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CIA OIG’s Wild Parsing about What Was “Depicted” on the Torture Tapes

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I wanted to point out a somewhat weedy detail about how the CIA IG Report describes the torture investigation as compared to how the CIA’s Office of Inspector General described that investigation in court filings last year.

As you’ll recall, after the CIA admitted to the destruction of the torture tapes in 2007, the ACLU filed to hold the CIA in contempt for not having revealed the existence of the torture tapes earlier in their torture document FOIA. In response, the OIG submitted a filing and a declaration describing why they hadn’t revealed the existence of the tapes.

The filing explained that CIA had no obligation to search its operational files in response to the ACLU’s FOIA unless those files had been the subject of an investigation.

Moreover, the videotapes were not responsive to Plaintiffs’ FOIA requests because the activities depicted on the videotapes were not the subject of a CIA OIG investigation of allegations of impropriety in Iraq, or any other investigation conducted by CIA OIG. Under the Central Intelligence Agency Information Act (“CIA Information Act”), the CIA’s operational records are exempt from search or review in response to FOIA requests unless an exception to the Act applies. One exception is where the records requested are the specific subject matter of an investigation by CIA OIG into allegations of impropriety or illegality in the conduct of an intelligence activity. 50 U.S.C. § 431(c)(3). Here, CIA OIG did not conduct an investigation into allegations of impropriety or illegality relating to the interrogations on the videotapes prior to their destruction. Therefore, the tapes were exempt from search and review in response to Plaintiffs’ FOIA requests up to the time of their destruction. [my emphasis]

And the declaration went on to make certain claims about the relationship between the CIA IG investigation and the subject matter of the torture tapes.

In January 2003, OIG initiated a special review of the CIA terrorist detention and interrogation program. This review was intended to evaluate CIA detention and interrogation activities, and was not initiated in response to an allegation of wrongdoing.

[snip]

At no time prior to the destruction of the tapes in 2005 did OIG initiate a separate investigation into the interrogations depicted on the videotapes.

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Helgerson’s Hints

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JasonLeopold linked to two interviews with John Helgerson, who as the CIA’s former Inspector General, oversaw its investigation into torture. (Fox, Spiegel)

Helgerson and Cheney

The Fox one, perhaps predictably, focuses on Helgerson’s reported interactions with Cheney, providing a counterpoint to Jane Mayer’s portrayal of discussions between the two men as heated.

"The VP (whom I had long known reasonably well, as, in a non-IG capacity, I used to brief the House Intelligence Committee on a weekly basis when he was an active Member) received me graciously and asked a number of good and appropriate questions. Despite what you may have read elsewhere, he did not attempt in any way whatsoever to intimidate me or influence what we were finding, concluding and recommending," Helgerson wrote in an e-mail to FOX News. 

Of course, if Helgerson was briefing the committee regularly during this period, it is likely he was interacting with Addington, then a Counsel on the committee. Also at that time, one of CIA’s young lawyers, John Rizzo, was "the Agency’s focal point in dealing with the joint congressional committee investigating the Iran-Contra Affair." So, curiously, Cheney, Addington, Rizzo, and Helgerson were probably all involved with the House Intelligence Committee during the Iran-Contra issues.

Given the description he gives of his relationship with Cheney, I’m particularly interested in Helgerson’s description of how and why Cheney got a briefing.

"Only infrequently do IG reports take on such significance that they need to be briefed to the VP, and when this is the case, normally White House or NSC Counsel, or the VP’s own staff, receive the material first and then inform the VP as they see fit," he wrote.

Helgerson said that at the time the review had been completed, he and others in the spy agency briefed a number of key parties about the program and the IG’s findings. They included members of the White House, the National Security Council, Congress and the Department of Justice.

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Your Daily WaPo Torture Apology Debunking

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I will say this for today’s daily installment of the WaPo torture apology. The WaPo’s two spook reporters, Walter Pincus and Joby Warrick, at least note–in paragraph 10–that having Buzzy Krongard speak for everyone at CIA might not be logically valid.

It is impossible to extrapolate from the small sample contacted by Washington Post reporters about the effect the varied inquiries are having on the thousands of agency employees, more than one-third of whom are spread around the world. But among the dozens of officials who were part of the program and either remain active or have retired, feelings run high about how the White House and the Justice Department have handled the issue. 

