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Even before the Aug. 24 release of the 2004 CIA inspector general's report revealed the full extent of harsh methods used on terror detainees, much of the furor over the agency's enhanced interrogation techniques has been over questions of morality, legality and politics. But there's also a cold, practical question: Did harsh methods like waterboarding cause terrorist suspects to give up valuable, actionable information? (Read "Five Questions for the CIA IG's Interrogation Report...
...April, after the Obama Administration released the Bush Administration's so-called torture memos, which provided the legal rationale for the tactics, Cheney demanded that it also release two CIA memos that, he said, would "show the success of the effort." Those memos, taken together with the unclassified inspector general's report into the CIA's interrogation program, would be the smoking gun that proved, once and for all, that harsh interrogation paid...
...close reading of all three documents, released the same day that the Justice Department announced it would open up a limited investigation into the interrogations, reveals not smoke but fog. And there's just enough of it that both defenders and critics of the CIA's techniques can claim to have been vindicated. The three high-value detainees who endured the harshest interrogation did yield a trove of information, including details of some schemes to attack U.S. targets. But it's hard to gauge whether these were actually looming threats. (See portraits of Gitmo detainees...
...Critics of the Bush Administration have long claimed that the CIA was itself coerced into using harsh methods. Under this scenario, the agency was pressured by its political masters to go into the "dark side" - a phrase made famous by Cheney in the aftermath of 9/11. Bush backers counter that it was the intelligence professionals who said that hardened al-Qaeda operatives could only be broken in this manner. The IG report may help to establish the origins of the program. If it turns out the agency was forced into employing the harsh techniques, expect even louder calls for indictments...
...information, possibly including details of imminent attacks on the U.S. homeland. But tantalizing references to the IG's findings contained in the now infamous "torture memos" by the Bush Administration Office of Legal Counsel suggest that interrogators didn't get much actionable information out of the detainees. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden said last week that the truth lies somewhere in between: that the program achieved "modest success" - providing the agency with useful information about al-Qaeda organization and leadership, but not necessarily information about attacks. If the IG report says no specific attacks were prevented because of information gleaned...