Apart from Beaver's legal input, no one else seemed to have provided any detailed legal advice on the new techniques. It seemed strange that on so important a decision the legal advice of a relatively junior lawyer, with limited experience of these issues, could be definitive.
Several months passed before I met Beaver. By then, like Dunlavey, she was being sued in American courts, although the cases were later dropped. Beaver told me she arrived in Guantánamo in June 2002. In September that year there was a series of brainstorming meetings, some of which were led by Beaver, to gather possible new interrogation techniques. Ideas came from all over the place, she said. Discussion was wide-ranging. Beaver mentioned one source that I didn't immediately follow up with her: "24 - Jack Bauer."
It was only when I got home that I realised she was referring to the main character in Fox's hugely popular TV series, 24. Bauer is a fictitious member of the Counter Terrorism Unit in LA who helped to prevent many terror attacks on the US; for him, torture and even killing are justifiable means to achieve the desired result. Just about every episode had a torture scene in which aggressive techniques of interrogations were used to obtain information.
Jack Bauer had many friends at Guantánamo Bay, Beaver said, "he gave people lots of ideas." She believed the series contributed to an environment in which those at Guantánamo were encouraged to see themselves as being on the frontline - and to go further than they otherwise might.Under Beaver's guidance, a list of ideas slowly emerged.
Potential techniques included taking the detainees out of their usual environment, so they didn't know where they were or where they were going; the use of hoods and goggles; the use of sexual tension, which was "culturally taboo, disrespectful, humiliating and potentially unexpected"; creating psychological drama. Beaver recalled that smothering was thought to be particularly effective, and that Dunlavey, who'd been in Vietnam, was in favour because he knew it worked.
The younger men would get particularly agitated, excited even: "You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas." A wan smile crossed Beaver's face. "And I said to myself, you know what, I don't have a dick to get hard. I can stay detached."
Beaver confirmed what Dunlavey had told me, that a delegation of senior lawyers came down to Guantánamo well before the list of techniques was sent up to Washington. They talked to the intelligence people, they even watched some interrogations. The message from the visitors was that they should do "whatever needed to be done", meaning a green light from the very top - from the lawyers for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the CIA.
By the first week of October, the list of 18 techniques was more or less completed and it fell to Beaver to provide the legal sign-off. She was conscious of her relatively lowly position - "the dirt on the ground", as she put it, too self-deprecatingly - but also acutely aware of the time constraints, the pressures.
Relations with Dunlavey were now very tense. It was rumoured that Dunlavey was leaving, that he'd become paranoid, lost the plot. She tried getting help from more senior lawyers in Florida and Washington, but got nowhere. So she ploughed on alone, proceeding methodically through the 18 techniques. Each was tested against the standards set by US law, namely, the Eighth Amendment of the constitution (which prohibited "cruel and unusual punishments"), the federal Torture Statute, and the military law of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Her standard was elastic. The federal Torture Statute, she wrote, would not be violated so long as none of the proposed techniques was "specifically intended to cause severe physical pain or suffering or prolonged mental harm".
Legality was thus boiled down to intent.The techniques were justified because there was "a legitimate governmental objective in obtaining the information for the protection of the national security of the United States". The ends always justified the means.
Rumsfeld had described the detainees as "the worst of the worst"; Beaver herself had unambiguous views about some of them. "Psychopaths," she told me. "Skinny, runty, dangerous, lying psychopaths."Beaver explained what she had tried to do, and her sense of shock about the way in which her advice was made public. "They gave me an hour's notice, no warning, no preparation." They left her name on the advice when they released it; Haynes could have blacked it out but didn't.
She took the flak and the lawsuits personally.
General James T Hill visited Guantánamo a week before he took over command of Southcom in August 2002. He had not closely followed all the comings and goings over new interrogation techniques, but he had become increasingly concerned about a "dysfunctional" command leadership. He worried that the full intelligence value of the detainees may not be fully exploited. He was also concerned that the interrogators hadn't been properly trained. "They were just kind of swimming by themselves," he said. However, he was not happy about the suggestion from the Pentagon that he should be the one to approve the new techniques. "I said no, no, no. This is way too important to leave at our level." He pushed the decision back to Washington.
Hill's memo reached General Dick Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the most senior person in the US armed forces, on October 25 2002. "There was a sense of urgency that in my 40 years of military experience hadn't existed in other contingencies," he explained when we met. There was the real fear that one of the detainees may know when the next attack would happen, and that they would miss vital information.
The first big decision was Geneva. For historic, cultural and training reasons, Myers insisted that the Geneva conventions should apply, even to a rogue, lawless actor such as al-Qaida. It became clear to me that Myers was a little confused about the decision that was actually taken. He claimed to be satisfied with the president's decision of February 7 2002. "After all the arguments were done, the decision was, we don't think it applies in a technical sense, but we're going to behave as if it does."
That wasn't what the president decided.The actual decision distinguished between the Taliban - to whom Geneva applied, although detainees could not invoke rights under it because they were not wearing uniforms or insignia - and al-Qaida, to whom it didn't apply at all because they were not a state.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
