The Agony of Dealing with the Past

It’s been known for years that the CIA used unacceptable, inhumane interrogation methods and violated prohibitions on torture in many ways after the U.S. declared its “war on terror.” The U.S, Senate Intelligence Committee report reinforces this characterization of recent U.S. interrogation practices and is a sign that the United States is reluctant to come to terms with its past with any convincing consistency.

The CIA as Scapegoat

The good news is that the Senate Intelligence Committee did not find any previously unknown areas of malfeasance. Instead, it seems that the U.S. system of “checks and balances,” albeit faulty, has worked to some extent. The report discloses certain key information that was previously already leaked to the public in 2003. A turning point was the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in 2004, in which America learned that the ends of war don’t justify all kinds of means. Even as officials sought for years to cover up the abuse, there was enough internal doubt to set a counter-movement in motion. The worst practices, including the infamous waterboarding, were no longer used after 2003.

The Senate’s investigative report is still a harrowing read. The range of atrocities in CIA prisons was greater than previously known. There were more prisoners — 119 instead of 97 — than the intelligence service had acknowledged. Moreover, a staggering number of detainees, more than one in five, were improperly held in “black sites.” The committee also found no evidence that the interrogations brought a wealth of knowledge to light. It further confirmed that the CIA, suddenly faced with the task of examining terrorist prisoners, was completely unprepared. Even more grotesquely, the CIA paid a firm of two psychologists $80 million to develop interrogation methods that even the intelligence agency deemed too brutal to publish.

Publishing the investigation results provides a catharsis, but it is far from the end of discussion. The report is flawed in that efforts to make the CIA the lone scapegoat are too obvious. Congressional self-interest is explicit in the report, and Congress must be able to able to accept blame for failing to exercise its responsibility to supervise the interrogation. Congressional leaders defend themselves by asserting that the CIA misinformed them. But a truly independent investigation would also examine evidence that Congress had no intention of blaming its intelligence agency and instead contributed to a political climate where there are no more taboos regarding methods of fighting terrorism. Political analysis reveals a tendency to absolve former President George W. Bush. President Bush should have been informed of the details within the first four years of the start of the controversial interrogation program. It is the political leadership’s job to provide clear rules to its intelligence agencies and allow no gray areas.

The Wrong Debate

It is a different phenomenon to witness how insufficiently the scandal is being handled. The published report has now overtaken the old debate of whether or not methods of torture do any good. However, this debate is irrelevant. The report demonstrates how, in any case, neither one view nor another is absolutely correct. The determinative argument is not that methods of torture yield unreliable results; the decisive component is that torture is deeply immoral. It is not acceptable for a democratic state to commit atrocities in the name of its citizens when those atrocities provoke disgust. Nevertheless, trying this issue in secret has a corrupting effect, starting with interrogation personnel who will be forced by the state into illegal, inhumane behavior, and leading up to political leaders who will discredit their involvement with their own web of lies. Torture is outlawed for a good reason, even in the United States, and this ban was in place long before 9/11.

The offense is a dark chapter in the history of a country that wants to be a beacon of human rights. Recovery will be agonizing, as the U.S. seeks to avoid making same mistake twice. Still, the CIA’s apologists who want to gloss over its behavior or even use it as an example for the future are unduly receiving a lot of attention. And the Senate report is a means, albeit imperfect, to eventually deprive those apologists of ground to stand on.