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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern05142009.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern05142009.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">May 14,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>See No Evil
<br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Ugly Questions for General Myers
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By RAY
McGOVERN <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">T</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>uesday evening offered an unusual opportunity
to question the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (2001-2005),
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, at an alumni club dinner. He was eager to
talk about his just-published memoir,
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1416560122/counterpunchmaga">
Eyes on the Horizon</a> (and I was able to scan through a copy during the
cocktail hour).<br><br>
Myers’s presentation, like his book, was thin gruel. After his brief
talk, he seemed intent on filibustering during a meandering Q & A
session. He finally called on me since no other hands were up. Some were
yawning, but it was too early to simply leave.<br><br>
I introduced myself as a former Army intelligence officer and CIA analyst
with combined service of almost 30 years. I thanked him for his stated
opposition to interrogation techniques that go beyond “our interrogation
manual”; and his conviction that “the Geneva Conventions were a
fundamental part of our military culture”both viewpoints emphasized in
his book.<br><br>
I then noted that the recently published Senate Armed Services Committee
report, “Inquiry Into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody,” sowed
some doubt regarding the strength of his convictions.<br><br>
Why, I asked, did Gen. Myers choose to go along in Dec. 2002 when
then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized harsh interrogation
techniques and, earlier, in Feb. 2002, when President George W. Bush
himself issued an executive order arbitrarily denying Geneva protections
to al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees?<br><br>
I referred Gen. Myers to the Senate committee’s finding that he had
nipped in the bud an in-depth legal review of interrogation techniques,
when all interested parties were eager for an authoritative ruling on
their lawfulness. (The following account borrows heavily from the Senate
committee report.)<br><br>
Background: The summer of 2002 brought to interrogators at Guantanamo
fresh guidance, plus new techniques adopted from the Korean War practices
of Chinese Communist interrogators who had extracted false confessions
from captured American troops.<br><br>
On Aug. 1, 2002 a memo signed by the head of the Justice Department’s
Office of Legal Counsel, Jay Bybee, stated that for an act to qualify as
“torture”:<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>--"Physical pain … must be equivalent in intensity to the pain
accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment
of bodily function, or even death.<br><br>
<dd>--"Purely mental pain or suffering … must result in significant
psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or
even years."<br><br>
</dl>During the week of Sept. 16, 2002, a group of interrogators from
Guantanamo flew to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for training in the use of
these SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, & Escape) techniques,
which were originally designed to help downed pilots withstand the
regimen of torture employed by China. Now, SERE techniques were being
“reverse engineered” and placed in the toolkit of U.S. military and CIA
interrogators.<br><br>
As soon as the Guantanamo interrogators returned from Fort Bragg, senior
administration lawyers, including William “Jim” Haynes II (Department of
Defense), John Rizzo (CIA), and David Addington (counsel to Vice
President Dick Cheney), visited Guantanamo for consultations.<br><br>
And, just to make quite sure there was no doubt about the new license
given to interrogators, Jonathan Fredman, chief counsel to CIA’s
Counterterrorist Center, also arrived and gathered the Guantanamo staff
together on Oct. 2, 2002, to resolve any lingering questions regarding
unfamiliar aggressive interrogation techniques, like waterboarding.
<br><br>
Fredman stressed, “The language of the statutes is written vaguely.” He
repeated Bybee’s Aug. 1 guidance and summed up the legalities in this
way: “It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies, you’re
doing it wrong.”<br><br>
<font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">Needed: More Authoritative
Guidance<br><br>
</b></font>Small wonder that on Oct. 11, 2002, Gen. Michael Dunlavey, the
commander at Guantanamo, saw fit to double check with his superior,
SOUTHCOM commander Gen. James Hill and request formal authorization to
use aggressive interrogation techniques, including
waterboarding.<br><br>
On Oct. 25, 2002, Hill forwarded the request to Gen. Myers and Secretary
Rumsfeld, commenting that, while lawyers were saying the techniques could
be used, “I want a legal review of it, and I want you to tell me that,
policy-wise, it’s the right way to do business.” Hill later told the Army
Inspector General that he (Hill) thought the request “was important
enough that there ought to be a high-level look at it … ought to be a
major policy discussion of this and everybody ought to be
involved.”<br><br>
Gen. Myers, in turn, solicited the views of the military services on the
Dunlavey/Hill request.<br><br>
The Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force all expressed serious concerns
about the legality of the techniques and called for a comprehensive legal
review. The Marine Corps, for example, wrote, “Several of the techniques
arguably violate federal law, and would expose our service members to
possible prosecution.”<br><br>
<font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">Ends Justify Means?<br><br>
</b></font>The Defense Department’s Criminal Investigative Task Force
(CITF) at Guantanamo joined the services in expressing grave misgivings.
