Releasing the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on torture wasn’t even close to a close call. It was a necessary, if infuriatingly belated, corollary to the choice not to prosecute those who relied on faulty legal advice in engaging in such repugnant practices.
The sordid episode called for national accountability, which is what the committee provided Tuesday. Nations, like individuals, cannot move on from traumatic moments without taking stock of their behavior. That rule holds especially true in the context of civil liberties, because of the recurring temptation to repeat problematic behaviors. Indeed, as Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., noted, President Barack Obama’s self-imposed executive order to restrict the CIA from holding detainees and limit interrogation techniques to those in the Army Field Manual “could be overturned by a future president with the stroke of a pen.” As Feinstein argued, “They should be enshrined in legislation.”
By contrast, the arguments against releasing the report, or for delaying its release, were flat-out wrong. Some — from those who supported and orchestrated torture — are self-interested and wrong. Others — I’m talking about you, John Kerry — were well-meaning and wrong.
There will never be a comfortable time to disclose embarrassing information. No doubt some enemies of the United States will seize on the disclosures to protest, or worse.
But the notion that the country’s enemies need an incentive to seek to harm our citizens is horribly belied by, among other things, the recent beheadings by the Islamic State. Accepting the contention that the risks of release are too great, and the practice so far in the rear-view mirror, would both reward CIA obstructionism and ignore the fact that this debate, and practice, is capable of being repeated.
‘Brutal’ interrogations
The imperative for disclosure was clear in advance. But reading the stomach-churning findings of the 500-page executive summary, the only part cleared for declassification, reinforces its importance. No one can review this account without feeling horror and shame, and without feeling anger at the degree to which public officials and the public itself were misled about what was being done in the name of national security.
Among the conclusions: So-called “enhanced interrogation was “not an effective means of obtaining accurate information.” Instead, “multiple CIA detainees fabricated information, resulting in faulty intelligence.”
Meanwhile, the interrogations “were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others.” The techniques included, in addition to waterboardings that amounted to near-drownings, detainees being kept awake for up to 180 hours, detainees subjected to “rectal rehydration,” and detainees kept shackled in total darkness in dungeon-like conditions.
Even as the CIA mistreated detainees, it submitted false claims about the effectiveness of the interrogation techniques and misled the Justice Department and others about what it was doing. Its claims of counterterrorism successes were “wrong in fundamental respects,” at best corroborating information already available or acquired before the application of enhanced interrogation.
One of the most infuriating parts of the report concerns the degree to which the CIA submitted misleading information to the Justice Department lawyers called on to approve the enhanced interrogation techniques. I have argued, and continue to believe, that it would be unfair to prosecute individual CIA officers for engaging in torture based on distorted legal advice supplied by the Office of Legal Counsel. The now-discredited OLC opinions approved waterboarding, among other practices; that was wrong as a matter of law and morality.
Feinstein, all too accurately, described the episode as “a stain on our values and history.” If that stain can never be erased, the committee’s report reflects an essential step in minimizing it.
