Self-admitted unpunished torturer admits crime again
by David Atkins
Proud American torturer Jose Rodriguez proudly admitted his crimes on 60 Minutes last night:
Some parts of the transcript:
Lesley Stahl: You had no qualms? We used to consider some of them war crimes.
Jose Rodriguez: We made some al Qaeda terrorists with American blood on their hands uncomfortable for a few days. But we did the right thing for the right reason. And the right reason was to protect the homeland and to protect American lives. So yes, I had no qualms.
As CBS points out, Rodriguez was one of the trainers of the infamous right-wing torture squads in Central America.
Jose Rodriguez: If there was going to be another attack against the U.S., we would have blood on our hands because we would not have been able to extract that information from him. So we started to talk about an alternative set of interrogation procedures.
Lesley Stahl: So you’re the one who went looking for something to break this guy.
Jose Rodriguez: Yes. And let me tell you something, you know, because years later the 9/11 Commission accused, or said that 9/11 was a failure of imagination. Well, there was no lack of imagination on the part of the CIA in June 2002. We were looking for different ways of doing this.
Rodriguez went back again and again to the government to ensure that he could engage in the torture he wanted to employ with open legality. Once that was given, he proudly did this:
Jose Rodriguez: We went to the border of legality. We went to the border, but that was within legal bounds.
Lesley Stahl: Even after you got the Justice Department legal office to give you this okay, you kept going back and back, with each thing you did. Over and over.
Jose Rodriguez: We wanted to make sure that the rest of government was with us.
Lesley Stahl: How does the water boarding that you engaged in, how did that work?
Jose Rodriguez: The detainee was strapped to an inclined board with his feet up so that no water would go–
Lesley Stahl: So his head was back.
Jose Rodriguez: So his head was back. And a cloth was placed over the mouth and nose. And water was applied to it.
Lesley Stahl: Oh he couldn’t breathe through his nose.
Jose Rodriguez: So when he was saturated, then the air flow would be stopped.
Lesley Stahl: And he’d have the sensation of drowning.
Jose Rodriguez: And he would have the sensation.
Lesley Stahl: And was he naked?
Jose Rodriguez: In many cases, nudity was used extensively. And it worked well.
Lesley Stahl: Why is nudity effective?
Jose Rodriguez: It is effective because a lot of people feel very vulnerable when they’re nude. And also because of the culture. Nudity, it is not something that is common…
Lesley Stahl: Was it waterboarding that broke the dam with Abu Zubaydah?
Jose Rodriguez: I think he was more taken aback by the insult slap.
Lesley Stahl: Oh, what’s the insult slap?
Jose Rodriguez: It’s just slapping somebody with an open hand so that you don’t hurt ’em.
Lesley Stahl: By “hurt,” you mean you don’t break his jaw?
Jose Rodriguez: We don’t break his jaw. And the objective is not to inflict pain. The objective is to let him know there’s a new sheriff in town, and he better pay attention.
That’s torture. By any definition, it’s torture. It may not involve hot pokers and fingernail pliers, but it’s still torture. And it didn’t work, per the inspector general’s own frank admission, which Rodriguez blithely dismisses later in the interview. And how does Rodriguez defend all this, beyond wrapping himself in the flag and desecrating the memories of those who lost their lives on 9/11? The “potential ticking time bomb” defense:
Lesley Stahl: Would the plots have been stopped without the harsh interrogation techniques? In other words, could it have happened without waterboarding?
Jose Rodriguez: I can’t answer that question. Perhaps. But the issue here was timing. We needed information and we needed it right away to protect the homeland.
Lesley Stahl: You told us that the whole rationale, justification for the whole interrogation program was to stop an imminent attack. The inspector general says it didn’t stop any imminent attack.
Jose Rodriguez: I submit to you that we don’t know. We don’t know if, for example, al Qaeda would have been able to continue on with their anthrax program or nuclear program or the second wave of attacks or the sleeper agents that they had inside the United States that were working with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to take down the Brooklyn Bridge, for example. So, it’s easy, years later, to say, “Well, you know, no ticking time bomb—nothing was stopped.”
See? The fact that there wasn’t an attack proves that there was probably a ticking time bomb that was prevented. Even though no ticking time bomb was ever found. That’s totally reasonable.
Not that the ticking time bomb defense ever has merit as a basis for legal precedent. It’s one of the most infuriatingly stupid premises ever devised to permit codified totalitarian action. Why? First of all, because the ticking time bomb scenario is incredibly improbable, one only ever seen in cheesy Hollywood movies and right-wing fantasy television shows. But second, because if such a scenario really ever did implausibly happen, that’s what prosecutorial discretion is for. It’s often said that hard cases make for bad law, and if ever there was a circumstance in which that saying applied, it’s this one. In the incredibly unlikely event that a nuclear attack were about to go off in minutes and a suspect in custody had the information to disarm the bomb, I imagine that any number of things would probably be done to attempt compliance and few people would bat an eye–if the truth about what happened ever even came out. Nobody would prosecute the people involved, and few but the most ardent civil libertarians would care.
What one doesn’t do under any circumstance is codify torture into law in order to justify an impossibly implausible scenario. And one doesn’t engage in torture, “legal” or illegal, on suspects who may or may not have information on a potential attack that may or may not be in process.
This has been probably the most chilling aspect of the new civil liberties regime over the last 12 years: it’s not just what has been done in our name–that’s bad enough–but that what was done has been justified so openly. It’s not as if the American government hasn’t since its inception done some truly awful things in its past by people who justified to themselves, like Mr. Rodriguez, that they were doing it all for flag and country. But at least in the past such people had enough shame to know they should at least keep it under wraps and classified. J. Edgar Hoover, terrible as he was, at least knew better than to proudly make public his operations.
But when torture becomes a matter of national public policy and men like Mr. Rodriguez proclaim it proudly on national television rather than from behind cell bars, we have a different order of problem entirely. And the onus for that problem lies not just with our elected officials, but with all of us as a society. After all, once it’s on 60 Minutes it’s not as if we can turn our heads and pretend we didn’t know.
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