On Lawfare, in a longish post Matt Tait of the University of Texas-Austin laments the damage done by the CIA’s torture program, and his final point is telling:
Finally, the RDI [rendition, detention and interrogation] program was reckless in ways that the officials who designed it may never really have understood, and for which they have never been held accountable. It is perhaps hard to fully convey how much of a threat the legacy of torture still poses to the United State’s ability to interact with its allies overseas and to its ongoing counterterrorism efforts.
The risks and subsequent fallout from this recklessness is vast. When the U.K.’s domestic security service, MI5, found out that the U.K. foreign intelligence service, MI6, had been involved in the rendition—but not torture—of suspects who had later endured torture, MI5 threw all MI6 officers out of its headquarters. This caused a prolonged rift between two of the main intelligence agencies of one of the United States’ closest allies—agencies that are themselves responsible for no small amount of intelligence that reaches the president in his daily brief.
Similarly, some extremely bad people are walking free with large payouts because the evidence against them was contaminated by torture. The program has directly led to considerable litigation in the U.K., Canada, U.S. and elsewhere. It has put top-secret documents at risk of discovery through litigation. It has caused a sustained foreign policy firestorm for the United States and its allies with enormous costs.
Defenses of this program ignore or undervalue these costs, or pretend they are not directly attributable to it. And even putting values aside, advocates of starting a new torture program as a matter of “toughness” ignore that the price of doing so will not be measured in a few hurt feelings.
Torture is a deeply flawed instrument when it comes to intelligence collection, easily fooled and unverifiable. It’s real purpose is vengeance and fear; its results is loathing and disdain. It’s the tool of fools who have no faith in their own value systems. Matt’s story, which includes new CIA Director Gina Haspel, is a story of failure, law-breaking, and ego. She should not have been confirmed, and wouldn’t have been by adults.
