1 Boring Old Man

Cheney Intervened in CIA Inspector General’s Torture Probe
22 May 2009
Jason Leopold, | t r u t h o u t

    Former Vice President Dick Cheney intervened in CIA Inspector General John Helgerson’s investigation into the agency’s use of torture against "high-value" detainees, but the watchdog was still able to prepare a report that concluded the interrogation program violated some provisions of the International Convention Against Torture.

    The report, which the Obama administration may soon declassify, was completed in May 2004 and implicated CIA interrogators in at least three detainee deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq and referred eight criminal cases of alleged homicide, abuse and misconduct to the Justice Department for further investigation, reporter Jane Mayer wrote in her book, "The Dark Side," and in an investigative report published in The New Yorker in November 2005.

    In "The Dark Side," Mayer described the report as being "as thick as two Manhattan phone books" and contained information, according to an unnamed source, "that was simply sickening."  "The behavior it described, another knowledgeable source said, raised concerns not just about the detainees but also about the Americans who had inflicted the abuse, one of whom seemed to have become frighteningly dehumanized," Mayer wrote. "The source said, ‘You couldn’t read the documents without wondering, "Why didn’t someone say, ‘Stop!’""

    Mayer added that Cheney routinely "summoned" Inspector General Helgerson to meet with him privately about his investigation, launched in 2003, and soon thereafter the probe "was stopped in its tracks." Mayer characterized Cheney’s interaction with Helgerson as highly unusual. Cheney’s "reaction to this first, carefully documented in-house study concluding that the CIA’s secret program was most likely criminal was to summon the Inspector General to his office for a private chat," Mayer wrote. "The Inspector General is supposed to function as an independent overseer, free from political pressure, but Cheney summoned the CIA Inspector General more than once to his office."

    "Cheney loomed over everything," the former CIA officer told Mayer. "The whole IG’s office was completely politicized. They were working hand in glove with the White House." But Mayer said Cheney’s intervention in Helgerson’s probe proved that as early as 2004 "the Vice President’s office was fully aware that there were allegations of serious wrongdoing in the [torture] Program." Helgerson has denied that he was pressured by Cheney…

    In October 2007, former CIA Director Michael Hayden ordered an investigation into Helgerson’s office, focusing on internal complaints that the inspector general was on "a crusade against those who have participated in [the] controversial detention program."

    News reports have suggested that when Helgerson’s report is declassified it will seriously undercut claims made by Cheney in numerous interviews that the systematic torture of "high-value" detainees produced valuable intelligence, thwarted pending terrorist plots against the United States and saved "hundreds of thousands of lives"…

    In an interview with Harper’s magazine last year, Mayer said Helgerson "investigated several alleged homicides involving CIA detainees" and forwarded several of those cases "to the Justice Department for further consideration and potential prosecution." "Why have there been no charges filed? It’s a question to which one would expect that Congress and the public would like some answers," Mayer said. "Sources suggested to me that … it is highly uncomfortable for top Bush Justice officials to prosecute these cases because, inevitably, it means shining a light on what those same officials sanctioned"…

    In "The Dark Side," Mayer wrote that Helgerson was "looking into at least three deaths of CIA-held prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq." One of those prisoners was Manadel al-Jamadi, who was captured by Navy SEALs outside Baghdad in November 2003. "The CIA had identified him as a ‘high-value’ target, because he had allegedly supplied the explosives used in several atrocities perpetrated by insurgents, including the bombing of the Baghdad headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in October 2003," Mayer reported in The New Yorker. "After being removed from his house, Jamadi was manhandled by several of the SEALs, who gave him a black eye and a cut on his face; he was then transferred to CIA custody, for interrogation at Abu Ghraib. According to witnesses, Jamadi was walking and speaking when he arrived at the prison. He was taken to a shower room for interrogation. Some forty-five minutes later, he was dead." At the time of his death, Jamadi’s head was covered with a plastic bag, he was shackled in a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited his ability to breathe and according to forensic pathologists who have examined the case, he suffocated.

[see also Dan Froomkin’s Establishing the connection between the Bush White House and Abu Ghraib]

In Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, we enter the story at the end when the central character, Kurtz, is dying. Kurtz was a man of promise and ambition whose descent into the darkness of the Congo was accompanied by a plunge into hatred and madness. We know the story more recently from Marlon Brando’s role in the movie adaptation, Apocolypse Now. I don’t think it’s a reach to make an analogy between Kurtz and Dick Cheney. In his speech, Cheney sanitizes his Enhanced Interrogation Program, but as we read these stories of his direct involvement and the things that were done, it’s clear that the truth is that he personally shepherded this walk on the "dark side" – one that approached that of Conrad’s fictional Kurtz. From his speech:

In top secret meetings about enhanced interrogations, I made my own beliefs clear. I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do.

Why would a Vice President of the United States personally oversee such a program? Why would he immerse himself in the details of the gathering of intelligence, making personal trips to the C.I.A. to question our analysts? Why would he and his lawyer David Addington personally involve themselves in getting the legal memos to approve torture? Why would he interfere with the C.I.A. Inspector General’s inquiry into the C.I.A.’s activity? How does he know about what really happened at Abu Ghraib? Why does he claim that the Obama Administration is out to get him when we all know that the President would love for us to shut up and "look forward?" Why is he making a pro-torture speech at the American Enterprise Institute after leaving office instead of riding the range in Wyoming? Was this dark trend in his personality there from the start, or did the events of 9/11 drive him there? This week he said:

In the years since, I’ve heard occasional speculation that I’m a different man after 9/11. I wouldn’t say that. But I’ll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities.