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| THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2014

INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES

Opinion

I cant be forgiven for Abu Ghraib

ARTHUR OCHS SULZBERGER JR., Publisher

DEAN BAQUET, Executive Editor

STEPHEN DUNBAR-JOHNSON, President, International

TOM BODKIN, Creative Director

PHILIPPE MONTJOLIN, Senior V.P., International Operations

JOSEPH KAHN, Assistant Editor

ACHILLES TSALTAS, V.P., International Conferences

RICHARD W. STEVENSON, Editor, Europe

CHANTAL BONETTI, V.P., International Human Resources

PHILIP P. PAN, Editor, Asia

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE DEMARTA, V.P., International Advertising

ANDREW ROSENTHAL, Editorial Page Editor

PATRICE MONTI, V.P., International Circulation

TRISH HALL, Deputy Editorial Page Editor

HELENA PHUA, Executive V.P., Asia-Pacific

TERRY TANG, Deputy Editorial Page Editor

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MARK THOMPSON, Chief Executive Officer, The New York Times Company
STEPHEN DUNBAR-JOHNSON, Prsident et Directeur de la Publication

A RECORD OF TORTURE AND LIES

An investigation into
the C.I.A.s
secret interrogation
program
reveals
depravity
that is hard
to comprehend.

The world has long known that the United States

government illegally detained and tortured prisoners after
the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and lied about it to
Congress and the world. But the summary of a report
released Tuesday of the Senate investigation of these
operations, even after being sanitized by the Central
Intelligence Agency itself, is a portrait of depravity that is
hard to comprehend and even harder to stomach.
The report raises again, with renewed power, the
question of why no one has ever been held accountable for
these seeming crimes not the top officials who set them
in motion, the lower-level officials who committed the
torture, or those who covered it up, including by destroying
videotapes of the abuse and by trying to block the Senate
Intelligence Committees investigation of their acts.
At one point, the report says, the C.I.A. assured Congress
that the behavior of the secret jailers and interrogators
was nothing like the horrors the world saw at the Abu
Ghraib prison in Iraq. That was the closest the agency
seems to have come to the truth what happened appears
to have been worse than what took place at Abu Ghraib.
The Senate committees summary says that the torture
by C.I.A. interrogators and private contractors was brutal
and far worse than the agency has admitted to the public,
Congress, the Justice Department, even to the White House.
At least one detainee died of suspected hypothermia
after being shackled partially naked to a concrete floor in a
secret C.I.A. detention center run by a junior officer without
experience, competence or supervision. Even now, the
report says, its not clear how many prisoners were held at
this one facility, or what was done to them.
In that, and other clandestine prisons, very often no
initial attempt was made to question prisoners in a
nonviolent manner, despite C.I.A. assertions to the
contrary. Instead, in many cases the most aggressive
techniques were used immediately, in combination and
nonstop, according to the summary of the declassified
and heavily censored document. Sleep deprivation
involved keeping detainees awake for up to 180 hours,
usually standing or in stress positions, at times with their
hands shackled above their heads.
The C.I.A. appears to have used waterboarding on more
than the three detainees it has acknowledged subjecting to
that form of torture. During one session, one of those
detainees, Abu Zubaydah, an operative of Al Qaeda, became
completely unresponsive. The waterboarding of another,
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the
9/11 attacks, became a series of near drownings. Some
detainees, the report said, were subjected to nightmarish
pseudo-medical procedures, referred to as rectal feeding.
That some of these detainees were highly dangerous
men does not excuse subjecting them to illegal treatment
that brought shame on the United States and served as a
recruiting tool for terrorist groups. To make matters
worse, the report said that at least 26 of the 119 known
C.I.A. prisoners were wrongfully held, some of them for
months after the C.I.A. determined that they should not
have been taken prisoner in the first place.

The C.I.A. and some members of President George W.

Bushs administration claimed these brutal acts were
necessary to deal with ticking time bomb threats and
that they were effective. Former Vice President Dick
Cheney, an avid promoter of enhanced interrogation,
still makes that claim. But at no time did the C.I.A.s
torture program produce intelligence that averted a
terrorism threat, the report said. All of the information that
the C.I.A. attributed to its enhanced interrogation
techniques was obtained before the brutal interrogations
took place, actually came from another source, or was a lie
invented by the torture victims a prospect that the C.I.A.
had determined long ago was the likely result of torture.
The litany of brutality, lawlessness and lack of
accountability serves as a reminder of what a horrible
decision President Obama made at the outset of his
administration to close the books on this chapter in our
history, even as he repudiated the use of torture. The C.I.A.
officials who destroyed videotapes of waterboarding were
left unpunished, and all attempts at bringing these acts into
a courtroom were blocked by claims of national secrets.
It is hard to believe that anything will be done now.
Republicans, who will soon control the Senate and have the
majority on the intelligence panel, denounced the report,
acting as though it is the reporting of the torture and not the
torture itself that is bad for the country. Maybe George
Tenet, who ran the C.I.A. during this ignoble period, could
make a tiny amends by returning the Presidential Medal of
Freedom that President Bush gave him upon his retirement.

