Excellent news (for a change)

Those who know me have heard my incessant praise for The Economist. Although I’ve only been plugged-in to the news media for the last 7 or 8 years, I have consistently found this to be the most objective and detailed reporting available. Add to that their distinctively British character (e.g., delightfully dry wit and overall lack of concern for offending anyone—it seems no one told the Limeys that they no longer rule that their days of imperialism are over), and the erudite becomes entertaining. They have been on fire in the last two months (cf. their articles on the historical causes for the Israeli-Hizbollah conflict and their special report on global warming), but this post is not about them. It is about TIME. A 7 year subscriber, I typically find their work unsatisfying, even depressing. Yet lately they have had some real gems. I would like to bring one such story to your attention.

 

The September 18 issue of TIME contained an article entitled, “The Unofficial Story of the al-Qaeda 14,” by Ron Suskind. This article discussed Mr Bush’s recent speech (September 7) wherein the president—with uncharacteristic candor and detail—explained that and why he was having 14 high-profile terror detainees transferred from their CIA “black site” prisons to Guantanamo Bay. I have already written a little about the speech. Suffice it to say that the speech was astonishing in many ways political. What I didn’t know, what Mr Suskind reveals in his article, is that the majority of the speech was unconscionable misinformation.

 

According to Mr Bush, these 14 detainees were interrogated with “alternative methods.” Most believe that this means some form of torture outlawed in the Geneva Conventions. However, the president maintained in the speech that these means were not only fruitful, but proved essential in the capture of other dangerous individuals and resulted in the thwarting of multiple terror plots against the US. Indeed, this was the apparent reason for the president’s detailed account of the information that was garnered from such methods: normally Mr Bush (et al) are very hush-hush about what we know, explaining that if they disclose such things it will aid the enemy in their plans. Yet here the president was directly attempting to influence Congress (via public opinion; the room was full of 9/11 victims’ families) to pass the president’s tribunal/wireless wiretapping/interrogation bills immediately in order that someone can be tried for the atrocities of that day. Aside from the incredible hubris of strong-arming his own Republican Congress right before an election and the insulting specious logic of his argument (e.g., even if Congress passed such legislation, no one will be tried for years—the trials will take years, the tribunal legislation, with its suspension of habeas corpus, looks prima facie unconstitutional, and any evidence obtained under duress will be inadmissible, etc.), the speech was tactically brilliant. So I thought.

 

According to Mr Suskind’s reporting, there was very little truth in Mr Bush’s speech. (NOTE: I apologize for paraphrasing the report. I’m new to the blog world, but from what I have gathered it is illegal for me to reproduce much more than a few sentences from the article. Thus, I shall err on the side of caution.) Here’s the story: after 9/11 the president had to make a choice to follow the FBI or the CIA in their suggested interrogation techniques. The FBI’s method proved quite fruitful in the 1990s when interrogating al-Qaeda. Although it took some time, they were able to crack the members by presenting a “tough but very human face.” For example, the detainees were impressed by the agents’ knowledge of the Koran and their apparently benevolent motivations (e.g., the FBI performed an operation on an al-Qaeda member’s child). Meanwhile, the CIA translated urgency into the need for a blank check. As we know, Mr Bush sided with the latter. What the public doesn’t know, but “what is widely known inside the Administration i s that once we caught our first decent-size fish--Abu Zubaydah, in March 2002--we used him as an experiment in righteous brutality that in the end produced very little. His interrogation, according to those overseeing it, yielded little from threats and torture. He named countless targets inside the U.S. to stop the pain, all of them immaterial. Indeed, think back to the sudden slew of alerts in the spring and summer of 2002 about attacks on apartment buildings, banks, shopping malls and, of course, nuclear plants. What little of value he did tell us came largely from a more sophisticated approach, using his religious belief in predestination to convince him he miraculously survived his arrest (he was shot three times and nursed to health by U.S. doctors) for a reason: to help the other side. It's that strange conviction that generated the few, modest disclosures of use to the U.S. Complicating matters is that Zubaydah was more a facilitator--a glorified al-Qaeda travel agent--than the operational master the Administration trumpeted him as. Also, he suffers from multiple personalities. His diary, which the government refuses to release, is written in three voices over 10 years and is filled with page after page of quotidian nonsense about housekeeping, food and types of tea.” Yet, according to the president on September 7, these same interrogations of this same man “helped lead” to the capture of both Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Mr Suskind writes that Zubaydah confirmed the latter’s codename (which intelligence officials already suspected) and “had nothing to do with identifying Binalshibh,” according to senior intelligence people past and present. Rather, the apprehension of both resulted from informers unrelated to the terrorist network. As for their own interrogations, extreme duress “provided little information” from either.

 

Mr Suskind concludes as follows: “To be fair, the abusive interrogations of the 14 did lead to some actionable intelligence, but Bush's list fails to take into account the unnecessary costs of resorting to abuse--specifically, the lost opportunity to uncover more secrets by developing a rich captor-captive relationship, the loss of a democracy's moral authority and the poisoning of any eventual legal proceeding, which, of course, would disallow evidence gained through torture. Five years after 9/11, Americans are understandably eager to finally get an unfiltered--read nonpoliticized--look at our "high value" captives, the transnational actors, so-called, at the center of global drama. An authentic legal process would give them that--which is why the Administration is dead set against it. The problem is not really with classified information. Most of what these captives told us is already common knowledge or dated; the U.S. hasn't caught any truly significant players in two years. However, discovery in such a case would show that the President and Vice President were involved in overseeing their interrogations, according to senior intelligence officials. Subpoenas on how evidence was obtained and who authorized what practices would go right into the West Wing.” As for the “judicial process” which the president supposedly charged Congress to initiate immediately, Mr Suskind predicts that we won’t see anything until “January …2009. Next Administration.” Sadly, I don’t think there is any way this prediction could be wrong.

 

I find it so strange that good reporting almost always makes me feel ashamed of my government. (I find it even stranger that such reporting, for the very reason that it is good, causes an instinctual revulsion in conservatives: naturally anything that exposes the our shame can’t be true and must be the product of the liberally biased, blame-America-first media.) Regardless, my hat is off to TIME and Mr Suskind this week for telling me something I didn’t know.

 

-W.