WASHINGTON: As US President Barack Obama works on improving relations south of the border during his four-day trip to Mexico and a Latin American summit, he may be surprised over the welcome his release of interrogation memos is having back home.
Obama, who banned the use of interrogation techniques such as sleep deprivation and simulated drowning during his first week in office, released the four top-secret memos on Thursday to mixed reviews. The memos revealed disturbing details about the methods approved by the previous administration for extracting information from terrorist suspects.
“The interrogation techniques described in these memos have already been widely reported,” Obama said in a statement explaining his decision to declassify the memos. “Withholding these memos would only serve to deny facts that have been in the public domain for some time.”
At issue is Obama’s decision to absolve CIA officers from prosecution who committed the harsh, painful interrogations even as his administration released the memos, graphically detailing (and authorizing) such tactics as slamming prisoners against walls, waterboarding them, forcing inmates to maintain stress positions and exposing them to temperature extremes in the nude for long periods of time.
But, in a carefully worded statement, authorities left open the possibility that operatives and higher-level administration officials could face prosecution.
The release of the memos involved a fierce battle within the highest ranks of the White House about the benefits of releasing the information. The memos were among the most urgently sought and the most fiercely protected classified records of recent years.
Intelligence experts said the documents could ignite calls in Congress and among international courts for a fresh, independent investigation of detainee treatment.
The former head of the CIA, Michael Hayden, who ran the agency under President George W. Bush, said the White House move would undermine intelligence work and dissuade foreign agencies from sharing information with the CIA.
“If you want an intelligence service to work for you, they always work on the edge. That’s just where they work,” he told reporters.
On the other side, human rights advocates argued that Obama should not have assured the CIA that officers who conducted interrogations would not be prosecuted if they used methods authorized by Bush lawyers in the memos.
Obama, however, defended his decision. “Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past,” he said.
But the decision not to prosecute CIA officers who used the harsh interrogation techniques left some feeling that it could tarnish somewhat Obama’s growing popularity among Arabs and Muslims, who have cheered his promises to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities and withdraw US troops from Iraq.
Leaders in Washington’s Arab American community, however, believe the president was courageous in releasing the memos. “President Obama’s release of the Bush administration’s interrogation guidelines and procedures is timely and relevant,” said John Duke Anthony, President of the Washington-based National Council on US-Arab Relations, adding that memos should “help to further repair the damage the Bush administration inflicted on America’s reputation throughout the Islamic world.
“The president did the right thing,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute (AAI). “The guilty people are not the guys who did it, the guilty ones are the ones who institutionalized the torture techniques.”
Zogby also supported Obama’s decision to release the memos. “The memos are horrifying in their cold and near ruthless attention to the details of each of the ‘techniques’ used in ‘enhanced interrogation’,” said Zogby. “They are an abomination, representing ... a deliberate effort to circumvent and defile the law.
Anthony said the decision by Obama was in line with his campaign promises.
Since taking office he said he has “announced his intentions to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo, change in name from Abu Ghraib to Baghdad Central Prison, extended his hand in friendship to Muslims, reached out to Iran and Syria, appointed a special envoy for Arab-Israeli affairs, gave his first international interview to Al Arabiya Television, and voiced positive Islam-centric opinions during his recent visit to Turkey. These and other initiatives convey a degree of welcomed sincerity and credibility in stark contrast to many of the attitudes and actions of the previous administration.”
The Bush administration’s decision to allow these harsh interrogation tactics “is a disgrace to our country,” said Zogby. “What the president has done makes it possible to restore our lost honor.”
But the AAI president cautioned that the release of the memos must involve a follow-up of accountability: “This brave act of transparency must now be followed by specific steps to hold Bush administration officials accountable for what they have done. “We do not need another Abu Ghraib situation, where only the lowest level personnel are punished, and those who gave the orders and justified these crimes, escape unscathed,” said Zogby.
Despite moves toward transparency and an announcement to shut down Guantanamo, Obama will still have to address the issue of the more than 600 detainees being held at the US Bagram Theatre Internment Facility in Afghanistan, which has been dubbed “the other Guantanamo.” There are at least three other known detention centers in Afghanistan.