But they never get around to challenging Buzzy and their other sources themselves. They never point out that a lot of the whining their sources do is either transparently bogus or just plain whining. And they present numerous sources from the CIA itself debunking the cries of low morale from the torture apologists, yet still let the torture apologists dictate Pincus and Warrick’s conclusion that the torture investigation has and will devastate CIA morale.

Take the claimed worries about whether the legal advice from one Administration carries over to another one.

A much-discussed question is whether the legal reassurances of one administration carry over to its successor. "When a previous administration says something was legal, and the next says it doesn’t matter, the result is hesitancy to take on cutting-edge missions," the former senior official warned. 

I can’t count the number of times that Obama Administration officials have stated that no one who followed John Yoo’s transparently bad legal advice will be prosecuted, but here’s how Eric Holder reiterated that point in his announcement of the investigation.

Further, [the men and women in our intelligence community] need to be protected from legal jeopardy when they act in good faith and within the scope of legal guidance. That is why I have made it clear in the past that the Department of Justice will not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees. I want to reiterate that point today, and to underscore the fact that this preliminary review will not focus on those individuals.

Yet Pincus and Warrick simply print that complaint, without pointing out the entire premise of it is wrong.

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The IG Report Chronology

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I wanted to make some observations about the chronology included in the CIA IG Report–Appendix B of the report. These are mostly just observations, so I apologize if this post is incoherent.

Three columns

First, notice that the chronology has three columns, only one of which (Events at Washington) is labeled. The other two columns appear to be organized in parallel structure to the report itself, with the High Value Detainee program–which corresponds with pages 33 though 45 in the report–in the third column, and a program that appears to be in Afghanistan and Pakistan–which corresponds with pages 46 through 77 [note–someone smart already pointed out this structure WRT the report itself–apologies for forgetting who it was]–in the center column.

The most interesting detail of the three-column structure is that it shows the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the center column, whereas the capture of Abu Zubaydah is in the third column, suggesting a different administrative entity captured KSM than captured AZ (though KSM was transferred into that other entity immediately after being captured). 

First Column

So let’s look at the first column. The first redaction probably pertains to the Finding authorizing the program in general–I’ll come back to treatment of this after that Finding is released on Monday. It also describes CIA OGC "beginning research" on interrogation issues as early as September 2001. That suggests legal research (and no doubt refers to work done in cooperation with John Yoo and David Addington), but I wonder if OGC also started the technical research–which would put that genesis of the torture program (unsurprisingly) much earlier than the December 2001 date currently claimed.

The rest of the column–at least the unredacted bits–include four different kinds of information:

  • Policy maker deliberations (July 2002)
  • DOJ deliberations and authorizations (July 2002, August 2002, July 2003)
  • Congressional briefings (Fall 2002, February to March 2003–I’ll return to these later)
  • Management improvements (November 2002, January 2003, April 2003, June 2003, September 2003)

Of those, one very interesting detail (in addition to the redacted event in December 2002) is the repeated focus on OMS (Office of Medical Services) guidelines, which demonstrates the degree to which they used medical personnel to make this look legit. Note that the CIA doesn’t include the "Legal Principles" document in there, even though it considered that a key authorization–or so it says.

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The CIA IG Report’s “Other” Contents

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In this post, I reviewed the known contents of the CIA IG Report’s 6-page section on torture for those who seem to forget we’ve seen substantive bits from that in the Bradbury memos. In this post, I’ll look at what else shows up in the Bradbury memos. In a follow-up post, I’ll look at what IG Report contents we haven’t seen (and therefore are all but guaranteed not to see).

From what we can reconstruct, the report appears to include the following:

  • Intro and summary
  • A history of CIA’s involvement in torture
  • A description of the development of the torture techniques as if they were developed for use for Abu Zubaydah
  • A review of the legal authorization for the program, with the critique that doctors were not involved in the pre-authorization review and, probably, a description of the ways that torture as practiced exceeded the guidelines included in Bybee Two 
  • An erroneous claim that everyone who should have been briefed was briefed
  • Apparently a general review of how the program was implemented, including a description of the close involvement of medical personnel, and a description of what was done to which High Value Detainees
  • A description of the decision to videotape and apparent reviews of what a review of the videotapes and cables revealed about whether the torture was what it was claimed to be
  • Forty pages of completely redacted material
  • The Effectiveness section
  • A policy section that notes that the program includes many of the same techniques as the State Department qualifies as abusive
  • Three pages of recommendations
  • A number of Appendices–the CIA appears to be hiding the very existence of about five of these and most of the contents of the rest of them

While I couldn’t begin to guess what that 40 page completely redacted section includes, the stuff that has been made available show the IG was concerned about waterboarding (for a variety of reasons), believed the program to constitute the same kind of abuses the State Department condemned, and believed the approval process for the torture techniques (the Bybee Two memo) was inadequate.

