Our nation’s leaders made the difficult decision to use coercive interrogation methods to learn as quickly as possible what hardened al-Qaeda operatives knew in the immediate months after 9/11. Knowledgeable officials expected that al-Qaeda would try again — soon — and in a more devastating fashion. Several plots were foiled and last week we finally killed al-Qaeda’s leader. This was not the result of luck — it is due to the hard work of members of the military and our intelligence agencies.
Their reward has been an open-ended investigation and the disturbing reopening of cases closed by career prosecutors. Others have written about the financial ruin in store for agents and analysts whose focus will shift from the enemy to their legal bills. What has been less well understood is what the investigation will do to the CIA as an institution at a time when it serves as the nation’s eyes and ears and, sometimes, the sword and shield, during war against a shadowy, covert enemy. If you are being prosecuted for pushing the envelope at the orders of your political leadership, you will not just think twice next time — you might instead refuse or leave the agency.
The Carter presidency serves as a warning. Attacking “Watergate, Vietnam, and the CIA,” Carter came to office determined to clean house. He campaigned by attacking the CIA: “Our government should justify the character and moral principles of the American people, and our foreign policy should not short-circuit that for temporary advantage,” he said. He promised to never “do anything as president that would be a contravention of the moral and ethical standards that I would exemplify in my own life as an individual.”
He and his CIA director, Adm. Stansfield Turner, saw little need for information gathered by spies and informants. Turner promptly took a buzz saw to the division in charge of covert operations, eliminating 820 positions out of 4,730.
The message was clear, and as a result CIA agents became risk-averse. After all, if you might be fired or prosecuted for doing something, the safest thing to do is nothing. America’s ability to gather human intelligence and conduct covert operations swiftly fell apart. The CIA failed to predict the fall of the shah. Iranian students — one of them now the president of Iran — took U.S. Embassy officials hostage. A covert operation to rescue them failed miserably, killing eight Americans.
The effects of this decimation of our intelligence capabilities continue. The intelligence agencies failed to stop the 9/11 attacks and do not appear to have penetrated al-Qaeda’s leadership. As the Silberman-Robb Commission reported in 2005, the intelligence community’s estimates on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were almost totally mistaken. The Bush administration began the investments to turn around the long-run capabilities of the CIA, but Obama’s investigations threaten to return the mindset of our agents to the 1970s, even as our nation needs them most. Not only do the prosecutions threaten to undermine our ability to gather the intelligence to carry out operations like bin Laden’s killing, they may cause us to miss intelligence threats yet unknown.
— John Yoo is a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and author of Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush.
THIS JUST IN: Applying its own principles to itself, the AEI has told its member businesses that there is a compelling need for employee job security rather than fire-at-will policies. "After all, if you might be fired or prosecuted for doing something, the safest thing to do is nothing," said AEI Executive Vice-President Etaoin Shrdlu. "Risk-averse employees are a drag on American competitiveness." He went on to request employee job-protection legislation.
Not.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis sentence--"Not only do the prosecutions threaten to undermine our ability to gather the intelligence to carry out operations like bin Laden’s killing"--is just bizarre and disproves itself. They did manage to carry our the bin Laden operation notwithstanding investigations.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNO: Do you actually believe that you two examples are analogous in any form of reality regularly visited by man?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYoo could be next.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI believe everyone who protects us should be above the law. They keep us safe, so the last thing we should do in stand in their way. I don't understand why we don't do more, actually. Torturing a suspected terrorist's family in front of him would be especially effective. In fact, let's let the police have this power also. They probably save more lives on a day-to-day basis than the CIA. As we've all seen on TV, getting a warrant and all that can be a huge hassle and often stands in the way of speedy action. Safety first.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseShamah: The intelligence was gathered prior to Obama setting the precedent that political actions of prior adminstrations being criminalized.
MikeB: So writting a legal opinion that a liberal disagrees with is something that should be illegal?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusetflavin: For sarcasm to be effective it has to be believable, relevant, and hopefully funny. So far you're 0 for 3.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMarkW asked, "NO: Do you actually believe that you two examples are analogous in any form of reality regularly visited by man?"
I reply, yes. Consider: From time to time, fired employees show up without warning and shoot the boss. Rather like Navy Seals taking out OBL.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJohn Yoo? The same John Yoo that said the President had the right to crush the testicles of a completely innocent child as a method to illicit information from his father? That John Yoo? And we should be paying attention to this man for some reason?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@MikeB: Next for what? A bizarre partisan rant from you and your kind? Or were you referring to something else.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Never Outraged: Congratulations for making the most ridiculous post I have ever personally witnessed on this or any other website. Whenever I turn on the tube or open a paper and see a picture of the one lecturing us I'm reminded that we have folks like you to thank for it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow strange that Yoo only mentions Carter by name as blameworthy for undermining US intelligence capabilities. If, as he writes "the effects of this decimation of our intelligence capabilities continue," it would seem that eight years of President Reagan and 12 of Presidents Bush, whose impact on intelligence agencies was far more recent, would be more relevant. His unwillingness to point fingers at his party makes it easy to dismiss Yoo as a partisan hack rather than a brave truth teller.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOne day in the not-so-distant future, we will be at war with an enemy that doesn't lop heads off. That country will get a very intelligent lawyer to show them loopholes in international law.
That country - in the interest of saving lives - will circumvent international law the same way we do - by redefining terms, finding exceptions, and ignoring the spirit of such agreements.
Then, when our loved ones serving our country are captured, they will be brutalized by that country using our same logic. The spirit of laws and agreements will be ignored due to their own national security interests.
Will John Yoo stand up and be accounted for when our troops are brutalized? Will supporters of this nonsense tell a family member that their captured son or daughter needs to suck it up because it's only a little water up your noise? A little cold? Nobody needs that much sleep? Hanging by your thumbs until you tell them what they need to hear to protect themselves is not permanent damage?
At this rate, we'll be under liberal rule for generations. We start making some progress to recover lost seats and then double down on torture.
Support our troops - reject torture no matter what bright shiny objects are held up to distract you.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGot a source Slide?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNO: Do you really want to stick with your attempt to analogize employees who shoot their bosses with Nave SEALs?
You are getting further from any rational realm with every attempt to defend yourself. Perhaps you should give up before you disappear from the known realms altogether.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSlide: I love the way liberals keep adding and changing the details of their lies, each time they tell them.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@TracePlayer: At what point in history, during what conflict, were Americans captured during war ever NOT subjected to brutality by a foreign regime that willfully violated international law?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe unmentioned but hilarious fact in the various posts on this blog: Leftists are falling all over themselves to defend the Jimmy Carter legacy!!!!
If in 2011 their standard bearer for the future is defined by the Carter-era then conservatives have absolutely nothing at all to worry about on Nov 4, 2012.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Traceplayer: By the way, every US military aviator (officer and enlisted) receives waterboarding as part of SERE school. So do a great number of other military personnel from other occupational fields. Interestingly, some of these occupational fields were gutted during the Carter-era which you seem to seek a return to.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@MarkW - that's a joke, right? If we had the intelligence all these long years, why didn't Bush get him? If these methods are so effective, why couldn't Bush find him for a decade? Was Bush really that inept (perhaps, but I doubt that was your point)?
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