Word: inspector
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...long-awaited report from the inspector general at the Securities and Exchange Commission concluded that the SEC received six "substantive" complaints from June 1992 to December 2008 that could have uncovered disgraced financier Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme as early as 1992 if it had "properly examined or investigated" Madoff's trading practices...
...Inspector General's report released Monday there are references to the considerable doubt inside the CIA about interrogating prisoners of war. Although CIA management apparently never raised those doubts with its political bosses, the rank and file understood how little they themselves knew about interrogation. Few had ever conducted an interrogation, let alone an interrogation employing physical coercion. They also worried about the legal guidance coming out of the Department of Justice. (Read Five Revelations from the CIA Report...
What makes a definitive analysis difficult is the fact that the inspector general's report and both memos are, despite their declassification, still substantially redacted. One consequence is that it is hard to establish timelines: for instance, how much information did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed provide before he was waterboarded, and how much afterward? (Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times, Zubaydah 83 times and Nashiri twice.) (Read "How Waterboarding Got Out of Control...
Another, more fundamental question hard to answer with certainty is whether the interrogators needed to use harsh techniques at all. The inspector general's report says that at least in some instances, they were used "without justification." Even interrogators in the field worried that their bosses' "assessments to the effect that detainees [were] withholding information [were] not always supported by an objective evaluation, but are too heavily based, instead, on presumptions of what the individual might or should know." But ultimately, the conclusion of the inspector general's report in this regard is not, well, particularly conclusive: "The effectiveness...
...plan to [attack Heathrow]." This could suggest he gave up the information before he was put on the waterboard. But as with much of the eagerly anticipated documents, its meaning is anything but clear. Which means that far from ending the debate on whether harsh interrogation worked, the inspector general's report and CIA memos have simply provided more grist to both sides of the argument...