Hayden and Gast on Handling Terrorist Suspects

Hayden and Gast on Handling Terrorist Suspects

Colleagues: Two very important and interesting pieces today.
The first is from Bob Gast, a Renoite and participant in this Forum, who recently retired as an Assistant Director of the FBI. Bob laments the publicity given to how we handle terrorist suspects and the difficulties that presents for FBI or other interrogators.
Following that is a sharp critique by Mike Hayden, former NSA and CIA Director, who finds much to be concerned about with the direction AG Holder and the Justice Department/FBI are proceeding on counter-terrorism issues, including but not limited to the manner in which the Christmas bomber was handled.
First, this from Bob Gast: (reprinted with permission)
Hi to all –  Having been involved in handling or supervising interrogations ( or interviews as the FBI calls them) for nearly forty years, I was most distressed recently to see in the media and hear from various politicians and other pundits a series of  criticisms, opinions, and ( most worrisome) details of the manner in which interrogations are and may be conducted.

I believe that this desire ( however well intended) to shine a light on a most useful investigative technique is harmful to our national security and could well impact negatively on our ability to obtain valuable intelligence data.  Why do I say this??

Interrogations are a delicate dance between the interrogator who wants information from the interviewee, and the interviewee who may or may not have information but , in any case,  is probably unlikely to give in easily.  At the outset, the interrogator has a number of “arrows in his quiver”:

—   #1 The interviewee is probably in custody or at least is unable to leave the scene of the interview so he/she are somewhat anxious.

—  #2 The interviewee has little knowledge of what the interrogator knows or suspects.

— #3  The subject ( this is the Bureau term.  In New York he is the perp as in “lets whale on the Perp” or the Mutt as ” lets sweat the Mutt.)  In any case the subject doesn’t know with any certainly what the interrogator can and will do to him – physically or mentally.  Sure they’ve heard all these stories that the Feds are good guys or the local cops are wimps etc etc. but can he/she be sure???

—  #4  In military interrogations there is also available to the interrogator a wide range of other options, such as rendition ( it may not be too nice to be returned to Iraq or Saudi Arabia) , the Gitmo option, and a lot of other scary stuff involving threats of serious bodily harm.

Ok, all this is going through the mind of the subject when he is first confronted and he is definitely on the defensive.  But the biggest advantage of all to the interrogator is APPREHENSION and FEAR of what may happen.  What do I mean?  Simply a definite unease as to the UNKNOWN.  He doesn’t think that he will be physically harmed but he DOES NOT KNOW FOR SURE.  Moreover, he is unsure as to what the interrogator may be able to do for him.  i.e., speak with the prosecutor offer immunity etc.  The skillful interrogator can manipulate the subject using all of these CONCERNS and with time will obtain valuable information.

The problem we have now is that the Government/ Justice Department seems hell bent on publicizing in great detail the rules of interrogation and, worst yet, what will happen to the interrogator if she or he fails to follow the rules.  Note, for example, the pending courts marshall of the three navy seals in Afghanistan. This takes away from the interrogation a great deal of the suspense and apprehension on the part of the subject and will make it infinitely more difficult to obtain information on a timely basis.

All the bad guys, be they domestic or foreign warriors, will now have the advantage over the interrogators because you can bet your life savings on the fact that these ” RULES OF CONDUCT”  will now be  part of their “training manuals”.
The contention by the government that this bright light shone on the subject will somehow be viewed favorably by our friends and enemies abroad is, I believe, total BS.

Finally I was glad to read that the interrogation teams will spend considerable time on the study of the backgrounds of likely terrorist subjects and will seek outside help in gaining a better understanding of their possible motivations, religious strictures, family relationships etc.  This will take time but we must build within our intelligence community a very high level of expertise before we can consistently go  “one on one” with some of these subjects.

Hope that you all find this of interest and I’d welcome comments.
Bob Gast, FBI Assistant Director Retired

Now here is the article I denoted by GEN Mike Hayden, former Director of the NSA and the CIA. While Hayden’s article is two weeks old, I think the criticism he levels at the Obama Justice Department and the AG personally is worth serious consideration. Subsequent to the torrent of criticism of the handling of the Christmas bomber, we have seen White House officials troop out to declare that Umar the Bomber is now spilling his guts, so it really didn’t matter that he was “Miranidized” quickly and “lawyered up” by the FBI.

I love Hayden’s last comment noting how slow this Administration has moved in setting up the mechanisms needed to go after the terrorists, but how quickly it seems to be moving against the Navy Seals and, especially, CIA interrogators: “They are apparently still getting organized for the al-Qaeda interrogations. But the interrogations of CIA personnel are well underway.”