Eric Fair
BETHLEHEM, PA. I spent this semester
teaching creative writing at Lehigh
University. Ive been a soldier, a police
officer and an interrogator. So hearing
students call me Professor and assigning homework was a significant
change of pace.
But the courses title, Writing War,
kept me from straying too far from the
memories that have haunted me over
the last decade. I am grateful to Lehigh
for the opportunity to teach the course.
The schools willingness to put a veteran in the classroom is the very thing
this country needs to be doing in order
to collectively process what the last 13
years of war have wrought. But teaching a class about war reminded me
daily that I am no college professor.
I was an interrogator at Abu Ghraib.
I tortured.
Abu Ghraib dominates every minute
of every day for me. In early 2004,
workers inside Abu Ghraib were
scrambling to cover the murals of Saddam Hussein with a coat of yellowish
paint. I accidentally leaned up against
one of those walls. I still wear the black
fleece jacket with the faded stain. I still

smell the paint. I still hear the sounds. I

still see the men we called detainees.
Last month, my students at Lehigh
read The Things They Carried by
Tim OBrien. During class I talked
about the things American soldiers carried in Iraq. I brought in a cigar box
filled with the trinkets and mementos I
had purchased from Iraqi vendors at
Baghdad International Airport. I
brought along the black fleece jacket.
When I asked the students to share
their memories of the release in 2004 of
the Abu Ghraib photographs showing
the abuse of detainees, I received the
sort of looks students give when they
think they should know something and
are too embarrassed to admit they dont.
Most avoided eye contact, some gave a
sort of noncommittal nod, while others
went for pure honesty and just yawned.
It was my first encounter with a generation that doesnt consider the release of the Abu Ghraib photographs to
be a critical moment in their lives. I
dont fault them. They were in elementary school at the time. Its something
for history books. Its something their
parents talk about. Its an answer on a
test.
As I looked at their blank faces, I
realized I could let myself feel a powerful sense of relief. Abu Ghraib will fade.
My transgressions will be forgotten.

But only if I allow it.

Ive published articles in newspapers
detailing our abusive treatment of Iraqi
detainees. Ive done interviews on TV
and radio. Ive spoken to groups from
Amnesty International, and Ive confessed everything to a lawyer from the
Department of Justice and two agents
from the Armys Criminal Investigation
Command. Ive said
everything there is to
As a former
say. Its not hard to
interrogator
pretend the best
in Iraq, I was
thing to do is put it all
behind me.
not surprised
I stood before the
by the torture
class that day tempreport, and
ted to let apathy
what it says
soften the painful
about our
truths of history. I no
painful
longer had to assume
history.
the role of the former
interrogator at Abu
Ghraib. I was a professor at Lehigh University. I could
grade papers and say smart things in
class. My son could ride the bus to
school and talk to his friends about
what his father does for a living. I was
someone to be proud of.
But Im not. I was an interrogator at
Abu Ghraib. I tortured.
Eventually I encouraged the students
to track down the photos from Abu

Ghraib and record their reactions in

creative essays. We spent time talking
about the abuses that took place and I
even exposed them to some of my own
writing. They still called me Professor, but I suspect they no longer
thought of me as one.
On Tuesday, the Senate released its
torture report. Many people were surprised by what it contained: accounts
of waterboardings far more frequent
than what had previously been reported, week-long sleep deprivation, a horrific and humiliating procedure called
rectal rehydration. Im not surprised.
I assure you there is more; much remains redacted.
Most Americans havent read the report. Most never will. But it stands as a
permanent reminder of the country we
once were.
In some future college classroom, a
professor will require her students to
read about the things this country did in
the early years of the 21st century. Shell
assign portions of the Senate torture report. There will be blank stares and
apathetic yawns. There will be essays
and writing assignments. The students
will come to know that this country isnt
always something to be proud of.
ERIC FAIR, an Army veteran, was a contract interrogator in Iraq in 2004.