Reflecting the tenor of the four services’ concerns, CITF’s chief legal
advisor wrote that the “legality of applying certain techniques” for
which authorization was requested was “questionable.” He added that he
could not “advocate any action, interrogation or otherwise, that is
predicated upon the principle that all is well if the ends justify the
means and others are not aware of how we conduct our business.”<br><br>
Myers’s Legal Counsel, Captain (now Rear Admiral) Jane Dalton, had her
own concerns (and has testified that she made Gen. Myers aware of them),
together with those expressed in writing by the Army, Navy, Marines and
Air Force. Dalton directed her staff to initiate a thorough legal and
policy review of the proposed techniques.<br><br>
The review got off to a quick start. As a first step, Dalton ordered a
secure video teleconference including Guantanamo, SOUTHCOM, the Defense
Intelligence Agency, and the Army’s intelligence school at Fort Huachuca.
Dalton said she wanted to find out more information about the techniques
in question and to begin discussing the legal issues to see if her office
could do its own independent legal analysis.<br><br>
<font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">See No Evil<br><br>
</b></font>Under oath before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Captain
Dalton testified that, after she and her staff had begun their analysis,
Gen. Myers directed her in November 2002 to stop the review. <br><br>
She explained that Myers returned from a meeting and “advised me that
[Pentagon General Counsel] Mr. Haynes wanted me … to cancel the video
teleconference and to stop the review” because of concerns that “people
were going to see” the Guantanamo request and the military services’
analysis of it. Haynes “wanted to keep it much more close-hold,” Dalton
said.<br><br>
Dalton ordered her staff to stop the legal analysis. She testified that
this was the only time that she had ever been asked to stop analyzing a
request that came to her for review.<br><br>
<font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">Asking Myers<br><br>
</b></font>I asked Gen. Myers why he stopped the in-depth legal review.
He bobbed and weaved, contending first that some of the Senate report was
wrong.<br><br>
“But you did stop the review, that is a matter of record. Why?” I asked
again.<br><br>
“I stopped the broad review,” Myers replied, “but I asked Dalton to do
her personal review and keep me advised.”<br><br>
(Myers had a memory lapse when Senate committee members asked him about
stopping the review.)<br><br>
I asked again why he stopped the review, but was shouted down by an
audience not used to having plain folks ask direct questions of very
senior officials, past or present.<br><br>
<font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">I Confess: Rumsfeld Made Me
Do It<br><br>
</b></font>Haynes told the Senate committee that “there was a sense by
DoD leadership that this decision was taking too long.”<br><br>
On Nov. 27, 2002, shortly after Haynes told Myers to order Dalton to stop
her review – and despite the serious legal concerns of the military
services – Haynes sent Rumsfeld a one-page memo recommending that he
approve all but three of the 18 techniques in the request from
Guantanamo. Techniques like stress positions, nudity, exploitation of
phobias (like fear of dogs), deprivation of light and auditory stimuli
were all recommended for approval.<br><br>
On Dec. 2, 2002, Rumsfeld signed Haynes’s recommendation, adding a
handwritten note referring to the use of stress positions: “I stand for
8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?”<br><br>
As the shouting by my distinguished colleagues died down, I too remained
standing, reminding myself that I had wanted to say a word about the
Geneva Conventions, “for which you, Gen. Myers, express such strong
support in your book.”<br><br>
I waved a copy of the smoking-gun, two-page executive memorandum signed
by George W. Bush on Feb. 7, 2002. That’s the one in which the President
arbitrarily declared that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions did
not apply to al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees, and then threw in
obfuscatory language from lawyers Addington and Alberto Gonzales that
such detainees would nonetheless be treated “humanely and, to the extent
appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner
consistent with the principles of Geneva.”<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>I then made reference to “Conclusion 1” of the Senate committee
report:<br><br>
<dd>“On Feb. 7, 2002, President George W. Bush made a written
determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which
would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply
to al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees.<br><br>
<dd>“Following the President’s determination, techniques such as
waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions … were authorized for use in
interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody.”<br><br>
<dd>“Gen. Myers,” I asked, “you were one of eight addressees for the
President’s directive of Feb. 7, 2002. What did you do when you learned
of the President’s decision to ignore Geneva?”<br><br>
<dd>“Please just read my book,” Myers said. I told him I already had, and
proceeded to read aloud a couple of sentences from my copy:<br><br>
<dd>“You write that you told Douglas Feith, ‘I feel very strongly about
this. And if Rumsfeld doesn’t defend the Geneva Conventions, I’ll
contradict him in front of the President.’<br><br>
<dd>“You go on to explain very clearly, ‘I was legally obligated to
provide the President my best military advice not the best advice as
approved by the Secretary of Defense.’<br><br>
<dd>“So, again, what did you do after you read the President’s executive
order of Feb. 7, 2002?”<br><br>
</dl>Myers said he had fought the good fight before the President’s
decision. The sense was that, if the President wanted to dismiss Geneva,
what was a mere Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to do?<br><br>
In this connection, Myers included this curious passage in his
book:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>“By relying so heavily on just the lawyers, the President did not get
the broader advice on these matters that he needed to fully consider the
consequences of his actions. I thought it was critical that the nation’s
leadership convey the right message to those engaged in the War on
Terror.<br><br>
<dd>“Showing respect for the Geneva Conventions was important to all of
us in uniform. This episode epitomized the Secretary’s and the Chairman’s
different statutory responsibilities to the President and the nation. The
fact that the President appeared to change his previous decision showed
that the system, however, imperfect, had worked.”<br><br>
</dl><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">Enter Douglas
Feith<br><br>
</b></font>Interestingly, Myers writes, “Douglas Feith supported my views
strongly … noting that the United States had no choice but to apply the
Geneva Conventions, because, like all treaties in force for the country,
they bore the same weight as a federal statute.”<br><br>
Myers goes on to corroborate what British lawyer/author Philippe Sands
writes in The Torture Team about the apparent twinning of Feith and Myers
on this issue. Sands says Feith portrayed himself and Myers as of one
mind on Geneva.<br><br>
Just before the President issued his Feb. 7, 2002 executive order, Feith
developed this novel line of reasoning: The Geneva Conventions are very
important. The best way to defend them is by honoring their “incentive
system,” which rewards soldiers who fight openly and in uniform with all
kinds of protections if captured.<br><br>
In his book, Myers notes approvingly that this is indeed the line Feith
took with the President at an NSC meeting on Feb. 4, 2002, to which Feith
had been invited, three days before President Bush signed the order that
has now become a smoking gun.<br><br>
According to Feith, the all-important corollary is to take care not to
“promiscuously hand out POW status to fighters who don’t obey the rules.”
