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Jose Rodriguez’s Tortured Logic

5-2-2012

By Adam Jacobson
Law and Security Program

Get the real facts on torture at RealBookonTorture.org

In his new book Hard Measures, former Director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service Jose Rodriguez claims to set the record straight about the CIA’s use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs), many of which, including waterboarding are considered torture and are illegal under U.S. and international law.

Rodriguez insists that these methods were used to get information out of some of the world’s most notorious terrorists, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind of 9/11, whose arraignment at Guantanamo is scheduled for this Saturday.

But these assertions just don’t pass muster. One reason might be Rodriguez himself. As professional interrogator Mark Fallon points out, “Like other torture advocates, Rodriguez wasn’t a trained interrogator and lacked meaningful experience with Al Qaeda.”

Rodriguez’s claims that torture worked hinge on a flimsy premise: that KSM, Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, and the other so-called high-value detainees who were waterboarded and subjected to other forms of enhanced interrogation needed to be made “complicit” before their interrogations could proceed. According to Rodriguez, these detainees were not cooperative and resisted CIA interrogation when they arrived. As this story goes, after the CIA subjected them to EITs, the detainees became cooperative and started answering questions.

Indeed, the question in Hard Measures is never whether valuable intelligence was gleaned during enhanced interrogation, but whether or not these techniques worked in getting the detainees past the breaking point, after which non-coercive interrogation methods would work.

The unspoken implication here is that lawful interrogation methods work. But they will only work on the super bad guys if they are roughed up first. And once they’re roughed up enough, they’re just an open book.

Except that’s not quite true, either. Rodriguez mentions numerous times that even after rendering the high-value detainees “complicit” through EITs, the CIA still didn’t get all the answers they wanted.

“But wait,” you, a thinking person, might say, “I thought that was the point of waterboarding them. If they aren’t giving you answers, you use EITs, and then they give you all the answers because you made them complicit. If they aren’t giving up everything, why don’t you just enhanced interrogate them some more, until they become super-duper complicit?”

And there’s the rub. According to its advocates, enhanced interrogation works when traditional interrogation won’t, but only so much. In real life, professional interrogators use non-coercive interrogation methods with high-value detainees and get the reliable, actionable information they’re after, without torturing or abusing anyone. And in real life, EITs and torture get you false information. The false link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, a major motivation for the war in Iraq, came largely from interrogations that involved torture.

Professional interrogators who have actually interrogated high-value detainees (unlike Rodriguez) say that threats and pain can actually render those detainees more resistant and make an interrogation more likely to fail.

Read this statement by professional interrogators disputing Rodriguez’s claims here, and join Human Rights First in calling on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to release its report on CIA interrogation and detention practices here.

 

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Posted in Blog | 4 Comments »

  • arcticredriver

    I watched Rodriguez softball interview with Lesley Stahl on 60 minutes. Mike Wallace must be rolling in his grave. The first 15 minutes were devoted to the torture of Abu Zubaydah. Several times his ID portrait published by wikileaks was shown. Rodriguzez reassures Stahl that Abu Zubaydah’s torture left him with no permanent damage.

    But his image shows how he now has to wear an eye patch. There is image published showing him minutes after he was captured — unocnscious, but with two healthy eyes.

    When everyone read John Yoo’s infamous torture memo, and the passage about how the President could authorize interrogators to pluck out subject’s eyes, everyone thought this was just written for effect.

    But Abu Zubaydah did in fact lose his eye while being interrogated by his CIA torturers. He was taken to one interrogation with two healthy eyes, and he woke up in his cell with one of his eye sockets bandaged. The CIA does in fact pluck out suspect’s eyes.

    Rodriguez is a shameful war criminal. Worse, his deceit has not made the public safer, as he claims, his insistence on continuing to put forward the false narrative where torture worked has been extremely damaging to public safety.

    From what we know of Abu Zubaydah and his colleague ibn al Shaykh al Libi — they told the truth prior to be being tortured — just as the FBI interrogators believe.

    Under torture Al Libi made three importnat false confessions that cost trillios of dollars hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian lives, and the lives of thousands of American GIs.

    Under torture Al Libi confessed to running a training camp where al Qaeda trainees were trained by Iraqi weapons specialists, who trained them how to use Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction.

    Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations was based on these two false confessions. There were no ties between al Qaeda and Iraq. Iraq meekly destroyed all its WMD immediately after its defeat during the 1991 Gulf War.

    That very costly, pointless war was the direct result of using torture and taking confessions wrung through torture at face value.

    Mr Rodriguze was no hero.

  • David Walters

    Mr. Rodriguze is completely wrong. My degree is in psychology and I have never read a reliable source showing torture will provide valid information. Torture will only produce what the torturer wants it to produce.

    I could sense Lesley’s discomfort with Rodriguze’s answers which salves my soul a bit.

  • Tombolino

    I’m not fan of what these people did, to those capture over seas, but when you think about what the president is doing now, instead of capture and “enhanced interrogation techniques”, the president is just now killing them, and no one is saying a thing about that.

  • ratoo

    Enhanced Interrogation as part of a HUMINT collection program works! Anyone who denies this knows nothing about interrogation or HUMINT. Jose Rodriguez is a great American Patriot. Thank God we still have a few people like this left to keep us safe. On the other hand, the book reveals what many Americans have suspected for some time: There are anti-American ideologues in the government and media, who will do everything within their power to harm the U.S. and anyone who tries to protect and defend her. In simply doing his job, Rodriguez had to contend with self-serving bureaucrats, politicians and malignant reporters hell-bent on releasing classified information to the world. It is these illegal leaks, and not Rodriguez’ noble and necessary HUMINT activities, that are criminal.

    The book demonstrates what a hopeless bureaucratic nightmare our intelligence and defense services have become; an endless charade of paperwork, rules, attorneys and confusing nonsensical, bureaucratic steps, just to conduct simple intelligence activities. Certainly, at this rate, we will not–we cannot–prevail in a war with a capable adversary. And the facts revealed, so far, demonstrate this is exactly what liberals in the U.S. want. Consistent with facts revealed in this book, and stated liberal ideology, we now see irrefutable evidence that the Obama administration and its corrupt Attorney General and his minions, are behind further leaks of classified information and a grand cover up of the same. No amount of sham regime “investigations,” however, can cover-up the truth. Lawless Obama, Holder and treasonous leaker-liberals should be tried and jailed. Rodriguez deserves high praise and our gratitude for doing what needed to be done to keep us safe, all in the face of liberal treason.