E-mail a friendMichael Otterman
airdate October 16, 2007
Michael Otterman is an award-winning freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker who's covered crime and culture for a variety of publications. The New York native studied journalism at the University of Boston and earned his masters at the University of Sydney's Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies. During that time, Otterman wrote a thesis on Abu Ghraib, which became his first book, the critically acclaimed American Torture—a look at how torture became standard practice in today's 'War on Terror.'
Michael Otterman
Tavis: Michael Otterman is a visiting scholar in peace and conflict studies at the University of Sydney in Australia. His acclaimed new book tackles the controversy over the use of torture by the U.S. in the so-called war on terror. The book is called "American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond." Michael Otterman, nice to have you on the program.
Michael Otterman: Oh, thanks for having me in.
Tavis: Good to see you. I'm trying to figure out how to have a conversation about American torture when the American president says we don't torture.
Otterman: Right, well, that is the line of the administration right now, but we have to realize is that when he says, "We do not torture," what's the definition he's using? Well, I argue in the book and elsewhere that the United States definition of torture, well, it's actually radically different than other definitions of torture, specifically - well, there's many examples, but in the U.S., for an act to be torture, under law it must be specifically intended to cause severe pain or suffering.
And so the Department of Justice uses that as an excuse. They say, “Well, if an interrogator's specific intent is to get information, not to cause severe harm, then this act technically isn't torture.” This is one of the loopholes created by the Department of Justice to justify a lot of these enhanced techniques that we hear about today.
Tavis: How does our - that is to say, the U.S. definition - stack up or not stack up, as it were, against the accepted definition around the world, if there is, in fact, an accepted definition?
Otterman: Well, the most accepted definition comes from the U.N., in the convention against torture, and that simply is the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering to extract information. Again, intentional infliction or specific intent. It doesn't sound that different when you hear it, but when you look at what specific intent really means, again, if the interrogator could argue his specific intent was not to cause severe harm, then it's possible to make a case it wasn't actually torture.
And that specifically applies to the psychological tortures that we hear about, the enhanced techniques, quite roughly, are forced standing for up to 40 hours at a time, sensory deprivation, isolation. What about things like hypothermia, water-boarding? These psychological tortures, again, there's a gray area there, because the interrogator could say, "Well, my specific intent wasn't to cause this severe harm," and with these psychological tortures that don't leave physical marks, this case could be made.
Tavis: I would assume that anyone, any country, that engages in torture by any definition does so because there is some believe on their part that it works. Does it?
Otterman: Well, torture doesn't work. It's actually quite counterproductive. Look, I'm not going to say torture has never worked in an extreme case, because there are, maybe, exceptions to the rule. But when you look at it as a whole, any gains from torture are completely overwhelmed by the negatives. Say in the case - well, the U.S. experience with torture, quite recently.
Look at Abu Ghraib. There was a poll taken by the Coalition Provisional Authority about one month before the Abu Ghraib images leaked, and that was April, 2004. The poll showed that about 63 percent of Iraqis supported the U.S. mission in Iraq. One month after, the poll was taken again, after these images were splashed around the world, across computer screens everywhere.
That number dropped from 63 percent down to nine percent. So that shows the wider effects of the use of torture. It turns people against you. And the more immediate torture situation, well, it's quite simple - under torture, under severe pain, people are willing to say anything to stop the sensation of the pain. And again, there are real-world examples to back that up.
One of the first U.S.-held detainees in this war on terror, one of these high-value detainees, was this man named Shaykh al Libbi. And he was involved with running terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and elsewhere. And at first when he was captured, it was the FBI that was interrogating him, and the FBI uses what's called rapport-building techniques.
These are techniques that involve no infliction of pain, but they aim to build trust between the prisoner and the interrogator. The FBI interrogator will offer non-violent incentives. Say if this guy's wife is sick, he'll offer better treatment. He's a Muslim; he'll allow him to pray. And the FBI was using these methods to, according what I've heard, great effect.
The CIA, which was authorized on September 17th, 2001, to literally kill, capture, or detain anyone they deemed al Qaeda - this came through a presidential finding one week after 9/11 - the agents on the ground were restless, they didn't like these FBI techniques. They requested custody of this guy Shaykh al Libbi. It was granted.
First he was sent to Egypt for what we can imagine was extreme torture. He ended up in a CIA black site, and under the - well, various tortures. Water-boarding, which is when you lay someone down on a board, force water into their mouth; it's a form of mock execution. Long-time standing; 40 hours, reportedly. Induced hypothermia.
