"If Only You Knew What I Knew, You'd Realize How Foolish You Are"

It comes down to this -- 18 watts vs 17; 79 decibels vs. 80; 41 degrees water vs 40; 20 minutes vs 21. Thus was the essence of today's chilling NY Times article which intended to portray what it characterized as the "overwhelming control exercised from C.I.A. headquarters and the Department of Justice — control Bush administration officials say was intended to ensure that the program was safe and legal". Instead, it depicted the banality of a bureaucracy allowing the corrupting influence of official secrecy to shield it from the overwhelming common sense realization that our government had embarked upon a descent into an evil that is the antithesis of every ideal for which we believe this nation stands. Thus, when our nation's prior President stated that "We do not torture," what he was really saying was: "we will douse a prisoner with 41-degree water but for only 20 minutes at a stretch, not 40 - degree water for 21 minutes -- that would be torture."

How does this happen -- how do we as a nation depart so far from the ideals that we teach our children as to that for which our nation stands? How is it that, as described by Glenn Greenwald, as a nation we take helpless detainees in our custody (not that it matters, but many of whom subsequently prove to be innocent of any wrongdoing) and (a) threaten to blow their brains out, torture them with drills, rape their mothers, and murder their children; (b) choke them until they pass out; (c) pour water down their throats to drown them; (d) hang them by their arms until their shoulders are dislocated; (e) blow smoke in their face until they vomit; (f) put them in diapers, douse them with cold water, and leave them on a concrete floor to induce hypothermia; and (g) beat them with the butt of a rifle -- all things that we have always condemned as "torture" and which our laws explicitly criminalize as felonies? I cannot provide a more perfect example of the corrupting influence of official secrecy on the national security decision-making process. I cannot imagine any scenario whereby the above actions would have been adopted as the official policy of our government if they had been subject to public debate, even if that public debate was to occur on September 12, 2001.

In fact, I was in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, approximately 100 yards from the impact of American Airlines Flight 77. I knew a number of the victims of that terrorist attack to include one who was on the flight on official business, only to die when it crashed into the building in which he worked everyday. I specifically recall returning home that evening and, standing on the back deck of my home with my wife, commenting to her that how we reacted to that day's events will forever define us as a nation. Little did I, or anyone else, recognize then the completely "un-American" manner in which our government would eventually react.

Which brings me to a common phenomenon I encountered throughout my years immersed in official government secrecy. Inevitably, I would always encounter an individual who would have considerably greater access to classified information than I did (especially highly compartmentalized information) and refuse to engage in the substantive merits of a particular argument. Instead, he or she would state, in essence, that "if only you knew what I did you would realize how foolish you are in believing what you think you know."

As we have seen over the past several days, the phenomena of "I know something you don't know" is continually exploited by many of our government leaders. For years, former Vice President Cheney has stated that torture (i.e. "enhanced interrogation techniques") has produced valuable intelligence that saved American lives. In the first place, this is an exceedingly vile argument to make, unworthy of a response from any decent human-being. Nonetheless, the media has embraced this as a typical "he said v. he said" argument, without recognizing that it is an aberrant argument without factual basis.

For the past several months, Cheney has demanded the declassification of a number of documents which would prove that torture works and saves American lives. Two of those documents were released on Monday by the Central Intelligence Agency. After they were released, even Cheney recognized that he could no longer make the claims that he did. Instead, after the documents were released, he stated:

The documents released Monday clearly demonstrate that the individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about alQaeda.

Based upon this statement, a number of media outlets promptly reported that the release of these documents proved that torture works and that it saved American lives. However, even in his markedly revised claim, Cheney himself no longer made such an assertion. Instead, he clearly stated that the bulk of intelligence came from detainees subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques;" a very different statement than that it was the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that produced the bulk of the intelligence.

The above highlights how difficult it is to have an informed discourse as to the proper policy our nation should undertake if only a small, incestuous clique has access to the available "facts." None of the "facts" recently declassified and released to date is of use to our nation's adversaries and thus never should have been subject to classification in the first place. Instead, they have now been reduced to "political fodder" in which the "facts" are conveniently disregarded.