[HN Gopher] The CIA's outsourced torture is lost to history
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The CIA's outsourced torture is lost to history
Author : jbegley
Score : 135 points
Date : 2021-08-06 16:41 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (foreverwars.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (foreverwars.substack.com)
| puchatek wrote:
| I keep hearing that torture doesn't provide reliable information.
| And then i read that an organization that specializes in
| obtaining information uses torture extensively.
|
| Either nobody holds them accountable for when their dodgy intel
| doesn't check out or i have been misled and torture does in fact
| yield good results. Which one is it?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| This assumes their goal is to get actual intel and not just
| politically actionable intel. Torture is a great way to make
| someone say whatever you want them to.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Institutions like people have beliefs and positions
| irrespective of these positions relationship with reality. For
| example the FBI which would would reasonably expect to be
| experts in scientific analysis spent decades sending experts to
| testify as to the nature of matching hair that was left at
| crime scenes with real live suspects. Turns out that upon
| review 95% of the cases in which they gave testimony were
| flawed and they notably couldn't reliably tell dog hair from
| human hair let alone identify suspects.
|
| Just think of it people got 4 year degrees in a scientific
| field and built entire decades long career pretending to do
| something effectively not only to others but to themselves and
| their superiors. They testified in court dressed up in fancy
| suits with fancy titles when they were less effective at doing
| their job than a magic 8 ball.
|
| It would be like finding out your doctor wasn't exactly clear
| on the difference between a liver and a kidney and him and all
| his colleagues were just kind of faking it and hoping you
| wouldn't notice.
|
| The only saving grace that made them look sort of effective was
| the fact that they quite frequently but not always had ample
| evidence against the suspect meaning they were far more than
| average sending them hair samples of people who were in fact
| already known to be the real killer so they could in theory
| appear somewhat accurate by for example always saying yes if
| the hair was the same color which is you know fantastic for
| black people.
|
| Why would we expect a field of endeavor that is entirely
| isolated from any accountability to be good at anything?
| throw7 wrote:
| "...we've decided to live in this world of limited oversight."
|
| Read it and weep... I can just imagine any of the main players of
| this sordid state of affairs saying: "You want the truth? You
| can't handle the truth!"
|
| I have to say though you have to admire how incredible a cleaner
| Haspel is. Spotless really.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Yeah next time folks here will defend CIA as bunch of highly
| moral patriots, well they are either clueless or outright
| lying, which goes well along what CIA is anyway supposed to do.
|
| US has no moral high ground. US folks here might feel like they
| still do, but to 95% of the world, US can easily end up bigger
| bully than any other state, ie Russia or China.
|
| And by bully I mean murders, kindappings, torture, rape and so
| on. Or just death of few hundreds of thousands of civilians.
| For reasons that are at best dubious.
|
| How many of those in the article were coming from Afghanistan
| theatre, a war that US and allies lost recently and ran away
| quicker than locals could say 'but wait...' ?
|
| Man, am I pissed off. US should be trying to win, or at least
| keep good friends in near future. This is _not_ how one should
| do it.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i wouldn't get too worked up, the article cites only one
| instance from Abu Hamza al-Tabuki while claiming to document
| 14. The article has a lot of words but little actual
| information, I would ask for more specific details before
| letting the author really get under your skin.
| [deleted]
| Clubber wrote:
| >ran away quicker than
|
| Uh, we've been there 20 years. If we had run away quicker, it
| would have saved a lot of lives and money.
| the-dude wrote:
| I am sure he means the pace of the retreat.
| ncmncm wrote:
| What I am looking for is prosecution.
|
| Everything done in those programs was explicitly against numerous
| laws, and everyone involved knew it at the time. I see no reason
| not to indict every person who participated, at any level, with
| numerous felonies, along with everyone whose responsibility was
| to stop it, and didn't. There is way more than enough guilt to go
| around.
|
| Prosecutions should particularly include CIA executive
| management.
| anonHash wrote:
| And if we don't do it, we are no better than nazis.
