Dick Cheney’s ‘Torture Worked’ Evidence Refuted in DOJ Report

On May 13, 2009, I published a post questioning a peculiar claim made by former Vice President Dick Cheney on the previous Sunday’s Face the Nation. Referring to the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation program, Cheney said: (emphasis added)

I made a request that two memos that I personally know of, written by the CIA, that lay out the successes of those policies and point out in considerable detail… all that we were able to achieve by virtue of those policies, that those memos be released…

While the documents Cheney requested remain classified, references to one of the memos within a recent Department of Justice (DoJ) report does no such thing.

Released during the Feb. 19 Friday ‘news dump,’ the report contained the results of the DoJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility(OPR) investigation into the Office of Legal Counsel attorneys’ conduct related to the enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) employed by the Bush Administration. As fellow Care2 blogger, Jessica Pieklo, detailed Feb. 21, the Justice Department issued a damning assessment of Bush attorneys John Yoo and Judge Jay Bybee pertaining to their effort to craft legal cover for the interrogation policies touted by Cheney on CBS’ Face the Nation. Disappointingly, it also cleared them of professional misconduct.

Pieklo, an attorney herself, found the Department’s decision aggravating but unsurprising. However, the report’s revelations relevant to Cheney’s claim, explained below by Newsweek‘s Michael Isikoff, may come as a surprise to anyone who still believes that the former Vice President maintains any credibility on matters of national security.

From Isikoff’s Feb. 20 Newsweek post:

The memo reviewed the results of the use of EITs – which included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and forced nudity – mainly against two suspects” Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the report states. One key claim in the agency memo was that the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogations of Zubaydah led to the capture of suspected “dirty bomb’ plotter Jose Padilla. “Abu Zubaydah provided significant information on two operatives, Jose Padilla and Binyam Mohammed, who planned to build and detonate a ‘dirty bomb’ in the Washington DC area,” the CIA memo stated, according to the OPR report. “Zubaydah’s reporting led to the arrest of Padilla on his arrival in Chicago in May 2003 [sic].”

But as the Justice report points out, this was wrong. “In fact, Padilla was arrested in May 2002, not 2003 … The information ‘[leading] to the arrest of Padilla’ could not have been obtained through the authorized use of EITs.” (The use of enhanced interrogations was not authorized until Aug. 1, 2002 and Zubaydah was not waterboarded until later that month.)

This is what Cheney was citing as evidence that waterboarding terrorist suspects served as productive interrogation tool. Before and since, Cheney has insisted that the Obama administration’s halting of such techniques has made America more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Adding insult to Cheney’s injuriously deceptive assertion is the fact that Zubaydah did provide information about Padilla before he was tortured. Isikoff mentions one of Zubaydah’s conventional interrogators, FBI Agent Ali Soufan, who has since spoken out about the wrongheaded, counterproductive decision to waterboard Zubaydah and others.

(A clip of Soufan’s Jan. 6, 2009, testimony before Congress is embedded within my above mentioned May 13 post.)

Agent Soufan’s criticisms, validated by the DoJ report, have been consistently attacked by those willing to spew Cheney’s pro-torture talking points. Among those willing to mimic Cheney is former speech writer for the Bush White House, Marc Thiessen.

If you’re unfamiliar with Thiessen, be sure to read “Meet Dick Cheney’s Favorite Torture Apologist” from Charles J Brown, a Care2 colleague and Senior Fellow and Washington Director of the Institute for International Law and Human Rights.

Thiessen’s relevance here is succinctly explained by Adam Serwer in his Feb. 22 post at The American Prospect’s TAPPED blog. Serwer illustrates that Thiessen has publicly declared Soufan to be a liar on at least two occasions. Based on the OPR report and Isikoff’s Newsweek post, Serwer concludes:

[The OPR report] not only acts as a refutation of Thiessen’s claim about Zubaydah but calls into question the effectiveness of torture in general, since it was one of the examples Steven Bradbury had used to claim that the “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” had worked.

Finally, it’s worth noting, as Greg Sargent of The Plum Line did Feb. 22:

…Cheney’s claim that documents would prove torture worked got reams and reams of press coverage. Will the fact that we now know that one of the docs he cited was “plainly inaccurate” get even a fraction of the attention his initial claims did? Will he or his daughter even be asked about it during their next three dozen TV interviews?

Certainly, we’ll have an opportunity to hear from Cheney’s daughter Liz before long, but daddy Cheney — having suffered a mild heart attack (his fifth) over the weekend — should be taking it easy for a while. Perhaps, he could use the time to revise his memoir so his publisher can justify its non-fiction classification.

Executive Office of the Vice President Photo by way of Wikimedia Commons.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
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Seth E.

9:37AM PST on Mar 6, 2010

Sheila,

I'm not sure how a report from the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility would have any liberal bias; this is a report of findings from an investigation and is not open to much interpretation, whether liberal or conservative. This article simply passed along the findings of the report and appears to have somewhat objectively explained the ramifications of it.

