Author of CIA Kidnap Program says, “The CIA never felt it would help to torture these people”
Author of CIA Kidnap Program says, “The CIA
never felt it would help to torture these people” -- Michael Scheuer, CIA
officer and special adviser to the chief of the CIA’s bin Laden department
until November 2004
In 1995, in the wake of the 1993 car-bomb attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, [Michael] Scheuer was the main CIA officer charged with hunting down Islamic terrorists believed to be posing a threat to the US. He was the “go-to guy” for all things al-Qaeda.
President Clinton’s National Security Council had asked the CIA to break up al-Qaeda around the world and to arrest and imprison key operatives. “The Agency is a tool of the President so of course we said “yes”,” Scheuer explains at his home near the CIA’s HQ in Langley, Virginia. “We asked how we were to do it and where we were to take them, and they said “it’s up to you”.”
The CIA has no prisons and no powers of arrest, so Scheuer was presented with something of a problem. The programme of renditions he developed was very different to the system which now operates.
Today, anyone suspected of links to terrorism can be snatched anywhere in the world, put on a secret CIA jet and taken to a country, such as Egypt, for “out-sourced” torture.
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When Scheuer developed his programme he stipulated strictly that only suspects who had been tried in absentia for terrorist offences or had an outstanding arrest warrant were to be targeted. “They had to be part of some legal process,” Scheuer says. “We were focusing on a very narrow segment of al-Qaeda. It was very delicate and complicated.”
The target also had to be perceived as a direct threat to the US by the CIA and the department of justice and the country in which the person was to be seized had to support the action and carry out the arrest. Today there only has to be the suggestion they are involved in terrorism – no convictions or warrants are needed, nor is the permission of another country.
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“The primary intention was to get the guy off the streets so he couldn’t carry out any more atrocities against US citizens,” he says.
“Our second goal was to seize documents along with the suspect and exploit them for intelligence. Finally, we never expected to get anything from interrogations. Al-Qaeda are trained to fight the jihad from their jail cells , they are masters of counter-interrogation. They’ll give you old information or false information. The CIA never felt it would help to torture these people. ”
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“If we had brought them to the US, the rendition programme would be being celebrated around the world today. We would have abided by the Geneva Conventions. It would have gone down in CIA lore as a tremendous operation if it was handled in a way commensurate with US law.
“The fact that it isn’t, is down to the policymakers. It’s better to use a system that’s in place – of PoWs and the Geneva Conventions – than invent a new one ad-hoc which people don’t agree with. We shot ourselves in both feet. We did it in such a stupid way.
“Everyone from the President down had the option to make them PoWs, but they were arrogant. We believe al-Qaeda can get legitimacy from what we say and do, so there was a constant fear of giving them legitimacy by calling them PoWs.”
Scheuer understands the CIA will eventually be the fall guys for the policy. “...If the lawyers said it was OK, it was OK.”
Both the Clinton and Bush White House OK’s the policy. The Clinton years averaged about a dozen snatches a year. Bush has OK’d about 40 or 50 per year.
Posted: Sun - October 16, 2005 at 02:24 PM