Waterboarding and its discontents

OPINION:

It has been eclipsed in the news for just a moment by all the hubbub over the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire presidential primary, but earlier you may have noticed the latest suggestion in Congress and Medialand over how to conduct the war on terror: Go after the good guys.

Honest. Not the enemy. But the CIA. Not its chief but the lower-downs. Maybe even the grunts. The foot soldiers who do the real work, take the real risks, and who get their hands and maybe even their consciences dirty. Because they’ve got a real war for fight, not another Power Point presentation to prepare or computer projection to analyze.

Besides, you can be sure the higher-ups long ago took every precaution to assure what used to be called Plausible Deniability. You see their names and pictures in the paper from time to time — the well-tailored bureaucrats with clean fingernails who sit in air-conditioned offices at Langley, Va., issuing memos designed to cover their precious backsides. Just in case, as they say, Questions Arise.

Rather than go after those at the very top of the organizational chart, congressional investigators home in on the CIA’s clandestine service and those in it — the agents who have done the dirty work, whether in Iraq or Afghanistan or in secret prisons around the world that don’t officially exist. These agents are the latest targets of the second-guessers in Congress, in the media, and in general. All of these worthies sound shocked — shocked — at what Americans on the front lines in this war on terror may have done for no better reason than to protect the rest of us.

It turns out that our people may actually have poured water down some innocent terrorist’s nose in an attempt to make the subject think he is about to drown unless he tells them what they want to know. Like the plans for the next September 11, 2001-type attack.

They may even have mistreated some real innocents, for identities do have a way of getting confused in wartime — just ask anyone ever subjected to friendly fire. This is the nature of the world in which we live. Let’s not pretend that the choices to be made in fighting this war or any other are simple.

What a difference a few years can make. Immediately after September 11, leading figures in Congress briefed on the CIA’s anti-terrorist tactics demanded more action against those who had attacked this country, not less.

In a curious way, all this criticism is a tribute to the current administration. How so? Well, imagine there had been another successful terrorist attack on these shores that claimed still more thousands of lives, even tens of thousands if the more grandiose ambitions of al Qaeda were fulfilled. Would anybody now be outraged at the possibility that our intelligence agencies might not be fighting the terrorists by Marquess of Queensberry rules?

Unlikely. On the contrary, CIA officials would doubtless be called on the carpet, and accused of not doing nearly enough to squeeze information out of the terrorists who had fallen into our hands.

But no major terrorist attack having occurred in this country since September 11, 2001, we’re all supposed to be terribly upset that those plotting to kill as many Americans as possible might have been denied all the rights, privileges and protections ordinarily accorded fully accredited, properly uniformed, legitimate prisoners of war.

This debate over waterboarding is largely abstract now, since the CIA abandoned the practice a few years ago. Once it became public knowledge that waterboarding really isn’t designed to be fatal but rather to convince the prisoner that it is, and that he is about to be drowned unless he tells all, the tactic largely lost its usefulness. But before it did, the technique is said to have played a crucial role in extracting vital information from top al Qaeda operatives like Khalid Sheik Mohammed — now in custody at Guantanamo, thank goodness.

Though he refused to cooperate with American intelligence for months after his capture, it is said that it took only a minute or so under water for KSM, as he’s known in the official records, to start talking. The intelligence he provided was instrumental in capture and/or conviction of at least six major terrorist suspects and prevention of major attacks on civilian targets here and abroad, including a scheme to send the Brooklyn Bridge crashing into the East River.

Knowing what we now know, would we really risk the lives of thousands of innocents rather than permit American operatives to use their most effective technique against a mass killer like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who once bragged about directing the September 11 attacks? (And claimed to have personally beheaded Daniel Pearl, too.)

But the question in Congress has become whether those who conducted his successful interrogation should be punished and exposed. By all means, if the law has been broken, those who broke it in the course of effectively preventing another September 11 should be tried, convicted, and punished — and then given a medal. For the law is the law. But duty is duty. One does not cancel out the other.

Once the head of the CIA’s clandestine service at the time these tapes were destroyed is properly reamed out by a congressional investigating committee, or even put in jail, he will still have the satisfaction of duty done. And it would be an honor to shake his hand.

As for any politician who takes the high ethical ground, at least in his own opinion, and speaks glibly of going after American agents who have used harsh tactics against terrorists, he should be asked: How many innocent lives would you be willing to risk in order to spare a Khalid Sheik Mohammed a minute of stark fear?

That’s an ethical question, too. For we are all responsible not only for what we do but for what we fail to do, and that includes failing to protect the innocent or our own intelligence agents.

Paul Greenberg is a nationally syndicated columnist.