Philip Mudd: Sitting Across from KSM Was Useful So Waterboarding Him 183 Times Was Too

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Philip Mudd — who was a top CIA analytical official until 2005 and then became a Deputy Director of FBI — has written a defense of torture in anticipation of the release of the Senate Torture Report.

The argument is actually fairly crafty. He acknowledges he probably will “question [the Report’s] merits” once it comes out.

I don’t know what’s in the report, and I wasn’t approached during its preparation. I can only guess that I would be among those who question its merits once it enters the public domain.

Given that he effectively admitted to Steven Colbert back in September, above, he was responsible for inserting the tortured claim from Ibn Sheikh al-Libi that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda, and given that he left government after being denied a promotion because his analysts pushed for more torture [correction from Nada Bakos: the claim his analysts pushed for more torture floated when he retired is not accurate], what he likely means is that the Report is going to show very damning evidence about his actions.

But then Mudd appears to say nice things about democracy — as he did with Colbert.

This judgment, though, isn’t particularly relevant. In our system of checks and balances, there will often be times when overseers and officials from executive branch agencies don’t agree, and both parties have a right to speak on a matter that is of such interest to the public. We’re in a finger-pointing Beltway battle between two entities nobody much trusts. Let the people sort it out, after they see what both sides say; let the public decide where the pendulum rests.

There are key points that might get lost in this ugly rumble. Primary among them is the quality of the Senate report, which the CIA evidently argues is profoundly flawed and therefore misleading. This may well be true, but it’s not clear it should stand in the way of the report’s release. The agency has its perspective; the overseers have theirs.

[snip]

Time the release of the Senate report to coincide with the release of a CIA rebuttal. Give both sides their say, and then let the public weigh in. [my emphasis]

But in fact, Mudd’s defense of democracy — let the people sort it out! — is instead an appeal for a relativism in which there is no truth, only competing truths. Mudd suggests that since both sides get to have their say, we’ll come to an adequate outcome.

Of course, Mudd is full of shit on this point. FIrst, because Mudd, a torture defender, has for years been permitted by CIA to go on TV and write Daily Beast columns. He and other torturers have had opportunity to give uncontested rebuttals for years, even with the help of Hollywood. CIA’s torture critics, however, have been and even still are getting ominous warnings not to talk to the press. We’ve had 5 years in which only the torture fans get to defend torture, and that’s what Mudd considers a fair fight.

But also because while John Brennan’s CIA may argue the report is flawed, whoever drafted the Panetta Report actually agreed with the Senate Report. Let’s have that report as CIA’s rebuttal, what say you, Mudd?

The “CIA” doesn’t think the report was flawed; the CIA’s institutional defenders do.

Then, couched in another apparent nod to democracy, Mudd suggests that torture was useful.

Do Americans, and their representatives in lawmaking bodies, want their security services to interrogate prisoners using these tactics? Do they believe these tactics represent American values?

If the answer is “no,” the question of whether the tactics are successful becomes moot. Let’s assume, for the moment, that we all accepted as fact that the tactics were hugely successful in eliciting valuable intelligence. Would this then change the argument? I hope not: If you want to judge that these programs aren’t appropriate for a democratic society, that judgment shouldn’t come with a sliding scale. So why waste time on the question of the program’s utility? Why pretend that the answer would sway those who believe America should never again return to the tactics the CIA used?

As an intelligence officer who was at the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center during the early 2000s, and was once its deputy director, my views of this debate are not complex, and they won’t be changed by this report. The al Qaeda prisoners we held at CIA facilities helped us understand the adversary. A lot? A little? Somewhere in between? Outside observers can debate it, but it’s hard to argue that sitting across from the most senior leaders of your adversary, over a long period of time, isn’t helpful to understanding how they think and act. It is.

This judgment, though, is as irrelevant today as it will be the day this Senate report appears in public.

One of America’s top analysts lays out the defense for torture efficacy this way:

“Sitting across from the most senior leaders of your adversary [is] helpful to understanding how they think and act.”

