The Berntsen National Security Review

The Interrogation Memorandums

This past week President Obama authorized the release of a set of classified memorandums written during the Bush administration.  These documents outlined the procedures and tactics employed during the interrogations of captured senior Al Qaeda operatives and have been referred to by the press as the “torture memos”.  President Obama’s release of these memos took place despite substantial protest.  The four most recent CIA Directors—John Deutch, George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden—all recommended against the release of these memorandums.  President Obama’s own newly appointed Director of CIA, Leon Panetta, also recommended against releasing the documents.  Yet President Obama, in a seemingly relentless effort to discredit his predecessor, George W. Bush, made the memorandum available to the public anyway.

In taking this action, President Obama has effectively defined the limits of what America, at its most aggressive and most passive, would do against Al Qaeda detainees.  This will undoubtedly allow groups like Al Qaeda to adjust the preparation and training of their operatives.  Administration officials as well as some journalists on the left have argued that the President took into consideration the fact that much of the memos’ contents have already made it into the press.  This is a hollow defense.  Speculation or discussion of these details in the press may allow Al Qaeda and other terrorists to assess potential U.S. capabilities to some extent.  But official White House memorandums released to the public, and immediately downloadable online, are the gold standard for Al Qaeda. 

In addition to bolstering Al Qaeda’s tactical position and morale, I argue that President Obama has also demoralized those members of the Clandestine Service that make enormous personal sacrifices and take tremendous risks in the fight to keep our nation safe.  After having served most of my adult life in CIA’s Clandestine Service and having led many important counterterrorism missions, I can say that the rank and file is truly horrified by President Obama’s naïve decision making.  Apologists for Obama’s misguided decision may counter by highlighting the President’s announcement that no CIA employees who participated in the interrogation program will be prosecuted.  Surely President Obama understood that taking such action would have accelerated retirement of many senior officers already eligible to depart and would have also caused a significant number of resignations.

On top of all this, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy, called recently for a “truth and reconciliation commission”—much like what South Africa used to address decades of apartheid.  Leahy’s “truth commission” would purportedly be established to investigate allegations of wrongdoing at the Justice Department during the Bush Administration.  It would allow America to cleanse itself of what he terms Bush Administration crimes.  This is simply a cheap political stunt designed solely for Democratic political advantage and will further undermine our ability to defend ourselves against Al Qaeda terror.

On a daily basis we watch countries like Iran and North Korea continue to advance their technology in the area of weapons of mass destruction.  What the Obama administration fails to comprehend is that terrorist groups are also evolving their tradecraft and the lethality with which they plan to strike.  The fact that we did not suffer a significant follow-on attack in the continental United States during George W. Bush’s eight year presidency resulted from the extremely aggressive posture taken by his administration.  George W. Bush, for all his mistakes and missteps, did understand that we were at war with a lethal and insidious enemy, and he conducted himself accordingly.  Sadly, it is inevitable that a time will come when we learn of an impending catastrophic attack on an American city.  In today’s highly globalized society, small numbers of people can leverage technology to do terrible things.  Given the positions staked out by President Obama, how does a reasonable person believe the national security apparatus will function in such a crisis?  Will individuals be willing to accept the reality of such a threat and be allowed to act decisively at the lowest level to counter the threat, or will such threats have to work their way up the chain of command, at the cost of time, for reflection by President Obama himself?

President Obama’s handling of the classified Bush-era interrogation memorandums displays a lack of maturity.  More dangerously, it displays a lack of understanding of what could lie ahead for the nation.  Like all Presidents in the modern age, Obama is likely to face events in the years ahead that will be heartrending.  To prepare for these challenges and to minimize the impact on the nation, he must avoid rewarding our enemy and build consensus within the national security establishment.  Unfortunately, with the release of these memos, the hope that President Obama would conduct himself in foreign affairs as a moderate pragmatist has all but evaporated.  

