by Mark Fallon
A lot of us did, in fact, consider how history would judge these actions. My memo was far from the only one raising a yellow flag. Alberto Mora was heroic in his opposition to the torturers. This book has introduced you to plenty of others who put their careers on the line or sought out journalists after they were back from combat to say loud and clear: “What we have seen is wrong!”
Clearly, though, those voices were not enough. The boulder kept rolling. The avalanche followed. America became just what its extremist enemies wanted—a fellow terrorist in a world where the established rules of war no longer applied.
We know the truth of what happened now, and the facts of the extraordinary efforts that were made to keep that truth hidden from the American public forever. We know because people such as Senators Dianne Feinstein and John McCain wouldn’t turn their eyes away from what was happening or be cowed by the powerful protectors of the torture secrets.
As early as 2005, McCain used his stature as a former Vietnam War POW to lead a bipartisan effort that resulted in the successful enactment of the Detainee Treatment Act—also known as the McCain Amendment—that prohibits torture and other cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of those held in US custody.
Nine years later, in 2014, Feinstein, who was then head of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, refused to back down when it became apparent the CIA was “spying” on her committee’s investigation of Agency torture practices. Instead, she gave a March 2014 speech on the Senate floor expressing her concerns that a CIA search of the Senate computers “may well have violated the separation of powers principles imbedded in the United States Constitution.”
Feinstein also refused to back down a month later, in April 2014, when former CIA director Michael Hayden said in an interview on Fox News Sunday that she was being too “emotional” about the torture subject. Watch torture sometime; it’s an emotional spectacle.
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Others didn’t back down either, and I fought along with them. In a November 16, 2010, letter to then-Defense secretary Robert Gates, I joined Steve Kleinman, XXX XXXXXX, ex-CIA field officer Robert Baer, former FBI counterintelligence agent Joe Navarro, and nine others in condemning the “Appendix M” that was added in 2006 to the Army Field Manual on interrogation tactics and practices. Among other ill-considered changes, Appendix M authorizes interrogators to place detainees in pitch-black goggles and earmuffs for periods of up to twelve hours, which can then be extended with permission of a flag or general officer, and to prevent detainees from sleeping more than four hours a day for up to 30 days in a row.
“As interrogators, interviewers and intelligence officers with decades of experience in the field, we believe that these interrogation tactics are ineffective,” we wrote. “Furthermore we recognize that they can be counterproductive (i.e., they can serve to enhance rather than reduce both the detainee’s resistance while also severely diminishing his ability to accurately recall critical intelligence information). The use of these techniques was clearly banned in previous versions of the manual and they ought to continue to be clearly off limits.”
Have we won that fight yet? No, but that’s no reason to quit. In fact, it’s every reason to keep going.
In the same spirit, in an April 2012 op-ed for the Huffington Post titled “Torture Is Illegal, Immoral, Ineffective and Inconsistent with American Values,” I took on Jose Rodriguez, who had argued in his book Hard Measures that torture was necessary and saved lives. I challenged Rodriguez’s claims and argued that the misguided tactics had actually hardened resistance, an outcome that another half decade of brutal war has proven deadly accurate.
I also challenged the media as a whole to stop referring to enhanced interrogation techniques as “what human rights advocates call torture,” as if this were some kind of battle between tree huggers and national security experts. Narrative matters, and media plays a huge role in shaping how the public perceives events. One of the key jobs of journalism is to look behind the curtain of intentionally bland phrases such as “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Once 60 Minutes II and Seymour Hersh pulled that curtain back—once they showed the world that EITs and torture were too often synonymous—there was no going back to ignorance. But that could have and should have happened sooner.
In October 2014 Human Rights First convened a panel of seventeen of the nation’s most respected interrogation and intelligence professionals, including former US military general officers and senior executive service members. I was involved in getting the word out and personally called and e-mailed many of them to ask that they participate. After much deliberation, we sent out to the media a statement of principles that torture is illegal, ineffective, and counterproductive. We followed that up with interviews and an open letter to President Obama that I helped draft, urging him to instruct the current leadership of the CIA to unequivocally stand behind his condemnation of torture. Eventually, we consolidated all those materials onto a website, humanrightsfirst.org, that the media and public generally could access.I
Two months later, on December 8, 2014, I wrote an op-ed for Politico titled “Dick Cheney Was Lying About Torture.” The op-ed was a further challenge to the narrative Cheney and other torture apologists kept peddling in their incessant effort to convince the public of the necessity and effectiveness of the CIA Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation program. My purpose, I said, was to illuminate the darkness about torture. Beyond that, the larger purpose of all this activity was to redirect the narrative about torture, and I think we managed that. And my timing couldn’t have been better: about twelve hours after the Politico column was released, the “Torture Report” was introduced on the Senate floor, and the narrative about EITs was forever changed.