Under these CIA tortures, he did start to tell his interrogator certain things. This was in 2002, 2003, this was during the build-up to the war in Iraq. And what the CIA was after at the time was any information linking al Qaeda and Saddam. And this guy was smart, he knew that, and so under these tortures he said, "Well, al Qaeda has been trained by Saddam in poisons and gases."
And sure enough, when he revealed these things, the tortures subsided. And this information was so hot, so to speak, it went straight to the White House. In late 2002, you have George Bush saying, "We now know that Saddam has trained al Qaeda in poisons and gases." Colin Powell said the same exact thing in his speech to the U.N.
"We know Saddam has trained al Qaeda in poisons and gases." Obviously we know now that this is all false, it's made up. It was made to please his interrogators. But not only was it just lies under torture, but it had really real-world implications, and it kind of shows the wider implications of torture and how information gleaned under torture could be used for other means.
Tavis: Here's a silly question. If it doesn't work, why engage in it? Why the long history that the U.S. has had of engaging in torture?
Otterman: Right, well, torture works. It doesn't work if you want to get accurate, reliable information, but torture works, say, if you want a false confession. These tortures that are used today by the CIA - and again, I don't use the word torture lightly. Water-boarding is, indeed, a torture, and it's not just my opinion, this is world opinion. Even the State Department classifies it as a torture.
Under these tortures, people will make things up, that much we know. But why is it used? Well, torture speaks to perhaps some of the darker elements of the human psyche. In the wake of 9/11, you have Dick Cheney on "Meet the Press" saying, "We now need to go to the dark side." You have Cofer Black, the then-director of the CIA's counterterrorism center saying, "The gloves are now off."
There's a real sense and a real push towards retribution, and torture factors into that. Also, there's a lot of myths about torture. Shows like "24" depict torture in an incredibly positive light. Jack Bauer goes out there, tortures one guy, saves L.A., saves New York, so on. In reality, you don't get these quote, unquote "ticking time-bomb cases."
Actually, the whole justification - some people make the case, torture should actually be legal for these ticking time-bombs. It's quite preposterous, because the whole range of factors - capturing someone right after they planted a bomb but right before it goes off, and you know you have the right guy and you know everything else, but he's not saying where the bomb is and only torture could work to get this information - again, it makes for dramatic TV.
Tavis: Doesn't quite work that way in real life, though.
Otterman: In fact, I've been studying this issue. I've never seen a real-world example of this quote, unquote "ticking time-bomb."
Tavis: Let me ask, then, the inverse, which is that if - I know what the American people say to pollsters. The number you cited earlier, at one point it's 63 percent pre-knowledge of torture, then it drops down to nine percent. I heard that number clearly. I wonder, though, the inverse - whether or not you think that the American people, no matter what we say to pollsters, would favor torture if the information gleaned from it helped us to live in a safer world and really did cause us to move forward in this so-called war on terror.
Otterman: Right, well, if those variables were somehow true, then maybe you would see even wider support for torture. Polls I've seen, the most recent poll was about 40 percent in support of torture. A fact I cite in the book is in 2005, a poll showed 60 percent of Americans supported the use of torture to save U.S. lives.
But when you ask that question, you have to realize even just the phrasing itself - to save lives. Because when you look at the long history of torture, like I said, it's counterproductive. Maybe under torture, among all the lies maybe a grain of truth flies out, but the wider impacts, not just on a human rights level - obviously, you're destroying a person. I spent time with torture victims. This isn't something that anyone easily recovers from. This is something people live with forever. And incidentally, even the interrogators suffer from many of the same psychological problems when they use torture as their victims.
But incidentally, it's the wider costs that really bring it back, and I think if people realize that there is no true ticking time-bomb, if people realize it actually puts, well, say, our troops in Iraq, at much greater risk.
Tavis: Let me ask you in just 20 seconds right quick, just because I'm curious. Do you have any sense of how many people around the globe are in prison now under the auspices of the U.S. government?
Otterman: Well, according to the Pentagon's own figures, there's up to 60,000 detainees in Iraq.
Tavis: Right now, in Iraq alone.
Otterman: In Iraq alone.
Tavis: That's not Afghanistan, that's not other places.
Otterman: No, that's just Iraq, and a lot of this is a byproduct of the surge. Also in Guantanamo we have about 360 detainees. Again, the Pentagon won't provide exact figures. Afghanistan, another - maybe up to 1,000.
Tavis: The new book from Michael Otterman is called "American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond." Michael Otterman, nice to have you on the program.
Otterman: Yeah, thanks a lot.
Tavis: All the best to you.
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