Read the rest of the entry to see the more specific details of the program.

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Those CIA Employees Don’t LOOK Pissed that Obama Released the Torture Memos

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The Village has been out in force declaring that Obama’s decision to release the torture memos will hurt the morale of CIA’s employees.

But CIA’s employees sure greeted Obama warmly when he spoke at Langley yesterday. See also the beginning of the applause at the end of the Panetta introduction.

Now I realize these things are carefully stagecrafted. I realize the members of the clandestine service–the men and women being asked to push the limits in the name of national security–are probably not sitting in front of the camera at an Obama photo op. 

But I’ve been re-reading the books that first exposed our torture program in the last few days, and it’s clear that opposition came not just from the FBI. It came, in some cases, from those at CIA who thought the torture ineffective, too much, dehumanizing to the interrogators. As Scott Horton describes,

CIA interrogators were not wild about the use of these techniques.

[snip]

But the rebellion included whistleblowers who went to the CIA’s inspector general, John L. Helgerson. He launched a probe which documented what was going on and concluded, correctly, that a number of the techniques then in use were potentially prosecutable as federal crimes. Bybee’s memo and those of his successor Steven G. Bradbury are designed to silence and override the dissenters, most notably the CIA inspector general, and thus put down the rebellion against torture at the CIA.

Now, I will grant you that some in the CIA are still defending the efficacy of the torture. Others are no doubt worried they will be prosecuted.

But some will be grateful that Obama is forcing the CIA out of the torture business. 

The CIA IG Report: Is Waterboarding KSM 183 Times Really Effective?

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picture-97.thumbnail.pngI think I’ve finally gotten some folks to to pay attention to the OLC Memo revelation that KSM was waterboarded 183 times in a month.

In that post, I suggested that if it took 183 uses of waterboarding to make KSM comply with interrogators wishes, then waterboarding is far less effective than the CIA would like us to believe. It appears the CIA IG was raising the number of times KSM was waterboarded in the same context I am–to question the efficacy of waterboarding someone that many times. 

As I described last night, Steven Bradbury spends four pages of the May 30, 2005 memo trying to prove that enhanced interrogation is effective. He appears to be responding to a six-page passage in the CIA IG Report addressing the efficacy of enhanced interrogation.

I dealt with that section in some detail last night.  But by reconstructing that section best as we can from the fragments Bradbury gives us (see my work below), we see the IG Report was tying the number of times KSM and Abu Zubaydah were waterboarded with its judgment of waterboarding’s (in)efficacy.

Bradbury doesn’t reveal how the IG Report begins the discussion of the efficacy of the enhanced interrogation program. But shortly after the beginning, the IG Report seems to refute claims that individual, high value detainees are the key to collecting information on al Qaeda. It points out that CTC relies on the information from lower-level detainees–presumably collected without enhanced methods since CIA claims it only uses enhanced methods on high value detainees–to round out its understanding of information collected from high value detainees.

CTC frequently uses the information from one detainee, as well as other sources, to vet the information from another detainee. Although lower-level detainees provide less information than the high value detainees, information from these detainees has, on many occasions, supplied the information needed to probe the high value detainees further. … [T]he triangulation of intelligence provides a fuller knowledge of Al-Qa’ida activities than would be possible from a single detainee.

Bradbury leaves out the next part of the IG Report’s discussion. But from there, the IG Report says we can’t conclusively determine whether enhanced interrogations have provided information that has prevented specific attacks (note, the wording of this discussion is very vague, perhaps intentionally so; it could mean any number of things, including that we have zero evidence that torture has prevented attacks, or that we just don’t have evidence one way or another). Then, the IG Report appears to elaborate on this difficulty, noting that, "there is limited data on which to assess their individual effectiveness." Again, this quotation is unclear, but it appears to refer to the effectiveness of one enhanced interrogation method over another. That is, the IG Report appears to be saying it has no way of assessing whether waterboarding is more effective than sleep deprivation than persuasion. Finally, the IG Report admits that enhanced interrogation–or perhaps just waterboarding–is tied to an increase in the number of reports (though it appears to have already dismissed any possibility of assessing the quality of these reports). And it is in that context in which the IG Report discusses the sheer number of times that Abu Zubaydah and KSM were waterboarded. 

