Secrecy as an Enabler of Evil

When a society of men and women institute a government, that society invests its government, for the most part, with the sole legal and moral authority to use violence. Be it the police officer on the street shooting an armed and dangerous criminal, the courts imposing capital punishment on a convicted murderer, or a nation's military engaging in warfare, governments have a profound responsibility to its citizens to ensure that its use of violence is just. This includes ensuring that the threat upon which a government inflicts violence in behalf of its citizens is grave, and certain; that there is a reasonable basis to believe that all other non-violent means of addressing the threat are impractical or ineffective; there must be serious prospects of success by resorting to violence; and the use of violence must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil at which the violence is directed.

In employing institutionalized violence, it is not unusual for government officials to be confronted with a rapidly changing environment which directly impacts upon the question of whether the use of violence is just or evil. For example, when confronted with split second decisions in the face of an uncertain or ill-defined threat, it is not unusual for police or military personnel not to be held criminally liable even if it turns out that the target of official violence was not a threat at all but in fact was an innocent person. However, in some cases, while a split-second decision to unleash violence on someone who proves innocent may be justifiable, instances in which the victim is subject to a fusillade of violence can result in the government official, be it a police officer or a military service member, being held accountable through the criminal justice system. In such instances, the focus is often not on the first shot that was fired, which may be justified, but on the last of dozens, if not hundreds of shots fired .

With that background, the Washington Post had a very disturbing article today about the infliction of violence by our government through torture. It discusses at great length the interrogation of Abu Zubaida, how he was waterboarded 83 times over four or five days, and how the on site officials in charge of his interrogation became convinced that he was cooperating and that there was unanimity within the team to that effect. The last section of the piece was entitled "One More Time," and states that:

CIA officials at the Counterterrorist Center were not convinced.

"Headquarters was sending daily harangues, cables, e-mails insisting that waterboarding continue for 30 days because another attack was believed to be imminent," the former official said. "Headquarters said it would be on the team's back if an attack happened. They said to the interrogation team, 'You've lost your spine.' "

...

"It was hard on them, ...," the former U.S. official said. "They are psychologists. They didn't enjoy this at all."

The two men threatened to quit if the waterboarding continued and insisted that officials from Langley come to Thailand to watch the procedure, the former official said.

After a CIA delegation arrived, Abu Zubaida was strapped down one more time. As water poured over his cloth-covered mouth, he gasped for breath. "They all watched, and then they all agreed to stop," the former official said.

A 2005 Justice Department memo released this year confirmed the visit. "These officials," the memo said, "reported that enhanced techniques were no longer needed."

Discussions of "enhanced interrogation techniques" in the abstract serve no useful purpose other than to obfuscate the fundamental values at stake. Rather, an informed discussion of all the circumstances surrounding the violence inflicted on detainees by our government in our name must take place -- a discussion that continues to be needlessly impaired by government secrecy and destruction of government records.

Furthermore, a case can be made that needless secrecy actually enabled the infliction of unjust violence by our government. When releasing the Army's revised interrogation techniques in September 2006, LTG John Kimmons, the then Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence acknowledged that the Army considered classifying some of the techniques in order to keep them out of the hands of the enemy. Instead, they opted for transparency, in part to be "as clear as we can be in the training of these techniques to our own soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines." Similar transparency on the part of our national leaders to include former President Bush, former Vice-President Cheney, and others could have avoided the infliction of unjust government violence in the first place. Increased transparency today can facilitate a better understanding on the part of the American people as to the full extent of the violence unleashed on detainees in their name. It can also ensure that the same degree of accountability to which we subject a 19-year-old soldier is also applied to our national leaders at the highest levels.

One final point. One of the architects of the CIA interrogation program, who was actually a contractor to the CIA, issued a brief statement yesterday: "It may be easy for people who were not there and didn't feel the pressure of the threats to say how much better they could have done it. But they weren't there. We were and we did the best that we could."

In one regard, he is absolutely right. All of us are capable of committing unspeakable acts when under pressure. The military, for example, understands this all too well, which is why they instill discipline through training and effective leadership in our young men and women who are subject to the incredible pressures of combat. In the words of General Kimmons, "transparency" is a big part of that discipline and training, as is assurance of accountability should unjust violence be inflicted by any service member. When it comes to the inflection of torture by our Government, the "pressure" of government transparency could have precluded us as a nation from embarking upon the road to that evil in the first place.