TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS
THE ATTACK ON THE WORLD TRADE CENTER SHOWED THE weakness of American intelligence gathering. Top secret information obtained by one agency was silo’ed from others, making it impossible to aggregate intelligence and obtain a full picture of the security threats. The CIA knew that two of the 9/11 hijackers were on American soil in San Diego, but didn’t share the information with the FBI, who were actively trying to track them down.1 September 11 was a crippling intelligence failure, and in the immediacy of that failure many in President George W. Bush’s administration felt the need to do something radical. Greater sharing of intelligence, naturally. But much more as well. Two main solutions were devised, or revived: total surveillance and tortured interrogations. They represent the first prong of the counterinsurgency approach.
In effect, 9/11 set the stage both for total NSA surveillance and torture as forms of total information awareness. The former functioned at the most virtual or ethereal, or “digital” level, by creating the material for data-mining and analysis. The latter operated at the most bodily or physical, or “analog” level, obtaining information directly from suspects and detainees in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. But both satisfied the same goal: total information awareness, the first tactic of counterinsurgency warfare.
The first, total NSA surveillance. In the aftermath of 9/11, the US government put in place a web of illicit and licit signal intelligence programs with the ambition to capture and collect all communications around the world. This effort gave birth to bulk data collection programs ranging from the Section 215 program of the USA PATRIOT Act to those myriad NSA programs made public through the Edward Snowden revelations. With names like PRISM, UPSTREAM, and BOUNDLESS INFORMANT, these surveillance programs would give the US government access to all communications flowing through the underwater cables and satellites orbiting around earth, as well as through the servers of Internet companies and social media. These post–9/11 intelligence programs provide the US government direct access to any foreigner’s e-mails, attachments, videos, VoIP calls—in sum, practically all foreign digital communications and Internet traffic. The different programs are targeted at different systems and use different techniques—from simple cable-splicing in order to make integral copies of all the digital data flowing through fiber-optic cables, to the more complex introduction of malware into intercepted and surreptitiously opened hardware being sold to foreigners. What they aim for is totality.
You may recall the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program that Admiral John Poindexter tried to pioneer in the late 1990s and to resuscitate in the wake of 9/11. The program had that ominous image of an eye at the top of a pyramid seeing the entire world, with the Baconian logo scientia est potentia (“knowledge is power”). The objective was a massive surveillance system that would capture absolutely all communications. The TIA program was originally shelved in 1999 in part because of the controversy surrounding Admiral Poindexter, who had been the highest-ranking official in the Reagan administration found guilty during the Iran-Contra affair. The TIA program was revived and funded for a while after 9/11, before eventually being scrapped again because of the renewed storms surrounding Poindexter.2 But the architecture, vision, and ambition of “total information awareness” captured perfectly the first prong of counterinsurgency strategy.
The ambition here was total information, and our new digital technologies have now made this possible. American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) legal director David Cole reminds us of a PowerPoint slide leaked by Edward Snowden that gives a sense of the capabilities and the ambition. The NSA document reveals, Cole writes, that “the NSA’s ‘new collection posture’ is to ‘collect it all,’ ‘process it all,’ ‘exploit it all,’ ‘partner it all,’ ‘sniff it all,’ and, ultimately, ‘know it all.’”3 Yes, “know it all”: that is the goal. US government today tries to gain access, to monitor and surveil practically all foreign communications, including e-mails, Facebook posts, Skype messaging, Yahoo video-chat platforms, Twitter tweets, Tumblr photos, Google searches, etc.—in sum, all telecom data including social media and Internet traffic. And of course, it is not only the US government that tries to achieve these capabilities, but also its Five Eyes partners—the intelligence agencies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—and other allies like France and Germany, as well as the intelligence agencies of most developed countries large and small, from China or Russia to Israel. And in our new digital age, such surveillance is becoming easier, cheaper, and more efficient daily.
The goal of total information awareness has been carried out through licit and illicit activities—the latter most dramatically illustrated by the infamous hospital episode the night of March 10, 2004. The NSA had been carrying out, for two years, a warrantless eavesdropping program known as Stellar Wind that monitored telecom and e-mail communications between US citizens and foreign citizens if either party was linked to a terrorist group. The warrantless program was ultimately deemed illegal by the Department of Justice. Despite that, and shortly thereafter, then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and President Bush’s chief of staff rushed to the hospital late at night to get the ailing attorney general, John Ashcroft, semiconscious and in his sickbed in the intensive-care unit, to reauthorize the warrantless eavesdropping program. Ashcroft was so sick, in fact, that his powers had been transferred to his deputy, James Comey. Significant legal controversy also surrounded the Section 215 program, which was deemed illegal by several federal judges—before it was eventually modified, ever so slightly, in June 2015 to require that the telecoms hold the metadata rather than the NSA, at taxpayer’s expense.4 The full scope and reach of the NSA programs, and their constitutionality, have not, to date, been sufficiently recognized or properly adjudicated.
