MY new book “Torture Team: the Rumsfeld Memo and the Betrayal of American Values” tells an unhappy story: The circumstances in which the US military was allowed to abandon President Lincoln’s famous disposition of 1863, that “military necessity does not admit of cruelty”. This committee will be familiar with those events: It was a focus of the judicial confirmation hearings for William J. Haynes II in July 2006. You will recall that on Dec. 2, 2002, on the recommendation of Haynes, Secretary Rumsfeld authorized the use of new, aggressive techniques of interrogation on Guantanamo Detainee 063. It is now a famous memo, the one in which he wrote: “I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?”
My book tells the story of that memo. My account is that of the report recently published by the Inspector General at the Department of Justice (DOJ). I learnt that the concerns of FBI personnel at Guantanamo were communicated directly to Haynes’ office, in telephone conversations in November and December 2002 between Bowman and, first, Bob Dietz; second, Dan Dell’Orto (who was then Haynes’ deputy and is now his acting successor); and third, Haynes himself.
My conclusion, taking into account my conversations with Haynes, is that he was able to adopt that approach because by then he had knowledge of the contents of the DOJ legal memos written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo on Aug. 1, 2002.
On the basis of these conversations I believe that the administration has spun a false narrative. It claims that the impetus for the new interrogation techniques came from the bottom-up. That is not true: The abuse was a result of pressures driven from the highest levels of government. It claims the so-called Torture Memo of Aug. 1, 2002 had no connection with policies adopted by the administration: That too is false.
As result, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions was violated, along with provisions of the 1984 Convention prohibiting torture. The specter of war crimes was raised by US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in the 2006 judgment in Hamdan v Rumsfeld. That judgment corrected the illegality of President Bush’s determination that none of the detainees at Guantanamo had any rights under Geneva.
Chairman, for what purpose was this done? The administration claims that coercive interrogation of Detainee 063 produced meaningful information. That is not what I was told by those I interviewed. The coercive interrogations were illegal, did not work, have undermined moral authority, have migrated, have served as a recruiting tool for those who seek to do harm to the US, and have made it more difficult for allies to transfer detainees and cooperate in other ways. They have resulted in the very opposite of what was intended. On May 14 last the Pentagon announced charges against Detainee 063 were dropped. These unhappy consequences mirror Britain’s experience in using similar techniques against the IRA in the early 1970s, widely believed to have extended the conflict. The five techniques were soon abandoned but not before great damage was done.
In conclusion, I can put it no better than George Kennan, the great American diplomat. In 1947 he wrote a telex that issued this warning in relation to a perceived Soviet threat: “(W)e must have courage and self-confidence to cling to our own methods and conceptions of human society. (T)he greatest danger that can befall us ... is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.” Chairman, honorable members of the committee, no country has done more to promote the international rule of law than the United States. Uncovering the truth is a first step in restoring this country’s necessary leadership role; in undoing the damage caused; and in providing a secure, sustainable and effective basis for responding to what is a real threat of terrorism.
— This is an abridged version of testimony given by Philippe Sands to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
