Black Sites

by hilzoy

From the NYT:

"In a report on Friday, the lead investigator for the Council of Europe gave a bleak description of secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency in Eastern Europe, with information he said was gleaned from anonymous intelligence agents.

Prisoners guarded by silent men in black masks and dark visors were held naked in cramped cells and shackled to walls, according to the report, which was prepared by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator investigating C.I.A. operations for the Council of Europe, a 46-nation rights group.

Ventilation holes in the cells released bursts of hot or freezing air, with temperature used as a form of extreme pressure to wear down prisoners, the investigators found. Prisoners were also subjected to water-boarding, a form of simulated drowning, and relentless blasts of music and sound, from rap to cackling laughter and screams, the report says.

The report, which runs more than 100 pages, says the prisons were operated exclusively by Americans in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2006. It relies heavily on testimony from C.I.A. agents."

TPM has now put the report online. It's pretty grim reading. One section details conditions in the sites (emphases in original):

"Clothes were cut up and torn off; many detainees were then kept naked for several weeks. (...)

Detainees went through months of solitary confinement and extreme sensory deprivation in cramped cells, shackled and handcuffed at all times. (...)

At one point in 2004, eight persons were being kept together at one CIA facility in Europe, but were administered according to a strict regime of isolation. Contact between them through sight or sound was forbidden... and prevented unless it was expressly decided to create limited conditions where they could see or come into contact with one another because it would serve [the CIA's] intelligence-gathering objectives to allow it.

A common feature for many detainees was the four-month isolation regime. During this period of over 120 days, absolutely no human contact was granted with anyone but masked, silent guards. (...)

The air in many cells emanated from a ventilation hole in the ceiling, which was often controlled to produce extremes of temperature: sometimes so hot that one would gasp for breath, sometimes freezing cold.

Many detainees described air conditioning for deliberate discomfort.

Detainees were exposed at times to over-heating in the cell; at other times drafts of freezing breeze.

Detainees never experienced natural light or natural darkness, although most were blindfolded many times so they could see nothing (....)

There was a shackling ring in the wall of the cell, about half a metre up off the floor. Detainees' hands and feet were clamped in handcuffs and leg irons. Bodies were regularly forced into contorted shapes and chained to this ring for long, painful periods. (...)

The sound most commonly heard in cells was a constant, low-level hum of white noise from loudspeakers. Other recollections speak of an external humming noise, like aircraft engines or a generator. The constant noise was punctuated by blasts of loud Western music -- rock music, rap music, and thumping beats, or distorted verses from the Koran, or irritating noises -- thunder, planes taking off, cackling laughter, the screams of women and children. (...)

The combined pressure of applied physical and psychological exertion, combined in some cases with more concentrated pressure periods for the purposes of interrogation, is said to have caused many of those held by the CIA to develop enduring psychiatric and mental problems."

Remember: psychological damage is a feature, not a bug.

But there's another paragraph that I think is also worth quoting:

"The rendition, abduction, and detention of terrorist suspects have always taken place outside the territory of the United States, where such actions would no doubt have been ruled unlawful and unconstitutional. Obviously, these actions are also unacceptable under the laws of European countries, who nonetheless tolerated them or colluded actively in carrying them out. This export of illegal activities overseas is all the more shocking in that it shows fundamental contempt for the countries on whose territories it was decided to commit the relevant acts. The fact that the actions only apply to non-American citizens is just as disturbing: it reflects a kind of 'legal apartheid' and an exaggerated sense of superiority. Once again, the blame does not lie solely with the Americans, but also, above all, with European political leaders who have knowingly acquiesced in this state of affairs."

This is true. Ask yourself why we held ghost detainees overseas. Part of the reason, of course, is that holding them here would have been illegal. But that can't be the whole of it: holding them in Poland and Romania is illegal under Polish and Romanian law. (To be precise: I don't know whether what our agents did was illegal -- the report details some extraordinarily permissive bilateral agreements -- but those Polish and Romanian leaders who authorized the detentions would seem to have acted illegally.) So another part of the answer has to be: we'd rather the Poles and Romanians break their laws than that we break ours.