In other words, at the tail end of an extended discussion explaining all the reasons we can’t say enhanced interrogation prevented any specific attacks and why it may be a mistake to focus exclusively on individual high value detainees, the IG Report connects the sheer number of reports CIA has gotten when using waterboarding with the sheer number of times it was used on Abu Zubaydah and KSM.

And significantly, 12 pages later the IG Report notes that CIA was using waterboarding more than it had said it had been using it.

Now all of this is obviously very fragmentary, and Bradbury seems to have deliberately obscured the IG Report’s language in key passages. As it happens, though, both the White House and SSCI are in the middle of attempts to assess the efficacy of waterboarding. 

In response to those efforts, the CIA has begun assembling thousands of classified cables that contain daily reports from the agency’s secret prisons, tracking the interrogation methods used on high-value detainees and how much information was obtained as a result.

Let’s hope this inquiry–unlike the memos sent to Steven Bradbury tailored to allow him to claim that torture was effective–do more than track the number of reports gathered under torture. And heck, while they’re at it, perhaps the White House and the SSCI could release this part of the IG Report, which seems to conclude–after having watched thousands of hours of torture videos–that it was not effective.

Sign the petition telling Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate torture here.

As Bradbury notes on page 10 of is memo, the IG Report discusses the efficacy of enhanced interrogation from page 85 though 91. Here are the topics that discussion covers, in order, with the Bradbury description of the reference:

Page 85: No direct reference

Page 86: A description of an increase in intelligence reports attributable to enhanced methods and a discussion arguing that you can’t measure the efficacy of interrogation by pointing to just the reports from one detainee..

See IG Report at 86, 90-91 (describing increase in intelligence reports attributable to use of enhanced techniques). 

According to the CIA Inspector General:

CTC frequently uses the information from one detainee, as well as other sources, to vet the information from another detainee. Although lower-level detainees provide less information than the high value detainees, information from these detainees has, on many occasions, supplied the information needed to probe the high value detainees further. … [T]he triangulation of intelligence provides a fuller knowledge of Al-Qa’ida activities than would be possible from a single detainee.

IG Report at 86.

Page 87: No direct reference

Page 88: A statement that it is difficult to determine whether interrogations have stopped specific attacks.

As the IG Report notes, it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks. See id. at 88.

Page 89: A statement noting that there is limited data on whether enhanced methods are effective (note–Bradbury pitches this as an observation that the Read more →

Conyers Invokes the CIA Inspector General Report on Torture

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In a HuffPo column arguing for a Commission to look into Bush era crimes, John Conyers mentions something people on the Hill rarely talk about: the 2004 CIA Inspector General report on torture.

Nor do I agree that the relevant facts are already known. While disparate investigations by Committees of congress, private organizations, and the press have uncovered many important facts, no single investigation has had access to the full range of information regarding the Bush administration’s interrelated programs on surveillance, detention, interrogation, and rendition. The existence of a substantially developed factual record will simplify the work to come, but cannot replace it. Furthermore, much of this information, such as the Central Intelligence Agency’s 2004 Inspector General report on interrogation, remains highly classified and hidden from the American people. An independent review is needed to determine the maximum information that can be publicly released.

Conyers links to this Jane Mayer interview about the report by way of explaining the significance of the report.

One of the lingering mysteries in Washington has been what happened to the CIA internal probe into homicides involving the program. You note that CIA Inspector General (IG) John Helgerson undertook a study and initially concluded, just as the Red Cross and most legal authorities in the United States and around the world, that the program was illegal and raised serious war crimes issues. Helgerson was summoned repeatedly to meet privately with Vice President Cheney, the man who provided the impetus for the program, and it appears as a result of these meetings the IG’s report was simply shut down. Would those probes have brought into question the Justice Department’s specific approval of torture techniques used by the CIA–approval that involved not just John Yoo, but much more specifically Michael Chertoff and Alice Fisher, the two figures who ran the criminal division?

