OUTSOURCING THE WAR ON TERROR
Outsourcing the war on terror
Having killed off the CIA interrogation program, Obama can claim the moral high ground about ‘torture’ — as Pakistan does the dirty work.
By Marc A. Thiessen
The capture of the Taliban’s second in command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in a joint operation with Pakistan appears to be a major success in the war on terror. The Obama administration deserves credit for bringing him in alive.
Baradar is a potential treasure trove of intelligence on the Taliban and al-Qaeda. After months of criticism of President Obama’s handling of terrorist detainees, and a nearly successful attack on the homeland, he seems to have rediscovered the virtue of capturing and interrogating terrorists, instead of killing them or reading them their Miranda rights. But problems with his approach to terrorist interrogation remain.
In his first year in office, Obama dramatically escalated the targeted killing of senior terrorist leaders, while eliminating the CIA’s program to detain and question high-value terrorists for intelligence on planned attacks. Under that program, about 100 high-value terrorists were taken into CIA custody, and their questioning helped the United States stop a series of terrorist plots. While news of Baradar’s capture leaked within days, under the CIA program captured terrorists were often held in secret for months before al-Qaeda realized they were being interrogated. This approach allowed us to capture still other terrorists who did not know they were in our sights.
But according to The Washington Post, there have been “no reports of high-value detentions” in the past year. Baradar’s capture does not change this reality. He is not in American custody. He is being held and interrogated by Pakistan’s intelligence services. In another time, he might have been secretly transferred to CIA custody for questioning. But under Obama, we no longer have this capability.
Echoes of al-Qaeda arrests
Baradar’s handling appears to echo that of two senior al-Qaeda terrorists who were captured in the early days of the Obama administration. In January 2009, Pakistani commandos, acting on intelligence from the CIA, seized a Saudi al-Qaeda operative named Zabi al-Taifi. A U.S. counterterrorism official told the Associated Press that Taifi “was among the top two dozen al-Qaeda leaders” and “was deeply involved in internal and external operations plotting.” A month later, the CIA and the Pakistani commandos in Quetta captured an al-Qaeda terrorist named Abu Sufyan al-Yemeni. According to The New York Times, he was “on CIA and Pakistani lists of the top 20 al-Qaeda operatives” and “helped arrange travel and training for al-Qaeda operatives from various parts of the Muslim world to the Pakistani tribal areas.”
Like Baradar, Taifi and Yemeni possessed valuable intelligence. But instead of sending them to the CIA or Guantanamo, they were sent to Islamabad, interrogated briefly by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, and then repatriated to their home countries, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
Where are these men now? In the wake of the recent attempt by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to blow up an airplane over Detroit, it would be enlightening to learn what happened to these two senior al-Qaeda terrorists.
Are they in prison? Have they been released? Have they returned to the fight? Was either involved in the Detroit attack? Perhaps the most transparent administration in history would like to explain their fates.
The handling of these terrorists makes a mockery of Obama’s moral preening oninterrogation. The president says he has “banned torture.” On his second day in office, he issued an executive order mandating that “an individual in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government, or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States … shall not be subjected to any interrogation technique or approach … that is not authorized by and listed in the Army Field Manual.”
Handing off to Pakistan
Yet in the cases of Taifi and Yemeni — and now Baradar — Obama has allowed Pakistan to interrogate these terrorists in our place. They are not under the control of U.S. officials, or detained within a U.S. government facility. While U.S. officials must do everything they can to ensure their humane treatment, the Pakistanis are not required to follow the Army Field Manual or interrogate these terrorists according to the new standards mandated by the Obama administration. And, as The New York Times put it, “the Pakistanis have long been known to subject prisoners to brutal questioning.”
Allowing foreign intelligence services to question terrorists is a loophole in President Obama’s new, morally superior interrogation policy — one that allows tough interrogations to proceed without staining Obama’s reputation. Such loopholes expose the hypocrisy of Obama’s approach to interrogation. He claims the moral high ground, when all he is actually doing is outsourcing the tough cases.
The problem is that when interrogations are outsourced, America is dependent on the competence and effectiveness of the foreign intelligence service that is interrogating the terrorist — which is almost certainly less competent and effective than our own interrogators would be. If the terrorists refuse to cooperate, we have no options to compel their cooperation. And the Pakistanis do not need our permission to release or repatriate them.
Hopefully, Baradar’s interrogation will produce useful intelligence. The fact that he is alive and in questioning is progress. But that does not excuse the fact that America today still has no program to hold and effectively interrogate high-value terrorists ourselves.
Marc A. Thiessen is the author of the best-seller Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack.
(Illustration by Web Bryant, USA TODAY.)
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2010/02/column-outsourcing-the-war-on-terror-.html
Posted at 12:16 AM/ET, February 18, 2010 in Forum commentary, Terrorism – Forum | Permalink
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