Choose Napolitano was the inspiration for doing this put up. He wrote a wonderful piece within the Day by day Wire final week commenting on the obvious collapse of the felony case towards Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 11th of September assaults. The Judge wrote:
Because the pre-trial hearings within the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others who’re charged with masterminding the 9/11 assaults proceed on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, the federal government continues to stumble with its personal witnesses. In hearings final week, authorities attorneys tried to exhibit that statements the defendants made to CIA and FBI brokers had been voluntary.
When the federal government’s principal torturer, a now-retired psychologist, had problem recalling that in a torture session he threatened one in all his victims by providing to slit the throat of the sufferer’s younger son and that he had recounted that menace beneath oath in earlier testimony, it turned obvious to all within the courtroom and to these of us who monitor these terrible proceedings that the federal government was encountering a wierd and sudden problem in defending the conduct of its torturers.
The Choose’s judicial instincts are spot on. However there’s far more to this story. The American public, and far of the world, have been bamboozled into believing that torture is an efficient interrogation approach. It isn’t. It’s counter productive.
Hollywood and novelists have performed a key position in my opinion of popularizing torture as a crucial evil. The TV present, 24, that includes Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, routinely relied to torture to get information out of terrorists. Hell, even Supreme Courtroom Justice Scalia, when he was alive, believed Jack Bauer had the right to torture:
“Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Choose Scalia stated. Then, recalling Season 2, the place the agent’s tough interrogation ways saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Courtroom decide etched a line within the sand.
“Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” Choose Scalia challenged his fellow judges. “Say that felony regulation is towards him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t suppose so.“So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes.”
Then there’s the late Vince Flynn. As you’ll be able to see from the picture posted on the prime of this piece, I used to be buddies with Vince — at the very least till he as a result of well-known — and helped him along with his first 5 books. His views on torture are his personal. I advised in any other case, however he explains his considering on this interview with Robert Bidinotto:
Flynn: Sure. Right here’s the place I sit. It’s actual easy. If al Qaeda signed the Geneva Conference, placed on a uniform, caught their flag within the floor, and stated, “Let’s meet on the battlefield,” I might say: “Absolutely. Torture—you can’t do it. Period. End of discussion.” However we have now an enemy that gained’t placed on a uniform, has not signed the Geneva Conference, hides behind males, ladies, and kids, after which assaults males, ladies, and kids—civilians.
I feel it’s a joke that we’re even having this debate, as a nation. I feel that torture ought to happen just for high-value targets the place we all know they’re withholding data that might assist us bust up cells, financing, group, and doable operations.
The issue is that as a result of we’re a civilized society, and since we’ve misplaced our mooring—we’ve misplaced our attachment to our Judeo-Christian beliefs—we’ve gone off on this little safari with PC. We expect that we have now to say issues so that folks will suppose, “He’s smart, he’s compassionate, he cares, he’s got a good heart.” The truth is that in the event you had been to ask the American individuals, “When Mitch Rapp starts to torture some bad guy who knows where the nuke is, are you sitting there in the privacy of your home crying and saying, ‘Please stop torturing this guy’? Or are you saying, ‘Get him, Mitch! Get the information out of him!’”
Vince violated the Gannon Rule. Dick Gannon was my boss at State CT. He was a retired Marine Colonel and Vietnam Fight vet. He was fond of claiming, “If it feels really good it is probably wrong.” What I attempted to inform Vince was regardless of how emotionally satisfying torturing a foul man is for the aim of entertaining an viewers, in the true world it’s counter productive and fails to supply dependable intelligence.
Sadly, a lot of the world labors beneath the false perception fostered by the Jack Bauers and Vince Flynns that the CIA is expert and practiced within the artwork of torture. That may be a lie. The other is true. The CIA coaching program for case officers provided zero instruction in torture or interrogation. The first mission of a CIA operations officer is to recruit foreigners to spy for us — i.e., to commit treason towards their very own nation. This course of is a seduction, not coercion. In case you have satisfied somebody to betray their nation or their trigger it higher not be primarily based on anger at you for inflicting ache or threatening to hurt family members. That may be a recipe for getting screwed over by your recruited supply.
The CIA operations coaching course at its main facility in the US targeted on figuring out and recruiting sources. Interrogation or sweating a suspect for data just isn’t a part of that coaching. That’s the reason the CIA, within the instant aftermath of 11th of September, turned to 2 contract psychologists — James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen — to give you an interrogation program to make use of on suspected terrorists. This turned out to be a deadly clown present as a result of neither Mitchell nor Jessen “had any experience as an interrogator, any knowledge of al Qaeda, or any science to justify their methods.” They apparently had been avid followers of Vince Flynn.
I credit score individuals like former FBI Agent Ali Soufan with making an attempt to deliver some sanity to the CIA interrogation program. Sadly, he was ignored, smeared and have become a goal of CIA officers wanting to discredit him.
I clarify the backstory on a lot of this within the following video. Take pleasure in.
