Anti-torture bill needs McCain to get it passed
When Sen. John McCain’s Detainee Treatment Act was enacted in 2005, I was a junior enlisted Army interrogator getting Arabic language training in California. Two years later, McCain’s law directly impacted the way I conducted my interrogations.
The Detainee Treatment Act, also called the McCain Amendment, prohibits cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of any prisoner in the custody of the U.S. government and requires military interrogations to be performed in accordance with the U.S. Army Field Manual.
Under these guidelines, I deployed to Iraq in 2007 with the U.S. Special Operations Command. Over the course of 15 months, I performed over a thousand interrogations, all in Arabic, to help Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s troops dismantle the leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
My colleagues and I enjoyed tremendous success in the interrogation booth using tried-and-true, humane rapport-based techniques. Supported by an analytical team that enabled us to bombard our detainees with knowledge, we showed those we interrogated early on that they could never convincingly lie to us.
After the Senate Intelligence Committee released the executive summary of its report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program, many were appalled by the horrors and consequences of torture. When I read the report, like most Americans, I was dismayed.
I was also professionally embarrassed.
In Iraq, my team of interrogators never laid a hand on a detainee for three reasons. First, we believed it was simply un-American to harm a defenseless person, regardless of his alleged crimes. Second, we had better ways to obtain accurate and reliable information. Third, if better judgment would ever fail, Sen. McCain’s law kept us straight.
With the Detainee Treatment Act, Sen. McCain made sure that U.S. military interrogators would never treat people the way his North Vietnamese captors treated him. My veteran colleagues of the intelligence corps and I consider this his most important legacy. For that reason, we are hoping he will step forward to co-sponsor legislation to ban torture by all those acting in America’s name.
At the end of 2014, Sen. Diane Feinstein announced her intent to submit a bill that would prohibit torture by all U.S. interrogators, including civilians working for the CIA. But this effort will only succeed with Sen. McCain’s leadership and courage to reach across the aisle to do what is right.
It’s important for our national security, and for our national values, that the intelligence services receive the same clear parameters as the military.
I write as one of a huge majority of interrogators with recent and extensive field experience who believe our country is strongest, and our intelligence services most effective, when we stick to our values. As George Washington said at the founding of the republic, it is not enough to win our wars; we must win in a way that is consistent with the values of our society and the principles of our cause.
Torture only plays into the enemy’s hands. It makes him into the victim he needs to be to sell his narrative and recruit more terrorists. Our victory will depend on our moral consistency.
Last December, Sen. McCain took the Senate floor in one of his finest hours. He reminded us all, “in the worst of times, through the chaos and terror of war, when facing cruelty, suffering and loss, (we) are always Americans, and different, stronger, and better than those who would destroy us.”
We need Sen. McCain’s leadership once again. He should finish the job he started in 2005. Veteran interrogators like me who have long followed his moral leadership need to hear his voice once again. Right the ship, for everybody, once and for all.