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Why the Senate’s CIA Report Was Flawed From the Start
Senator Feinstein hoped to indict the Bush-era interrogation programs with the release of her report today, but all she will do is reignite partisan fighting over terrorism. She claims that the interrogation methods were ineffective, and that the CIA lied to the White House, the National Security Council, and the Justice Department to cover up its failures.
No matter what your view on the merits of interrogation, this report should not change your view because it is fundamentally flawed. Unlike previous investigations into intelligence controversies, such as the 1975 Church Committee or the 1987 Iran-Contra panel, only Democrats carried out the investigation. Republicans were excluded. Bizarrely, Feinstein and her staff refused to interview any of the CIA officials involved in the program. Can you imagine making out a case in a courtroom but refusing to call any witnesses?
I will raise only one case to show why this slant in the report ruins its value. The report baldly states that the interrogations yielded no valuable intelligence that would not have been obtainable otherwise, and that the CIA lied to the White House, the Justice Department, and Congress about its activities. According to several former CIA directors, harsh interrogations and waterboarding of Al Qaeda leaders such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed allowed U.S. analysts to identify Bin Laden’s courier (he would not use electronic communications). Tracking the courier then led us to Bin Laden’s hideout. The Feinstein report alleges that other sources had already provided the name of the courier independently. But the CIA’s rebuttal — signed by Obama’s appointee as CIA Director, John Brennan — makes clear that this information “was insufficient to distinguish him from many other Bin Laden associates until additional information from detainees put it into context and allowed the CIA to better understand his true role and potential in the hunt for Bin Laden.” The CIA is right. While it may have had the courier’s name, it had hundreds if not thousands of possible Al Qaeda agents in its files. Only the interrogations pinpointed his importance.
Al Qaeda is not defeated, and terrorists who wish us harm are not just on the rebound, they are making a comeback. ISIS controls wide swaths of Iraq and Syria, and it is beheading American hostages on video. Our intelligence community has used up the knowledge gained from the interrogations and is demoralized from the lack of political support, which is why the Obama Administration has suffered one intelligence failure after another — Benghazi, the rise of ISIS, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now is not the time to attack our intelligence agents, when we are calling on them to defeat rising threats around us.
For more of my thoughts, see my op-ed in response to the Feinstein report in the New York Daily News.
Published in General
RealClear has an “alternative” opinion from Ruth Marcus, find it here. Please don’t eat beforehand.
Releasing this report is explained by one fact: in about a month, the Senate Democrats will have utterly no power. This is spite. This is a hissy fit. This is a tantrum at their opponents, a smear at the Bush Administration, asserting their own sense of moral superiority despite being rejected by voters. They’ve been evicted, and they’re just slamming the door behind them and cursing at the new owners – because this is the last chance they’ll get.
The rumors are that the reports are being released in anger from Dianne Feinstein, who was upset about being lied to, and retaliation for the CIA spying on the Committee. But that might explain releasing the report suddenly, on a whim of passion. On the contrary, this report has been compiled for several years, without any input from the Republicans on the committee, and was being planned for years. It’s indignation isn’t a “report” that reveals any facts. The “facts” within the report have either been known for years, or are interpretations and arguments within a bitter dispute. Dressing it up as a “committee report” is only a thinly-disguised attempt to steal the authority of a committee, hoping to validate the conclusions of one side by attributing its release to the committee as a whole. No doubt, when a few years have passed and the controversy of its release forgotten, they’ll use this report as an authoritative citation.
Releasing this report, now, has no strategic purpose. It does not argue to right any wrongs; even if you find that you agree that the behavior is wrong, the behavior has been stopped years ago … by the Bush Administration itself.
January cannot come soon enough, to kick these lying bums out of power.
What we have learned from their previous hissy fits is the enemy pays attention and once it knows our techniques, it trains its soldiers how to counter them ie they go in knowing we won’t hurt them….that there are limits to how far we will go. Let the history books represent these Dems honestly and unkindly.
John, Would love to know why you think they released this report at this time.
John, I’m so far only on page 40 of the report (500 pages). I will read the whole thing and carefully before drawing firm conclusions. But my first impression is this: Incomplete, politically motivated, and unfair though it may be (obviously is), there’s quite enough here to say, “It seems inconceivable that even the most fair and impartial investigation in the world would persuade me they did nothing wrong here.”
There’s no “proper context” in which some of this stuff could be put that would make it seem okay. Even throwing out any moral qualms, even assuming all resulted in a net benefit or a huge benefit to national security–forget those questions for a moment–the account of excruciating, mind-bending incompetence alone should make us all sleep a lot less easy at night.
Let me choose the words more carefully. Not the “account of.” The “actual documents that have been reproduced.” I don’t care whether these were one-in-a-thousand. That these were written, in any context, should tell us all that something went seriously wrong here and is probably still going seriously wrong.
