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Enhancing Interrogation: Advancing a New Agenda

"[The] barbarous custom of whipping men suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this method of interrogation, by putting men to the torture, is useless. The wretches say whatever comes into their heads and whatever they think one wants to believe. Consequently, the Commander-in-Chief forbids the use of a method which is contrary to reason and humanity." --Napoleon Bonaparte, 1798 Within two days of his inauguration, fulfilling a campaign pledge to end abusive interrogation practices, President Barack Obama issued an executive order that revoked all previous Bush Administration "executive directives, orders, and regulations" dealing with detainee interrogation. Also overturned by the order were any previous "interpretations of the law governing interrogation" emanating from the Bush Administration's Department of Justice. The order established Army Field Manual (FM) 2-22.3, Human Intelligence Collector Operations, as the new standard for conducting intelligence interrogations, applicable to all agencies of the US government, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Specifically, the executive order prohibits "any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation that is not authorized by and listed in [FM 2-22.3]." (1) The adoption of the Army Field Manual as the broad standard for intelligence interrogation had its origin in passage of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. The act made Army Field Manual 34-52, Intelligence Interrogation, the predecessor document to FM 2-22.3 (published in September 2006), the legal template for all Department of Defense interrogation procedures. (2) Beginning in 2007, Congress pushed to extend that authority to the other elements of the intelligence community. This effort culminated in language included in section 327 of the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, stipulating that all intelligence interrogation methods would conform to those authorized in FM 2-22.3. (3) On 8 March 2008, President George W. Bush vetoed this proposed legislation. In a message to the House of Representatives explaining the veto, the President highlighted his disagreement with Congress over its attempt to restrict the CIA's continued use of enhanced interrogation techniques. President Bush emphasized that implementing such restrictions would jeopardize national security. "It is vitally important that the Central Intelligence Agency ... conduct a separate and specialized interrogation program for terrorists who possess the most critical information in the War on Terror [which] has helped the United States prevent a number of attacks." (4) President Bush clarified that his disagreement was "not over any particular interrogation technique ... [but] the need ... to shield from disclosure to al Qaeda and other terrorists the interrogation techniques they may face upon capture." (5) His comments were consistent with his July 2007 executive order, confirming that the CIA interrogation program "fully complies with obligations of the United States under Common Article 3 [of the Geneva Conventions of 1949]" regarding humane treatment of detainees. (6) The visceral nature of President Obama's opposition to enhanced interrogation techniques and his rejection of the Bush Administration's underlying legal rationale for them became even more apparent with his personal decision, taken against the advice of several former and serving senior intelligence officials, (7) to authorize the Department of Justice to release (with minimal redactions) four highly classified memoranda written by its Office of Legal Counsel in August 2002 and May 2005. The memoranda, addressed to CIA Senior Deputy General Counsel John A. Rizzo, are a grim, clinical review of the enhanced interrogation techniques CIA officers were permitted to use to question suspected al Qaeda terrorist detainees regarding critical national security information they refused to divulge under traditional methods. …