06/12/15 – Rupert Stone – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
We go now to our guest today, Rupert Stone, writing at Newsweek.com, Beyond Torture, The New Science of Interrogating Terrorists.
Welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm doing bad things.
Thanks for having me on.
Very happy to have you here.
Great piece of work here, especially for Newsweek.
No offense to your editors.
Beyond Torture, The New Science of Interrogating Terrorists.
First of all, I guess, can we start with there's going to be a new law.
McCain and Feinstein in the Senate, at least, are pushing a new anti-torture bill.
What's with that?
Basically, this new bill is currently working its way through Congress.
I think it's now due for a vote next week, probably.
And it originated, really, with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's so-called torture report that came out in December last year.
And the kind of gruesome revelations of torture in that really prompted a whole new debate of the torture issue.
And one of the recommendations that Senator Feinstein issued after that report came out was for there to be a new law which imposed firmer restrictions on the CIA interrogations, basically, to stop them using these sorts of ferocious interrogation techniques.
So that's really the context of the law.
And it will probably come to a vote next week, so we'll see what happens.
Now, I think people in the audience might be wondering about the date here.
We're halfway through 2015 talking about outlawing torture when I think we all thought torture was already illegal and that Bush was breaking the law when he authorized it in the first place.
But then John McCain passed the Detainee Treatment Act in 2005, and he did compromise with Dick Cheney and make the CIA exempt from it.
But he did restrict the military to the Army Field Manual in that thing, which Bush signed.
And then when Barack Obama became president, he signed an executive order that said something about torture, didn't he?
Or why is it necessary, does John McCain think, to push a new law like this?
OK, well, let me just – I'll start with the executive order.
I mean, the reason that they feel there's a need for congressional legislation in addition to that executive order is because – I mean, executive orders can be rescinded very easily in secret, I mean, basically by the stroke of a president's pen.
So let's say you had a president who believed that there was a need to reinstate the CIA interrogation program, then he could just literally just draw a line through that executive order, and it would certainly make it a lot easier to resuscitate those old methods.
On the subject of wasn't torture always illegal, I mean, yes, basically.
But what they've tried to do both with – excuse me, initially with the Detainee Treatment Act, and now with this is really close off the avenues by which creative lawyers could authorize torture, if you like, and could interpret law so as to legitimize those sorts of torture tactics, if you see what I mean.
But you're absolutely correct that, I mean, there are a bunch of prohibitions on the books against these sorts of brutal methods.
I mean, the Federal Torture Statute being one which implements the UN Convention Against Torture, and then you've got the Geneva Conventions as well, and Common Article 3 of those, even if you don't think the other ones apply, prohibits degrading inhumane treatment.
So there is a lot of stuff.
I do agree with you about that, certainly.
And I guess that really is the point about the Detainee Treatment Act, is Cheney frustrated McCain's efforts to apply that thing to the CIA back in 2005, and that's why he's doing this again ten years later, is to include the CIA in it.
Is that basically it?
That's exactly right, yeah.
I mean, the Detainee Treatment Act doesn't impose the Army Fuel Manual on the CIA, and that's exactly what this bill does.
There are actually other orders and provisions in this bill to really, if you like, really seal the deal.
One of them is it mandates the International Committee of the Red Cross have access to all detention facilities.
So that's not just Department of Defense, which already needs to give the Red Cross access, but the CIA, for any facilities it has, and even contractors, if they're running strange out-of-the-way places, they have to give the ICRC access.
So it's actually, by congressional standards, it's a very pretty solid bill, I'd say.
There is one quite serious loophole in it, which is it doesn't say anything about CIA rendition, or CIA black sites.
I mean, we can come on to that one later, if you like, but that is worth discussing, I think.
Right, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, so rendition and black sites, we'll certainly get back.
I was going to ask, and I know, I'm sorry we're going a little bit off from the focus of the piece here, but does it have support in the House as well?
It's obviously got bipartisan leadership for it in the Senate.
Does it look like it's going to be a thing?
I just haven't been able to keep up with that end of it at all.
What I've heard is that, yes, it does have bipartisan support, and it is expected to pass.
And I think that's partly thanks to Senator McCain, who's a Republican and very senior and respected, and he's managed to get that crucial bipartisan support for it.
