Testing torture

US President Barack Obama decided to declassify the official notes, which, under his predecessor, George Boucher, exchanged the CIA and the Ministry of Justice on the "tough" methods of interrogation. This was demanded from the White House in court on the basis of the Law on Freedom of Information.

Until 1947, the United States did not have a civil intelligence agency. Even during the Second World War, American newspapers wrote that the country is not to “Super Gestapo” or “Super-NKVD” that spying is “not in American”. President Harry Truman had such a disgust for this kind of human activity that at first he did not want to maintain intelligence in peacetime. And when he was nevertheless convinced, he raised the spy props to the newly -made CIA leaders - black raincoats, hats, wooden daggers and false mustache. In a word, he reacted to the new institution is not serious.

But Golem quickly fought off his hands. Gradually, the CIA, according to the unwritten law of all secret departments, turned into a state in the state. In 1975, when the facts of the illegal activity of intelligence were revealed (it was prohibited by working in the United States, especially a political investigation), Congress established the commission to investigate the charges, headed by Senator Frank Haughty. It was Choil who then called the CIA Rogue Elephant - a furious elephant.

The report of the commission of staring said: “The United States should not adopt the enemy’s tactics. The funds are as important as the goals. During the crisis, the temptation appears to ignore the wise restrictions that make people free. But whenever we do this, whenever we use inadmissible means, our internal force, which makes us free, weakens.”

These words should be knocked out on the marble wall of the lobby of the main building of the CIA, next to the quote from the Bible: "... And you know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (John, 8:32).

According to Obama advisers, the decision to declassify the papers was not easy for him. Four former and current Director of the Office opposed the declassification. A supporter of publicity was the Minister of Justice Eric Holder, who ultimately convinced the president that it would be difficult for the government to defend secrecy in court, and besides the fact that publicity will benefit the US international prestige. At the end of last week, the secrecy vulture was removed from four documents. However, some words and phrases in faxed copies are covered with black.

The declassification lies in the line of politics, which Obama designated in the very first days of his presidency, signing executive decrees on the ban on torture, closing the prison in the Gulf of Guantanamo and the elimination of secret CIA prisons abroad. But, unlike these decrees, this decision may have legal consequences. This bothered the president. Therefore, the decision turned out to be contradictory and half.

If the CIA investigators applied unacceptable interrogation methods, they must answer for their actions. If there are no guilty, then there is no guilt.

The alarm that covered the department was so great that on Monday, at the insistence of the director of the CIA Leon Panetta, President Obama arrived at the headquarters of the department in Langley. His speech to the administration of the department was filled with compliments and assurances that he would not give intelligence to be torn to pieces.

“You have a difficult job,” said Obama. “There is no place for errors in it. It is even more difficult because the successes usually remain a secret. When things are going well, they don’t give you out when they are badly, they are accused of you. I know that in this respect the last few days were difficult.” Obama said that in the future he would be on guard of secrecy, and promised to protect the names of the CIA employees "with the same energy with which you protect the American people from disclosure." “Do not be discouraged by what happened,” Obama called those present. “Yes, we make mistakes. But we study on them. We are able to recognize mistakes and go forward - that’s why I consider it an honor for myself to be the president of the United States and why you should be proud that you work in the CIA.”

I involuntarily recall the report of Khrushchev at the XX Congress: the party is good, Stalin is bad.

Eric Holder went even further in his promises: he stated that the government would not only not be held accountable to the CIA employees, "who acted in sincere confidence inspired by the lawyers of the Ministry of Justice, that their actions are legal," but would also provide them with lawyers and pay their expenses, they would make criminal charges somewhere abroad.

These speeches in no way satisfied the human rights activists. The American Union of the struggle for civil rights (he just acquired the lawsuit of the administration, demanding to declassify the documents) called the “amnesty” of the investigators of the “insolvent”. The UN specialist for torture Manfred Novak said that under the Convention against torture, the USA is obliged to hold the perpetrators to justice. Legislators proposed a milder option: a parliamentary investigation.

On Tuesday, Obama had to explain his position. “I don’t think that those who acted according to the instructions of the government’s lawyers deserve punishment,” he said. “As for the consequences for those who formulated these instructions, this is at the discretion of the Minister of Justice, I will not anticipate his decision.”

Critics on the right are not silent. Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney, who is considered the initiator of strict interrogation methods, said in a television interview that the Obama administration is cheating: she did not declare documents, of which it is clear that tough methods have proven their effectiveness: "If we have a discussion, let's discuss honestly."

The relevant information was not slow to leak into the press. It turned out that the most stringent method of coercion to the testimony - imitation of drowning - was applied only to three prisoners, the leaders of Al -Qaida, primarily to the organizer of the attacks on September 11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. If he behaved impudently before immersing in the water, refused to answer questions, then he became silk and spoke about the preparing new large-scale terrorist attack in Los Angeles by the cells of the cell, whose members were later arrested on its tip.

The instructions of the Ministry of Justice say that it is only allowed to apply tough methods when there are reliable intelligence about the inevitable threat of a terrorist attack, when there is convincing reason to believe that the interrogated has information by which the terrorist attack can be prevented, and finally, when other interrogation methods in a limited time did not give a result.