I’ll read the whole thing before offering any further comment.
Can you give us a specific example you found that stood out as being beyond the pale? I don’t think I will find the time to read the whole thing, and the early news reports seem rather information light.
I’ve been through the initial Findings of Fact and am having a little trouble, at this point anyway, seeing the horrors which would justify Diane Feinstein saying that we need to “ensure coercive interrogation practices are not used again.” I guess the next time Americans die we can authorize the CIA to force terrorists to play checkers for hours on end. That will certainly produce some great intel.
I don’t have a problem with Feinstein’s decision to release the ES. In a self-governing nation we need to hold government accountable. But I doubt that Feinstein and company will convince anyone that that we should somehow be ashamed of the CIA.
The assertion that no intel was obtained by ‘enhanced’ methods seemed silly on its face and the interrogation of KSM was clearly beneficial. However, I don’t believe every such interrogation was fruitful or warranted. The issue ought to be who gets to decide when such means are applied. I am not comfortable with broad discretion at multiple layers of authority because pointless abuse seems almost inevitable.
I like the idea offered by Alan Dershowitz in which there is a quasi-judicial authority not in the regular chain of command that has to sign off on a ‘torture warrant’– enhanced methods are used only when warranted, literally. http://www.alandershowitz.com/publications/docs/torturewarrants.html
While I am constrained from detailed comments on this mega-sized pack of lies concocted by the [fading minions of the most corrupt and morally bankrupt “political party” in the history of the Republic] Democrats, I will assert that the idea no worthwhile intelligence emerged from the interrogations is puerile nonsense. Everyone who has worked in the counterterrorism field in the last decade with any kind of access knows this. I am sure the bad guys know this, first hand.
I’m not going to read the whole thing. I’m not going to read any of it, actually. I am going to wait for Claire to post her views after she reads it.
There’s a worthwhile distinction we need to remember. There’s a difference between the behavior described within the report, which even we may find appalling or immoral, versus the decision to release this particular report, now, under these circumstances.
I don’t buy the defense that this is merely an attempt to “come clean” about past sins. It’s hard to forget that on the very day this report was released by one committee in Congress, another committee on the other side of Congress was grilling Democrats about its outrageous lying to accomplish its agenda. The idea that the Democrats in Congress were humbly trying to tell a hard truth … flies in the face of the rest of its behavior.
Further, the Democrats have owned the White House, and controlled congressional oversight, for (at least) the last six years. This is a report hurling accusations about the previous administration from more than six years ago. It is purely partisan, not only in its circumstances but also in its substance. If the CIA was immoral and incompetent, waiting until you’re on the way out the door is a cowardly time to broadcast your frustrations about the agency. That’s why it’s inevitable to draw the conclusion that this is just settling scores.
This is a stink-bomb, and I suspect the Democrats will drop a couple more in the next few weeks before they leave.
Good point but the horror described in the report (or I should say, the few bits I got in the media) outweighs the political timing. I don’t expect high morality from either party and it is ok if they keep each other under pressure to do the right thing merely to score political points. Political competition yields results that increase morality, even if the individuals themselves are immoral or amoral.
To be clear, I agree that the events they described – like leaving an inmate naked, only to find him dead from hypothermia the next morning – showed a callous disregard for human life.
My problem is that the very people responsible for addressing these issues …. either by changing the policy or prosecuting the people who failed to follow the restrictions of the policy … were the Democrats themselves. Were they dormant for six years? Or are we to believe that they were just notified of these horrors recently? Why are they only publicizing this now?
I’m reminded of the famous Bill Clinton interview after 9/11 when he claimed (i.e., bragged) that he immediately knew it was Bin-Laden. He said it to make himself sound perceptive and insightful, but after a moment’s reflection, you had to ask him: if you knew this bad guy was out there, why didn’t you do something to stop him when you had the chance?
How many detainees did the CIA behead?
I watched 9/11 unfold on Fox News from the very beginning and had friends in the Pentagon (all OK). I think most Americans are like me…..rather than feign offense, would stand in line for their turn with the bucket of water. I am thankful we can extract information without doing actual physical damage to the prisoners. I will not put Americans at risk of attack so I can do a little moral preening.
It is telling that you call it “moral preening”. Another poster used the phrase “moral niceties” in his title. Is morality now only for snobs or ivy tower intellectuals or people who are out of touch?
And you are making a wild assumption that these interrogations have put us beyond the risk of attack.
What does my “moral preening” comment tell you? It isn’t morality that I saw in her but rather her using a claim of morality to refuel her air of condescension… or worse, spite. And no, I do not assume they “put us beyond the risk of attack.” They prevented attacks but the risk remains and some day will be realized …. but when that day occurs, Feinstein can be content with her own perceived morality.