Zelikow on Torture

Philip Zelikow is emerging as one of the saner voices on the Bush administration torture program. As a lawyer with the State Department, he served as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's deputy as well as the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission. This varied background in law, diplomacy and intelligence makes him uniquely qualified to comment on a complex issue that touches all three areas. His op-ed piece in today's New York Times is worth a read. He points to the on-going investigation of the program by the Senate Intelligence Commitee as important and makes an educated guess as to what it will reveal.

What the committee may well find, after all the sifting, is that the reports were a critical part of the intelligence flow, but rarely — if ever — affected a “ticking bomb” situation. Yet the main rationale for using extreme methods is to save time. To the extent that the methods are more than just a way of debasing an enemy, their added value is in breaking people quickly, with the downsides including unreliability.

That is one reason the methods of torment do not stack up well against proved alternatives that rely on patience and skill. In setting up this program, officials do not seem to have thoughtfully considered those alternatives...There is another variable in the intelligence equation: the help you lose because your friends start keeping their distance. When I worked at the State Department, some of America’s best European allies found it increasingly difficult to assist us in counterterrorism because they feared becoming complicit in a program their governments abhorred. This was not a hypothetical concern.

A thoughtful inquiry parsing the pros and cons is necessary — but it may not end up finding much, if any, net intelligence value from using extreme methods. It should also consider the future of the C.I.A.: over the long haul, it might be best for the agency if its reputation rested on outstanding professional standards and patient expertise.

Zelikow's comments (along with those of Bush FBI Director Robert Mueller) stand in stark contrast to the claims made by former Vice-President Dick Cheney that torture kept us safe after 9/11.

--Ballard Burgher