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Judge Napolitano was the inspiration for this position. He wrote an excellent article in the Daily Wire last week commenting on the apparent collapse of the criminal case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9-11 attacks. The judge wrote:
As pre-trial hearings in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks proceed at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, the government faltered with its own witnesses. Has been. At last week's hearing, government lawyers attempted to demonstrate that statements given by the defendants to CIA and FBI agents were voluntary.
When the government's chief torturer, now a retired psychologist, had difficulty remembering that during a torture session he had threatened one of his victims by offering to cut the victim's young son's throat and that he had denied that threat under oath in previous testimony, mentioned, it became clear to everyone present in the courtroom and to those of us who were following these terrible proceedings that the Government faced a strange and unexpected difficulty in defending the behavior of its oppressors. Had been.
The judge's judicial instincts are excellent. But there is much more to this story. The American public, and much of the world, has been led to believe that torture is an effective interrogation technique. It is not. This is counterproductive.
Hollywood and novelists have played a significant role in my view of popularizing torture as a necessary evil. The TV show, 24, which stars Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, regularly relied on torture to extract information from terrorists. Hell, even Supreme Court Justice Scalia, when he was alive, believed that Jack Bauer had the right to torture:
“Jack Bauer Saved Los Angeles. …They saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Justice Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent's harsh interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuclear bomb, the Supreme Court judge digs a line in the sand.
“Are you going to plead guilty to Jack Bauer?” Judge Scalia challenged his fellow justices. “Say the criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is a jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I do not think so.“So the question really is whether we believe in these absolutes. And should we believe these absolutes.”
Then there's the late Vince Flynn. As you can see from the image posted at the top of this piece, I was friends with Vince – at least until he became famous – and helped him with his first five books. His views on atrocities are his own. I suggested otherwise, but he explained his thinking in this interview with Robert Bidinotto:
flynn: Yes. This is where I sit. It's really simple. If al Qaeda signed the Geneva Conventions, put on uniforms, put their flag in the ground, and said, “Let's meet on the battlefield,” I would say: “Absolutely. Torture—you can't do that. Period.” end of discussion.” But we have an enemy who does not wear uniforms, does not sign the Geneva Conventions, hides behind men, women, and children, and then attacks men, women, and children—civilians.
I think it's a travesty that we as a nation are even having this debate. I believe torture should only be for high-value targets, where we know they are hiding information that can help us eliminate cells, financing, organization, and possible operations.
The problem is that because we are a civilized society, and because we have lost our faith – we have lost our attachment to our Judeo-Christian beliefs – we have gone on this little safari with the PC. We think we should say things so that people think, “He's smart, he's kind, he cares, he has a good heart.” The reality is that if you ask the American people, “When Mitch Rapp starts torturing some bad guy who knows where the nuclear bomb is, are you going to be sitting there in the privacy of your home crying and saying , 'Please stop torturing this guy'? Or are you saying, 'Get him, Mitch! Get information out of him!'”
Vince violated the Gannon Rule. Dick Gannon was my boss at State CT. He was a retired Marine colonel and Vietnam combat vet. He was fond of saying, “If it sounds really good it's probably wrong.” I tried to tell Vince that no matter how emotionally satisfying it is to torture a bad guy for the entertainment of an audience, in the real world it is counter-productive and fails to produce credible intelligence.
Unfortunately, much of the world labors under the false impression promoted by Jack Bauers and Vince Flynns that the CIA is skilled and adept in the art of torture. That's a lie. the opposite is true. The CIA training program for case officers provided no instruction in torture or interrogation. The primary mission of the CIA operations officer is to recruit foreigners to spy for us – that is, to commit treason against their own country. This process is inducement, not coercion. If you have convinced someone to betray your country or your cause it had better not be based on anger at the threat of causing pain or harm to your loved ones. This is a recipe for screwing up your recruiting source.
The CIA operations training course at its primary facility in the United States focuses on identifying and recruiting sources. Interrogating a suspect or sweating for information is not part of that training. That's why the CIA, in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, turned to two contract psychologists – James Mitchell and Bruce Jason – to come up with an interrogation program to use on suspected terrorists. This proved to be a deadly clown show because neither Mitchell nor Jason “had any experience as investigators, any knowledge of al Qaeda, or any science to justify their methods.” He was apparently a die-hard Vince Flynn fan.
I credit people like former FBI agent Ali Soufan for trying to bring some sanity to the CIA interrogation program. Unfortunately, he was ignored, vilified, and became the target of CIA officers eager to discredit him.
I explain most of the backstory in the following video. enjoy.