President Obama acknowledged as much at a televised White House press conference on October 1, 2014, when he stated, “We tortured some folks. . . . We did some things that were contrary to our values.”
The president went further in his January 20, 2015, State of the Union address when he said, “As Americans, we respect human dignity, even when we’re threatened, which is why I’ve prohibited torture.”
In one of his last official documents—a January 19, 2017, letter to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and President Pro Tempore of the Senate Joe Biden—the president expanded his critique to the broader harm Gitmo has inflicted on America’s security and standing in the world: “Rather than keep us safer, the detention facility at Guantanamo undermines American national security. Terrorists use it for propaganda, its operations drain our military resources during a time of budget cuts, and it harms our partnerships with allies and countries whose cooperation we need against today’s evolving terrorist threat.” Gitmo, he wrote, is “a facility that never should have been opened in the first place.”
In retrospect, given how Gitmo evolved, I couldn’t agree more with that last point, but President Obama also hedged his bet on more than one occasion when he discussed the CIA and torture. We “crossed a line,” he allowed, but added that it was important “not to feel too sanctimonious” because those responsible for torturing detainees were working during a period of extraordinary stress and fear.
With that last sentiment, I have to take serious exception. Yes, these were times of extraordinary stress and fear, but as the old saying goes, character is what you do when no one else is looking, and what the CIA and its aiders and abettors did when no one else was looking was flat-out wrong.
Faith counts—faith in core values and founding principles, in our constitutional framework, and the rule of law. The torturers had no faith in the faith that matters.
Leadership matters too, but rank, title, and grade level are no guarantee of talent or meaningful experience. Following bad orders given by incompetent (or worse) bosses is not leadership; challenging the order is. If only the torturers had done more of that.
Loyalty is important too, but loyalty to core values, not to individuals. When core values are being violated, as they were time
and again in the treatment of detainees at Gitmo and elsewhere, challenge is the purest form of loyalty.
And finally strategy: it must be supported by tactics, not dragged down by them, and it must be aimed at realistic outcomes consistent with values.
On every one of those fronts—faith, leadership, loyalty, and strategy—our detention and interrogation policies, promulgated and endorsed at the highest levels of American government, came up woefully short, in ways that harm us still. What makes this even worse, and more painful for me, is that we had the proper way to do this right in front of us, and we had proof positive that rapport building with detainees yields infinitely more usable intelligence than beating the shit out of them—or fucking with their minds. But tough guys were in charge, the ones with more teeth than ass, and too many of the tough guys hunkered behind their desks in Washington couldn’t get enough of them or their dismal, unproven “science”—with sadly predictable results.
Torture ended up making us less safe as a country, not more so. Indeed, the most significant threat to our national security post-9/11 has come not from second waves of attacks from Al Qaeda or fresh waves of terror from ISIS but from the very manner in which the CIA and other agencies administered their interrogation program and from the ready willingness of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the DOD’s Office of General Counsel, and others to turn their backs on international conventions regarding the treatment of detainees. The cancer that began at Guantanamo Bay and later metastasized to Abu Ghraib didn’t stop there, or in Afghanistan either. Evidence mounts every day that the CIA’s black sites were a near-global phenomenon that compromised officials all around the world, or forced them to look away from horrendous acts.
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Yes, “we tortured some folks,” as President Obama said so colloquially back in 2014, but it wasn’t just “we.” The “American way of torture” dragged way too many people all around the world down into the pit with us, and it continues to do so to this day.
Gitmo remains open—the Forever Prison for Forever Prisoners—and seemingly it now has a fresh advocate in the White House. At a Nevada campaign stop in February 2016, Donald Trump vowed to keep Guantanamo Bay open and fill it “with some very bad dudes.” Far more alarming to me, Trump has also spoken approvingly of reinstituting waterboarding and even using “much tougher” techniques on all these very bad dudes he apparently intends to detain at Gitmo. To quote Trump from another 2016 campaign stop: “Torture works. OK, folks? Believe me, it works. . . . And waterboarding is your minor form, but we should go much stronger than waterboarding.”
No, President Trump, it does not work. In fact, it has just the opposite effect. Waterboarding, sleep deprivation, dog leashes, sexual humiliation—they all send us tumbling into the filth where our sworn enemies live, and it legitimizes their struggle in the eyes of their followers even as it delegitimizes us in the eyes of the world. The challenge now is to regain the high ground, not double down on the low road. This book is my effort to illuminate the mistakes we made and to help elevate us above them so we can return to the values that have so long made the United States of America the envy of the world. America has always been strongest when our actions match our values.
