The Ethics of Interrogation: Professional Responsibility in an Age of Terror

Chapter Ten: This We Do Not Do: The Future of Interrogation and the Ethics of Professional Responsibility

Ten This We Do Not Do The Future of Interrogation and the Ethics of Professional Responsibility I believe there should be a thoughtful debate about what is necessary and moral for a country to survive. —Jose Rodriguez Jr., Hard Measures, 121 I write this concluding chapter of The Ethics of Interrogation a little over ten and a half years after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Two items in the news suggest both why debates about counterterrorism practices are not likely to go away and how we might frame the national discussion our country ought to have about the ethics of interrogation and professional responsibility going forward. The first is the publication of a book, Hard Measures, by Jose Rodriguez, the former director of the National Clandestine Service of the CIA. In the book and in various interviews during the promotional tour for the volume, Rodriguez vigorously defends counterterrorism measures used by the CIA in the war on terror, including rendition and EITs.1 He argues that the enhanced techniques used on Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed resulted in intelligence that was key in the prevention of specific terrorist plots. The second news item is the conviction of Adis Medunjanin on federal charges of conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction and other terrorist-related activities, as part of a plot to engage in suicide bomb attacks on the subway system of New York City. Medunjanin was brought to trial after authorities discovered the plot and after his accomplices, Najibullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay, agreed to testify against him as part of a plea agreement. At trial, Zazi and Ahmedzay testified that they had traveled with Medunjanin to Pakistan in 2008 to 196 Chapter Ten train with al-Qaeda. They returned to the United States with the intent of targeting the New York Stock Exchange, Times Square, or Grand Central Station, before settling on the subway system as the desired target. At the conclusion of the trial, Assistant Attorney General for National Security Lisa Monaco described Medunjanin as “an active and willing participant in one of the most serious terrorist plots against the homeland since 9/11. Were it not for the combined efforts of the law enforcement and intelligence communities, the suicide bomb attacks that he and others planned would have been devastating.”2 These two stories—one about a book lauding the success of EITs; the other about a terrorist attack narrowly averted—provide a useful frame for concluding our discussion of the ethics of interrogation because they highlight the ongoing threat of terrorism and the need for intelligence about potential attacks in order to prevent them. Those who work in the field of counterterrorism know all too well that a successful terrorist attack is almost inevitable and that the effort to prevent terrorist attacks will require an ongoing calibration of the appropriate moral and legal measures to combat that threat. Assessing Counterterrorism Practices Jose Rodriguez raises an important issue that has not been sufficiently discussed. He notes that President Obama’s repudiation of EITs and the use of rendition and black sites severely limits his options with suspected terrorists. According to Rodriguez, the Obama administration has adopted a “take no prisoners” approach. Because there are limited options for where to imprison captured terrorists and only the techniques of FM 34-52 available for interrogating prisoners once they are detained, the administration has apparently adopted a policy that it is better to kill terrorists than to capture them.3 “An administration that thinks it was ‘torture’ to interfere with the sleep cycle of a handful of the worst terrorists on the planet,” Rodriguez writes, “has no problem with authorizing the firing of Hellfire missiles into a group of thirty or forty suspects gathered around a campfire.” While I disagree with Rodriguez’s casual dismissal of the significance of sleep deprivation, he raises an important issue. As he trenchantly puts the point, “There is no opportunity to interrogate or learn anything from a suspect who is vaporized by a missile.”4 This We Do Not Do 197 Indeed, although I have said very little about targeted killing, I agree with Rodriguez that it is the Obama administration’s version of coercive interrogation. It is authorized by a secret memorandum issued by the OLC; it is likely to be enormously controversial when the full details of the program are finally revealed; and it departs dramatically from traditional...