SENATOR FEINSTEIN SHOCKED AT CIA’S “EIT” PROGRAM (OR) THE MYTH OF AN OBJECTIVE CONGRESSIONAL STUDY

The Democratically-controlled Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSCI), chaired by California Senator Feinstein (D), has just voted to release to the public the 480-page executive summary and the 20 findings of a study carried out by only the Democratic Majority of the Committee. This study began in 2009 and was completed in 2012.  The highlighted phrase means that only Democratic staffers of the Committee conducted the “study” about counterterrorism activities ordered by a Republican president in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.  That fact alone makes one suspicious of the “objective” conclusions reached.  More telling is the admitted fact that the Democratic investigators in three plus years of research never bothered to interview Jose Rodriguez, the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and then the Director of all Clandestine Operations for the period in question, nor other senior CIA officials.  (I guess when you know what conclusions you wish to reach before you even start the study, it makes it easier to decide on your investigative methodology.)  Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican Minority Leader of the Committee, in explaining why he voted “yes” to release the report, stated he did so “Despite the report’s significant errors, omissions, and assumptions—as well as a lot of cherry-picking of the facts—I want the American people to be able to see it and judge for themselves.”  (That also allows a testosterone-free Chambliss to claim how he managed to be both against a biased report, yet vote for it.)  Unfortunately, this Report has been reported by the news media as the Senate’s SSCI-concluded “facts” – and thus its conclusions are the Gospel truth about the ineffective, lying and torturing CIA.  (Take a look at the choice of words in headlines of news articles in the subsequent days about the Report.)  It has not been reported simply as the biased, Democratic Party opinions of a Democratic investigation, done in a half-assed manner.

As for the substance of the Report, through leaks of the as yet unreleased Report to journalists, we already know that major conclusions (accusations) are that (1) no useful information on terrorist activities was obtained through Enhanced Interrogation Techniques; (2) many things done by the CIA were illegal; and (3) the CIA lied to Congressional investigators.  And while not in the original Report, Senator Feinstein has recently also publicly accused the CIA of having “spied” on the SSCI investigators.  Per news reports, the CIA has reported to the Justice Department for investigation alleged improper handling and removal of classified material that was made available on computers to the SSCI investigators.

As for the first accusation, President George Bush, Vice-President Cheney and Director of CIA Operations Jose Rodriguez have all publicly stated that the harsh interrogation techniques in the first few years after 9/11, including waterboarding, produced valuable intelligence that helped stop future planned terrorist attacks.  Granted, those people and others with such positive claims have a vested interest in promoting the idea that the interrogations obtained valuable information.  But are their “biased” views any less correct than the “biased” views of Democratic Party staffers-only working on a committee chaired by Democratic Party Senator Feinstein, whose virulent anti-CIA views have been known long before this three-year “study” ever began.   (Hard to believe isn’t it that SSCI staffers would have let their boss’s pre-study views affect their investigation!)  At least on this point, Senator Saxby was more adamant in his opposition to the conclusions of the Democratic report:  “While I agree with some of the conclusions in this report, I take strong exception to the notion that the CIA’s detention and interrogation program did not provide intelligence that was helpful in disrupting terrorist attacks or tracking down Usama bin Ladin. This claim contradicts the factual record and is just flat wrong. Intelligence was gained from detainees in the program, both before and after the application of enhanced interrogation techniques, which played an important role in disrupting terrorist plots and aided our overall counterterrorism operations over the past decade.”  So, who is correct?

I’ve found it sadly amusing that private individuals and politicians who are so adamantly against “torture”, as they like to call almost everything done by the CIA, have to also believe that it doesn’t work.  I guess it makes them feel better to believe that they’re views don’t actually impede the discovery or stopping of planned terrorist attacks that kill innocent people.  At several ethics conferences I’ve lectured at – yes, they let me in the door – I noted the frequency with which people started sentences with the phrase, “As we all know, torture doesn’t work…”  I guess this is simply one of those basic tenets of the Liberal mind upon which facts make no impact.  Apparently, unpopular facts made no impact upon the Democratic Party SSCI investigators.

As for accusation number 2 that the CIA did illegal things while interrogating captured terrorists, President Obama’s Attorney-General Eric Holder looked into those accusations soon after coming to office – and I’m not aware of anyone at the CIA having been charged with anything, other than one contractor who the CIA itself had reported to the Justice Department years earlier.  This has been a favorite witch-hunt theme by Democrats during the Obama Administration Era, despite the fact that all the techniques employed had been authorized by President Bush and legally cleared by his Justice Department.  (I was not the only CIA employee who found it insulting that if the Obama Administration believed waterboarding to have been “illegal”, why didn’t they start a Justice Department investigation of President Bush and top White House officials, instead of picking on mid-grade CIA officers who had done as ordered and who’d been told it had been cleared by the Justice Department.)

As for the third accusation that the CIA had lied to Congressional investigators, I guess this follows from their logic that having reached other conclusions about the efficacy of enhanced interrogation than what the CIA told people was the truth, that makes CIA officers liars.  Given that they didn’t even bother interviewing senior CIA officials directly involved in EIT such as Rodriguez, when was it they lied to the investigators?  This is all rather reminiscent of Congresswoman Pelosi’s  (D-CA) claims back in 2009 that the CIA had not briefed her on waterboarding and other techniques during a meeting in September 2002 when she was a member of the HPSCI.  Records released by the CIA and published in various newspapers and statements by Jose Rodriguez at the time of the release in 2012 of his book, Hard Measures, seem to refute her claim.  As the terrorist Abu Zubaydah had just been captured in August, had been waterboarded and had provided information (per various newspaper accounts), it’s hard to imagine that the CIA would not have been touting their success at a HPSCI briefing in September!  Hers would not be the first nor last example of “selective memory loss” by a politician once the political winds had changed.  In 2002, the American public wanted revenge and wanted to be made safe from further terrorist attacks – and Pelosi heard nothing at the HPSCI that concerned her back then.  By 2009, suddenly she is “shocked” to learn of waterboarding!

Perhaps what is most informative (and scary) of this SSCI Report are not the specious conclusions, but as another sad sign of the state of our Congressional affairs and the petty, partisan political games that go on there instead of actions of leadership for the welfare of the country.  The Gallup Poll of approval by the public of Congress dropped to 13 percent for April.  The rating has been in the teens for the last several years.  For many years, the work of the SSCI and the HPSCI on national security issues had for the most part remained above the petty partisan bickering that has so characterized Congressional behavior for the past decade – and has led to such pathetic poll results.  Sadly, in the last few years, both Republican and especially Democratic, members of these two important committees have sunk into the political mud of their colleagues – where having a good sound bite and “scoring” a point against the opposition is now more important than accomplishing things in an honest, objective manner.  This latest Report by the SSCI reaches a new low in biased, political maneuverings, where the two parties couldn’t even agree to both participating in the investigation.  It isn’t a study of the CIA.  It’s an attempt to trash the Republican Bush Administration.

This sad trend is one of the reasons I no longer recommend my students to seek employment in the CIA or any of the other national security agencies.  Why work hard and long, and perhaps in physical danger, just so that when the next Administration comes to power, your work and your honesty will be questioned and investigated by the Justice Department —  so that one political party can try to score a few points against the other.  Such a sad,  biased state of federal government oversight hardly encourages current CIA officers to stick their necks out and take risks to make America safe, knowing that five or ten years later some political hack is going to be judging their actions with hindsight and political motivations.