Who are you, John Kiriakou? (And who ordered the torture?)

ABC News bills its exclusive interview with John Kiriakou as “Coming In from the Cold: CIA Spy Calls Waterboarding Necessary but Torture,” but where exactly was this spy coming in from?

In his interview with Brian Ross, Kiriakou says a great many things—and it is quite the mixed bag. Sure, he says that he now believes waterboarding to be torture (he tried it and lasted about five seconds), but he also takes a twisted road to say that it was necessary for such a “high value” detainee.

In fact, much of the interview, and much of the tone of the ABC tape, goes to great ends to inflate the importance of Abu Zubaydah. To watch the report, you would believe that Zubaydah was the linchpin to breaking open the whole 9/11 conspiracy, and you would also believe that the crucial information was first divulged by AZ as a direct result of the waterboarding.

Ross and his colleagues do little to undercut this contention. It makes for an exciting exclusive, but not for very good journalism. The truth—if we can ever truly get there in these hyper-secret times—about Abu Zubaydah and his importance seems much, much hazier than Kiriakou or ABC leads us to believe.

Though I don’t have time to post a complete point-by-point (I’m a little under the weather today), I have read numerous major reputable publications on this subject, and I can safely say that for every bit of information that Kiriakou (or, for that matter, George W. Bush) claims was revealed by AZ after his torture, there is credible evidence that the US knew the intel before Zubaydah was even captured. The Washington Post and New York Times have covered this, and even the Report of the 9/11 Commission makes note that the supposedly key information that Kiriakou and Bush like to attribute to AZ—the “nickname” of Khalid Shaykh Mohammed—was known to the US before the attacks of 9/11/01.

Ron Suskind, in his book, The One Percent Doctrine, calls Zubaydah a low-level logistics guy, responsible for making minor travel arrangements, who knew nothing of al Qaeda’s inner workings. Suskind also notes that AZ was, in the words of one intelligence analyst, “insane, certifiable, [a] split personality.”

Like I said—none of that is in the Ross piece. Instead, the takeaway on this is that waterboarding may very well be torture by 2007 standards, but in those heady, just barely post-9/11 days, even torture could be forgiven since it lead to such crucial—and dare I say, because Kiriakou does—life-saving intelligence.

I can already feel the goalposts moving on this debate. Is it not only a matter of time before all the “serious” people “admit” that waterboarding is, y’know, basically a technique that borders on torture now that we look at it, but given the times and the “ticking time bomb,” sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Watch this space.

One interesting thing that John Kiriakou does say, and at some length, is that instructions for this “enhanced interrogation”—like that used to rough up Abu Zubaydah—came directly from CIA headquarters:

The former intelligence officer says the interrogators’ activities were carefully directed from Langley, Va., every step of the way.

“It wasn't up to individual interrogators to decide, ‘Well, I’m gonna slap him. Or ‘I'm going to shake him.’ Or ‘I'm gonna make him stay up for 48 hours.’ Each one of these steps, even though they're minor steps, like the intention shake-- or the openhanded belly slap, each one of these had to have the approval of the Deputy Director for Operations.

“. . . . [B]efore you laid a hand on him, you had to send in the cable saying, ‘He's uncooperative. Request permission to do X.’ And that permission would come. ‘You're allowed to him one time in the belly with an open hand.’"

This is information that should prick up the ears of more than one committee chair in Congress as they begin to ask questions about torture and the destroyed tapes of Abu Zubaydah’s (and at least one other’s) interrogation.

But, to the matter at hand, I still have questions about who John Kiriakou is. Aside from his being a retired CIA officer of undetermined grade, it appears that he now has a job in the business. . . and when I say “the business,” I mean “the industry.”

Lindsay Beyerstein reported yesterday that Kiriakou, who is credited as a “security consultant” on the upcoming Paramount release The Kite Runner, was connected with the film’s producers by “lobbyists from Viacom.”

The film adaptation of the Khaled Hosseini novel has been the center of some controversy of late. Several of the young stars of the film had to be spirited out of their native Afghanistan after fears arose that the boys and their families might be targets of violence because of a simulated rape scene in the movie.

Several papers credit Rich Klein, a “Middle East expert” with Kissinger McLarty Associates (KLA), as having made many of the arrangements for the evacuation. Klein seems to be the go-to guy for many productions looking to film in the Middle East. KLA is a K Street consulting firm formed by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Mack McLarty, the former White House Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton. (I do no know if John Kiriakou is connected in any way with KLA, nor do I know if KLA is the Viacom lobbyist that Beyerstein references.)

It’s a tangled, but interesting connection. One, of course, not mentioned by Ross or ABC. It is also a connection made more interesting when you note the Nightline feature that will appear one day after it aired the Kiriakou piece—that would be an interview with the makers of. . . wait for it. . . The Kite Runner.