ANTHONY RUSSO

What Mexicos president must do

Enrique Krauze

Contributing Writer

MEXICO CITY President Enrique Pea

Nieto has shown remarkable leadership in passing key reforms to reanimate the economy and further the development of Mexico. But now he must act
quickly to re-establish his political credibility and limit damage to his moral
standing. The present crisis requires it.
Thousands of young people have
been marching in the streets of Mexico
since the kidnapping and murder of 43
students (now confirmed by the DNA of
a burned body) from a college in
Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero. According to Mexicos attorney general,
the crime was committed by professional killers working for a narcogang and under the orders of the
former mayor of the town of Iguala,
who was a member of the leftist Party
of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
Although most of these criminals, including the mayor and his wife, have
been arrested, the student protesters
are blaming the Pea Nieto government of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and questioning
its legitimacy. They are even demanding that the legally elected president
resign from office.
Although most Mexicans may not
support so extreme a demand as resignation, the popularity level of the president has sunk quite low, and not only
because of the slow response to this
atrocious crime. The suspicion of a conflict of interest over his wifes partial
purchase of a luxury mansion has further clouded the situation for Mr. Pea
Nieto. Distrustful of government and

fed up with the violence and insecurity

unleashed by the drug cartels, Mexicans feel a profound moral and political
resentment at a situation that those of
us who struggled for the coming of democracy at the turn of the millennium
never expected to confront. While
there have been incidents of violence
among the protesters, most of the
demonstrations have been peaceful but
intensely angry. And their anger is justified.
No vale nada la vida, la vida no vale
nada (Worth nothing is life, life is
To ease the
present crisis, worth nothing) goes
a famous Mexican
Pea Nieto
song whose subject
needs to apis macho boastfulpear before
ness but whose
words sadly reflect
the nation
the deadly realities in
and offer an
my country. There
apology to
have been about
the people.
100,000 deaths from
criminal violence in
this new millennium. In the state of
Tamaulipas on the northeastern border,
civil authority is almost nonexistent,
and journalists, bloggers and even
tweeters are routinely assassinated. In
Guerrero, more than a dozen criminal
gangs are operating, and mayors and
local police often collaborate with them.
In entire areas of the states of Michoacn, Morelos and Mexico (a state
adjacent to the capital), kidnappings,
assaults and extortion are endemic.
Ninety-eight percent of the crimes have
gone unpunished. It is this near-total
impunity that is the countrys foremost
problem.
The violence recalls earlier periods of
Mexican history, as during the war
against bandits initiated by the dictator

Porfirio Daz (who ruled from 1876-1911)

and fought by a merciless mounted police force, the Rurales. It even reminds
us of the Mexican Revolution itself,
which left a long trail of blood until a
new dictatorship was imposed by the
PRI, founded in 1929. The long rule
of the PRI became a source of corruption that led, in the final decades of
the 20th century, to the enrichment
of politicians with ties to major drug
traffickers.
Many of us believed that all this
would disappear with the advent of democracy in 2000, when the PRI fell
from power after 71 years. We were
wrong. The sudden limitations put on
the near-monarchical powers of the
president had the positive effect of liberating legal local powers (governors
and mayors), but it also gave new
strength to illegal local powers (drug
traffickers and organized crime operatives), who recognized and utilized the
weakness of control within the new
democratic state to expand their national influence.
How can the violence and crime be
driven back and defeated? The old
means of dictatorship are not desirable
nor even thinkable. Freedom of expression, social networking and a solid
belief in human rights wont allow it.
Instead, the government must forge a
political and social consensus to greatly
strengthen the rule of law within the
framework of our young and fragile democracy.
But to do so, it must possess political
and moral credibility and at the moment it is precisely this credibility that
is in question.
To try to ease the crisis, President
Pea Nieto has proposed a series of
measures that would recentralize

power. He wants to eliminate more

than 1,800 local police forces (to be integrated into the police forces of our 32
states) and to legally remove municipal
governments linked to organized
crime. Some of these proposals point in
the right direction, but much more is
needed, especially a greater professionalization of all services connected with
the rule of law, from criminal investigation to the courts and prisons.
Right now the president must make
changes in his cabinet, for example by
removing the secretary responsible for
the awarding of a lucrative high-speed
rail contract that many of the presidents critics claim was granted as a
quid pro quo to the builder of the mansion that the first lady was buying as
their home. Although she is now selling
the property and the rail contract has
been canceled, Mr. Pea Nieto must acknowledge the shadows that have been
cast over his administration by the appearance of scandal.
This is perhaps the most difficult request I would make: that the president
appear before the nation, recognize his
errors and offer an apology to the
people of Mexico. Nothing lends more
nobility to a person in power than recognizing his own humanity. And no
strategy of reforms, even the most rational, can replace the legitimacy of
ethical leadership, especially in times
of crisis. Incarnating such leadership
should be Mr. Pea Nietos immediate
priority.
is a historian, the editor
of the literary magazine Letras Libres
and the author of Redeemers: Ideas
and Power in Latin America. This article was translated by Hank Heifetz from
the Spanish.
ENRIQUE KRAUZE

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