      

The Politics of Counter-Terrorism

President Barack Obama’s recently signed Executive Orders, banning enhanced interrogation techniques and closing the Guantanamo (GITMO) prison facility, were met with applause from the political left and horror from the political right.  So continues the politics of counterterrorism.  President George W. Bush used the “Global War on Terror” for a measure of political gain.  And now President Obama, unrestrained and similarly guilty of making statements regarding his own goals on counterterrorism, has brazenly pandered to voters without explaining the true dangers that lie ahead. 

Enhanced interrogation techniques include sleep deprivation, alteration of diet, placement in stress positions and water boarding.  All of these techniques were employed by the George W. Bush administration on three specific members of Al Qaeda: September 11th mastermind, Khaled Sheikh Mohammad; his replacement as Al Qaeda Chief of Operations, Ramzi Bin Al Shibi; and Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri.   All men have admitted publicly that they are not only guilty of participating in the planning of catastrophic attacks (meaning mass murder) of U.S. citizens but are proud of their actions.  The decision made to employ enhanced techniques against these three individuals produced intelligence that allowed for the decapitation of Al Qaeda’s second tier.  Whether one agrees with President George W. Bush’s decision on this matter or not, it is important to understand that at the time of their capture, each of these men were working toward the goal of killing as many Americans as possible while Al Qaeda had simultaneously sought and obtained a fatwa (or religious ruling) from a cleric to employ a nuclear weapon against the United States.   

President Obama’s pledge to halt enhanced interrogation techniques was a central theme of his campaign.  The decision now limits both United States military forces and the CIA to the U.S. Army Military Field Manual.  This betrays the fact that the new President and those advising him either do not comprehend the reality of what is occurring in terms of military interrogations—or, more alarmingly, they have chosen not to understand.  The truth is that the manual’s instructions are utterly ineffective.  As an example, under the current U.S. Army Field Manual, you may ask a suspect once, and only once, if he or she has committed a violent act.  Asking a second time is considered badgering and is a violation.  Ironically, this means that though an American citizen in the U.S. can be questioned intensely, a terrorist captured on the battlefield—knee deep in the bodies of his victims—can only be asked a particular question once.  In order to come to terms with these types of incongruities, the White House urgently needs to send someone into the field.  Someone who can examine and thoroughly monitor the entire cycle: from combat to prisoner capture, from questioning to incarceration. 

President Obama’s campaign rhetoric and political ambition also outweighed any desire for a detailed and honest evaluation of what is being done with the prisoners held in Guantanamo.  I am not in favor of enhanced interrogation techniques as a routine practice.  However, should someone be found with WMD material or found to be a participant in an effort to conduct a catastrophic attack on the homeland, a President can not afford to wholly disarm himself of the option to employ such techniques.  To do so, in this age of technology and terror, would be an act of extreme folly.  It would expose our families to grave danger.  President Obama would be wise to consider President Abraham Lincoln’s rationale for abrogating Habeus Corpus during the Civil War.  Stated succinctly, Lincoln explained: “[t]he Constitution of the United States is not a suicide pact.”

The closure of GITMO and specifically the future of those housed in that facility is a subject that should concern all of us.  The Bush Administration failed to make tough decisions on the matter.  There are at least one hundred prisoners in GITMO that fit the category of Enemy Combatant.  According to the Geneva Convention, the United States can justifiably, and in accordance with international norms, execute these individuals as marauders.    President Bush’s failure to deal with the status of such killers in an expeditious fashion and his decision to simply pass them on to the Obama Administration was not helpful in the least.  Former Bush administration officials no longer deserve the right to even comment on the status of the detainees; they had their chance and sadly voted present.   For his part, President Obama needs to ensure that any transfer of GITMO prisoners into the custody of other nations is done so on the condition of predetermined sentencing guidelines.  Those that do remain in US custody need to face some form of judicial process. Without these sorts of substantive steps—and without policies based on honest and comprehensive evaluation—we fail to address the toughest and most important issues at hand.  Such is the politics of counterterrorism.