By Eugene Robinson
4-24/09
The many roads of inquiry into the Bush administration's abusive "interrogation techniques" all lead to one stubborn, inconvenient fact: Torture is not just immoral but also illegal. This means that once we learn the whole truth, the law will oblige us to act on it.
Understandably, the Obama administration wants to avoid getting bogged down in a long, wrenching legal drama that almost certainly would be partisan and divisive. But I'm not sure it's possible to skirt the criminal implications of what we already know, let alone what we might find out in a full-scale "truth commission" investigation with access to all relevant witnesses and documents.
On the moral question, the administration has been straightforward and righteous. One of President Obama's first acts was to declare that the United States will no longer practice waterboarding or other abusive interrogation methods, saying that such depredations are inimical to our nation's values and traditions. Attorney General Eric Holder stated at his confirmation hearings that "waterboarding is torture." This refreshing and admirable clarity stands in stark contrast to the fog of legalistic sophistry in which the Bush administration cloaked its secret prisons.
On the legal question, though, the Obama team has been far less definitive. This is what Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, told his staff about the interrogation abuses in a memo last week: "I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past, but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given."
To state the obvious, this makes no sense at all. If Blair would not have sanctioned "those methods" -- some of which clearly meet the legal definition of torture, in my view -- then why would he give a pass to those who ordered the abuses and those who carried them out?
At least Blair, charged with leading the agents who performed the abuses, has a reason for going all fuzzy on the matter of accountability. And we can thank him for definitively refuting the most commonly cited pro-torture argument: that waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions and other abuses were necessary to obtain vital information that kept Americans safe from another al-Qaeda attack.
"High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used," Blair wrote in the memo. But in a separate statement, he added that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means."
Yes, people break under torture and tell what they know, along with what they don't know and what they think their torturers want to hear. But there is no way to be certain that the valuable information wouldn't have been extracted through traditional -- and legal -- methods of interrogation.
Even if experts have differing views about torture's effectiveness, there is one point on which they cannot disagree: It violates U.S. and international law.
What abuses legally qualify as torture? That probably depends on which of several possibly applicable legal standards is applied. At a bare minimum, though, it seems clear to me that waterboarding will almost certainly be deemed illegal if put under judicial scrutiny. The practice has been considered torture at least since the Spanish Inquisition -- except, apparently, in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel under George W. Bush.
I don't know what more we'll find out if a blue-ribbon investigative panel of some kind is formed. But what we already know is enough to ensure that sooner or later, the abusive interrogation methods authorized by Bush, Dick Cheney and other officials are going to be measured against the law. Our system, left to its own devices, is not designed to let illegal acts be revealed and then ignored.
From the viewpoint of the Obama administration, the alternatives may be unattractive or even unacceptable. No one wants to see low-ranking CIA interrogators go down for doing what their superiors told them was legal, especially if the superiors are not held to account. But pursuing criminal charges against the highest-ranking officials of the previous administration would be unprecedented, and it is unclear where such a process might lead.
It will be hard to stop this train, though. The rule of law is one of this nation's founding principles. It's not optional. Our laws against torture demand to be obeyed -- and demand to be enforced.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
My Tortured Decision
By ALI SOUFAN
FOR seven years I have remained silent about the false claims magnifying the effectiveness of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. I have spoken only in closed government hearings, as these matters were classified. But the release last week of four Justice Department memos on interrogations allows me to shed light on the story, and on some of the lessons to be learned.
One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.
It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.
We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives.
There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.
Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.
One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.
It was the right decision to release these memos, as we need the truth to come out. This should not be a partisan matter, because it is in our national security interest to regain our position as the world’s foremost defenders of human rights. Just as important, releasing these memos enables us to begin the tricky process of finally bringing these terrorists to justice.
The debate after the release of these memos has centered on whether C.I.A. officials should be prosecuted for their role in harsh interrogation techniques. That would be a mistake. Almost all the agency officials I worked with on these issues were good people who felt as I did about the use of enhanced techniques: it is un-American, ineffective and harmful to our national security.
Fortunately for me, after I objected to the enhanced techniques, the message came through from Pat D’Amuro, an F.B.I. assistant director, that “we don’t do that,” and I was pulled out of the interrogations by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller (this was documented in the report released last year by the Justice Department’s inspector general).
My C.I.A. colleagues who balked at the techniques, on the other hand, were instructed to continue. (It’s worth noting that when reading between the lines of the newly released memos, it seems clear that it was contractors, not C.I.A. officers, who requested the use of these techniques.)
As we move forward, it’s important to not allow the torture issue to harm the reputation, and thus the effectiveness, of the C.I.A. The agency is essential to our national security. We must ensure that the mistakes behind the use of these techniques are never repeated. We’re making a good start: President Obama has limited interrogation techniques to the guidelines set in the Army Field Manual, and Leon Panetta, the C.I.A. director, says he has banned the use of contractors and secret overseas prisons for terrorism suspects (the so-called black sites). Just as important, we need to ensure that no new mistakes are made in the process of moving forward — a real danger right now.
Ali Soufan was an F.B.I. supervisory special agent from 1997 to 2005.
FOR seven years I have remained silent about the false claims magnifying the effectiveness of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. I have spoken only in closed government hearings, as these matters were classified. But the release last week of four Justice Department memos on interrogations allows me to shed light on the story, and on some of the lessons to be learned.
One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.
It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.
We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives.
There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.
Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.
One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.
It was the right decision to release these memos, as we need the truth to come out. This should not be a partisan matter, because it is in our national security interest to regain our position as the world’s foremost defenders of human rights. Just as important, releasing these memos enables us to begin the tricky process of finally bringing these terrorists to justice.