The fact that John Helgerson—the inspector general at the CIA who is supposed to act as an independent watchdog—was called in by Cheney to discuss his tough report in 2004 is definitely surprising news. Asked for comment, Helgerson through the CIA spokesman denied he felt pressured in any way by Cheney. But others I interviewed have described the IG’s office to me as extremely politicized. They have also suggested it was very unusual that the Vice President interjected himself into the work of the IG. Fred Hitz, who had the same post in previous administrations, told me that no vice president had ever met with him. Read more →

Jane Mayer, the CIA Inspector General’s Report, and the Torture Tapes

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Though Mayer doesn’t connect the eventual destruction of the torture tapes in November 2005 with the Doug Jehl story published on November 9, 2005, revealing the conclusion of the CIA Inspector General’s report on torture, she reinforces a point I’ve made in the past–the decision to destroy the torture tapes was closely tied to the release of the IG report and the analysis made in the report.

The book is even more detailed than published excerpts have been about starkly the IG report changed the views on torture among some Administration officials, particularly Jack Goldsmith.

The 2004 Inspector General’s report, known as a "special review," was tens of thousands of pages long and as thick as two Manhattan phone books. It contained information, according to one source, that was simply "sickening." The behavior it described, another knowledgeable source said, raised concerns not just about the detainees but also about the Americans who had inflicted the abuse, ome of whom seemed to have become frighteningly dehumanized. The source said, "You couldn’t read the documents without wondering, "Why didn’t someone say, ‘Stop!’"

Goldsmith was required to review the report in order to settle a sharp dispute that its findings had provoked between the Inspector General, Helgerson, who was not a lawyer, and the CIA’s General Counsel, Scott Muller, who was. After spending months investigating the Agency’s interrogation practices, the special review had concluded that the CIA’s techniques constituted cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, in violation of the international Convention Against Torture. But Muller insisted that every single action taken by the CIA toward its detainees had been declared legal by John Yoo. With Yoo gone, it fell to Goldsmith to figure out exactly what the OLC had given the CIA a green light to do and what, in fact, the CIA had done.

As Goldsmith absorbed the details, the report transformed the antiseptic list of authorized interrogation techniques, which he had previously seen, into a Technicolor horror show. Goldsmith decline to be interviewed about the classified report for legal reasons, but according to those who dealt with him, the report caused him to question the whole program. The CIA interrogations seemed very different when described by participants than they had when approved on a simple menu of options. Goldsmith had been comfortable with the military’s approach, but he wasn’t at all sure whether the CIA’s tactics were legal. Read more →

Helgerson and Cheney

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It’s going to be a busy day for me, but one thing I’m hoping to do is nick down to Borders (hey, this branch is unionized, and Borders is local to Ann Arbor) to buy Jane Mayer’s new book. If for no other reason then to find out more about the meeting between John Helgerson, the CIA Inspector General, and Dick Cheney.

One of the lingering mysteries in Washington has been what happened to the CIA internal probe into homicides involving the program. You note that CIA Inspector General (IG) John Helgerson undertook a study and initially concluded, just as the Red Cross and most legal authorities in the United States and around the world, that the program was illegal and raised serious war crimes issues. Helgerson was summoned repeatedly to meet privately with Vice President Cheney, the man who provided the impetus for the program, and it appears as a result of these meetings the IG’s report was simply shut down. Would those probes have brought into question the Justice Department’s specific approval of torture techniques used by the CIA–approval that involved not just John Yoo, but much more specifically Michael Chertoff and Alice Fisher, the two figures who ran the criminal division?

The fact that John Helgerson—the inspector general at the CIA who is supposed to act as an independent watchdog—was called in by Cheney to discuss his tough report in 2004 is definitely surprising news. Asked for comment, Helgerson through the CIA spokesman denied he felt pressured in any way by Cheney. But others I interviewed have described the IG’s office to me as extremely politicized. They have also suggested it was very unusual that the Vice President interjected himself into the work of the IG. Fred Hitz, who had the same post in previous administrations, told me that no vice president had ever met with him. He thought it highly unusual.

Helgerson’s 2004 report had been described to me as very disturbing, the size of two Manhattan phone books, and full of terrible descriptions of mistreatment. The confirmation that Helgerson was called in to talk with Cheney about it proves that–as early as then–the Vice President’s office was fully aware that there were allegations of serious wrongdoing in The Program.

We know that in addition, the IG investigated several alleged homicides involving CIA detainees, and that Helgerson’s office forwarded several to the Justice Department for further consideration and potential prosecution. Read more →