America’s Dark Side: The Senseless and Ruthless Hunt for Terrorists

Americans found within themselves the strength to honestly discuss a dark page of their recent past — the fact that suspected terrorists were drowned, starved, and held in boxes instead of cells.

On the evening of Dec. 9, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee published a report about the practice of using torture against suspected terrorists. The document is only a small, declassified part of a much larger report, which for now remains classified. But that which has been announced is enough for the beginning of a major scandal, in which it turns out that formerly very high-level people are involved.

As became clear from the report, almost immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency began capturing and interrogating people who might have participated in the crime. The main flow of suspects came from countries of the Middle East and Afghanistan, where American troops were deployed already by the end of 2001.

The report also stated that American political leaders demanded that intelligence agencies work as quickly as possible to find and neutralize people who participated in the largest terrorist attack in the nation’s history; therefore, the CIA received “expanded powers” regarding the handling of prisoners. In practice, this meant that the agency could do anything with them that it wanted, not being beholden to any kind of laws.

One of the key conditions of this authority was the permission to use “enhanced interrogation techniques;” that is, as has now become clear, torture. Suspected terrorists were drowned, beaten, starved, deprived of sleep, held in small boxes where it was impossible to either lie down or stand up, hosed with cold water, hung by chains from ceilings and walls, and threatened with harm to themselves and their families. Those who resisted by declaring hunger strikes were forcibly fed a liquid diet through their rectum. What’s more, torture was even used on those people whose participation in terrorism was under serious question.

In their wish to achieve the necessary results, CIA interrogators occasionally went too far: It’s known that at a minimum, one suspect died from torture. The report also made clear that then-President George W. Bush, for a long time, did not even know what was occurring in the CIA’s secret prisons scattered around the world. The first more or less adequate report about the methods utilized by intelligence agents was received by Bush only in April 2006, more than four years into the program’s operation.

In general, the report leaves open the question of responsibility for the use of torture. It is unclear for now who really sanctioned the utilization of medieval methods of inquisition in the 21st century. It’s only known that the signature of Condoleezza Rice, who served as national security adviser during Bush’s first term, appears on many of the program’s documents. It’s also clear from the documents that at a minimum Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were knowledgeable about the program. But on the whole, the declassified portion of the Senate committee’s report makes it look as though the CIA began torturing people on its own initiative.

According to Professor Steven Miles of the University of Minnesota, who has studied the topic of doctors’ participation in torture, a program costing a half-billion dollars could not be the sole work of the CIA. In his opinion, the program’s authors must be from among the highest leaders of the country, who don’t want to advertise their participation. The professor, in particular, said that the CIA spent $81 million on the development of the methodology for conducting torture; the money was obtained by two doctor-psychiatrists, who drew up a collection of recommendations for the CIA. Interestingly, the doctors based their work on China’s experience in North Korea, when they subjected American prisoners to torture during the Korean War. Later, it was clarified that the Chinese and Koreans did not pose their questions to the prisoners to obtain information; rather, they tortured the Americans in order to psychologically break them. But the CIA did not know this and continued to torture their prisoners in correspondence with the received recommendations.

From these circumstances has grown yet another claim of the agency. In the overwhelming majority of cases, information received by investigators from their “clients” as a result of torture did not have any practical value. Prisoners spouted any kind of nonsense, only to stop the abuse, inventing nonexistent conspiracies and their participants, distracting CIA forces from verifying information, which had no relation to reality. In point of fact, from an operational point of view, torture brought far more harm than good. The system of justification, founded on the idea that “methods, of course, are harsh, but they save lives,” is, to put it mildly, far from reality. More likely, the reverse it true: People released from American prisons after being tortured will not pass up opportunities for revenge for their torment.

The position of American Sen. John McCain, who in his time endured several years of torture in a Vietnamese prison, is interesting in this context. He came out categorically against the CIA actions, stating that torture does not produce results; on the contrary, it will lead to the terrorists torturing American soldiers who have fallen into their hands. Sharing McCain’s opinion were other senators and congressmen who served in the military. Support for the program among American legislators came from “armchair generals,” not having served a single day in the military.

However, the program survived both presidential terms of George W. Bush, and was closed only after Barack Obama assumed the presidency in 2009. Now, after the publication of the report, it’s notable that the aged Bush has come out on many American television networks defending tooth and nail the methods introduced under his watch by the CIA. Echoing Bush have been leading figures in his administration, with the exception of Colin Powell — secretary of state during Bush’s first term. As the report made clear, officials with knowledge of what was going on in the CIA’s secret prisons planned to conceal information about the program from Powell, justifiably assuming that he would come out in opposition. When it happened, Rice became secretary of state, and Powell retired.

There is speculation that information about the multi-year program of torture carried out by the U.S. will serve as a perfect justification of sadism by totalitarian regimes around the world. In response to accusations of brutality, any dictator could simply say: “For Pete’s sake, I am simply implementing American innovations! Why are you criticizing me?” Now, American newspapers are filled with arguments that Bush and his team undermined the moral authority of their country, placing it in the same category as the most odious regimes past and present. Several commentators even complain that no practical difference remains between the U.S. and, for example, Zimbabwe.

However, this comparison, perhaps, is a serious error. There is indeed a difference. It is important to understand that one should evaluate the quality of a system not by its mistakes, but by the reaction of the system to those mistakes. In this situation the American government behaved indecently, foolishly and cynically, having begun torturing prisoners and concealing this fact from its own population, and from the whole world. But, in the first place, the practice was ceased; second, it was publicly exposed and condemned; and third, corresponding conclusions were drawn from the situation — the appearance of new torture prisons in the U.S. now seems impossible.

Yes, the American Senate, having published the report, demonstrated to the whole world the dirty secrets of its country, its “dark side.” In the short term, this will probably worsen America’s image in the world. But in the long-term, strategic sense, openness, the ability to admit and condemn one’s own mistakes — it is exactly what separates a civilized country from dense dictatorships, headed by “infallible” leaders, who hold their own and surrounding nations in poverty and fear.