I'm also very curious as to your definition of "socialist" and how you feel that opposing violent and ineffective torture would meet with such a socialist agenda.

It's amazing how the right wing media loves to call any opinions from the left "socialist" when they really have nothing to do with actual socialism, and even those that do involve it to some extent are certainly not negatives.

The Cold War has been over for about 20 years now, and with many of our allies having socialism involved to varying extents in their own countries, it might surprise you that "socialism" is not a derogatory term.

send a green star

SL L.

7:30AM PST on Mar 6, 2010

I find anything from A. Pendall totally subjective and he is coming from Chicago, radical left wing progressive political area. You can always find articles that lean both ways. but you try hard to go the very left wing socialist progressive direction, don't you. i won't read anything from you again, sir.

Michael C.

3:16PM PST on Mar 2, 2010

Sure, torture keeps America safe! Why, look at the Saudis! They're notorious for torture, and they never suffer terrorist attacks! Wait, they do? Constantly? And are only kept in power by billions in US military aid? Well, I never!

9:20AM PST on Mar 1, 2010

Interesting article!

Julie G.

8:19AM PST on Mar 1, 2010

Gosh! Retirement must be so sad for Cheney...no one to torture.

5:18PM PST on Feb 28, 2010

Lionel mentioned something I've discussed on some other threads, too, and that is to be proactive in trying to trying to prevent recruiting of terrorists.

Look at the recruiting done lately of Yemenis and Nigerians as a great example. Both of these are poor nations with Yemen lacking the oil of its neighbors while Nigeria does have some natural resources, but those are being stolen by corporations without compensation to the Nigerian people. Even though the US as a nation may not be directly guilty of these transgressions (even though some US corporations are, in the case of Nigeria), terrorist groups can manipulate the minds of the disenfranchised people of those nations to hate us and recruit them to take arms against us.

As much as I hate to say it, not only was our massive action to help Haiti after their earthquake the right thing to do as humans, but it was also a public enough show of assistance to such a poor nation that it may have intervened in what could have been another fertile ground for terrorist recruiting; knowing that we helped them is a good way of making sure they know we're their friends and not out to do them harm.

Torture has never been an effective method of gathering intelligence information. Even if someone is tortured, they could still lie, and how do torturers know when to stop? If a person truly doesn't know anything of value, they could fabricate something to get the pain to end, and we'd be left deceived.

Jim S.

12:33PM PST on Feb 28, 2010

Robert S.... Absence of a event if not proof that a policy worked. This is the argument that Government often uses to justify itself in it's actions and is faulty logic. Indeed, many reports, including from US intelligence agencies, contend that the Bush/Cheney policies made this country less safe, and have in fact increased recruitment by terrorist organizations. Unfortunately Obama has continued the same policies.

And Ross L....... It might surprise you to know that there are a large number of Tea Party people who are anti war, anti intervention and anti empire. The term Liberty Republicans is being used by a number of them. Interesting that if they win the Republican primaries, they will be running against pro war, pro empire Democrats. That is why the main stream press is giving the neo-cons such as Cheney, Baker and Rove so much press. The established system is quite threatened by those those who refuse to fit into a political mold that has resulted in the same mentality being in power.

Robert S.

9:05AM PST on Feb 27, 2010

Lionel Mann, The facts speak for themselves. The US was not hit again after 9/11 on Bush/Cheney's watch. The governments #1 job is to keep its people safe. Obviously, their (B/C) policies did that.

Ant m.

7:57AM PST on Feb 27, 2010

I for one am glade B/C did what they did... if your enemy dont fear you they'll over throw you ... Every other country should FEAR the United States ... untill then we are at risk ... ( people say we are supposed to respect pres. obama because of his office... fine ... but how come it doesnt count for pres. Bush ??? kinda two faced huh ???....If we were to start drilling our own oil here, we could leave the middle east alone ... but I doubt they would stop terrorizing us anyway butting fear into them is all they know ....

Lionel M.

3:41AM PST on Feb 27, 2010

Robert, S.
But all this codswallop about "preventing another terrorist attack" is not working. It was only ineptitude on the part of the attacker that prevented a horribloe disaster over Chicago recently. You and your lackeys will continue to be targets for terrorism until you address its root causes: your ruthless exploitation of the weak and helpless around the world, your corruption of the young, your destructive economic policies, your continual military aggression, to name but a few. Your current policies are daily increasing the numbers of your enemies. Even the mighty Gestapo and S.S. could not seal Nazi Germany against "terrorists", and your "security" is just as full of holes. You may catch ninety-nine, but the hundredth will get through. Please, get wise; give up your cowboy games and adopt civilised behaviour. Otherwise your children will reap the terrible harvest of your stupidity.