Cheney: Torture Saves Lives

In a continuation of my summary of Mayer's book, and venting my frustration with our former (thank God!) administration, I want to briefly address Cheney's criminal claim from this weekend that Obama is making the nation less safe by respecting the rule of law in dealing with terrorism suspects. Cheney's main argument behind his justification of Bush's war crimes is that we are dealing with a new kind of enemy who is willing to die in exacting maximum casualties. Further, he argues that there are moments when top terrorists are captured and "enhanced" interrogation might be the only way to get the information out of them about an imminent terrorist attack. In other words, torture saves lives. My answer to Cheney: bullshit!

A fascinating case which explicitly shows that torture does not work and humane interrogation does is the case of al-Midhar and Hazmi in the prelude to Sept.11th. Mayer's description of the case is corroborated by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report. After the African embassy bombings, the FBI captured a person who during an interrogation volunteered a phone number which would emerge as the main missed clue in thwarting the horrors of 9/11. The FBI immediately tapped the number which belonged to the father-in-law of Khalid al-Midhar, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers. The phone line was a goldmine: soon, the FBI was getting the voices of Bin-Laden's top lieutenants discussing a major operation. It was enough information for the FBI and CIA to warn the Bush administration that "Bin Laden prepared to strike in the US." A warning which Bush and Condi Rice brushed aside as the President was too distracted by his big speech on banning stem cell research. Reportedly Bush said to the intelligence officers: "Well, now you covered your asses" and moved on.

However, the FBI and the CIA realized that two men, al-Midhar and Hazmi were going to attend a major Al-Q meeting in Kualalumpur, Malaysia. Later, it was discovered that this was where the 9/11 plans were finalized. The intelligence services followed al-Midhar and Hazmi as they crossed Asia and ended up in Bangkok, Thailand. This is where the CIA mysteriously lost track of the men. Why? Because there was very weak cooperation between different intelligence branches in different countries. The animosity between the FBI and the CIA was reportedly so bad that FBI did not share with the CIA the information that al-Midhar and Hazmi had entered the US on multiple occasions! The fatal misstep was also due to simple human incompetency: it turned out that the rap sheets of the two would be hijackers just sat in an inbox at a CIA office for weeks before they were analyzed. The details get even more complicated and they are tracked down in the 911 commission report, but it is clear that sheer human incompetence (which is very normal given the scope of the agencies and human fallibility) and the failure to follow up on actionable intelligence (hence losing the terrorists in Bangkok) that caused the US to miss the warning signs of the horrible tragedy.

So, the intelligence goldmine--the phone number of a hijacker's father in law--was retrieved through a routine interrogation but it was the failure of human intelligence and competency not the fact that the terrorists weren't tortured enough, which caused the US intelligence services to miss the warning signs of 9/11.

I just wish one of the media "pundits," such as John King, would educate themselves about these damning details before interviewing Dick Cheney. So rather than blasting Obama for struggling to bring the rule of law back to the US, Cheney should disappear in one of his bunkers just in case someone in Obama's Justice Dept is reading Mayer's book and preparing indictments.