What Obamas Intel Chief Really Believes About Torture »
Posted By tehranchik 8 months ago in Political NewsUnclassified
Director of National Intelligence
Washington, DC 20511
Apr 16 2009
Dear Colleagues:
Today is a difficult one for those of us who serve the country in its intelligence services. An article on the front page of The New York Times claims that the National Security Agency has been collecting information that violates the privacy and civil liberties of American citizens. The release of documents from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) spells out in detail harsh interrogation techniques used by CIA officers on suspected al Qaida terrorists.
As the leader of the Intelligence Community, I am trying to put these issues into perspective. We cannot undo the events of the past; we must understand them and turn this understanding to advantage as we move into the future.
It is important to remember the context of these past events. All of us remember the horror of 9/11. For months afterwards we did not have a clear understanding of the enemy we were dealing with, and our every effort focused on preventing further attacks that would kill more Americans. It was during these months that the CIA was struggling to obtain critical information from captured al Qaida leaders, and requested permission to use harsher interrogation methods. The OLC memos make clear that senior legal officials judged the harsher methods to be legal, and that senior policymakers authorized their use. High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country. As the OLC memos demonstrate, from 2002 through 2006 when the use of these techniques ended, the leadership of the CIA repeatedly reported their activities both to Execute Branch policymakers and to members of Congress, and received permission to continue to use the techniques.
Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing. As the President has made clear, and as both CIA Director Panetta and I have stated, we will not use those techniques in the future. I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past, but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.
Even in 2009 there are organizations plotting to kill Americans using terror tactics, and although the memories of 9/11 are becoming distant, we in the intelligence services must stop them. One of our most effective tools in discovering groups planning to attack us are their communications, and it is the job of the NSA to intercept them. The NSA does this vital work under legislation that was passed by the Congress. The NSA actions are subject to oversight by my office and by the Justice Department under court-approved safeguards; when the intercepts are conducted against Americans, it is with individual court orders. Under these authorities the officers of the National Security Agency collect large amounts of international telecommunications, and under strict rules review and analyze some of them. These intercepts have played a vital role in many successes we have had in thwarting terrorist attacks since 9/11. On occasion, NSA has made mistakes and intercepted the wrong communications. The numbers of these mistakes are very small in terms of our overall collection efforts, but each one is investigated, Congress and the courts notified, corrective measures taken, and improvements are put in place to prevent reoccurrences.
As a young Navy officer during the Vietnam years, I experienced public scorn for those of us who served in the Armed Forces during an unpopular war. Challenging and debating the wisdom and policies linked to wars and warfighting is important and legitimate; however, disrespect for those who have serve honorably within legal guidelines is not. I remember well the pain of those of us who served our country even when the policies we were carrying out were unpopular or could be second-guessed.
We in the Intelligence Community should not be subjected to similar pain. Let the debate focus on the law and our national security. Let us be thankful that we have public servants who seek to do the difficult work of protecting our country under the explicit assurance that their actions are both necessary and legal.
There will almost certainly be more media articles about the actions of intelligence agencies in the past, and as we do our vital work of protecting the country we will make mistakes that will also be reported. What we must do is make it absolutely clear to the American people that our ethos is to act legally, in as transparent a manner as we can, and in a way that they would be proud of if we could tell them the full story.
It is my job, and the job of our national leaders, to ensure that the work done by the Intelligence Community is appreciated and supported. You can be assured the President knows this and is supporting us. It is your responsibility to continue the difficult, often dangerous and vital work you are doing every day.
Sincerely,
//Original Signed//
Dennis C. Blair
Unclassified
Read Full Story at theplumline.whorunsgov.com »
225 Views Share Story 6 Comments Report
Submitted By:
tehranchik
Well, I'm from and live in the Pacific Northwest. I did live in the middle east during the late 70's and early 80 ...
Who Also Submitted: All »
Other Related Articles: All »
RSS Join the Discussion
+ Add CommentComments So Far: 6 (view all)
-
67%
hyperbola8 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Blair doesn't need to worry too much about the anti-american corruption being rooted out.
Reply
Torture, War and the Imperial Project
With the release of the U.S. Senate's report on the Bush Administration torture program, it is now incontrovertibly clear – and officially established by the highest, most respectable Establishment institutions – that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and a host of other top officials deliberately, willingly, and with malice aforethought, established a system of interrogation using brutal techniques that they knew were against the law. Hence the need for the torture memos that attempted to give retroactive legal cover for atrocities that were already taking place at the orders of the White House and the Pentagon. They were also told repeatedly that these tortures were ineffective at producing useful intelligence.
What's more, it is now undeniable that they began this program long before they had captured even one "high-profile al Qaeda detainee," and that they were using these heinous techniques not in a desperate bid to save the nation from further attacks – which has long been their preening, self-serving claim – but instead to produce spurious data about the non-existent link between Iraq and al Qaeda. In other words, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld ordered their minions to beat and torment captives in order to get them to say something a – anything – that could then be used to "justify" a war of aggression that these grand statesmen had been planning long before the September 11 attacks.
