The shameful decision to go after the CIA interrogators

In a cave-in to his liberal backers who have been screeching about Gitmo interrogations and demanding retribution for years, the Obama administration has made a terrible mistake that could well paralyze our future national security. It's a crass political move aimed, not at the CIA interrogators at Gitmo, but at the political appointees who approved the enhanced techniques.

Yesterday, Jeffrey H. Smith, a counsel to the CIA during the Clinton years, explained all the reasons why a special prosecutor should not be appointed. The CIA has already prosecuted those interrogators who broke the rules. Career prosecutors at the Justice Department have already looked at this evidence and passed on the idea of prosecuting the agents. And President Obama has already ordered a change in the rules that offends the liberals so much. But the real reasons not to do this are the effects that this move will have on other national security efforts.

-- Fourth, prosecuting CIA officers risks chilling current intelligence operations. This country faces an array of serious threats. A prosecution or extensive investigation will be an unmanageable expense for most CIA officers. More significant, their colleagues will become reluctant to take risks. What confidence will they have when their senior officers say not to worry, "this has been authorized by the president and approved by Justice"? And such reactions would be magnified if prosecutions focus only on the lower-ranking officers, not those in the chain of command. Such prosecutions are likely to create cynicism in the clandestine service, which is deeply corrosive to any professional service.

-- Fifth, prosecutions could deter cooperation with other nations. It is critical that we have the close cooperation of intelligence services around the world. Nations often work together through their intelligence services on matters of mutual interest, such as combating terrorism, even if political relations are strained or nonexistent. The key to this cooperation is the ability of the United States to be a reliable partner and keep secrets. Prosecuting CIA officers undermines that essential element of successful intelligence liaison.

No wonder that Leon Panetta has had to issue six memos to the CIA to keep up morale. Will any agent take steps that we need to protect Americans in the future or will they worry that whatever they do will later result in their having to employ a lawyer and defend themselves years after the facts and after Langley has already cleared them simply because a new administration has taken over the White House.

And will the public's conscience really be shocked by reports of threats made to the members of Al Qaeda when they read the report that Vice President Cheney urged be released and learn how those interrogations did indeed, contrary to the Democrats' claims, did indeed reveal plots aimed at Americans here and abroad.

Detainee reporting has helped thwart a number of al-Qaeda plots to attack targets in the West and elsewhere. Not only have detainees reported on potential targets and techniques that al-Qaeda operational planners have considered but arrests also have disrupted attack plans in progress," the report said.

It describes how interrogations of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed yielded information about al-Qaeda's attempts to obtain anthrax and crash commercial airplanes into London's Heathrow Airport. It says that other detainees, when confronted with information learned from Mohammed, revealed more about the plots and members of al-Qaeda.

One of the documents on Mohammed titled "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Preeminent Source on al-Qaeda," noted that he was the most valuable source of information on the terror network. The report notes that the planner of 9/11 was forced to rethink second-wave attacks he envisioned after 9/11 because of increased security efforts in the United States. "KSM stated that he had planned a second wave of hijacking attacks even before September 2001 but shifted his aim from the United States to the United Kingdom because of the United States post-11 September security posture and the British government's strong support for Washington's global war on terror," the report noted.

The CIA report states that Mohammed "dramatically expanded our universe of knowledge on al-Qaeda plots & [and] leads that assisted directly in the capture of other terrorists including Jemaah Islamiyah leader Hambali."

The report on detainee information says that information learned from interrogations of al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah revealed plots against "targets abroad and in the United States including the White House and other U.S. symbols."

Zubaydah was the first senior member of the group to be captured in March of 2002.

The report describes gaining "invaluable insights" into "al-Qaeda's current organization, the personalities of its key members, and al-Qaeda's decision-making process. His reporting has contributed to our understanding of the enemy, how al-Qaeda members interact with each other, how they are organized, and what their personal networks are like."

Counter those results with the news of the interrogators' actions that were supposedly so egregious. John Hinderaker reports,

As a threshold matter, it is important to note that the allegations that have been reported in the press are just that--allegations, sometimes based on hearsay. The CIA's Inspector General singled out two incidents for special investigation, both of which involved the same debriefer--not a trained interrogator. As for the other allegations, the Inspector General's report says:

For all of the instances, the allegations were disputed or too ambiguous to reach any authoritative determination regarding the facts. Thus, although these allegations are illustrative of the nature of the concerns held by individuals associated with the CTC Program and the need for clear guidance, they did not warrant separate investigations or administrative action.