Therefore,

Torture is useful.

This is what CIA considers crack analysis!!!! It’s useful to sit down with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and therefore it was useful to waterboard him 183 times!!!

Apparently one of CIA’s former top analysts doesn’t understand that one can sit down with someone — the FBi had a pretty good track record at doing this — without engaging in medieval torture first. This former top analyst feigns not understanding that “sitting across from” someone is different from “pretending you’re drowning” someone over and over and over and over.

Maybe instead of releasing the report we should just let CIA’s torturers continue to expose just how stupid they really are (or pretend to be). Because while Mudd’s pre-rebuttal was meant to sound all democratic and whatnot, when you look closely it just exposes the stupidity of those who defend torture.

Update: I’ve changed the title of this to match exactly how Mudd characterized the sitting with KSM.

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23 replies
  1. der says:

    – “we should just let CIA’s torturers continue to expose just how stupid they really are (or pretend to be).”

    Mudd and his CIA supporters would disagree with who’re the stupid ones. Us or Them:

    – “They retrieve thoughts that are consistent with their previous beliefs,” says Taber, “and that will lead them to build an argument and challenge what they’re hearing.”

    In other words, when we think we’re reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing. Or to use an analogy offered by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt: We may think we’re being scientists, but we’re actually being lawyers (PDF). Our “reasoning” is a means to a predetermined end—winning our “case”—and is shot through with biases. They include “confirmation bias,” in which we give greater heed to evidence and arguments that bolster our beliefs, and “disconfirmation bias,” in which we expend disproportionate energy trying to debunk or refute views and arguments that we find uncongenial.
    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney

    • emptywheel says:

      I get confirmation bias.

      But noting that a smart man conflates sitting across from with torture is not confirmation bias. It’s exposing the crucial flaw in his logic, what we paid him to do for decades.

    • What Constitution? says:

      Confirmation bias isn’t quite as useful an argumentative tool where there is a rule in place. Mudd wants to talk about whether torture helped him understand his enemy and says that since being in the presence of his enemy might do that, torture might, too. ‘Cept there are rules here: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.” That’s a rule, the consensus of the civilized world as reflected in the International Convention Against Torture, which was adopted by the US Senate at the urging of President Ronald Reagan and is binding law in this country under our Constitution. This discussion isn’t about whether it was “convenient” for Mudd to engage in torture, as if “convenience” was a justification. I’m presuming that “no exceptional circumstances” also means “gee, it was convenient and/or fun” wouldn’t cut it, either. What’s Mudd’s understanding?

  2. orionATL says:

    a cia torturer and torture defender,

    named phillip mudd.

    charles dickens would have a mordat laugh at this one.

  3. orionATL says:

    why do all these men (mudd, eatinger) who are cia torturers and torture defenders look like evangelical christians, even mormons – carefully shaved, with short, carefully cut, precisely combed, slightly greasy-looking hair and handsome, undisputably waspish faces?

    does the cia clone these guys in a factory somewhere in thailand?

  4. der says:

    David Brooks may give some clue as to his tribes, the war hawks (Mudds), mindset back in those days 11 years ago:

    – “But those who actually have to lead and protect, and actually have to build one step on another, have to bring some questions to a close. Bush gave Saddam time to disarm. Saddam did not. Hence, the issue of whether to disarm him forcibly is settled. The French and the Germans and the domestic critics may keep debating, which is their luxury, but the people who actually make the decisions have moved on to more practical concerns.”
    http://gregmitchellwriter.blogspot.com/2013/03/ten-years-ago-david-brooks-iraq-war-hawk.html

    Bush, on meeting Putin could get a sense of his soul. Mudd when sitting across from KSM could possibly say the same. Though when KSM didn’t know his own soul it seems to have made sense to Mudd to water board him forcibly until he would confirm Mudd’s impressions.

  5. ess emm says:

    1. Mudd says we dont face the al Qaeda group today, we face its remnant the revolution…the revolution they inspired lives on. I suppose then that the AUMF isnt in effect anymore.