UPDATE: It seems that Kevin Drum had some similar thoughts about Abu Zubaydah’s suddenly fast-rising stock.


(cross-posted to Daily Kos and The Seminal)

Halfway between principled and protected: a modest proposal

On Friday, we learned from Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) that she was told of the CIA’s torture tapes in 2003, and wrote a letter advising that they be preserved:

In early 2003, in my capacity at Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, I received a highly classified briefing on CIA interrogation practices from the agency’s General Counsel. The briefing raised a number of serious concerns and led me to send a letter to the General Counsel. Both the briefing and my letter are classified so I cannot reveal specifics, but I did caution against destruction of any videotapes.

Given the nature of the classification, I was not free to mention this subject publicly until Director Hayden disclosed it yesterday. To my knowledge, the Intelligence Committee was never informed that any videotapes had been destroyed. Surely I was not.

While it sure is swell that Rep. Harman had serious concerns and wrote to the CIA about them, the gravity of what is reported to have been on those tapes probably warranted, as many have noted, more than a secret missive.

Matthew Yglesias, for one, suggested that it was about time those in Harman’s position start snitchin’ and let the chips fall where they may:

What members who find themselves in the position Harman says she's in. . . need to realize is that on some level acquiescence in these kind of abuses winds up legitimizing them. A member who believes he or she is in possession of evidence of crimes being committed and covered-up through illegitmate [sic] classification ought to seriously consider civil disobedience: calling a press conference, stating the facts, and accepting responsibility for the consequences. The White House could, of course, then turn around and seek to prosecute a member for violating classification laws, and the member could argue justification and we'd have it out. That's a tough call to make, clearly. But our political leaders have responsibilities to the country and to the constitution and I've never seen a candidate for office say something like "I'm the one who likes to abdicate responsibility, decline to make the tough calls, and then when someone else gets to the bottom of things try to make sure that my ass was covered."

But Michael Froomkin, with an eye on that old chestnut, the US Constitution, believes that perhaps a lesser degree of civil disobedience would be required:

Thanks to the Speech and Debate Clause there was a way for any Senator or Representative who wanted to blow the whistle to do so in a way that involved no risk of jail or fines – at worst they might have lost their security clearances (and even there the law is a little murky).

. . . .

The Speech and Debate clause has been interpreted to extend beyond floor speeches, e.g. to committee statements, but it unquestionably applies to floor statements. Thus, it would have been possible for Rep. Harman, or Senator Rockefeller, or the others allegedly briefed to go to the floor, either during the times when members may speak on topics of their choice, or under one of the extraordinary mechanism for privileged statements, and denounce the Bush administration’s determinate to torture helpless captives in secret offshore detention facilities.

While Yglesias, Froomkin, and myself, for that matter, understand there could still be political consequences to blowing the cover on administration misdeeds, I, for one, would like to believe that our elected representatives, when confronted with evidence of lies, corruption, or criminal activity, would have the conscience and courage to access one or both of these obstreperous remedies. However, things being as they are, with both individual courage and collective conscience in short supply, let me suggest a third way: closed session.

Closed session, in this case, is the means by which either the House or Senate closes the doors, empties the galleries, and conducts its business in private, without their staff present and without publication in the Congressional Record. Closed sessions are relatively rare (especially in the House), but have been used in the past to brief Congress on sensitive material, or to debate more freely matters that concern classified information or activities. Such sessions can be called by any sitting member, and is to commence upon a second from another member.

While I, as a rule, would be one of the very last to advocate more secrecy from our government, there are instances where a closed session can actually shed more light on an issue—though, admittedly, it requires a little artifice.

I learned about the alternative power of a closed session during my brief time around Capitol Hill during the Reagan Administration. Back then, the White House was using the CIA and various proxies to fund rebel movements and paramilitary militias throughout Central America. Some of this was known and talked about, some of it was an open secret, but to those outside the intel communities and the executive branch, some of it, especially the details of the financial and arms transfers and the level at which all of this was authorized, was not known outside the oversight committees and a few others in the legislative branch (if that).

Many of us knew something was going on, knew that at least some of it was illegal, and knew that pretty much all of it was completely unacceptable for a theoretically freedom-loving democracy. The question was, how to let everyone else know?

The trick here was to get a member with clearance—a member of an oversight committee or the leadership—to ask for a closed session to debate some part of one of these programs. Once in closed session, he or she could use the secrecy provided and the rights granted under the Constitution to discuss in greater detail what unconscionable or undesirable activities were going down.

After that, you wait for human nature or an individual conscience to work its magic.