What is clear, though—as I document in Exposed—is that the myriad NSA, FBI, CIA, and allied intelligence agencies produce total information, the first and most important prong of the counterinsurgency paradigm. Most important, because both of the other prongs depend on it. As the RAND Corporation notes in its lengthy 519-page report on the current state of counterinsurgency theory and practice, “Effective governance depends on knowing the population, demographically and individually.” The RAND report reminds us that this insight is not novel or new. The report then returns, pointedly for us, to Algeria and the French commander, David Galula: “Galula, in Counterinsurgency Warfare, argued that ‘control of the population begins with a thorough census. Every inhabitant must be registered and given a foolproof identity card.’”5 Today, that identity card is an IP address, a mobile phone, a digital device, facial recognition, and all our digital stamps. These new digital technologies have made everyone virtually transparent. And with our new ethos of selfies, tweets, Facebook, and Internet surfing, everyone is now exposed.
Second, tortured interrogation. The dual personality of counterinsurgency warfare is nowhere more evident than in the intensive use of torture for information gathering by the United States immediately after 9/11. Fulfilling the first task of counterinsurgency theory—total surveillance—this practice married the most extreme form of brutality associated with modern warfare to the formality of legal process and the rule of law. The combination of inhumanity and legality was spectacular.
In the days following 9/11, many in the Bush administration felt there was only one immediate way to address the information shortfall, namely, to engage in “enhanced interrogation” of captured suspected terrorists—another euphemism for torture. Of course, torture of captured suspects would not fix the problem of silo’ed information, but they thought it would at least provide immediate information of any pending attacks. One could say that the United States turned to torture because many in the administration believed the country did not have adequate intelligence capabilities, lacking the spy network or even the language abilities to infiltrate and conduct regular espionage on organizations like Al Qaeda.6
The tortured interrogations
combined the extremes of brutality with the formality of the rule of law. We are familiar with the first, but the details nevertheless remain stunning—and numbing. Waterboarding a suspect over 183 times. Forcing a detainee to remain in a standing stress position for 7.5 days, or almost 180 hours. Locking a prisoner in a coffin-sized confinement box for nearly 2 weeks. These unconscionable practices were administered by CIA agents and contractors, including psychologists, beginning in 2002, in black-site prisons far and wide—from Afghanistan to Thailand—many times after extensive and lengthy FBI interrogations.
Even the more ordinary instances of “enhanced interrogation” were harrowing—and so often administered, according to the Senate report, after the interrogators believed there was no more information to be had, sometimes even before the detainee had the opportunity to speak. One prisoner, named Ridhar al-Najjar, is described as “having been left hanging—which involved handcuffing one or both wrists to an overhead bar which would not allow him to lower his arms—for 22 hours each day for two consecutive days.” Another prisoner, Gul Rahman, was subjected to “48 hours of sleep deprivation, auditory overload, total darkness, isolation, a cold shower, and rough treatment,” before then being “shackled to the wall of his cell in a position that required [him] to rest on the bare concrete floor […] wearing only a sweatshirt.” (He was found dead the next day. The cause of death was hypothermia.) Another prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was placed “in a ‘standing stress position’ with ‘his hands affixed over his head’ for approximately two and a half days,” and then later, a CIA officer “placed a pistol near al-Nashiri’s head and operated a cordless drill near al-Nashiri’s body.”7
Ramzi bin al-Shibh was subjected to this type of treatment immediately upon arrival in detention, even before being interrogated or given an opportunity to cooperate—in what would become a “template” for other detainees. Bin al-Shibh was subjected first to “sensory dislocation” including “shaving bin al-Shibh’s head and face, exposing him to loud noise in a white room with white lights, keeping him ‘unclothed and subjected to uncomfortably cool temperatures,’ and shackling him ‘hand and foot with arms outstretched over his head (with his feet firmly on the floor and not allowed to support his weight with his arms).’” Following that, the interrogation would include “attention grasp, walling, the facial hold, the facial slap… the abdominal slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation beyond 72 hours, and the waterboard, as appropriate to [bin al-Shibh’s] level of resistance.”8 This template would be used on others—and served as a warning to all.
The more extreme forms of torture were also accompanied by the promise of life-long solitary confinement or, in the case of death, cremation. Counterinsurgency torture in the past had often been linked to summary disappearances and executions. Under the Bush administration, it was tied to what one might call virtual disappearances.