    2. After Mudd dumps on teevee Stephen says I want to point out to you you’re not on Broadway right now. The serious look that Mudd gives Colbert is Exhibit A in proving that Mudd is a psychopath.

    3. Later Mudd acts like the US public might have at some time been for torture, but its only after Mudd tortured that we had a “debate” and only now its not alright.

    What a raving psychopath. I can imagine Mudd chewing the carpet in his office.

  6. ess emm says:

    BTW, Stephen will never sit closer to evil then he was in this interview. An Evil that addresses people as Dude. A humorless, fast-talking, mass kidnapper. An absolutely convinced of his world-view sociopath.

    My skin is still crawling.

  7. Jeff Kaye says:

    Uh, a “tell,” Mr. Mudd, when Colbert asked you if we renditioned any CIA prisoners to Syria. You couldn’t quite remember?? You “think so”?

    OK to be on a tyrant’s side then, eh?

    Who can believe the CIA and their spokespeople when they are such inveterate liars?

  8. Stephen says:

    “He and other torturers have had opportunity to give uncontested rebuttals for years, even with the help of Hollywood.”

    I take it that the author of this article has NOT seen Zero Dark Thirty–otherwise they would have realised that in that movie torture is shown NOT to get the results desired by the torturers.

    • jasmine311 says:

      “I take it that the author of this article has NOT seen Zero Dark Thirty–otherwise they would have realised that in that movie torture is shown NOT to get the results desired by the torturers.”

      Really? Well it seems to me that portraying a CIA torturer as a glamourous heroine is a monumental effort to rebut the ugly and revolting truth about US torture.

    • Anonsters says:

      Alas, it does. They get the tip on the name, Abu Ahmed, from the guy they spend all their time torturing, and from that name they eventually get his cell phone number, and from that cell phone number they eventually track him in Pakistan, and from tracking him they find the bin Laden compound. So finding bin Laden is traced directly from the tortured guy. And although it’s true that they get the name by deceiving him, rather than during a torture session, the point is that the guy is so exhausted (from sleep deprivation, in combination with waterboarding and bug-boxing) that they can trip him up by lying to him.

      • Stephen says:

        Anonsters wrote: “…although it’s true that they get the name by deceiving him, rather than during a torture session, the point is that the guy is so exhausted (from sleep deprivation, in combination with waterboarding and bug-boxing) that they can trip him up by lying to him.”

        That’s a rather desperate argument to make. Had the makers of Zero Dark Thirty wanted to show that torture works they would have done so in a more forthright fashion.

        Moreover, as far as I can now recall (it’s been a while since I’ve seen the film) the torture sequences ended early on in the movie. What followed afterwards (IIRC) was a lengthy interlude where they are still searching for Osama bin Laden until they last did so, so your statement that the the finding of ObL in the movie could be “traced directly from the tortured guy” seems like rather a stretch”.

        BTW, I would also note that the filmmakers had no qualms about depicting the US SEAL team which conducted the raid on the Bin Laden compound killing people in a cold-blooded mob-hit-style fashion, including women who (presumably) had no association with terrorism themselves other than being related by blood or marriage to Osama bin Laden. Doing so did not exactly depict the SEALs (or the US) in a very favourable light. (In fact it made the sequence difficult and very painful to watch, at least for me.)

        • P J Evans says:

          Remember, they were really really busy telling us that they got useful information for finding bin Laden from all their ‘enhanced interrogation’, and they’re still trying to convince us it works. That’s the point of having Mudd go on TV and lie.

        • Anonsters says:

          No, it’s not a stretch, because everything ties back to the guy they tortured. It was his exhaustion from the various torture techniques that resulted in him giving them a name, because, according to the movie, he couldn’t think clearly, and they had the advantage of having him totally isolated and worn down.