Part of this might be due to the fact that our legal system is probably in better shape than those of Poland or Romania. It is certainly more confident and has had time to sink deeper roots. For this reason it might be easier to get away with things in Poland or Romania than it is here. In this context, the report notes that "the United States chose, in the case of Poland and Romania, to form special partnerships with countries that were economically vulnerable, emerging from difficult transitional periods in their history, and dependent on American support for their strategic development."

Or, in other words, we chose to pick on weaker countries we could pressure, countries that had no earthly reason to do this other than to gain our favor. Moreover, Poland and Romania are countries that were fairly recently under Communist rule, and the report makes clear that we worked with their military intelligence services, which have resisted civilian control and democratic accountability.

***

Whenever I write a post like this, someone pops up in comments to ask why I am so concerned about the fate of terrorists. In many cases, I don't have to engage with this question: many of the people we have held and tortured are innocent. In the case of the program described in this report, however, I would assume that many, though not all, were terrorists. So it's worth saying explicitly that this is not, for me, just about feeling badly for the people we have detained and abused. Sometimes I feel very badly for them, especially in the case of those who are, as best I can tell, completely innocent; but feeling badly for them is not essential. Because there's another motivation at work, namely: concern for my country, and the desire that it be the best country it can be.

There are some things we, as individuals, should not do to other people. Often, we will also sympathize with those people, and that sympathy might prevent us from, say, torturing or raping them. Sometimes we feel no sympathy, however -- the other person might be a person only a saint could sympathize with, like Jeffrey Dahmer. If our only reason for not torturing or raping people was sympathy, then when faced with such a person, we might have no reason not to do whatever we liked to him or her. But sympathy is not our only reason for not torturing and raping people. There's also self-respect: the thought that whatever someone else might choose to be like, and even if that person has chosen to be Jeffrey Dahmer, there are certain things that I will not choose to do, because I do not want to be the sort of person who does them.

If someone saw me not torturing Jeffrey Dahmer and said: Gosh, there's hilzoy, all undone by the thought that such a horrible person might suffer even a teensy bit of pain, I would think: sorry, but you do not understand why I am doing this at all. And if someone thinks that the reason I do not want my country to abduct children, to disappear people without charges and without trial, to waterboard them, or to keep them in isolation for months on end, is nothing but concern for them, they are making a similar mistake. I feel terrible about what we have done to a lot of people -- the Uighurs, for instance. I do not have a lot of sympathy for Osama bin Laden. But that fact has precisely nothing to do with my thinking that there are certain things I simply do not want my country to do, even to him.

Comments

[publius]

The last part is particularly interesting, and gets at an important point. Nothing a human can do justifies this type of torture (particularly state-sanctioned). The big error that people make is that they make the correctness of torture hinge on the goodness/badness of the person in question.

Liberals often dance around it, but people should probably just call a spade a spade and state forcefully that prohibiting torture has nothing -- nothing, nothing -- to do with the person in question. I'll stipulate infinite evil, and even then, I'll argue torture is immoral.

It's the brightest of lines.

[adam]

Well said. I'll agree with publius that the last bit is the most important -- all of us die eventually, and the only thing we'll have to take with us is what we were in life. A terrorist will always be a terrorist, whether we capture them or thwart them or not. They've already condemned themselves, and I don't have to throw my honor down the hole after them to change that. I don't appreciate my country doing it on my behalf.

[Gary Farber]

Because there's another motivation at work, namely: concern for my country, and the desire that it be the best country it can be.

There are some things we, as individuals, should not do to other people.

I'm nostalgic for the good old days of the Cold War, when we condemned NKVD/KGB methods of torture. When conservatives pointed out the horror.

[crayz]

I would feel sympathy even for Dahmer. No one deserves this treatment. You wouldn't do it to an animal; certainly not to a fellow human being. Least of all someone who is at worst a low-level Al-Queda or Taliban grunt. Someone who probably had as much responsibility for 9/11 as an arbitrary American soldier has for My Lai

What have we become?

[Dan]

well said hilzoy. It is amazing that we're even having this debate here in America.

[aimai]

Well, I've never seen a "liberal dance around it"--I've seen no liberals not take a hard and fast position on torture. some of them say its wrong--full stop. Some of them say it doesn't work and its wrong. Some of them say it doesn't work and its wrong and its immoral and they themselves wouldn't do it. Show me an actual liberal who says its ok to do?

