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The Obama administration is creating a new system for conducting interrogation of terrorism suspects. It’s supposed to be a way to look forward, and avoid mistakes of the past, as The World’s Matthew Bell reports.
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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp, this is The World. Previously classified details of the CI-’s treatment of terrorism suspects were made public this afternoon. They are not pretty. One interrogator apparently told a suspect that, if any attacks happened in the U-S, quote, “We’re going to kill your children.” Another interrogator allegedly tried to convince a suspect that his mother would be sexually assaulted in front of him. We’ll have more on the implications of the report in a moment. First, The World’s Matthew Bell tells us about a related announcement from the Obama administration, on how it plans to revamp the system of interrogating detainees.
MATTHEW BELL: The White House says President Obama will create a new multi-agency unit for interrogating so-called high value terrorism suspects. The unit will be based at FBI headquarters in Washington, led by an FBI official, and it will include US intelligence officials. The team will be overseen by the White House. It will also follow the rules for interrogations laid out in the US Army Field Manual. Those rules prohibit torture, along with some of the harsh interrogation techniques used in the past, such as water boarding. White House spokesman, Bill Burton, made the announcement today.
BILL BURTON: The President’s view is that intelligence gathering is best left to the intelligence community, and this is a way that the intelligence community can best operate, especially in these high volume instances.
MATTHEW BELL: Former CIA official, Robert Baer, says the Obama administration has been slow to end bad intelligence practices from the Bush era. But he says this is a step in the right direction, because it would take the main responsibility for interrogations and give it to the FBI.
ROBERT BAER: You can count on FBI agents going into an interrogation, and following the rule of law. That’s what they do, that’s what they get hired for. There would also be closer supervision, direct supervision from the department of justice. So, any tendency to resort to torture, were morel likely not, that not to happen.
MATTHEW BELL: The White House said the new interrogation’s unit does not mean that the CIA is being cut out of the interrogations process. But Baer, who served in the CIA for 21 years, says the agency has no business being involved in the questioning of suspects.
ROBERT BAER: It’s not what the CIA does, is interrogations, police forces do that, foreign intelligence services do that. The CIA runs what we call Clandestine Sources, informants overseas, and that’s its core business, and that’s what it should’ve been doing all along. When you the CIA into some sort of pera-military organization that interrogates prisoners of war. So it was just a dumb idea in the first place.
MATTHEW BELL: According to former vice president Dick Cheney, however, the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program disrupted terrorist plots and saved American lives. President Obama has said he would rather look forward than go back and examine whether or not harsh interrogation techniques during the Bush years amounted to torture. But that might be unavoidable, as new details of alleged CIA abuses are coming out. Today, the justice department announcement the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into those allegations. Political science professor, Michael Desch, at the University of Notre Dame says it’s understandable why the Obama administration would prefer to look forward, but Desch says, these issues should not be swept under the rug.
MICHAEL DESCH: Without making a version of the Nuremberg defense, you know it does seem to me that lower level people that were following orders, should not be the primary focus in our assessment to these abuses. I would focus at a much higher level, or at least prefer that the focus be there.
MATTHEW BELL: And when you say, higher level, what are you talking about?
MICHAEL DESCH: I’m, you know, talking about senior policy makers at the department of justice, and in the white house.
MATTHEW BELL: CIA director, Leon Panetta, today sent an email message to agency personnel to help relieve concerns they might have. Panetta said the latest allegations of CIA abuses are part of an old story, and that he intends to quote, “Stand up for those officers who did what their country asked and who followed the legal guidance they were given.” Panetta said “That is the president’s position, too.” For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.
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