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In January 2002, the British government gave instructions to its intelligence agencies debriefing or interrogations prisoners captured in Afghanistan, many of whom were being abused or tortured by their US allies. The agencies asked for legal guidance, and the UK Guardian has now published what that guidance was, posting the original document online.
According to the Guardian:
The interrogation policy – details of which are believed to be too sensitive to be publicly released at the government inquiry into the UK’s role in torture and rendition – instructed senior intelligence officers to weigh the importance of the information being sought against the amount of pain they expected a prisoner to suffer. It was operated by the British government for almost a decade….
A couple of quick points, as I won’t have time to delve real far into this today.
1) The UK government’s guidance essentially asks the intelligence agents and interrogators, who specifically are not allowed to use torture or cruel treatment themselves, to assess whether the intel gathered through the torture of their US allies would have any negative effects if exposed. If so, then they are to ask for permission from higher ups to proceed. Presumably, if they believe the means of extracting information won’t ever be found out, they can proceed (though the document notes such intel can’t then be used in court).
This also means that collaboration with torture occurred most likely at higher agency levels, or even, as the document suggests, at the Minister level.
2) This document was not supposed to be revealed, not even to the controversial UK Torture Inquiry headed by Sir Peter Gibson. As the Guardian article makes clear, it is precisely this kind of information, kept secret from investigators looking at torture, that makes the official torture inquiry such a farce. It is also why a number of British human rights and legal groups have threatened to boycott the torture inquiry proceedings. (There’s actually a number of serious problems that also contribute to the threat to boycott, and are listed by the British legal charity Reprieve here.)
It’s been very hard to hold the U.S. and its allies accountable for their war crimes and torture. But such accountability is not impossible, and the torture criminals should consider the workings of the ancient Greek goddess Nemesis.
Going After Rumsfeld
A number of people have contacted me, excited about the recent decision by District judge James Gwin to allow a former U.S. interpreter in Iraq, who was held for months in isolation and tortured at Camp Cropper in Iraq, to sue Donald Rumsfeld for damages, for having approved the torture techniques, if not his actual incarceration.
From the AP story by Nedra Pickler:
Lawyers for the man, who is in his 50s, say he was preparing to return to the US on annual leave when he was detained without justification and that his family knew nothing about his whereabouts or whether he was still alive.
Court papers filed on his behalf say he was repeatedly abused, then released without explanation in August 2006. Two years later, he filed a suit in Washington arguing that Rumsfeld personally approved torturous interrogation techniques on a case-by-case basis and controlled his detention without access to the courts in violation of his constitutional rights.
I certainly wish the contractor luck, but it has been the policy of the U.S. government to do all in its power to spike such cases, and I suppose there will be appeals to higher courts.
Meanwhile, to show that justice may be delayed, and grind exceedingly fine, but that it is not always denied, consider this article, which reports that “Twenty Salvadoran soldiers await trial in Spain for crimes against humanity perpetrated during the Salvadoran Civil War.” The Spanish courts under the principle of “universal jurisdiction” have threatened prosecution of Rumsfeld and others for torture, and the current criminal investigation by John Durham appears to be meant, in part at least, to stave off such prosecution by demonstrating the U.S. intends to prosecute war criminals. But that claim is certainly insufficient, even if the killers of Al Jamadi and Gul are indicted.
The struggle against torture is intimately tied to the struggle for democratic rights at home and around the world. As such, all supporters of civil liberties must make the fight for accountability their own.
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In Philip Zimbardo’s book, “The Lucifer Effect, How good people turn evil” which details a study of how badly people will misbehave when permitted to do so, Philip concluded that the only significant deterrent that keeps most people within resonable bounds is the threat of the consequences they might face.
Rumsfeld et al, and those that come after him need to know that there will be consequences otherwise this behavior will continue.
Philip also has a talk on TED.com see here
I think you have overstated Zimbardo’s conclusion. I plan to publish something more comprehensive on Zimbardo’s thesis re why there was torture at some point in the near future. Zimbardo’s own role as President of the APA right after 9/11, just at the time the APA was insinuating itself in a major way in helping braintrust the war on terror, and was supporting the idea of psychologists consulting the interrogators, even as they were loosening ethical standards of the organization vis-a-vis ethical conflicts with the government and other “authorities”, has never been explained.
Neither was Zimbardo’s championing of the career of Col. Larry James, chief psychologist at Gitmo
Haven’t read the Guardian article yet; not clear from your post (unless I blew past it) how this information came to be revealed at this time. Did someone leak it to The Guardian?
From the post:
Thanks, but really no surprises.
Basically don’t get caught.
Same rules the banks use.
Same rules dictators and war criminals use.
Same rules the royalty uses.
We, and the UK, and nay other country that did this, have become monsters. There’s no shred of decency or humanity.
Of course someone leaked it. It was secret. How did they get it? How does the press ever get such material. I suppose they could have found it lying on the street, or mysteriously unprotected online.
The article itself only says the document was “seen by the Guardian”. The “why now” I believe has to do with the political fight over the torture inquiry and how deep it will go, or how legitimate. You can follow my link on that issue in the article.
Jeff, I’ll be interested in your expose of Zimbardo. I have no vested interest but did find some of his revelations surprising. Prior to reading his work I would never have guessed how thoroughly the heart of darkness lives in all of us.