|
| Whole lots of them were indicted and charged for the simple
| crimes not of their own but others. Applying the same standards
| to ourselves will result in similar indictments and justice.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Shark jumped! Scale matters, nuance matters. The scope of the
| two comparisons make them unequal.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they have blackmail on
| nearly all of the prominent politicians, prosecutors, and
| judges in the system. And what's worse, I bet you if any
| serious candidate runs on intelligence agency reform, they
| might suddenly have some really juicy dirt about them leaked
| online. _Especially_ candidates from the younger generation.
| You could probably crucify someone in the public square with
| all the weird stuff in our browser histories.
| kwere wrote:
| Or "create" some dirt
| peakaboo wrote:
| It will never happen.
| tux3 wrote:
| All of this is clearly extremely immoral.
|
| There is no accountability, which is itself extremely immoral.
|
| Both of these are worth stopping. Legality did not affect their
| decisions, neither should it ours, in this case.
|
| Let's write the laws if we have to; this needs corrective
| action.
| ncmncm wrote:
| We don't need to write new laws. We just need to execute on
| the laws that were, and are, already in place. The new US
| Attorney General could start issuing indictments immediately.
| Most of these laws have no Statute of Limitations deadline,
| so remain viable no matter how far back you go.
| tux3 wrote:
| If the laws have been successfully ignored, then something
| is severely dysfunctional with the current approach.
|
| I don't think this can be explained just by "individual
| people being evil". You can't just designate a few
| scapegoats at the CIA, ruin their lives as punishment, and
| call the problem solved. There are severely wrong
| incentives in place.
|
| We do need to write more laws. Or rather, your country
| does.
| ncmncm wrote:
| "Laws are not being enforced! Let's make new laws to
| require that laws be enforced!"
|
| What is wrong with this picture?
| tux3 wrote:
| Come on, a law is not being enforced, therefore it is not
| possible to make a better law?
|
| Legislation happens to be the simplest fix when
| government agencies are acting horribly wrong. We can do
| other things, too, but we should start with the tried and
| true.
|
| The current laws happen to be really bad and are not
| stopping anyone. I think we can do better. Law doesn't
| have to be bad and ineffective.
|
| Here's one example of something you can do with the law:
| declare the CIA dissolved, reallocate the budget.
|
| Is that the best thing we could do? I genuinely can't
| say. But that would be a law that cannot be ignored.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If the issue is the unwillingness to enforce any part of
| existing law then no law that you could possibly write
| will stop people from continuing to willfully ignore the
| law.
| tux3 wrote:
| I don't think it's unwillingness to enforce, so much as
| laws that happen to be really hard to enforce in this
| particular case.
|
| I think the reason for that is the complete lack of
| transparency and accountability.
| ectopod wrote:
| They should have been prosecuted. Instead, Obama gave a blanket
| pardon for everyone involved and the US has threatened
| sanctions against the ICC if they attempt a prosecution.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Obama did not issue anything binding on future
| administrations, unlike formal pardons. He just expressed his
| intention not to act as the law required.
|
| A good first step would be to stand aside and let ICC
| prosecute, which even actual pardons would not block.
| lazide wrote:
| My guess? In exchange for Osama bin Laden, he agreed to
| turn a blind eye.
| themolecularman wrote:
| > A good first step would be to stand aside and let ICC
| prosecute, which even actual pardons would not block.
|
| Who would they prosecute? Obama or Bush?
|
| It seems like the implication people have when talking
| about this is that the CIA agents or CIA directors should
| be charged.
|
| From my perspective, would they have done any of these
| illegal activities if they hadn't been given the green-
| light from the top?
|
| If Bush/Obama said we will let the ICC prosecute, would any
| CIA agent/director have done it? Probably not.
|
| I'm not disagreeing about prosecution, I'm just wondering
| where the buck stops and where the true responsibility
| lies.
| ncmncm wrote:
| We need no buck. "Following orders" is not an excuse. So,
| everybody up and down the line who knew they were
| involved in illegal activity is guilty of that, and also
| of conspiracy. Many are also guilty of obstruction of
| justice, which is normally punished more harshly than the
| crime covered up.
|
| Obama halted the torture program, but could be prosecuted
| for other crimes involving use of drone strikes on
| civilians, along with underlings who organized or
| performed the strikes.