          The interlude in time between getting the name—near the beginning—and their finding of bin Laden—near the end—resulted from their misidentifying a dead body as the body of the named person, Abu Ahmed, rather than Abu Ahmed’s brother, who was the one who died. When they realized Abu Ahmed himself was still alive, they began tracking him through his cell phone. And that’s how they found bin Laden’s compound.

          As for the SEAL-team raid, I had no problem with that whatsoever. That’s exactly how I expect it to work. They didn’t want to shoot and kill women and children. In fact, the ones they could quickly identify as non-threats they rounded up and guarded. The women they killed, and the guy on the stairwell who seemed defenseless, were all potential threats. I’m not sure what we expect SOF to do in such a situation other than protect themselves and try their best not to kill people who needn’t be killed. In fact, that it bothered the SEAL guy who shot one of the women comes out in the little scene where he stops and talks to the team leader. It’s kind of jokey and unserious, but that typifies their black humor in general—it’s a coping mechanism, in other words.

          Yes, if the makers of the movie wanted to cheerlead for torture, they could’ve done so in a blatant way. I suspect the makers of the movie rather decided just to make a movie based on what they had been told by government sources (advertently or not). It’s the people inside the government who fed the information to the makers of the movie who, to me, are at fault for how torture is, indeed, depicted as successful.

          Not least because we knew about Abu Ahmed from other sources, well before we learned about him from torture. But that’s never brought out in the movie.

  9. Valley girl says:

    In the Daily Beast piece Mudd says:

    ~~For much of the American public, this seems like old news: The CIA’s “black site” prisons and enhanced interrogation techniques have been shut down for years, and it is hard to imagine America’s security services ever returning to these types of programs. ~~

    Eh wot?

    Is there any evidence to support any of these statements? If so, I’d like to know.

  10. Bill says:

    Popularism is not democracy. It’s amazing how many of our government officials fail to grasp that basic fact. Intrinsic to democracy is the rule of law – the concept that even our most senior leaders are subject to the law.

  11. klynn says:

    His used, “Therefore?”

    Let’s see…consequently…as a result…for that reason…

    Just not getting his parallel, his cause-and-effect, his relationship of the clauses he is linking.

    Let me see… I’ll paraphrase.

    “Sitting across from the most senior leaders of your adversary [is] helpful to understanding how they think and act.”

    As a result,

    Waterboarding, a form of torture, more specifically a type of water torture, in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning. Waterboarding can cause extreme pain, dry drowning, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, lasting psychological damage, and death. Adverse physical consequences can manifest themselves months after the event, while psychological effects can last for years, which is useful. Useful to understanding how your adversary thinks and acts.

  12. chronicle says:

    Years and years of torture, debate of it’s relevancy and legality, whether or not the CIA committed war crimes, reports, rebuttal reports, referrals from both CIA and the Senate to DOJ for possible crimes, …and on and on and on.

    Meanwhile, the victims are still retching in continuing physical pain, nightmares and psychological damage, while others are still on the receiving end of USG torture.

    The mere fact that torture at the hands of the USG has become a source of daily world wide discussion, says volumes of what we have become as a nation. At one time in my life…this would have been unfathomable. Mudd is a certifiable psychopath. And so are all the rest of the sub-human filth that perpetrated torture..and continue to perpetrate torture..in MY FUCKING NAME. I would put a bullet through your contemptible skull if I could.

  13. GKJames says:

    “But in fact, Mudd’s defense of democracy — let the people sort it out! — is instead an appeal for a relativism in which there is no truth, only competing truths. Mudd suggests that since both sides get to have their say, we’ll come to an adequate outcome.”

    Mudd’s argument is also transparently disingenuousness. The public’s view — whatever it is, though I suspect that it’s an even split — is an opinion that, while conducive to political kabuki, is substantively meaningless. Only a viable Art. III proceeding with individuals as defendants (preferably decked out in orange), would lead to a definitive and legitimate judgment of their conduct. It’s the fear of just such a judgment which has Mudd and the other geniuses in this sordid tale hiding behind the skirts of public opinion. The last thought on earth they’d dare to entertain is that of a trial.

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