top secret though right?
that torture is wrong, it doesn’t work, it creates more terrorists, and it makes us no better than Stalin and Hitler.
After yesterday’s passage of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Amendment No. 2516, to the defense appropriations bill, which would deny Habeas Corpus review by the US Circuit Courts to the GWoT detainees, I hope you will be permitted to do a follow-up op-ed pointing out Sen. Graham’s hypocrisy. The point also needs to be made that this amendment also covers US citizens held in detention on US soil (Jose Padilla) and therefore could enable the unimaginable here: ‘night and fog’. It’s a slippery slope we’ve been on since 9/11 and needs a sisyphean effort of ‘push-back.’
That’s a great suggestion. And I hope Larry takes you up on it.
There’s also soj’s new diary on Graham.
The companion op-ed to Larry’s in the LATimes is worth a read , link here.
Neocon mouthpiece David Gelernter presents the war party’s position on this with the typical fractured logic, flawed argument, simplistic and false assumptions and shabby sophistry we’re now used to hearing from these academic hacks.
Gelernter’s arguments are based on his astonishing lack of knowledge and refusal to acknowledge the relevance of facts that challenge those absurd theories he attempts to propagate.
Gelernter presents his arguments so poorly that he’s actually giving fellow academic neocon nincompoop Reuel Marc Gerecht a run for the money as most idiotic propagandist in the neocon fantasy world.
God that makes my skin crawl…
If melting the skin off of children’s bodies can stop an atrocity, our duty is hideously plain…
If billions of dollars are spent, hundreds of thousands of civilians are killed and thousands of our own soldiers are dead or maimed, our duty is hideously plain…
I’m trying to imagine if such a statement appeared in a North Korean press item about a captured American. What would the response be then?
Pax
These are violent and dangerously disturbed individuals who need to be shunned by humankind, of that there is no doubt.
Larry, I’ve been reading your stuff around the web for quite some time now but this post was enough to make me join up at this blog. (And I need another blog membership like I need to listen to another Bush speech).
I’m a supporter of General Wesley Clark and he has been beating the drum on this topic heavily recently, asking bloggers to keep alive the topic because the mainstream media is letting it drop.
So you got my attention by making all the same points as he has been making about how wrong and counterproductive torture is.
This is from a transcript of what Clark said recently in an interview for http://www.crooksandliars.com
Full transcript at http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/2300
Thanks for speaking up Larry. People who know this topic from real life experience and not from action movies need to be saying this stuff as loudly and as often as possible.
gasp
You mean there are other blogs?
Crooks and Liars is one of my favorites.
Welcome to this one.
haha rumi, you’d be surprised what you can find out there on the “internets.”
If it wasn’t for Crooks and Liars a poor Aussie blogger like me would hardly ever see Jon Stewart.
yeah, I know he’s got a website at Comedy Central where, in theory, you can watch vids of his show, but for some reason my version of Windows is never up to date enough to work on that site, and no matter how many times I update it, I have no joy.
thanks for the welcome.
We have to get you fixed up with some consistent way to get a fix of The Daily Show. Pure genius they are and a voice of sanity in a variety of unlikely expressions.
Crooks and Liars is where I found the link to the recent Fox Network sexual harassment suit. They pounded O’Reilly righteously as well..
…ah, good times, good times.
Phoebe, welcome! And that’s a great quote. Keep us posted on Clark’s campaign. He’s a very good guy.
thanks susan, if there’s an audience for Clark info, I’m your woman.
Travelled all the way from Australia to Little rock to see him in person a few months back. Don’t think I’ve ever been as impressed with a candidate for office. I would say “a politician” except the fact Wes Clark is not quite a politician is one of the things I like about him.
Nice to “meet” you. Sure like the look of the blog here.
Thanks for this, Larry, and thanks for everything else, too.
The Whispering Campaign has posted a one-page, large-font excerpt in the hope that readers will print, copy and distribute it widely.
For those who would like to help spread the word, here’s the link: Torturing Detainees Will Not Help Us.