Greg Sargent has obtained CIA Director Leon Panetta's letter to Sen. John McCain confirming that torturous interrogations played at best a small role in discovering Osama bin Laden's whereabouts:
Let me further point out that we first learned about the facilitator/courier's nom de guerre from a detainee not in CIA custody in 2002. It is also important to note that some detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques attempted to provide false or misleading information about the facilitator/courier. These attempts to falsify the facilitator/courier's role were alerting.
In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier's full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means.
Torture advocates will seize on Panetta's admission that "some of the detainees who provided useful information about the facilitator/courier's role had been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques," to argue that torture works. This presumes a great deal given that the fact that detainees who had been subjected to torture gave viable intel does not mean that said intel was disclosed under torture. This would describe alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed giving up intel after being waterboarded while being interrogated through traditional means, which, as I pointed out last week, he appears to have done. The argument over torture, however, is not that it can never work -- but that it's less likely to provide good information for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because the victim is willing to say anything to make the treatment stop.
The political significance of torture is amplified by the fact that the aspects of national security policy conservatives might point to as being useful in finding bin Laden -- such as a massive surveillance state and indefinite detention -- are policies that have been embraced by the current administration. The only part of the post-2006 Bush national security regime abandoned by the administration was its most morally reprehensible -- and that's why it's become such an important element of Republican criticism of the president.
What Panetta reveals, however, is what we already know -- the United States needn't resort to torture techniques developed by our enemies to defend itself. I believe much of the president's failure to alter the trajectory of national security policy after Bush has to do with bureaucratic inertia and resistance. I wonder how much that inertia -- and CIA concerns about exposing themselves to legal jeopardy -- will affect the decision of the next Republican elected to the White House. Whomever it is will inevitably face pressure from their base to restore the torture program, but they may face the same kind of institutional resistance Obama did after years of the intelligence community producing results without it.
