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:

[rainman_bc]

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

Who claimed the US was a civilized country??? That's pretty subjective, and the perception about the US from within her walls are a lot different than the perception outside her walls.

Re:Two things:

[ArmyOfFun]

I guess we should just say please and thank you instead to get the info we need?

I guess if we torture someone (maybe to death) who actually doesn't have any info we need and/or isn't actually an enemy we just say "oops"?

Re:Two things:

[ndansmith]

When John McCain was being held in VietCong POW camps he was frequently tortured. When asked for the names of members of his flight squadron, John McCain gave five names: The offensive line of his favorite NFL team. No wonder he is also against torture for the reason that it produces faulty intel.

So does anything go in YRO now??

[BBlinkk]

Im I the only one wondering what the hell this has to do with our online rights?? It was on a private INTRANET for god sakes...

This wasn't the peoper place for her to complain

[elrous0]

Jeez, she had no right to use the CIA intranet to complain like this. She should have used the proper CIA procedure with regards to such complaints--take them to the New York Times.

-Eric

One Question:

[tomhudson]

and the victim is unlikely to actually die if this is done by skilled practitioners.

Who'd they practice on before they became so skilled?

Gov't Torturer: I only lost 3 this week.
Superior: Good enough. Here's your "Skilled in Waterboarding" cert. And no, I don't want to know what you did with the bodies.
Gov't Torturer: Thanks. BTW, you might want to avoid the "mystery meat" at the cafeteria.

Re:Wrong all around

[cinnamoninja]

Dammit, "I don't like this" is not a sufficient reason for violating classification.

Err, yes it is.

Should she have been fired for breaking security? Yes.

Should she have done it anyway? Yes.

This is a classic case for civil disobedience. There come times when following the law violates your own integrity as a person, and the dual virtues of loyalty and compassion conflict. At that point, you must showcase you humanity and be willing to take the punishment for it.

Might I have the strength to choose as wisely.

Re:The US is absolutely civilized.

[tomhudson]

I can't speak for those "other countries", but the Canadian constitutional applies to everyone, citizen and non-citizen alike, just like the rest of the laws.

It's also why we're reluctant to extradite death-penalty cases unless we get assurances that the death penalty won't apply. Once they're here, they have the same right not to be put to death for a crime as anyone else.

It must work - our murder rate is 1/3 the US rate.

Torture CREATED the fundamentalist jihad movement

[NZheretic]

View the first chapter of Adam Curtis's documentary The Power of Nightmares.

From Baby it's cold outside

VO: In the 1970s, this film was made, that showed what happened in Nasser's main prison in the '50s and '60s. It was based on the testimony of survivors. Torturers who had been trained by the CIA unleashed an orgy of violence against Muslim Brotherhood members accused of plotting to overthrow Nasser. At one point, Qutb was covered with animal fat and locked in a cell with dogs trained to attack humans. Inside the cell, he had a heart attack.

General FOUAD ALLAM, Interrogator Interior Ministry 1958-87 (speaking in Arabic; subtitled): Sayyed Qutb thought of himself as a superior sort of person. He saw himself as an important Islamist thinker and a strong character. And so on and so on. But at the end of the day, when he was in the military prison he gave us the exact details about his secret group and the orders he had given. The most dangerous was the order to flood the whole of the Nile delta and drown this corrupt land of infidels.

VO: Qutb survived, but the torture had a powerful radicalizing effect on his ideas. Up to this point, he had believed that the Western secular ideas simply created the selfishness and the isolation he had seen in the United States. But the torture, he believed, showed that this culture also unleashed the most brutal and barbarous aspects of human beings. Qutb began to have an apocalyptic vision of a disease that was spreading from the West throughout the world. He called it jahilliyah--a state of barbarous ignorance. What made it so terrifying and insidious was that people didn't realize that they were infected. They believed that they were free, and that their politicians were taking them forward to a new world. But in fact, they were regressing to a barbarous age.

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:Snark

[Valdrax]

And do you really know what goes on in Guantanamo Bay?
Yes.

Okay, you know the good event -- the press release events. Do you know the bad? Do you know about Sean Baker, an MP that was beaten until permanent brain injury in a training exercise where the guards thought he was an actual inmate? Do you know about the repeated attempts at suicide by detainees that have lost hope? Do you know that the Red Cross has said that treatment of prisoners there is "tantamount to torture?"

How our our captured soldiers treated? We've had very few, but the enemy has gone out of their way to violate the Geneva Convention, has tortured and left beheaded bodies in the street, burned and left bodies hanging from a bridge. Do I need to go on?

Yes. Please do. Please explain exactly how just being better than the terrorists is the only moral end goal we should strive for.

Joseph Stalin killed about 10 million of his people, while Pol Pot killed only 2 million of his. Does that mean since Pol Pot didn't kill as many people that he's a decent and civilized fellow? Of course not.

Similarly, we've tortured prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram. Our administration has fought tooth and nail for the "right" to continue torturing suspects and people "of material importance." Sure, we haven't beheaded any of our prisoners (though we have beaten to death a few). We haven't been rounding up people and executing them like the Sunnis and Shia have been doing with each other, but is being better than freaking terrorists the best that we can do or should strive to do?

I disagree. I think it takes a sick level of moral sloth to advance the idea that we shouldn't care as long as our enemies are worse.

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.)