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I. http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/topics/interrogators
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank the entire Regan Arts team for its support, most especially Kathy Huck and Judith Regan, who believed that a book about how we enacted state-sponsored torture needed to be written. Many publishers felt torture was a dead issue until the election of Donald Trump as president brought the issue back onto the front pages.
This book would not be possible without the support of Sterling Lord Literistic and my agent, Robert Guinsler, who from the very beginning believed this story needed to be told. I’m grateful for the fantastic editing of Nathan and Howard Means, who helped polish my manuscript and turn it into a book, as well as Patrick McCord for his advice and contributions. Pamela Hamilton has been so much more than a publicist. She has been by my side throughout the writing and editing process and has acted as coach, mentor, and friend. I’m also grateful to my brother, Bill Fallon, for his tireless efforts and assistance with web pages, branding, and other materials to enable my message to reach a broader audience.
I am so grateful for the encouragement, mentoring, and friendship of Bill Dedman, Jess Bravin, Josh Phillips, and Adam Grant. Their guidance and assistance with book proposals and finding an agent, publisher, and editors helped make this book possible. They continue to be a frequent source of council and guidance.
I’m also humbled to count heroes like Dave Brant, Ralph Blincoe, Steve Corbett, Mike Gelles, and Bob McFadden among my closest friends, and I’m profoundly grateful for the incredible amount of time they took helping ensure the accuracy of the details in the book. Britt Mallow, Scott Johnson, Sam McCahon, and other CITF terrorist hunters helped me piece together the amazing role we played in our history.
Roy Nedrow, John McEleny, Neill Robins, Pete Segerstein, Steve Schiebinger, Ron Struble, Blaine Thomas, Stu Couch, Carol Joyce, Randy Carter, Steve Minger, Dave Enos, Ken Frederick, Greg Highlands, Ken Reuwer, Bill Klein, Tom Neer, Ray Mack, Bob Hartley, Russ Palerea, Tim James, Greg Golden, Jeff Sieber, Mike Marks, Bill Lietzau, Whit Cobb, Jeff Norwitz, Mark Jacobson, Bill Monahan, John Ligouri, John McGuire, and many others assisted in reconstructing meetings to provide the most accurate accounting of events possible. They should all be proud to have served with honor during a critical time in our nation’s history.
I am particularly humbled to call Alberto Mora a friend. His patriotism and genuine concern for American values and human rights is inspirational. Alberto restored my faith in political appointees, and I’m grateful for his guidance and the valor he so consistently demonstrates.
I am grateful as well for the support from Human Rights First. Elisa Massimino and the amazing staff there believe in American ideals and universal values. Raha Wala first told me they needed my voice. He, Scott Cooper, Brenda Bowser Soder, Corrine Duffy, Adam Jacobson, Heather Brandon, and others have worked tirelessly to illuminate the darkness of torture. Add in Sarah Dougherty of Physicians for Human
Rights, Laura Pitter from Human Rights Watch, and Katherine Hawkins and Scott Roehm of the Constitution Project, and I’ve been blessed many times over.
I’m thankful for the support and assistance from a group known as the Dissident Psychologists, including Stephen Soldz, Steven Reisner, Nathaniel Raymond, and Jeffrey Kaye, as well as Heather O’Beirne Kelly from the APA, for ensuring I had access to documents and the various perspectives surrounding the issues of psychologist involvement in national security interrogations.
I also want to express my gratitude to the ACLU for obtaining so many e-mails and correspondence the US government had denied me access to, and to Robert Fein, who tracked those e-mails down and sent me so much correspondence regarding these issues over the years. The ACLU and Knights First Amendment Institute were instrumental in challenging censorship and protecting the First Amendment. I’m especially grateful for the support from the ACLU’s Brett Max Kaufman and Knight Columbia’s Alex Abdo. In the same vein, special thanks go to the researchers who provided me with material, support, and encouragement, including Par Anders Granhag, Aldert Vrij, Sharon Leal, Zarah Verhnam, Shane O’Mara, Melissa Russano, Maria Hartwig, John Horgan, Mia Bloom, and Chris Meissner.
Senators John McCain and Dianne Feinstein both urged me to continue to speak out against torture, and Senator Carl Levin paved the way by first illuminating the darkness and insisting my story be known. The courage and patriotism of these and others within the Congress who have worked so diligently to set the record straight on our shameful national policy decision to use torture as an instrument of national power cannot be overstated. So many in the media also carried that torch, long before it became popular to do so.
I also want to thank all of those friends and colleagues, far too many to list, who encouraged me to write this book and supported me during this process. Without that support network, this book would not have been possible.