Dirty Hands, Clean Conscience? The CIA Inspector General's Investigation of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” in the War on Terror and the Torture Debate

Abstract

The 'War on Terror' has generated fierce debate on torture as a means of thwarting terrorist threats. The argument is polarized between those who take a utilitarian position and those who seek to uphold the absolute prohibition on torture. Within the utilitarian camp, there are those who argue that torture, while immoral, should be legalized for use in the fight against terrorism, so that it can be better controlled and regulated. This article will provide new insights through its analysis of the CIA Inspector General's 2004 Special Review of Counterterrorism, Detention and Interrogation Activities, declassified in 2009. This offers important evidence that counters the key assumptions of contemporary torture apologists. Specifically, the Inspector General's findings reinforce the argument that torture is not effective, that efforts to legalize its use under controlled conditions are futile, and that even where torture is permitted by higher authorities, recriminations against the perpetrators are still likely to ensue. Furthermore, torture tends not to be aimed at thwarting imminent threats. Its use by the CIA in the 'War on Terror' is no exception. In any case it has yielded little evidence that could not have been obtained through legitimate means.

Conducting effective research into state complicity in human rights abuses

“…Like many of the techniques used, as the Senate report concludes, these practices rarely had anything to do with securing credible intelligence in the fight against terrorism. Instead, they are intended to degrade, humiliate and dehumanise, irrespective of whether or not the victim has any credible connection to Al Qaida or affiliated terrorist groups (Bellamy, 2006;Blakeley, 2007Blakeley, , 2011MacMaster, 2004). The Senate report also corroborates conclusions that human rights investigators, litigators, and academics working on rendition had long ago reached: very few of those caught up in the rendition programme had anything to do with international terrorism.…”

Drones, state terrorism and international law

“…As I have argued elsewhere, there has been relatively little scholarship on the use of state terrorism by liberal democratic states (Blakeley 2007(Blakeley , 2009a(Blakeley , 2008. The academic and policy worlds are both fixated on the threat from terrorism to Western states, such that the complicity of state terrorism tends to be side-lined (George 1991;Herman and O'Sullivan 1989;Raphael 2009a, 49-65;Miller and Mills 2009, 414-37).…”

“…processes of neoliberalisation, tracing its historical use as part of European and then American imperial and neo-imperial projects, particularly aimed at securing unfettered access to key markets, as well as core assets such as oil. While the post-Cold War preference has been to achieve these ends through consensual means, where significant obstacles arise in the form of political dissent and resistance, the US tends to resort to coercion (Blakeley 2009b). In a similar vein, Doug Stokes and Sam Raphael have explored the use of state terrorism in oilneoliberalisation process and insulating local elites from dissent, thereby stabilising the production and flow of oil that underpins US hegemony (Stokes and Raphael 2010).…”

Militarising the Mind: Assessing the Weapons of the Ultimate Battlefield

“…For instance, in the design and implementation of post-9/11 EITs, the CIA compelled behavioural scientists to find psychological weaknesses or phobias specific to each prisoner which could be exploited (Bloche and Marks 2005). Some prisoners were made to listen to unfamiliar and culturally distressing music, while others were made to observe the mishandling of the Quranconsidered sacrilege by devout Muslims (Blakeley 2011).…”