The two incidents deemed most serious were the threatening of Abd Al-Nashiri with a loaded handgun and with a power drill. As noted above, these threats were made (but not carried out) by a debriefer who was not trained or authorized to use enhanced interrogation techniques (the CIA distinguishes between debriefers and interrogators.) This same debriefer also threatened Al-Nashiri by saying that "We could get your mother in here." It is worth noting that he said he wanted Al-Nashiri to infer, based on the debriefer's accent and the threat that he made, that he (the debriefer) was from a Middle Eastern security service that has the reputation of using such tactics. The implication was that Al-Nashiri was well aware that the Americans would do no such thing.

The same debriefer was also involved in a "ruse" where he and others tried to convince a detainee that they had shot another detainee, whose "body" the detainee was led past. This one individual accounts for a significant proportion of the improper interrogation techniques documented in the IG's report.

Some of the misdeeds documented in the report border on the humorous, like the claim that interrogators "smoked cigars and blew smoke in Al-Nashiri's face during an interrogation." The horror!

Think of the information gained. Will Americans truly feel that such actions "shock the conscience" - which is the standard for prosecuting these agents for torture?

And remember, this is the information from an earlier CIA report that has already been investigated and prosecution had been decided against. Now the Democrats are in control and the standards change.

And, as Bret Stephens points out, this effort by Holder will lead to the revealing of the names of real CIA agents and expose them and their families to possible retaliation by Al Qaeda. Those who trembled in their shoes for Valerie Plame don't seem to be concerned about real undercover agents.

What's nearly certain, however, is that the names of the agents will soon become a part of the public record, either directly or through leaks that the liberal press will have no scruple about printing. Last year, for instance, the New York Times published the name of a CIA officer who interrogated 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This was despite the protests of the officer and the CIA that to identify him would "put him at risk of retaliation from terrorists or harassment from critics of the agency," as the Times put it in an editor's note.

So much, then, for President Obama's solemn promises to the CIA troops. Nor is Mr. Holder's decision the only political missile tracing a course toward Langley.

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department is looking into allegations that military defense attorneys for top al Qaeda detainees had shown their clients photographs of CIA officers and contractors.

The pictures, some of which were "taken surreptitiously outside [the CIA officers'] homes," were gathered by an outfit called the John Adams Project, jointly sponsored by the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The Project seeks to identify the interrogators to serve as witnesses if and when their clients are tried in federal court or by military commissions. "We are confident that no laws or regulations have been broken," ACLU executive director Anthony Romero told the Post.

He's got to be kidding. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, the law endlessly invoked in Mrs. Wilson's case, specifically proscribes anyone "in the course of a pattern of activities" from seeking to expose the identity of covert agents "to any individual not authorized to receive classified information." Equally plain is the penalty: "fined under Title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than three years, or both."

The Act was written in response to the public disclosure of the names of U.S. covert agents, at least one of whom, Athens station chief Richard Welch, was assassinated in 1975 by Greek terrorists. It was approved overwhelmingly in Congress. In a 2006 letter to this newspaper, Sen. John Kerry approvingly quoted former president George H.W. Bush's "admonition that those who expose our agents are 'the most insidious of traitors.'"

Mr. Kerry was objecting to an editorial warning that CIA officers would soon have to take out personal insurance against the risk of lawsuits and congressional subpoenas. But those officers will have considerably more to fear if the detainees they once interrogated learn their names and are able to get the word out to their associates (as the "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdul Rahman was able to get messages out of federal prison through his lawyer Lynn Stewart), assuming they don't get out themselves. In that case, more CIA agents will be gunned down in their homes—and the John Adamses of our day will have given demonstrably material support to terrorists.

But hey, that is nothing when the Obama administration wants to appease their left flank. Is it any coincidence that they came to this decision just when the left is getting restless over talk that Obama will be forced to drop the public option from his health care ambitions?

And what will happen if the CIA captures a Taliban leader tomorrow in Afghanistan? Will those agents have the confidence to interrogate him and prevent future attacks against the Afghans and our troops there? Will this political move by the Obama administration be worth the deaths that will result? Remember how intelligence failures lead to 9/11 after the Church commission in the 1970s weakened the CIA. Will these decisions lead to future deaths due to the CIA's wariness about interrogating evil men who have information about plans to kill us?