So yeah, I think it is expected to pass, but obviously you never know.
Okay, now, so rendition and black sites, I mean, those are two different things.
One is exporting people to be tortured somewhere else, or at least to be detained somewhere else.
And it's extraordinary when they torture them, I guess, the way they put it.
But then the black sites, we know, right, that they've had – they've claimed Somalian terrorists, that when they kidnapped those guys, they held them on a ship at sea outside of the law for quite a while there.
I forget all the particulars of that one.
But then Cy Hirsch and his new piece on the bin Laden raid also had a throwaway line in there, which he refused to elaborate on on this show, unfortunately.
Oh, yeah, and by the way, there's a black site still at Diego Garcia, which we've known there was one there from back in the Bush years.
But so, yeah, in any case, if we take his word for it, and I do, there is still a finding that is authorizing the CIA to do secret kidnappings and detainments, at least at Diego Garcia, and who knows where else?
Yeah, that's a very good point.
Yeah, I noticed that detail in the Hirsch piece.
I mean, that's the first I'd heard of any kind of facility being on Diego Garcia now.
And, you know, actually, I wrote a thing about an interview with Lawrence Wilkerson earlier this year, which I don't know if you saw Vice News, where he said that during the Bush years, he'd heard that the CIA did have a black site on Diego Garcia.
So I absolutely agree.
There are these reports that one did exist there.
I'm just going back for a moment to the question of what the CIA can do now vis-a-vis detention and rendition.
I mean, the executive order, Obama's executive order, one of the curious aspects is it still allows the CIA to detain prisoners.
But it says on a, I think the wording is on a short-term transitory basis.
That's it.
Which, you know, for some of us, life might seem short-term and transitory.
So, you know, it's really a movable feast, whatever that means.
But it does allow them to detain prisoners for however long.
And it doesn't ban rendition at all.
It doesn't impose any restrictions on extraordinary rendition.
It did later a kind of task force, which that order set up did make recommendations about, you know, I think it's getting assurances from whichever country you're sending the prisoners to, that they won't torture them and pull out their fingernails, et cetera.
But, you know, you can still do this stuff legally.
At least there isn't a new restriction on it.
And this legislation now, interestingly, the legislation now doesn't put any kind of restriction on those practices.
All right.
I'm sorry.
Hold it right there, Rupert.
We've got to take this break.
We'll be right back, everybody.
Rupert Stone, he's writing at Newsweek.
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All right, guys.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Rupert Stone.
He wrote this piece at Newsweek called Beyond Torture, The New Science of Interrogating Terrorists.
So we're talking about the new McCain-Feinstein bill to re-outlaw torture and the loopholes in it.
And now, also, you really get into some very interesting stuff in this article here about the, well, a few more things here.
First of all, Appendix M, and that is what binds the military's treatment, or supposedly, in law, binds the military's treatment of their detainees.
And then, of course, this whole report about how to get actual effective interrogations done, which is a whole other set of questions.
But first of all, can you tell us about Appendix M, and perhaps as it relates to Bagram Air Base or anywhere else where you know it might?
Okay, yeah, sure.
So basically, I mean, the manual is, I mean, the whole reason it's played the role it has, the central role in the Detainee Treatment Act and now this law, is because it basically, it does prohibit, I mean, most certainly of the CIA interrogation techniques, you know, the waterboarding, the sleep deprivation for days on end, et cetera, et cetera.
But the interesting thing is that it has this special appendix, which was added onto it in 2006 when the document was revised, which authorizes what's called a special restricted interrogation technique called separation.
And that might sound innocuous, but what that basically involves is 30-day, putting a prisoner in isolation for 30 days or even more, if a commanding officer gives his approval.
It says you have to limit a prisoner to, was it, no less than four hours sleep every 24 hours.
Now, I don't know about you, but I mean, if I have one night of sleep, I have four hours, I feel quite bad the next day, especially two days, four hours sleep.
Now, imagine if you're a, you know, a prisoner who's just been captured, put in enemy captivity and, you know, in a nasty prison cell with a nasty blanket, being interrogated, you know, you're restricted to that amount of sleep over an indefinite period, as the appendix allows.