My only point in reference to Zimbardo’s work was man can be drawn to the dark side. Has Zimbardo been, I know not.
In his TED presentation he finishes with a few paragraphs that seem valuable, “So you need a paradigm shift in all of these areas. The shift is away from the medical model that focuses only on the individual. The shift is toward a public health model that recognizes situational and systemic vectors of disease. Bullying is a disease. Prejudice is a disease. Violence is a disease. And since the Inquisition, we’ve been dealing with problems at the individual level. And you know what? It doesn’t work. Alexander Solzhenitsyn says the line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. That means that line is not out there. That’s a decision that you have to make. That’s a personal thing.
So I want to end very quickly on a positive note: heroism as the antidote to evil. By promoting the heroic imagination, especially in our kids, in our educational system. We want kids to think, I’m the hero in waiting, waiting for the right situation to come along, and I will act heroically. My whole life is now going to focus away from evil that I’ve been in since I was a kid, to understanding heroes.
And now their idea of heroism is, it’s ordinary people who do heroic deeds. It’s the counterpoint to Hannah Arendt’s Banality of Evil. Our traditional societal heroes are wrong, because they are the exceptions. They organize their whole life around this. That’s why we know their names. And our kids’ heroes are also role models for them, because they have supernatural talents. We want our kids to realize most heroes are everyday people, and the heroic act is unusual. This is Joe Darby. He was the one that stopped those abuses you saw, because when he saw those images, he turned them over to a senior investigating officer. He was a low-level private and that stopped it. Was he a hero? No. They had to put him in hiding, because people wanted to kill him, and then his mother and his wife. For three years they were in hiding.
This is the woman who stopped the Stanford Prison Study. When I said it got out of control, I was the prison superintendent. I didn’t know it was out of control. I was totally indifferent. She came down, saw that madhouse and said, “You know what, it’s terrible what you’re doing to those boys. They’re not prisoners, they’re not guards, they’re boys, and you are responsible.” And I ended the study the next day. The good news is I married her the next year. (Laughter) (Applause) I just came to my senses, obviously.
So situations have the power to do, through — but the point is, this is the same situation that can inflame the hostile imagination in some of us, that makes us perpetrators of evil, can inspire the heroic imagination in others. It’s the same situation. And you’re on one side or the other. Most people are guilty of the evil of inaction, because your mother said, “Don’t get involved, mind your own business.” And you have to say, “Mama, humanity is my business.”
So the psychology of heroism is — we’re going to end in a moment — how do we encourage children in new hero courses, that I’m working with Matt Langdon -he has a hero workshop — to develop this heroic imagination, this self-labeling, “I am a hero in waiting,” and teach them skills. To be a hero you have to learn to be a deviant, because you’re always going against the conformity of the group. Heroes are ordinary people whose social actions are extraordinary. Who act.
The key to heroism is two things. A: You’ve got to act when other people are passive. B: You have to act socio-centrically, not egocentrically. And I want to end with the story that some of you know, about Wesley Autrey, New York subway hero. 50-year-old African-American construction worker. He’s standing on a subway in New York; a white guy falls on the tracks. The subway train is coming. There’s 75 people there. You know what? They freeze. He’s got a reason not to get involved. He’s black, the guy’s white, and he’s got two little kids. Instead, he gives his kids to a stranger, jumps on the tracks, puts the guy between the tracks, lays on him, the subway goes over him. Wesley and the guy: 20 and a half inches height. The train clearance is 21 inches. A half an inch would have taken his head off. And he said “I did what anyone could do,” no big deal to jump on the tracks.
And the moral imperative is “I did what everyone should do.” And so one day, you will be in a new situation. Take path one, you’re going to be a perpetrator of evil. Evil, meaning you’re going to be Arthur Andersen. You’re going to cheat, or you’re going to allow bullying. Path two: you become guilty of the evil of passive inaction. Path three: you become a hero. The point is, are we ready to take the path to celebrating ordinary heroes, waiting for the right situation to come along, to put heroic imagination into action? Because it may only happen once in your life, and when you pass it by you’ll always know, I could have been a hero and I let it pass me by. So the point is thinking it and then doing it.
So I want to thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let’s oppose the power of evil systems at home and abroad, and let’s focus on the positive. Advocate for respect of personal dignity, for justice and peace, which sadly our administration has not been doing. Thanks so much. (Applause)”
If he has strayed, he is still worthy of recognistion for exposing these truths and maybe making the world a bit better by doing so.
Thank you for this, Jeff.
This proves that the United States still sets the world standards for human rights. U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!
From here in the Sonoran Desert, we, the Native Americans and Chicanos, have come to see Jimmy Carter, as part and parcel to our “gold standard” and to include FDR, Truman, and Lyndon Johnson.
Now, much can be said when assessing Carter’s Era, but what can not be demonized is his formal institution of Human Rights into our public body. Add in the Geneva Conventions, and Obama, comes up far short. Subsequently, Obama will never make it into our “gold standard.” Moreover, torture, rendition, and Gitmo, would’ve been a no-no, and prosecuted accordingly.
BTW, Jeff, Thanks.
Jaango
Thank you for your response, the snark notwithstanding.
Craig Murray’s response to this revelation:
Well, that’s the million dollar question, no one knows.
Also, According to Andy Worthington, the NGO’s have since withdrawn.
Link
I now see that I should have checked the top of the blog first!
Bingo!