If the CIA are not interrogators, then who in our government is, that has a charter authorizing operations outside the United States?Originally Posted by relative autonomy
If the CIA are not interrogators, then who in our government is, that has a charter authorizing operations outside the United States?
The Defense Intelligence Agency? Maybe even the State Department? Really, i don't think is something US, as a liberal republic, should be doing. I understand the arguments for aggressive interrogation, torture, and extraordinary redefinition but ultimately think they corrupt the intelligence process more than add to it, to say nothing of what they do for the image or moral standing. Maybe it is an essential function but I just think the negatives out weigh the positives. Most importantly, I don't think American service people, whether they are intelligence professionals, military officers, or enlisted men, should be put in a position where, it can be argued, they are violating the US constitution and committing war crimes. Frankly, lynndie england was fallboy and its disgraceful. Check out The Torture Papers; the documents are all there. you can see a lot of it google books.
I agree with Dr. Zelikow's second point that jedburgh posted. The real issue at hand in extraordinary renditions is how the detainees are handled. If the people weren't being tortured and abused extraordinary rendition would be not be an issue that the EU would act on like it is. Its going to be interesting how this EU investigation pans out and, much further down the road, how contemporary debates on torture are going to be cast by historians.
Back to the CIA, hasn't it been a victim of serious mission creep? As far as i understand (and please let me know if i am wrong), the CIA Charter defines the CIA as an mere independent analytical Agency. The Truman Administration, through NSC decisions, quickly gave it an operational capacity, expanding on some vague clause like "undertake such other functions related to national security." I think the CIA ended up picking up everything the military or state department couldn't or wouldn't do. I just think interrogations is a perfect of example of the CIA getting involved in stuff it shouldn't and, on a practical level, is diluting the quality of intelligence sources and overall analysis that follows.
Oh Grasshopper (he intones in his best David Carradine voice), there is much for you still to learn.
I recommend that you do a little reading about what is encompassed by the intelligence discipline. It is not simply analysis. It includes planning, collection, processing, analysis and dissemination. It takes many forms or -Ints. Interrogation is a technique that is germane to just one part of the whole discipline--the Human Intelligence (or HUMINT) sub-discipline.
i understand the subfields of intelligence and i know how central interrogations are to human intelligence. I just think interrogations, especially as when they drift more towards torture, corrupt the intelligence process. I mean you will say anything to stop pain. It's that simple. From my research, which is mostly on Vietnam, its seems that informant nets and agent penetrations are a much better source of human intelligence than interrogations. Considering that so much of "small wars" are concerned with "winning the hearts and minds" and that "interrogation" tactics often serve to alienate the population, I think one would want to be very careful about what countries they rendition prisoners to and what tactics are condoned. I think the CIA black sites and Gitmo (in addition to extraordinary rendition) have hurt the US more than helped them in the War on Terror. I can we really say the damage done in terms of public standing is worth whatever intelligence was gotten from those interrogations?
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