| sofixa wrote:
| > the US has threatened sanctions against the ICC if they
| attempt a prosecution
|
| It's worse than that, they have sanctioned ICC prosecutors
| and there's a law allowing the US to invade The Hague if a
| war criminal of theirs is under detention or trial there.
|
| It's not even vague, it's blatant hypocrisy and refusal to
| adhere to international treaties and war crimes definitions (
| which the US itself helped shape, but has never applied to
| itself).
| fruityrudy wrote:
| A good way to try out waterboarding is swimming with a face mask.
| It's not for everyone.
| theknocker wrote:
| Every "progressive" who supports the intelligence community
| should be legally required to stand in a mirror and laugh at
| themselves every morning.
| tudorw wrote:
| "The violence of change pales against the violence of maintaining
| the status quo." Unknown.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| What's most appalling to me is that "[the torture program] was
| the CIA's central counterterrorism program at the time". If the
| best thing our intelligence agency can come up with is torture,
| it speaks really poorly to the rest of the work the agency was
| doing. I wonder how many years it will be before we have a
| president with the conscience to just shut it down.
| the_af wrote:
| Reading about all of this I wonder about the lack of oversight
| and accountability, and misleading answers to various
| governmental committees (and to the public, of course). And I
| know the blanket answer is "well, we cannot divulge our secrets,
| it would endanger national security!".
|
| But that's often not true. It's self-evident that making detailed
| records of active intelligence operations public would be self-
| damaging, but lying about torture is not one of those things.
| Saying "well, the president claimed we were supposed to guarantee
| detainees the same standards of treatment as under American law",
| when someone who conducted the rendition program says "that's a
| lie" is not the kind of secret you suppress because it would
| otherwise endanger national security -- it's the kind of secret
| you suppress because you're undemocratic. Same with destroying
| records of torture.
|
| The underlying matter here is: how did the US as a (modern)
| country decide that some things should not be subjected to
| democracy, that some rules cannot be decided or at least known by
| the people, and that this must be done "for their own good"?
|
| "But national security!" is a bullshit answer. No-one is asking
| them to divulge the list of their covert agents _right now_.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I suspect it is more a case of half the country is fine with
| what happened and the other half has some issues with it, but
| not enough to spend political capital on it.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/26/americans-d...
|
| Americans are split on torture.
| the_af wrote:
| Likely. However, my question goes beyond whether torture is
| good or bad, but about whether people think some things
| should not be handled in a democratic, open way and should
| not be subject to serious oversight, and that it's ok to lie
| about them "for the greater good".
|
| If I was a US citizen who agreed with the application of
| torture in some situations -- to be clear, I don't -- even
| _I_ would be wary of the lying. Next time it will be applied
| to a policy I do _not_ agree with, and I will be kept in the
| dark "for my own good".
| MattGaiser wrote:
| You might just be embarrassed about the torture. You agree
| with it, but also want it hidden.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Fascinating content, but interrupted six separate times by a
| "Type your email... Subscribe" text box. I wonder what the
| conversion rate is on that fifth box; who misses it the first
| four times and then decides to sign up?
|
| Back on topic, I do hope that some of this is simply being
| withheld and is not truly lost to history, but it does make one
| wonder: At what point will the digital information inside
| secretive state agencies like the CIA be analyzed by, say, 3rd-
| millenium historians, in the same way that we analyze cave
| paintings? I enjoy reading through some of the declassified
| Apollo mission engineering documents, but I would be shocked if a
| future government was willing to release such shameful material
| even decades after it was no longer of strategic importance and
| the individuals involved were all deceased.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I have heard (though I can't remember the source) that at a
| certain point on the secrecy ladder, digital files are viewed
| as intrinsically insecure so documents are only created and
| handled as hard copies.
|
| Obviously, I have no idea if this is actually true.
| [deleted]
| the_af wrote:
| I googled Gina Haspel, mentioned as a CIA person who
| destroyed records of torture, and her Wikipedia page mentions
| she "does not use social media". I bet she doesn't, and for
| good reason!
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