{"id":1805,"date":"2008-01-29T03:53:59","date_gmt":"2008-01-29T03:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voxnova2.wordpress.com\/?p=1764"},"modified":"2008-01-29T03:53:59","modified_gmt":"2008-01-29T03:53:59","slug":"what-the-cia-didnt-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/2008\/01\/29\/what-the-cia-didnt-know\/","title":{"rendered":"What The CIA Didn’t Know"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Given the CIA\u2019s long distinguished history<\/a> of bungling and incompetence with regard to intelligence gathering generally, I suppose it should come as no surprise that the CIA doesn\u2019t know what it\u2019s doing with regard to interrogation either:<\/p>\n

\u00a0Surprising as it may be, the\u00a0CIA\u00a0has never really been in the interrogation business. After 9\/11, it turned its back on its own limited history of interrogations and never consulted those in the U.S. with solid experience in that difficult art. Even in the seven years since it has built an interrogation capability mostly from scratch, the agency has never applied the best practices in behavioral science to improve its regimen. The result has been to privilege brutality out of ignorance, which, according to many experts and insiders interviewed, means that interrogation practices that produce faulty information are now at the very heart of the U.S. efforts against a mysterious and still-unfamiliar enemy. In short, despite innumerable statements from the Bush administration about the value of the\u00a0CIA\u2019s interrogation program, U.S. interrogators are still mostly in the dark\u2014\u00a0\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

in the dark not only about al-Qaeda, but about how to effectively elicit vital national-security information from the detainees in its custody.Those with intimate knowledge of the program say that in many cases, U.S. interrogators haven\u2019t even been able to learn the basics about many of those they hold or have held, to say nothing of whatever crucial information they possess.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interestingly, one place that the\u00a0CIA\u00a0didn\u2019t look for help was the place where interrogations have been performed, lawfully, for decades: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. \u201cIn terms of actual interrogations, when you have a suspect in custody, the\u00a0FBI\u00a0does that hundreds of times a day, 365 days a year, for 90 years,\u201d said Mike Rolince, who spent over three years as Special Agent in Charge of counterterrorism at the\u00a0FBI\u2019s Washington field office before retiring in October 2005. \u201cThe FBI\u00a0brought serious credibility and a track record to the table. That said, the U.S. government decided to go about [interrogations] in a different way. The results speak for themselves. I don\u2019t think we need to be where we are.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

FBI\u00a0agents familiar with the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah have claimed\u00a0that the waterboarding was worthless\u2014and that the only valuable information from Abu Zubaydah came from documents captured from him. \u201cHe was talking before they did that to him, but they didn\u2019t believe him,\u201d\u00a0FBI\u00a0agent Dan Coleman told The Washington Post. \u201cThe problem is they didn\u2019t realize he didn\u2019t know all that much.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More<\/a>. (HT: Megan McArdle<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Given the CIA\u2019s long distinguished history of bungling and incompetence with regard to intelligence gathering generally, I suppose it should come as no surprise that the CIA doesn\u2019t know what it\u2019s doing with regard to interrogation either: \u00a0Surprising as it may be, the\u00a0CIA\u00a0has never really been in the interrogation business. After 9\/11, it turned its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2986,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[248,155,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blackadder","category-terrorism","category-torture"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat The CIA Didn't Know<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Given the CIA's long distinguished history of bungling and incompetence with regard to intelligence gathering generally, I suppose it should come as no\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/2008\/01\/29\/what-the-cia-didnt-know\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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