I had the honor of going to hear Lt. commander Charles Swift, who fought the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case, at an ACLU dinner. There's a guy you'd think would take a wishy washy view of things since he's a Navy Defence Lawyer. On the contrary, he said flat out that Guantanamo and torture both simply "created more terrorists" and anything that did that had to be wrong and also counterproductive.

aimai

[g]

Pardon the irrelevance, but you have unclosed italics around "four-month isolation regime" (the closing tag has ".i" instead of "/i") and they're breaking my feed aggregator...

[OCSteve]

When conservatives pointed out the horror.

Those were the days my friend…

[Ugh]

If we can't chain naked bodies into contorted shapes for long, painful periods while blaring the sound of screaming children then the terrorists will have won.

[Dianne]

If we can't chain naked bodies into contorted shapes for long, painful periods while blaring the sound of screaming children then the terrorists will have won.

Yes, I know you're being sarcastic, but...there are worse things than having the terrorists win. Becoming them, for example. Or behaving so badly that they look relatively good by comparison (à la Hitler making Stalin seem like a cuddly ally, Cortez making the locals want Montezuma back, Pol Pot making the Vietnamese invasion seem good to the Cambodians, etc.) That's worse and that's happening. Dammit, how do we stop it?

[Nell]

Can we now stop pretending (or seeming to grant the false assumption) that this torture was about gathering information?

[RepubAnon]

Interestingly, the US Government condemns the Iranians for "legalized kidnapping" when the Iranians do this stuff:

US Says Iran's Response on Missing Former FBI Agent Case Not Credible
By David Gollust
State Department
08 June 2007
...
The State Department late Thursday issued a statement expressing dismay over what it said was Iran's decision to harass and in some cases imprison American citizens on "groundless charges.

[hilzoy]

Hi -- I've fixed the italics, but I can't figure out what I did to prevent any paragraphs from existing in the last bit. If anyone can suggest possible mistakes that might have had this effect, feel free.

Serves me right -- usually I proofread again after I post (for some reason, I can't do it well in html), but this time I just went to bed. Hah! said the html, and pounced.

[hilzoy]

Wait -- there are no paragraphs at all, except for blockquotes. Huh?

[sean nyc/aa]

Well, now we know why GWB was so insistent that Poland was a significant ally in the GWOT leading up to the 2004 election. They were putting their asses on the line, legally, for us.

[hilzoy]

Hah. I fixed it. Manually.

[Alan]

One wonders how much longer till our nation's ideals and spirit is essentially crushed, if it isn't already. I don't think a country like ours, based on ideals like "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" can survive long if it throws away those ideals in the name of expediancy.

[Davebo]

A Lear, a Gulfstream, and a Boeing Business Jet???

Why can't we rendition these folks on commercial carriers and save some money??

[Govt Skeptic]

The fact that you have to explain to your readership why kidnapping and torturing people -- even very guilty people -- is bad...well, that alone speaks volumes.
This country has been corroded by our dingbat president's fake black-and-white moral philosophy, if you can call it that. When you have to explain to people that principle alone is often a good enough reason not to do bad things, when you have to explain that if you whack your moral compass enough times it eventually loses its function, well then we as a nation have little to hope for.
If your readers can't understand simple principle-oriented notions like "torture is always bad!" then how can we expect them to grasp the subtleties of how we've undermined the statehood of every country we seek to exploit? How can you convey the importance of self-determination for states in the middle east, even if the interim effects of that self-determination are sometimes less than desirable?
Dimwits get what they deserve. Are we a nation of dimwits?

[farmgirl]

Skeptic -- I think the (core) readership is on board with the "torture bad" concept. However, there is a significant portion of the public who have been cowed into believing otherwise. Some of these people occasionally drop in, but for me the value of hilzoy's more detailed arguments is they give me the ammo to have more than an "Is not! Is so!" exchage with people who might disagree.

[pedro]

I think Hilzoy's arguments are wonderfully clear, too. I myself cannot, however, argue from a position of "love of country", simply because I suffer from a condition called 'acute cosmopolitanism,' and I am therefore not a patriot. It is not love of country that leads *me* to want the US to treat people fairly: it is love of justice.

