CIA Blogger Fired for Criticizing Torture Policy

PetManimal writes "A contract software developer for the CIA who had a blog on the CIA intranet was fired after criticizing torture in an entry. The title of the post: something along the lines of 'Waterboarding is Torture and Torture is Wrong.' The Washington Post reports Christine Axsmith is not the only CIA blogger -- the spy agency uses blogs to let agents and other workers share information and ideas." From the article: "Hundreds of blog posts appear on Intelink. The CIA says blogs and other electronic tools are used by people working on the same issue to exchange information and ideas. CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano declined to comment on Axsmith's case but said the policy on blogs is that 'postings should relate directly to the official business of the author and readers of the site, and that managers should be informed of online projects that use government resources. CIA expects contractors to do the work they are paid to do.'"

Comments

Two things:

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

1) Blog derives from 'weblog.' She's an ilogger (intranet), not a blogger :-)

2) For those wondering - waterboarding

The modern practice of waterboarding involves tying the victim to a board with the head lower than the feet so that he or she is unable to move. A piece of cloth is held tightly over the face, and water is poured onto the cloth. Breathing is extremely difficult and the victim will be in fear of imminent death by asphyxiation. However, it is relatively difficult to aspirate a large amount of water since the lungs are higher than the mouth, and the victim is unlikely to actually die if this is done by skilled practitioners. Waterboarding may be used by captors who wish to impose anguish without leaving marks on their victims as evidence.

Charming thing for a civilized country to be practicing & defending.

Re:Two things:

[jackbird]

I suggest you read up on Ali Soufan's work in investigating the Cole bombing and the networks that make up Al-Quaeda. As the author of a recent article on Soufan related in an interview:

Q: In your article, you describe Soufan's interrogation techniques. He engaged the suspects; he won their respect; he debated them on theological issues. In interrogations he carried out just after 9/11, these techniques worked very well; he got crucial information about the hijackers and their connections. His methods were very different from the "extreme measures" that we've been hearing about--waterboarding, sleep deprivation, humiliation--and that are being justified on the grounds that they're the only way to get this kind of information. Have we been given a false choice between abusing prisoners or letting something terrible happen?

A: Ali Soufan has shown that intelligent and careful interrogation can achieve real results. And it helps immensely, obviously, to have the language and cultural skills that he does. There are very few people in the American intelligence community that have his set of talents. The U.S. is known to have used these sorts of tactics. You mention the C.I.A.'s impulse has been to deliver Al Qaeda suspects to foreign intelligence agencies that could torture them and extract information the C.I.A. thought it couldn't otherwise obtain. However, what this abuse has yielded from the top Al Qaeda lieutenants is questionable. And I think that's because it's untrustworthy information obtained under torture.

Q: So the problem with torture isn't just that it's torture-- that it compromises America ethically, morally--but that torture doesn't always work.

A: It doesn't work. It often is misleading, as in the case of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, an Al Qaeda lieutenant who was tortured into saying that Saddam Hussein worked with Al Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction. That was the information that the U.S. was trying to get out of him, and he gave it to the interrogators under torture, and that became part of the rationale for the U.S. going to war with Iraq--a disastrous consequence of choosing an unethical approach to gaining information.

Re:Wrong all around

[_xeno_]

That's not how clearances work. There are two aspects that must be satisified to allow access to classified material:

1. Clearance. You must have a sufficient clearance level to view the material.

2. Need to Know. You must need to know the information in order to properly carry out your job.

She clearly violated the second part: the need to know. Personally, while I agree that torture is wrong (and useless as an information gathering technique), she didn't need to reveal that she knew about instances of it from secured information. If all she had said was "I think waterboarding is bad" she probably wouldn't have gotten into any trouble. However, she clearly violated the need to know, clearly demonstrating herself to be a potential security risk.

There are rules about how security is handled, and when the US government desides to trust you to follow them, you'd damned better follow them! In this case, American lives may not have been at stake, but make no mistake: there are instances when information is classified because revealing it will endanger Americans and allies, and I'd much rather she follow the rules and disagree with the CIA than decide she can determine when it's OK to break them.

Security in the armed forces and the CIA is not a laughing matter. There are arguably times when it's time to break the rules and reveal terrible things. One of the side effects you must be prepared for, though, is losing your clearance and potentially being arrested and jailed for it. Part of civil disobedience is accepting the consequences of your actions.

The US used to be civilized. Then came Bush.

[Valdrax]

I find interesting the cognitive dissonance that allows for members of the right-wing to claim that there is an objective moral authority above and beyond the laws of man on issues like gay rights but that only the law and points of technicalities of citizenship are all that matters when the ability to torture foreigners suspected of knowing terrorists is on the line. Pick one or the other, and if you pick the "objective moral authority" side, then do try and strain your brain to think of what Jesus would've thought of torturing people to save your own skin.

There's no quibble about whether the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments apply to our current law enforcement procedures. The restrictions are on the government, and they apply anywhere the government acts, and nowhere in the amendments is government only barred from action against citizens. Go, and see if you can find limitations to bar injustice against citizens only in the Constitution. Furthermore, given the results of Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, it's pretty damn clear that torturing people is flat out illegal in the opinion of the Supreme Court.

Re:The US is absolutely civilized.

[jahudabudy]

Can you provide a single example of an American citizen being dragged from US soil to be held as an enemy combatant without due process? A link to a reputable news source would be sufficient.

How about the BBC?

Re:Misleading Contribution

[Valdrax]

That scaring people with water should be considered torture is completely debateable. Personally, I'm curious -- could I keep my cool with people scaring me that way?

Dude. That's pretty messed up. Read up more on the subject.

Salient points to consider:

• People think they're drowning to death. The terror response to this is wired into the most primitive parts of our brain. It's the mental equivalent of hitting below the belt.
  
• The average person lasts 14 seconds before caving in.
  
• The toughest prisoner they had lasted two minutes before begging them to stop.
  People subjected to this can be traumatized for life afterwords and may develop phobias of water from it.
  
• This isn't "getting a swirly" in a high school locker room. This is being convinced that people who hate you are in the process of trying to kill you.

You have to be completely lacking in the human trait known as empathy to consider this "sissified." I'd love to see how well you hold up to this kind of treatment, especially if no one's taught you that it's unlikely that you'll actually die from the water you're inhaling while struggling to breathe.

(Note, once again, that even people taught what the procedure is rarely last more than a few seconds under it.)