Between the Lines Q&A

A weekly column featuring progressive viewpoints
on national and international issues
under-reported in mainstream media
for release Aug. 26, 2009

Home | Broadcast-Quality MP3s | Archives | Search BTL Archives
About | Broadcast Schedule | | Squeaky Wheel Productions


Narrow Investigation into Bush-Era Torture
Violates Legal Mandate
for Full Accountability

RealAudio MP3

Interview with Ray McGovern,
retired CIA officer,
conducted by Scott Harris

torture

In response to a Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility recommendation to consider prosecution of CIA employees and contractors who are alleged to have tortured and abused U.S.-held detainees, Attorney General Eric Holder has appointed federal prosecutor John Durham to lead a new investigation. Durham is already investigating the destruction of CIA videotapes of harsh interrogations of American-held terrorist suspects, after being appointed to that job in 2008 by President Bush's Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Holder's appointment of a prosecutor reverses a Bush administration decision not to investigate nearly a dozen cases of prisoner abuse.

Under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the Obama administration released a 2004 CIA Inspector General report and memos detailing specific abuses of prisoners. Torture methods included mock executions, threats to kill prisoners' children, rape their mothers, and the use of guns and power drills to intimidate detainees. Documents disclose that one prisoner was beaten to death with a flashlight by a CIA contractor.

Holder has stated the investigation will be limited to focusing on whether CIA and contracted interrogators violated Bush anti-torture guidelines. But human rights groups have called on Holder to broaden the investigation to include Bush administration attorneys and other officials who designed and implemented the torture policies. Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with retired CIA officer Ray McGovern, who, during his 27-year career at the agency, briefed Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. McGovern assesses Attorney General Holder's decision to proceed with a narrow torture investigation conflicting with the mandate of U.S. and international law for full accountability.

RAY MCGOVERN: There's one mischievous sort of canard running around. I was asked (a question) in a TV interview I had with the BBC this afternoon. It goes like this: "Won't this damage the morale of agency operatives? Won't this make them more hesitant in the future to do these kinds of things?" And, I say, "Whoa, second question: 'Yeah! But do you think that's not a good thing?"

I'd like them to be more hesitant, you know. I'd like them to reflect on the fact that there are U.S. laws as well as international laws against war crimes, because that's what torture is: a war crime.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Attorney Gen. Eric Holder's decision to appoint a prosecutor to investigate nearly a dozen cases where CIA interrogators and contractors may have violated U.S. and international laws prohibiting torture and abuse of prisoners is said to be very narrow. And, if you were to be advising Eric Holder or the president of the United States, about where this investigation should go, how would you justify giving a prosecutor a wide range to do the right thing in all areas, including holding to account former Bush administration lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo, the guys who created some of these blatantly illegal guidelines for abusing and torturing prisoners?

RAY MCGOVERN: From my point of view, if you don't investigate - and if the evidence is persuasive, if you don't prosecute those who were guilty of these very grievous war crimes, then they're going to happen again.

Now, let me quote Walter Mondale, because he was asked this question again in late April. He said, "Holding people responsible in some way for it happens is be very important. If the verdict here is that you can do these kinds of things and there are no consequences, then that leaves a precedent. I've been around in Washington long enough to know what that means, because there are lots of bad precedents. It's like leaving a loaded pistol on a kitchen table. You don't know who's going to pick it up and pull the trigger. There need to be consequences for violating the law.

So that's the broad issue. I think that even though this investigation is described as a very narrowly focused one, on the CIA employees and contractors who went beyond the very flexible guidance of the Department of Justice, I think it's not going to be possible to hold it to that. And that, by and large, it's going to expand into Department of Justice lawyers who authorized these torture techniques, including waterboarding. And if people have the courage, they will see - and please remember where you heard this first, if this is the first time you've heard this -- they will see that the president of the United States authorized torture by executive memo, dated Feb. 7, 2002. That was a two-page memo signed by George W. Bush in felt-tip pen with strokes an inch-and-a-half long and wide. It's on the web, look it up! Just put in "George W. Bush, torture, Feb. 7, 2002." That's where George Bush said, you don't have to pay attention to the Geneva protections as far as Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees are concerned.

Now the Senate Armed Forces Committee did a thorough investigation of this. In December of last year, they said that memo of Feb. 7, 2002 opened the door to all the abuses that followed.

BETWEEN THE LINES:Do you think that the appointment of John Durham, a federal prosecutor from Connecticut, to do the work of the prosecutor here on these torture cases will have in his scope, President Bush and Vice President Cheney when it comes to who gave the ultimate orders, here?

RAY MCGOVERN: Well, he won't, initially. Right now, his instructions are just to look at the folks that exceeded the Department of Justice guidelines. Those guidelines were so flexible. Those guidelines boiled down to the fact that you could do anything you wanted to a detainee as long as you didn't cause either death or major organ failure. And so, telling a detainee that you're going to have his wife or his mother violated in front of you, or telling a detainee that you're going to kill his children? Well, does that fit one of the guidelines? It's not expressly forbidden; it doesn't result in death, it doesn't result in major organ failure. So, I can see a CIA guy saying, "Well, it must be OK. It must be OK to bring in an electric drill into the interrogation, and turn it on and put it about an inch from a guy's head. That must be OK because I'm not causing death, I'm not causing major organ failure."

So it's going to be very, very messy. But I just hope that this fellow, Durham, who's been over a year looking into the destruction of the CIA tapes of these interrogation sessions. I just hope he's a principled lawyer. That's what we need; a gutsy, independent lawyer with integrity with a devotion to our Constitution, which used to be a very blessed thing, and still is to a lot of the rest of us. Retired CIA Officer Ray McGovern is cofounder of the group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. Read McGovern's articles online at www.consortiumnews.com

Related Links:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scott Harris is an executive producer of Between The Lines, which can be heard on more than 45 radio stations and in RealAudio and MP3 on our website at http://www.btlonline.org. This interview excerpt was featured on the award-winning, syndicated weekly radio newsmagazine, Between The Lines for the week ending Sept. 4, 2009. This Between The Lines Q&A was compiled by Anna Manzo.

To donate to Between The Lines, please send your check made payable to "The Global Center" and mail to:
Squeaky Wheel Productions
P.O. Box 110176
Trumbull, CT 06611

To get details on subscribing to the radio program or to publish this column in print or online media, contact us at (203) 268-8446.

Home | Broadcast-Quality MP3s | Archives | Search BTL Archives
About | Broadcast Schedule | | Squeaky Wheel Productions

(c) Copyright 2009 Squeaky Wheel Productions. All rights reserved.