You cannot disentangle the torture program from the war of aggression in Iraq – nor from the illegal wiretapping program, the corrupt war profiteering, and all the other degradations of liberty and law that have been so accelerated in the past eight years. They are all of a piece, part and parcel of a plan to expand and entrench America's "unipolar domination" of world affairs with a thoroughly militarized state led by an unaccountable, authoritarian "Unitary Executive."-
hyperbolaComment removed: Spam
-
100%
djn3nunez38 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
that they were using these heinous techniques not in a desperate bid to save the nation from further attacks – which has long been their preening, self-serving claim – but instead to produce spurious data about the non-existent link between Iraq and al Qaeda.
Reply
Amazing! Next you'll be saying they reverse engineered the communist techniques used on Americans in Korea to solicit false confessions for propaganda purposes.
(Sarcasm off:)
Also the U.S. Senate's report provides a direct link from the top down to both the CIA torture facilities and the prisons, like Abu Grabi (sp) controlled by the Military. The buck stops at Rummy. The soldiers procecuted for following these order swere sacrifical lambs. If they aren't going to procecute the CIA guys for following illegal orders then President Obama may as well grant the soilders a pardon.
-
-
83%
Candida8 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
The usual spin, spin, spin. Saying that 'torture had yielded some “high value information”' is not an endorsement of torture. It may be a simply a statement of fact, and frankly, it's common sense. In the mountain of garbage that torture produces, there are likely to be a few nuggets of gold. Whether those nuggets are ever found among the garbage is a different matter.
Reply
That's not the issue here though. Torture is illegal not because it's not effective, but because it's immoral and makes civilized contact between nations very difficult. It's irrelevant whether it's effective. If effectiveness were the only criterion, then any nation could decide for itself whether it was "effective enough" for its purposes, and what kind and how much torture was the optimal amount. If Americans (and all those who torture) want to be treated decently by others, then they better start treating others decently.-
75%
spkguy8 months ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
"The usual spin, spin, spin."
Reply
No ****, I have question for him...Who ordered the torture tapes destroyed?
Was it the people who could not produce the White house emails?
And as far as this is concerned..
"Saying that 'torture had yielded some “high value information”' is not an endorsement of torture."
I agree with what Philip Zelikow (A former Bush Official) had to say on this issue.
"2. Measuring the value of such methods should be done professionally and morally before turning to lawyers.
A professional analysis would not simply ask: Did they tell us important information? Congress is apparently now preparing to parse the various claims on this score -- and that would be quite valuable.
But the argument that they gave us vital information, which readers can see deployed in the memos just as they were deployed to reassure an uneasy president, is based on a fallacy. The real question is: What is the unique value of these methods?
For this analysis, the administration had the benefit of past U.S. government treatment of high-value detainees in its own history (especially World War II and Vietnam) and substantial, painful lessons from sympathetic foreign governments. By 2005, the Bush administration also had the benefit of what amounted to a double-blind study it had inadvertently conducted, comparing methods that had evolved in Iraq (different Geneva-based rules, different kinds of teams) and the methods the CIA had developed, with both sets being used to against hardened killers."
This point clarifies " The slipper slope" of what he interpreted from the BYBEE memo.
" The underlying absurdity of the administration's position can be summarized this way. Once you get to a substantive compliance analysis for "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" you get the position that the substantive standard is the same as it is in analogous U.S. constitutional law. So the OLC must argue, in effect, that the methods and the conditions of confinement in the CIA program could constitutionally be inflicted on American citizens in a county jail.
In other words, Americans in any town of this country could constitutionally be hung from the ceiling naked, sleep deprived, water-boarded, and all the rest -- if the alleged national security justification was compelling. I did not believe our federal courts could reasonably be expected to agree with such a reading of the Constitution."
http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/21/t...
-
-
TcarosComment removed: Hard Banned
More News
Politics Daily
Gallup: 78 Percent of Americans Identify as Christians, Continuing Decline
Yemeni Airstrike Targets Cleric Linked to Fort Hood Shooting
'Avatar': New Roles for Women in Sci-Fi?
Texas Leads U.S. in Population Growth Since Recession Began
Senate Passes Sweeping Health Care Reform, but Trouble Lies Ahead
Fox News Politics
New U.S. Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Fall to 452,000
House and Senate Have Ways to Go Before Health Insurance Deal is Done
Senate Votes to Raise Debt Ceiling to $12.4 Trillion
Griffith Party Switch Buoys GOP, Leaves Them Looking for More Defectors
White House Christmas Decor Featuring Mao Zedong Comes Under Fire
The Huffington Post
Andy Borowitz: Lieberman Calls Prescription Plan Unnecessary; "I've Been Off My Meds For Years"
Sen. Jeff Merkley: An Imperfect Stride Towards Justice
Mahinda Rajapaksa: We Look Back with Sadness, But We Look Forward with Hope
Steve Clemons: Missing Ted Kennedy: Health Care Reform Package Would Have Been So Different
Mark Hyman, MD: The Diabesity Epidemic Part III: Treating The REAL Causes Instead Of The Symptoms
Add a Comment
Sign In With Your Propeller Account
Please keep your comments relevant to this story.
To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.