That is, I think, quite problematic and dangerous psychologically.
So you have the potential for sleep deprivation there too, and sensory deprivation, because the appendix says if you can't separate a prisoner physically in a cell on his own, put him or her in solitary confinement, and then you can apply goggles and muffs or blindfolds to that prisoner if he's outside and there are, you know, there isn't like a physical, there aren't walls separating him from his environment from other people.
So, you know, that immediately conjures up images of Camp X-Ray and the prisoners kneeling down there, you know, the famous photo, and really doesn't have good ramifications.
So, yeah, I mean, prolonged isolation, sleep, sensory deprivation.
I mean, the appendix doesn't rule out stress positions, neither does the manual, which is odd because they were explicitly banned in the previous version.
So these aspects of the document are very problematic, and the bill actually contains a provision ordering a review of the manual to make sure its techniques are not only effective, but legally compliant.
So we might find in future that the appendix is shelved.
I mean, certainly a lot of experienced interrogators and all sorts of human rights groups and even the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture have called for it to be removed.
So we'll see what happens there.
Well, yeah, I mean, that's the great segue into this report here, whether sleep deprivation is a good way to get the truth out of somebody.
And especially, as you mentioned here, with goggles and earmuffs, that means blackout goggles and earmuffs, you know, completely sound-deadening earmuffs.
For sensory deprivation, and obviously combined with sleep deprivation, then you're talking about an attempt basically to drive them crazy, to break their mind.
So how the hell are you supposed to get good intelligence out of somebody like that?
But on the other hand, I mean, I guess it makes sense that they might say, OK, Uncle, Uncle, I'll become a good informant now or whatever, that kind of thing, because they can't stand it anymore, if that's the point maybe.
But it seems just as likely you drive them crazy just as quickly as get them to comply.
And then if you get them to comply, it seems like we're talking about two very different kinds of interrogations here.
One is, tell me about Osama's friendship with Saddam Hussein and I'll stop torturing you because I need talking points to lie the people of my country into war.
And then there's a second kind of interrogation, which is, hey, I really am trying to figure out what's going on here and get some real good intelligence out of you.
And I think when you talk about the report here, the HIG report, the unquestioned premise is we want good intelligence rather than, you know, sometimes we want good intelligence, sometimes we want to torture al-Libi until he says Saddam taught him how to make chemical weapons, you know?
Yeah, that's, I mean, that's absolutely what the sources in the story are saying is the cooperation is very different from compliance.
And, you know, if you coerce or abuse or torture a prisoner, you are just going to get the answers that you want to your questions.
You're not necessarily going to get accurate information where a prisoner who's cooperating is going to, if you like, voluntarily give up information he already has in a more reliable fashion.
And, you know, Colonel Steve Kleinman, who was one of the main sources in the story, I mean, I think we quote him as saying something like, you know, I don't want to force prisoners into telling me what they don't know.
So it's, you know, it's a question of extracting knowledge and truth from prisoners, not forcing them to present lies that, as you imply, might suit a political agenda in some cases like going to war.
I mean, the manual does contain several possible sort of, if you like, coercive or stress-inducing techniques, not just the appendix, but some forms of intimidation or mild humiliation.
But on the other hand, on the plus side, it does contain some techniques that my story suggests are useful.
So a basic ingredient that it recommends in any interrogation is rapport, building rapport.
It says asking prisoners questions should be used, you know, just basic question and answer, offering prisoners incentives like cigarettes or a cup of tea or something, you know, things like this to basically foster cooperation.
And the manual does endorse some of those methods.
So it's not all bad.
Right.
Well, yeah, I mean, those are the famous I don't remember anymore what it's called.
There's some Sam Jackson movie from the 90s where he's the negotiator.
And, of course, everybody knows this is Negotiator 101.
The first thing that you do is make friends with the guy.
Hey, look, man, it's you and me against the world.
What can I do here to help make this thing work out for everybody?
That's obviously the stance that somebody takes.
And then and that's what works.
And in the famous Al-Qaeda cases, too, you mentioned the Zubaydah case where Ali Soufan, the FBI agent, was being nice to him and getting great intel until the CIA took him away for torture.
