Some tortured logic about interrogations

Twenty years ago, in what some regard as the start of the terrorist war against America, Hezbollah suicide-bombers attacked the U.S. Embassy and the Marine barracks in Beirut, slaughtering more than 250 Americans.

Only one man was punished for those crimes — Keith Hall, the CIA agent in charge of the investigation. He was fired because he was seen as too tough, too aggressive in his interrogation of suspects.

In retrospect, this has to be regarded as a strategic error. As reported by journalist and author Mark Bowden: “William Buckley, who was Hall’s station chief, was subsequently kidnapped, tortured and killed. He was among 14 Western civilians kidnapped in Beirut in 1984.”

The following year, TWA Flight 847 was hijacked and Navy diver Robert Stethem was murdered. Terrorists went on to hit us again and again throughout the 1980s — e.g. soldiers in a Berlin disco in 1986, Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 — and even more often in the 1990s. Washington’s responses were feckless. The consequence was the spectacular atrocity of September 11, 2001, to which, at long last, the United States has responded forcefully.

But it appears we still have lessons to learn — and unlearn. The evidence for that: Army Lt. Col. Allen B. West is facing a court-martial.

Col. West’s story is by now familiar: While interrogating a hostile suspect in a village near Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, he drew his pistol and fired it twice — not at the suspect but close enough to inspire fear and, the colonel hoped, a spirit of cooperation.

The trick worked. The suspect revealed the details of a planned sniper attack and even named names. Arrests were made. Col. West told The Washington Times, his only goal was to “keep my soldiers out of potential ambush. There were no further attacks from that town.”

For achieving that result, Col. West did not receive a medal; instead he was charged with assault. He was given a stark choice: resign and forgo his pension or face court-martial. He has chosen the latter, and an inquiry is under way.

This raises an unpleasant issue Americans need to begin discussing: How far should interrogators go when questioning terrorists and terrorist suspects — those who flagrantly violate the rules of war and have therefore forfeited Geneva Convention protections? I would argue there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed — but that Col. West did not cross it.

I would argue that interrogators should not kill or maim suspects. They should not gouge out eyes or chop off fingers. They should not apply electrodes to suspects’ genitals.

But they shouldn’t try to frighten them as Col. West did? Or knock them off a chair — the harshest action Keith Hall took?

To insist on that standard means more Americans will be killed and that warriors like Col. West and Keith Hall will be drummed out of our fighting forces, to be replaced by graduates of sensitivity training courses. Is it really better to spill American blood than to risk raising suspects’ blood pressure?

Mr. Bowden — whose reporting on this issue for the Atlantic Monthly is probably the best there is — calls interrogation “the dark art.”

It’s also something of a lost art, at least in the United States. Mr. Bowden has noted, the CIA used to have an intensive course in interrogation techniques but that ended in the 1970s. Evidence that the methods employed were not beyond the pale includes this: Those who took the course were obliged to play the role of captives and experience the “stress and duress” that interrogation subjects would suffer.

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