“In other words, the best way to protect the Geneva Conventions is to gut
them,” as Dahlia Lithwick of Slate put it in a commentary last
July.<br><br>
I suppose it could even be the case that this seemed persuasive to
President Bush, as well. Which would mean that Doug Feith has at least
two contenders for the unenviable sobriquet with which Gen. Tommy Franks
tagged him “the f---ing stupidest guy on the face of the
earth.”<br><br>
It is not really funny, of course.<br><br>
<font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">Myers “Hoodwinked?”<br><br>
</b></font>While researching his book, Sands, a very astute observer,
emerged from a three-hour session with Myers convinced that Myers did not
understand the implications of what was being done and was “confused”
about the decisions that were taken.<br><br>
Sands writes that when he described the interrogation techniques
introduced and stressed that they were not in the manual but rather
breached U.S. military guidelines, Myers became increasingly hesitant and
troubled. Author Sands concludes that Myers was “hoodwinked;” that
“Haynes and Rumsfeld had been able to run rings around him.”<br><br>
There is no doubt something to that. And the apparent absence of Myers
from the infamous torture boutiques in the White House Situation Room,
aimed at discerning which particular techniques might be most appropriate
for which “high-value” detainees, tends to support an out-of-the-loop
defense for Myers.<br><br>
I imagine it should not be all that surprising, given the way general
officers are promoted these days, that Myers’ vacuousnesscum
deference-boarding-on-servilitycould land him at the pinnacle of our
entire military establishment. Certainly, nothing he said or did Tuesday
evening would contradict Sands’ assessment regarding naïveté.<br><br>
Myers still writes that he found Rumsfeld to be “an insightful and
incisive leader.” The general seems to have been putty in Rumsfeld’s
hands one reason he was promoted, no doubt.<br><br>
My best guess is that it is a combination of dullness, cowardice and
careerism that accounts for Myers’ behavior then and now. And, with
those attributes and propensities firmly in place, falling in with bad
companions, as Richard Myers did, can really do you in.<br><br>
As we said our good-byes Tuesday evening, one of my alumni colleagues
lamented my “ugly” behavior, although it was no more ugly than it was on
May 4, 2006, during my four-minute debate with Donald Rumsfeld in
Atlanta. (Sadly, my encounter with Myers was not broadcast live on
TV.)<br><br>
<font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">A Plaudit From the
Press<br><br>
</b></font>In attendance was a reporter from the Washington Post, but his
note-taking was confined to computing whether he should take the Post’s
buyout, or try to hang around for the newspaper’s inevitable funeral in a
couple of years. (So don’t bother looking for a print story on the Myers
event.) As we departed, the Post-man gave me what he seemed to think was
the ultimate compliment I should have been a journalist, he
said.<br><br>
I told him thanks just the same that my experience has been that,
unless they promise not to ask “ugly” questions and keep that promise,
journalists of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) are not permitted to
stay around long enough to qualify for a meager 401k much less an
eventual buyout.<br><br>
At least I was consistent, retaining with such groups an unblemished
winning-no-friends-and-influencing-no-people record, originally set three
years ago when I had a chance to ask an “ugly” question or two of Donald
Rumsfeld.<br><br>
Ray McGovern</b> was an Army officer and CIA analyst for almost 30 year.
He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity.<font size=3> </font><font face="Verdana" size=2>He is a
contributor to
<a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html">
Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia</a>, edited by
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair (Verso). He can be reached at:
<a href="mailto:rrmcgovern@aol.com">rrmcgovern@aol.com</a><br><br>
The original version of this article appeared at
Consortiumnews.com.<br><br>
<br><br>
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