And they didn't even ask him any questions for months after that.
They just locked him in solitary.
But then, you know, going back to the 90s, there was bin Laden's accountant basically in Sudan.
They offered him medical treatment for his wife.
And he said, screw Osama.
Here's all the paperwork I got.
I mean, that's how you do this.
Come on.
Especially if you're talking about Mujahideen guys.
It's not like any of them are living a good life or whatever.
You could find a way to give them a good incentive.
And everybody knows that's what works.
You don't even need an HIG study to tell you that.
Yeah, I mean, you know, these guys, some of them certainly in Afghanistan and Iraq, have lived in very rough societies where the levels of torture are absolutely eye-watering and really do whatever you think about the CIA, that it's worse.
I mean, really do surpass the CIA's enhanced interrogation program in terms of brutality.
So, you know, they are hardened people.
And they, you know, you are actually going to have a more interesting impact on them if you treat them well because they are used to rough treatment.
And you can really have much more of an effective impact by being generous and non-confrontational with them, apparently.
Yeah.
Well, and of course, you know, we don't want to get too bogged down in just the efficacy of it.
I mean, it's an important point.
But of course, if sometimes being nice to a guy ain't good enough and you really think that maybe if you beat him, you could beat it out of him, sometimes you're just going to have to do without that information and tough.
Because what the hell are we, a bunch of barbarians or is this Western civilization or not?
Yeah, that's absolutely correct, I think.
I mean, you know, the story focused, I suppose, mainly on the practical side of it.
But yeah, I mean, certainly, if you think of an analogy like, yeah, I mean, enslavement or genocide, I mean, these are crimes, international crimes on a par with torture.
I mean, they're absolutely prohibited and can never be used under any circumstances.
It says that explicitly in the UN Convention Against Torture.
So would we commit genocide to acquire a military advantage?
Would we enslave people for a commercial advantage?
No, no one ever suggests that.
So why on earth is torture even part of the public discourse?
Frankly, I mean, that's my view, certainly.
Yeah, well, it is good that people are doing this kind of work and, you know, doing studies and showing, hey, here is what works.
It's rapport building.
And so, you know, we also know that I left out one of the best ones was, I forget his real name now.
His pseudonym was Matthew Alexander.
And I interviewed him on the show, actually.
And he was the guy who got the location on Zarqawi.
And then they dropped a JDAM on Zarqawi's head and made him not Zarqawi anymore, which I think everybody agreed was a good idea to do.
And even me, and I'm against all bombings.
But bomb that guy?
Okay, bomb him.
But the way that Matthew Alexander got the information was that he made friends with the guy.
And, you know, unlike the rest of the military interrogators who were all trying to beat answers out of their captives, he was talking to this guy and tried to, you know, treat him with common decency, right?
Not like he signed up for the other guy's movement or anything.
Just treating him with decency and saying, hey, you know, tell me where we can find Zarqawi.
And he gave him up.
Yeah, absolutely.
He used actually one of the methods in the field manual to great effect, which is, I think, called emotional love, where he basically played on prisoners' love of their families to entice them into cooperating and clearly did that to great effect.
And, I mean, as regards to Zarqawi, I mean, he said that, you know, that rappel-based techniques were far more effective in producing intel that led to that guy.
But also General McChrystal has been on the record saying that torture actually undermined and slowed down the search for Zarqawi.
So, you know, it's a pretty mainstream view now that these methods are counterproductive from a practical perspective.
And, actually, that's a lot coming from McChrystal since he was in charge of Camp Nama there, where people were, in fact, torturing his watch and under his control and jurisdiction at that time.
That's a very good point.
Yeah, I mean, I think people wonder if he's always held the view I just expressed.
He learned that lesson firsthand, actually.
He was the one doing the torturing, and it didn't work out.
So we're glad that he learned one thing from that one.
It wasn't that the search didn't work.
He didn't learn that.
Yeah, sure.
Anyway, all right, hey, listen, great journalism, and I really appreciate your time on the show, Rupert.
Yeah, thanks.
I enjoyed that.
Thanks a lot.
All right, y'all, that's Rupert Stone.
He's written Beyond Torture, The New Science of Interrogating Terrorists.
It's at Newsweek.
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