[Govt Skeptic]

Farmgirl, I get you. But my point is, people who are stupid enough to not get it in the first place will not be swayed by the most eloquent or logical of arguments. They just think it's okay to torture. They're goal-oriented, we're principle-oriented. They're scared of terror, we're scared of losing our moral bearings.
You can't reform a sociopath. That's why they call them sociopaths.

[Gary Farber]

"But my point is, people who are stupid enough to not get it in the first place will not be swayed by the most eloquent or logical of arguments."

In most cases it's not that people are "stupid"; it's that they have different knowledge sets as to what's been going on, and what historical contexts to place it in, than most of us here do.

In some cases this means they can eventually reached. In other cases not so much. Commonly there are a lot of social/intellectual/emotional filters, often serving to disparage a wide variety of sources of information as legitimate, that interfere with getting to an understanding you and I would agree with. But simple intelligence and ability to process information isn't necessarily lacking, and concluding otherwise is often an error -- an error that happens to make us feel good about ourselves, and superior to others, which is a darn good reason to be suspicious of it.

[OCSteve]

people who are stupid enough to not get it in the first place will not be swayed by the most eloquent or logical of arguments.

Sure they can be. But a lot of it has to do with moving the line that defines torture. Of course torture is bad, the question then becomes what is torture? “Fun with power tools” is obvious. But I originally did not consider isolation or stress positions or temperature extremes to be torture. It is only via hilzoy’s (and Katherine’s) logic and eloquence that I came to change my mind on that. So just consider me to be a reformed sociopath.

[someotherdude]

Remember when defending torture was tantamount to defending pedophilia?

[hilzoy]

Actually, I think -- just guessing -- that a good number of the conservatives I read on blogs do seem to think that liberals are just unhinged by emotion -- everyone except the successful is just a poor victim whom we must drop everything to help, while rich people, the US, etc., are the evil bad ogres who victimize them. If you read someone arguing against torturing actual terrorists -- not innocent people, but actual terrorists --with this in the back of your mind, it's much easier to dismiss the arguments, via the same kind of mental laziness that might lead someone on the left not to take seriously the idea that a conservative arguing against a particular regulation on the toxic waste dumping industry could possibly be arguing in good faith. (Even though surely there are regulations on that industry that might be enacted that are stupid.)

[hermesten]

You might find this interesting. My son was taking a course at the local junior college and attending the state police academy. In his junior college class the professor asked who supported torture. My son and the professor were the ONLY ones in the classroom against torture. In his police academy class the professor asked the same question and roughly 50% of the class was against torture (many of whom were ex-military) --some even commented that they weren't becoming cops to abuse and torture people.

What this tells me is that our society, as a whole, is largely lost, though it can probably be regained with the right kind of leadership. On the other hand, there is still some institutional inertia in favor of our historical principles, though it is being quickly eroded.

[Maya's Granny]

My uncle once told me that the ends didn't justify the means, they included them.

[Jon H]

"Why can't we rendition these folks on commercial carriers and save some money??"

I don't think Travelocity lists flights to the City of Dis.

[Stan LS]

hermesten,

"though it is being quickly eroded"

In other words - the sky is falling.

[Jesurgislac]

Slightly offtopic, but I wondered if you'd seen this? Blackwater are working very, very hard to keep any information about the deaths of the four Blackwater mercenaries killed in Fallujah on March 31 three years ago out of the public domain. Obviously, this is wrong in itself - the families of the dead men have a right to know as much as their employer can tell them about how they died - but the implications are that Blackwater has something to hide - something that they're prepared to go to any amount of trouble to conceal.

[Donaldd]

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is an Illegal act of Conspiracy between George W Bush, John McCain, and Certain Republican party members of the United States Congress to Obstruct Justice by passing Legislation giving them Immunity from prosecution for Illegal and Criminal Acts of War as described in the Supreme Court Ruling in Hamdan Vs Rumsfeld.

[frank Martino]

They do it in Poland because they can't do it in the USof A? Please stop. Do you have ANY idea of what goes on in prisons inside this country? To American citizens? But then they're only black and brown American citizens so who cares.

[Gilda annah]

There is no such thing as feeling "badly" about anything. Do you have an impaired sense of touch?

You feel "bad" about something (emotionally).