While the odds that a gang of four or eight will commit an act of civil disobedience or just plain blab to a favorite journalist is perhaps small, the chances increase exponentially when you bring in nearly 100 more senators, or upwards of 400 representatives. You not only get the members of Congress, you get—though technically you shouldn’t—some percentage of their staffs, as well. This not only greatly increases the chance that something you want to get out gets leaked to the press, it makes it much, much harder to find out whom did the leaking.

True, as bleak as the Reagan years were for us liberal Democrats, it seems like a modest Valhalla when compared with today’s Capitol class. A closed session strategy would still require some degree of courage, or, at least, perseverance, on the part of a Harman or a Pelosi, a Rockefeller or a Reid, and it would require a fourth estate with the integrity and interest to pursue the story after the leak. And, true, it is advocating some degree of subterfuge in pursuit of openness. But, given the seemingly larger set of, um, values required of our congressional leaders by the suggested tacks of Yglesias or Froomkin, perhaps this wily tactic is the necessary cover that our leaders can use in place of their nebulous courage.

(cross-posted to Daily Kos)

The banality of evil: like father, like son?

The Bush Administration has once again set out to show us just how banal evil can be.

While the latest revelation of the CIA destruction of at least two tapes documenting their interrogation of alleged al Qaeda suspects is yet another cut-and-dried case of obstruction of justice by this administration, I want to take just a moment to reflect on the reason given for why these tapes were made in the first place:

General Hayden said the tapes were originally made to ensure that agency employees acted in accordance with “established legal and policy guidelines.” General Hayden said the agency stopped videotaping interrogations in 2002.

“The tapes were meant chiefly as an additional, internal check on the program in its early stages,” his statement read.

. . . .

A former intelligence official who was briefed on the issue said the videotaping was ordered as a way of assuring “quality control” at remote sites following reports of unauthorized interrogation techniques.

Because, as we all know, there is nothing more embarrassing to a government than torture of inferior quality. Especially at those franchise outlets “remote sites.”

Now back to the obstruction destruction. . . .

Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with Al Qaeda leaders, said he had heard nothing about any tapes being destroyed.

If tapes were destroyed, he said, “it’s a big deal, it’s a very big deal,” because it could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations.

. . . .

John Radsan, who worked as a C.I.A. lawyer from 2002 to 2004 and is now a professor at William Mitchell College of Law, said the destruction of the tapes could carry serious legal penalties.

“If anybody at the C.I.A. hid anything important from the Justice Department, he or she should be prosecuted under the false statement statute,” he said.

It seems to me beyond any doubt that the Bush Administration withheld important information about the existence of the tapes, their contents, and their destruction from Congress, the 9/11 Commission, and the judge and defense team in the Zacarias Moussaoui case, but I am beyond holding my breath until we get any movement toward arrests and prosecution in any of those instances.

I am not, however, beyond now speculating about the timing of the release of the new NIE on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, in light of our fresh understanding that the New York Times had planned to go public with the tape story today, Friday, and had officially notified the CIA on Wednesday. I can pretty much guarantee that Michael Hayden knew that this story was on its way some time before that.

In fact, I can’t even fathom the “dumb luck” of having the NIE and the tape destruction revelations come out in the same week—and in the same week as Mitt Romney’s “JFK moment” (not), and a (another) mass shooting, to boot

It’s really too much to fathom. Best we go back to our holiday shopping.

But, before we do, let me add that I draw this post to a close without anything in the way of a new revelation or much of a new angle—and for that, I feel a tad bad.

It’s not as if I didn’t try. Since I read of the tape scandal Thursday afternoon, I have been searching almost non-stop for a very specific angle, and I just can’t find the quotable, linkable piece of evidence I seek.

So, I am going to throw this out to you for help:

I will date myself here, but I have a very clear memory of a certain DCI named George H.W. Bush ignoring congressional requests for files and, indeed, destroying files in a direct rebuke of investigators. I even think I remember him justifying the destruction by saying that the CIA just didn’t have the room to store the files anymore.

The thing is, I can’t remember what the files were, and I can’t find a primary source that refers to this incident.

I believe this happened in the spring or summer of 1976—but the revelation might have come later. It is possible that the files concerned investigations into CIA programs known as CHAOS and CONDOR. The former having to do with Agency spying on domestic activist groups in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, the latter concerning CIA ties to South American shenanigans like the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende, the instillation of Augusto Pinochet, the torture of dissidents, and the murder three years later of Pinochet opponent Orlando Letellier and American Ronni Moffitt by car bomb on the streets on Washington DC. There is also the possibility that the files in question concerned CIA operations in Cuba.

Or maybe they were about something else—the details of this are hazy to me.

But, I feel relatively certain GHW Bush did destroy CIA records, and that he did so in defiance of Congress. If anyone else has this recollection, can shed some light on it, or can point to a newspaper article or a Congressional report, please let me know via comment or e-mail.

Thank you.

(cross-posted on guy2k, The Seminal, and Daily Kos)