Lawful Interrogation and Detention Act
Floor Speech
LAWFUL INTERROGATION AND DETENTION ACT -- (Senate - January 07, 2009)
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you, Madam President.
I come to the floor today to offer my support for S. 147, the Lawful Interrogation and Detention Act, which my very distinguished colleagues, Senator Feinstein of California and Senator Wyden of Oregon, have just spoken about.
This bill would do three very important things. The first is force the closing of the interrogation and detention activities at the Guantanamo Base. I have supported previous legislation that would do this. I enthusiastically support this legislation to do it.
The Bush administration has created a pretty significant mess with the activities down at Guantanamo. Unfortunately, some things you can snarl up so tightly that it becomes very difficult to unsnarl them, and I am afraid that is exactly the situation with Guantanamo. It will be difficult to unsnarl. It is a real challenge for the incoming administration. But it is vital that we do so because it has become a symbol to the rest of the world of America's departure from our core principles. So I am enthusiastically in support of that provision.
Another provision would restrict our interrogation activities to those techniques that are permitted under the Army Field Manual. In effect, it would end our embrace of enhanced interrogation techniques--indeed, torture.
In support of this notion, I would cite GEN David Petraeus, the Commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq in 2007, who at the time wrote a letter to all U.S. military forces in Iraq. In that letter, he said this:
Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone ``talk;'' however, what the individual says may be of questionable value. In fact, our experience in applying the interrogation standards laid out in the Army Field Manual ..... shows that the techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees.
We have heard arguments that, well, you can't really rely on military interrogators. They don't really know what they are doing. They are amateurish. They need the limitations of the Army Field Manual. By contrast, the interrogators of the CIA and of our intelligence community are experts and much more sophisticated and adept and don't need to have the Army Field Manual restricting them, as if it is some sort of a learner's permit for interrogation.
If you look at the facts, the reverse is actually true. It is the military that has officers with literally decades of experience interrogating enemy prisoners, interrogating enemy prisoners in situations where their fellow soldiers' lives are on the line, where men and women will die or live because of the information they are able to elicit. Notwithstanding those high stakes, they live by the terms of the Army Field Manual. By contrast, we know that the CIA really did not know much about interrogations, that when they got into the business, they had to learn about it. The place they chose to learn was from the SERE Program, a program designed to train American soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines who are likely to be captured by enemies that engage in torture how to be prepared for that, how to withstand it. So for training purposes, to prepare them for these ordeals, they used the interrogation techniques of despot, tyrant nations--North Korea, Communist China, Soviet Russia. For some reason, that was where our intelligence community thought it needed to go for expertise in how you interrogate prisoners, never minding the fact that the purpose of those despot regimes was not to interrogate prisoners and get actionable intelligence information; it was to torture those prisoners so they would say things and produce propaganda for those tyrant regimes.
So the notion that the military is a bunch of amateurs in intelligence who need the constraint of the Army Field Manual to prevent them from making amateur errors and the CIA is a bunch of clever, crafty experts who can operate at a graduate level for all of this is absolutely backward.
The damage that has been done to our country by this decision is, in my opinion, incalculable. When I think of the choice that was made to go this road, I am reminded of a phrase of Winston Churchill's. He describes a bad and dangerous decision that leads to worsening consequences in this way. He describes it as going down ``the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on, there are only flagstones, and a little farther on still these break beneath your feet.'' That is where we stand now, in this dark, descending stairway, with flagstones crumbling beneath our feet and the world looking on in horror at our departure from our core principles. I believe this legislation will help turn us back away from that dark and descending stairway, back into the light of our own best principles and the good will of our fellow nations.
America has not only suffered grievous and lasting harm from this administration's embrace of torture but also from this administration's embrace of torture's handmaiden. Torture's handmaiden, of course, is secret detention.
The bill Senator Feinstein and Senator Wyden are proposing would require the International Committee for the Red Cross to have access to any prisoners held by the intelligence agencies. The ICRC has been visiting detainees in connection with armed conflict since 1915, nearly a century. In 2007, the ICRC visited over half a million detainees in 77 different countries to ensure respect for their life, dignity, and fundamental right to judicial guarantees. All of those notions are enshrined in our own Constitution. They are our national bedrock.
Thirty-eight retired military leaders, distinguished generals and admirals, have concluded that the ICRC access to prisoners held by our Government is a ``critical measure to ensure continuing respect for the norm that [ICRC] access must be provided to all captives in wartime.'' This letter comes from battlefield warriors and intelligence officers who participated in every major American conflict from World War II until today. One of them, less than 3 years ago, was a member of our Joint Chiefs of Staff. They understand that this is important, and they understand why.
If we go down the corridors of history and survey the evil practices of tyrant regimes, we find one of their most notorious methods of coercion and subjugation is holding prisoners secretly and incommunicado. From the oubliettes of the Bourbon Kings of France to Calcutta's Black Hole, from the Gestapo's secret prisons to the Soviet gulags, from medieval dungeons to the bamboo cages of the Cambodian killing fields, secret and anonymous imprisonment has always been the hallmark of the despot. And now the Bush administration has stamped America with this shameful mark.
Our military leaders who are in the best position to judge are pushing back and saying ``enough.'' Why do they do that? I think they do that because they are not beguiled by the force of arms. They live with the likelihood of armed conflict, of injuries, of fatalities. They understand that we engage in that to defend principles, and to give away those principles without a shot fired accomplishes the very harm that we have a military, that we have intelligence services to protect us from.
What is it, we ask ourselves, that makes our country great? Whence cometh our strength? For centuries, America has been called a ``shining city on a hill.'' We are a lamp in the darkness to other nations. One of our greatest Senators, our friend TED KENNEDY, on the occasion of I believe his 15,000th vote in this institution said America is not a land, it is a promise. Torture, anonymous detention, and secret cells break that promise, extinguish that lamp, and darken that city on a hill.
Our strength as Americans comes from the fact that we stand for something. Our strength comes from the aspirations of millions of people around the globe who want to be like us, who want their country to be like ours, who want to believe in what we believe in. Our strength comes when we embody the hopes and dreams of mankind. Our strength comes, as President Clinton said, not from the example of our power but from the power of our example.
I believe Senator Feinstein's legislation will restore across this darkening world the power of America's example, turn us back from that dark and descending stairway, and restore us to the place where America belongs as an ideal and an example for other nations. I appreciate Senator Feinstein's hard work in putting this legislation together. I appreciate the support of Senator Wyden.
Many months ago, I offered the first amendment in the Intelligence Committee that would apply the Army Field Manual to interrogation techniques used by our intelligence agencies, and Senator Feinstein was kind enough to cosponsor that amendment. We worked together in conference to get that amendment passed into legislation that was subsequently vetoed. I submitted the International Committee of the Red Cross access provision last year.
I cannot find words strong enough to explain the strength of my view about the things we sacrifice for whatever small, short-term, tactical intelligence advantage we may achieve from torture and secret cells, assuming there even are any. Most intelligence professionals believe that what you get from torture is people who will say anything to get away from the pain. But let's assume there is some value to it for the sake of argument. I cannot find words strong enough to explain how overwhelmed that small tactical value is by the loss of our reputation and our standing and the confidence and trust of our friends and allies when we engage in behaviors that have been associated with despots and tyrants and the worst of history's regimes.
Let's put this behind us. Let's support this bill. As we go through this time of transition in American Government, let's also go through a time of transition in America's reputation in the world.
I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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