Washington Post
January 31, 2010
Pg. 21
Justice And Terror
The mishandling of enemy combatants
By Michael V. Hayden

In the war on terrorism, this country faces an enemy whose theory of warfare ends the hard-won distinction in modern thought between combatant and noncombatant. In doing that for which we have created government — ensuring life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — how can we be adequately aggressive to ensure the first value, without unduly threatening the other two? This is hard. And people don’t have to be lazy or stupid to get it wrong.

We got it wrong in Detroit on Christmas Day. We allowed an enemy combatant the protections of our Constitution before we had adequately interrogated him. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is not “an isolated extremist.” He is the tip of the spear of a complex al-Qaeda plot to kill Americans in our homeland.

In the 50 minutes the FBI had to question him, agents reportedly got actionable intelligence. Good. But were there any experts on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the room (other than Abdulmutallab)? Was there anyone intimately familiar with any National Security Agency raw traffic to, from or about the captured terrorist? Did they have a list or photos of suspected recruits?

When questioning its detainees, the CIA routinely turns the information provided over to its experts for verification and recommendations for follow-up. The responses of these experts — “Press him more on this, he knows the details” or “First time we’ve heard that” — helps set up more detailed questioning.

None of that happened in Detroit. In fact, we ensured that it wouldn’t. After the first session, the FBI Mirandized Abdulmutallab and — to preserve a potential prosecution — sent in a “clean team” of agents who could have no knowledge of what Abdulmutallab had provided before he was given his constitutional warnings. As has been widely reported, Abdulmutallab then exercised his right to remain silent.
In retrospect, the inadvisability of this approach seems self-evident. Perhaps it didn’t appear that way on Dec. 25 because we have, over the past year, become acclimated to certain patterns of thought.

Two days after his inauguration, President Obama issued an executive order that limited all interrogations by the U.S. government to the techniques authorized in the Army Field Manual. The CIA had not seen the final draft of the order, let alone been allowed to comment, before it was issued. I thought that odd since the order was less a legal document — there was no claim that the manual exhausted the universe of lawful techniques — than a policy one: These particular lawful techniques would be all that the country would need, at least for now.

A similar drama unfolded in April over the release of Justice Department memos that had authorized the CIA interrogation program. CIA Director Leon Panetta and several of his predecessors opposed public release of the memos in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit on the only legitimate grounds for such a stand: that the documents were legitimately still classified and their release would gravely harm national security. On this policy — not legal — question, the president sided with his attorney general rather than his CIA chief.

In August, seemingly again in contradiction to the president’s policy of not looking backward and over the objections of the CIA, Justice pushed to release the CIA inspector general’s report on the interrogation program. Then Justice decided to reopen investigations of CIA officers that had been concluded by career prosecutors years ago, even though Panetta and seven of his predecessors said that doing so would be unfair, unwarranted and harmful to the agency’s current mission.

In November, Justice announced that it intended to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several others in civilian courts for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The White House made clear that this was a Justice Department decision, which is odd because the decision was not legally compelled (other detainees are to be tried by military commissions) and the reasons given for making it (military trials could serve as a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda, harm relations with allies, etc.) were not legal but political.

Even tough government organizations, such as those in the intelligence community, figure out pretty quickly what their political masters think is not acceptable behavior. The executive order that confined interrogations to the Army Field Manual also launched a task force to investigate whether those techniques were sufficient for national needs. Few observers believed that the group would recommend changes, and to date, no techniques have been added to the manual.
Intelligence officers need to know that someone has their back. After the Justice memos were released in April, CIA officers began to ask whether the people doing things that were currently authorized would be dragged through this kind of public knothole in five years. No one could guarantee that they would not.
Some may celebrate that the current Justice Department’s perspective on the war on terrorism has become markedly more dominant in the past year. We should probably understand the implications of that before we break out the champagne. That apparently no one recommended on Christmas Day that Abdulmutallab be handled, at least for a time, as an enemy combatant should be concerning. That our director of national intelligence, Denny Blair, bravely said as much during congressional testimony this month is cause for hope.

Actually, Blair suggested that the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), announced by the administration in August, should have been called in. A government spokesman later pointed out that the group does not yet exist.
There’s a final oddity. In August, the government unveiled the HIG for questioning al-Qaeda and announced that the FBI would begin questioning CIA officers about the alleged abuses in the 2004 inspector general’s report. They are apparently still getting organized for the al-Qaeda interrogations. But the interrogations of CIA personnel are well underway.

The writer was director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009.