During the Algerian war, as noted already, the widespread use of brutal interrogation techniques meant that those who had been victimized—both the guilty and innocent—became dangerous in the eyes of the French military leadership. FLN members needed to be silenced, forever; but so did others who might be radicalized by the waterboarding or gégène. In Algeria, a simple solution was devised: the tortured would be thrown out from helicopters into the Mediterranean. They became les crevettes de Bigeard, after the notorious French general in Algeria, Marcel Bigeard: “Bigeard’s shrimp,” dumped into the sea, their feet in poured concrete—a technique the French military had apparently experimented with earlier in Indochina.9
The CIA would devise a different solution in 2002: either torture the suspect accidentally to death and then cremate his body to avoid detection, or torture the suspect to the extreme and then ensure that he would never again talk to another human being. Abu Zubaydah received the latter treatment. Zubaydah had first been seized and interrogated at length by the FBI, had provided useful information, and was placed in isolation for forty-seven days, the FBI believing that he had no more valuable information. Then the CIA took over, believing he might still be a source.10 The CIA turned to its more extreme forms of torture—utilizing all ten of its most brutal techniques—but, as a CIA cable from the interrogation team, dated July 15, 2002, records, they realized beforehand that it would either have to cover up the torture if death ensued or ensure that Zubaydah would never talk to another human being again in his lifetime. According to the Senate report, “the cable stated that if Abu Zubaydah were to die during the interrogation, he would be cremated. The interrogation team closed the cable by stating: ‘regardless which [disposition] option we follow however, and especially in light of the planned psychological pressure techniques to be implemented, we need to get reasonable assurances that [Abu Zubaydah] will remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life.’”11 In response to this request for assurance, a cable from the CIA station gave the interrogation team those assurances, noting that “it was correct in its ‘understanding that the interrogation process takes precedence over preventative medical procedures,’” and then adding in the cable:
There is a fairly unanimous sentiment within HQS that [Abu Zubaydah] will never be placed in a situation where he has any significant contact with others and/or has the opportunity to be released. While it is difficult to discuss specifics at this point, all major players are in concurrence that [Abu Zubaydah] should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life.12
“Incommunicado for the remainder of his life”: this statement may explain why the Guantánamo prison camp remained operative for so long. Abu Zubaydah made his first public appearance at a Periodic Review Board hearing at Guantánamo fourteen years later, on August 23, 2016—after fourteen years incommunicado. As of this writing, he remains detained at Guantánamo. The agency was given a governmental promise, at the highest levels.
Such measures and assurances, of course, were not the product of a demented interrogator, a deranged superior, or commanders gone native or mad. These routines were approved at the uppermost level of the US government, by the president of the United States and his closest advisers. These practices were put in place, designed carefully and legally—very legalistically, in fact—to be used on suspected enemies. They were not an aberration. There are, to be sure, long histories written of rogue intelligence services using unauthorized techniques; there is a lengthy record, as well, of CIA ingenuity and creativity in this domain, including, among other examples, the 1963 KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual.13 But after 9/11, the blueprint was drawn at the White House and the Pentagon, and it became official US policy—deliberate, debated, well-thought-out, and adopted as legal measures.
President George W. Bush himself specifically approved the transfer of the first detainee who would be interrogated by the CIA, Abu Zubaydah, to a black site in a foreign country because (among other reasons which are blacked out in the report) there would be a “lack of US court jurisdiction” there. “That morning, the president approved moving forward with the plan to transfer Abu Zubaydah to Country [redacted],” the Senate report states. Thereafter, and deliberately, the president kept willfully ignorant of the location of detainees “to avoid inadvertent disclosures,” but he tacitly approved it all.14
In this context, the explicit decisions regarding the transfer and treatment of detainees, and the interrogation methods used, fell to the secretaries of defense and of state, the attorney general, and, whenever possible, the vice president. John Ashcroft, the attorney general of the United States and the highest-ranking lawyer in the country, on July 24, 2002, “verbally approved the use of 10 interrogation techniques, which included: the attention grasp, walling, the facial hold, the facial slap (insult slap), cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, use of diapers, and use of insects.” Two days later, the Senate report states, “the attorney general verbally approved the use of the waterboard.” And in early August, according to the Senate report, �
��the National Security Council legal advisor informed the DCI’s chief of staff that ‘[National Security Adviser] Dr. Rice had been informed that there would be no briefing of the President on this matter,’ but that the DCI had policy approval to employ the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.”15
A year later, in July 2003, after being briefed by the DCI and CIA General Counsel on the enhanced interrogation techniques—including a description of the waterboard techniques that substantially understated the number of times it had been used on detainees Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah—Vice President Cheney and Rice spoke on behalf of the White House and reauthorized the use of torture.16
Practically every enhanced interrogation measure used—except perhaps the use of a drill and a broom handle—was also vetted at CIA headquarters and approved as an interrogation plan at the top level of the CIA. Prior to using “enhanced interrogation techniques,” multiple cables and authorizations went back and forth between the detention facilities and CIA headquarters.17 These uses of torturous methods were planned, authorized, supervised, analyzed, and reconfirmed and reinforced by the highest government authorities.
In 2003, the CIA General Counsel communicated with the National Security Council principals, White House staff, and Department of Justice personnel, and expressed concern that CIA interrogation methods “might be inconsistent with public statements from the Administration that the US Government’s treatment of detainees was ‘humane.’” The result was not what one might have expected. As the Senate torture report indicates, instead of putting a halt to these practices, following the communiqué, “the White House press secretary was advised to avoid using the term ‘humane treatment’ when discussing the detention of al-Qa’ida and Taliban personnel.”18 Clearly, these were not accidental practices. They were fully discussed, deliberated, and made legal. The government’s decision to avoid talk of “humane treatment” perfectly embodies the combination of brutality and official government sanction characteristic of a counterinsurgency regime.
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