David D. Cole Quotes

At the time CIA apologists for the torture they carried out with the facilitation of the Justice Department often justified the torture because they claimed that it worked. Critics rose to the bait and argued that proposition as there was much evidence that it did not, and nothing was learned that had not been obtained without torture. However, Cole argues that that was the wrong issue. Torture was outlawed whether it worked or not. The United States under Ronald Reagan signed the treaty and the Senate ratified it. Torture is wrong whether or not it works.

This was untrue. The CIA used several forms of torture on high value detainees. The torture was psychological and physical. Even the FBI had agents who observed CIA interrogations and complained to their supervisors. For cover, the George W. Bush administration, got 3 Justice Department Attorneys to write a secret memo defining certain types of torture as “enhanced interrogation”. Water Boarding, for which American soldiers had been court martialed and convicted for torture then became enhanced interrogation, and was used on a few terrorists. Because of the rigged Justice Department memo, the CIA claimed that they did not torture people. Another thing the CIA did was to turn over enemy to the intelligence services of third countries like Egypt, where torture was used commonly with no regard for the Geneva convention or other human rights provision. CIA agents then watched and asked questions but they claimed that they did not torture which was in some sense literally true.

It is surprising that these ideas would come from one of the most autocratic powerful monarch in the world at the time. However there were many very liberal influences on her from Europe. This set of proposals she even sent to Voltaire to get his feedback and criticism. As late as 2006 the American President was reluctant to outlaw torture for terroristsand the Vice President actually argued for its retention as an interrogation technique. Over 300 years earlier the autocrat of Russia argued against it.

The Senate was debating a law to make torture of foreigners and captives illegal under all circumstances. Vice President Cheney was very strongly opposed wanting an exception made for the CIA.

Neilson had flown in the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. It was the first bombing of Tokyo in WWII. He was shot down and captured. He was tortured including the torture of ‘waterboarding.’ The Japanese who administered the torture and who allowed it were tried before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East—the Tokyo War Crime Trials. They were convicted and punished. In the first decade of the 21st century the George W, Bush Administration argued that waterboarding was not necessarily torture despite the fact that Americans had tried and punished foreigners who engaged in the practice and even Americans who did. It was completely outlawed by military regulations but some Americans felt that it should be allowed by the CIA in dealing with terrorists.

At that time in American History, the George W. Bush Justice Department had a small team of lawyers who wrote a legal brief that defined torture in such a way that many of the most common forms of torture were no longer legal torture, even though they had been torture in American law and were again torture after this embarrassing episode of American history. The renamed techniques were called “enhanced interrogation” and a few terrorist suspects were subjected to it before the rules and laws were changed and the “legal opinions” nullified. The FBI and military intelligence did not use the so called enhanced interrogation techniques as they felt that torture produced unreliable intelligence as the victim will say anything the questioner wants to hear to end the torture. They also thought the Justice department memo was sloppy and defective legal work. Senator McCain was a particular expert on torture in that he had, during the Vietnam War, been captured and imprisoned for 7 years during which he had been tortured on several occasions.