The debate after the release of these memos has centered on whether C.I.A. officials should be prosecuted for their role in harsh interrogation techniques. That would be a mistake. Almost all the agency officials I worked with on these issues were good people who felt as I did about the use of enhanced techniques: it is un-American, ineffective and harmful to our national security.
Fortunately for me, after I objected to the enhanced techniques, the message came through from Pat D’Amuro, an F.B.I. assistant director, that “we don’t do that,” and I was pulled out of the interrogations by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller (this was documented in the report released last year by the Justice Department’s inspector general).
My C.I.A. colleagues who balked at the techniques, on the other hand, were instructed to continue. (It’s worth noting that when reading between the lines of the newly released memos, it seems clear that it was contractors, not C.I.A. officers, who requested the use of these techniques.)
As we move forward, it’s important to not allow the torture issue to harm the reputation, and thus the effectiveness, of the C.I.A. The agency is essential to our national security. We must ensure that the mistakes behind the use of these techniques are never repeated. We’re making a good start: President Obama has limited interrogation techniques to the guidelines set in the Army Field Manual, and Leon Panetta, the C.I.A. director, says he has banned the use of contractors and secret overseas prisons for terrorism suspects (the so-called black sites). Just as important, we need to ensure that no new mistakes are made in the process of moving forward — a real danger right now.
Ali Soufan was an F.B.I. supervisory special agent from 1997 to 2005.
MICHELLE OBAMA RULES!
Poll: 79% approve of Michelle Obama
USA Today: in Friday's paper about a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll marking the approach of President Obama's first 100 days.
How do Americans think he's doing?
First, though, USA TODAY's Susan Page takes a look at the remarkable ratings that first lady Michelle Obama is scoring. In the survey, taken Monday and Tuesday, 79% say they approve of the way she is handling the job of first lady. Just 8% disapprove.
That's higher than her husband's approval rating, which was 64% approve-28% disapprove in the Gallup Poll posted Wednesday. Asked about her stronger showing, Obama adviser David Axelrod joked in an interview, "Fortunately, she's agreed not to run against us."
While the president's rating shows a sharp partisan divide -- Democrats overwhelmingly approve but most Republicans don't -- Michelle Obama's appeal crosses party lines. Almost every Democrat expresses approval, 94%-1%. Even among Republicans, her approval rating is a muscular 64%-17%.
Michelle Obama's rating isn't a record high for a president's wife, but it's close. The highest approval rating since Franklin Roosevelt's administration was for Laura Bush in January 2005, as her husband was being sworn in for his second term. Then, 85% said she was doing a good job. And in February 1999, Hillary Rodham Clinton -- now the secretary of State, then on her way to being elected as a New York senator -- had an approval rating of 80%.
Most first ladies can only dream of reaching that sort of territory. Keep in mind that this question has only rarely been asked about first ladies. When it has, here are the top scores of Michelle Obama's predecessors: Nancy Reagan, 58% in April 1987; Rosalynn Carter, 59% in August 1979; Pat Nixon, 54% in June 1969; and Eleanor Roosevelt, 68% in February 1940.
USA Today: in Friday's paper about a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll marking the approach of President Obama's first 100 days.
How do Americans think he's doing?
First, though, USA TODAY's Susan Page takes a look at the remarkable ratings that first lady Michelle Obama is scoring. In the survey, taken Monday and Tuesday, 79% say they approve of the way she is handling the job of first lady. Just 8% disapprove.
That's higher than her husband's approval rating, which was 64% approve-28% disapprove in the Gallup Poll posted Wednesday. Asked about her stronger showing, Obama adviser David Axelrod joked in an interview, "Fortunately, she's agreed not to run against us."
While the president's rating shows a sharp partisan divide -- Democrats overwhelmingly approve but most Republicans don't -- Michelle Obama's appeal crosses party lines. Almost every Democrat expresses approval, 94%-1%. Even among Republicans, her approval rating is a muscular 64%-17%.
Michelle Obama's rating isn't a record high for a president's wife, but it's close. The highest approval rating since Franklin Roosevelt's administration was for Laura Bush in January 2005, as her husband was being sworn in for his second term. Then, 85% said she was doing a good job. And in February 1999, Hillary Rodham Clinton -- now the secretary of State, then on her way to being elected as a New York senator -- had an approval rating of 80%.
Most first ladies can only dream of reaching that sort of territory. Keep in mind that this question has only rarely been asked about first ladies. When it has, here are the top scores of Michelle Obama's predecessors: Nancy Reagan, 58% in April 1987; Rosalynn Carter, 59% in August 1979; Pat Nixon, 54% in June 1969; and Eleanor Roosevelt, 68% in February 1940.
Joe Klein: Don't Panic — At Least Not Yet
Unlike many of my colleagues in the mass media, I am suffering from outrage-deficit disorder. It's not that I'm not angry. I am, in fact, frustrated that we've civilized ourselves out of really satisfying scapegoat rituals: The ancients would have staged a mass immolation of the AIG casino pigs in their private jets or crucified Bernie Madoff on the 18th hole at the Palm Beach Country Club, preceded by a public show trial with Jon Stewart as chief magistrate. You probably need an over-the-top catharsis or two like that to get the popular rage under control. As it is, guilt and anger are being splashed about chaotically and inefficiently--and people like Barack Obama, who had nothing at all to do with the creation of this mess, are being blamed. That is very dangerous at a moment when there is a desperate need for patience and rationality.
Over the course of too many years in this business, I have discovered that my two worst sins are anger and impatience. Anger is a double-edged sword--sometimes it is entirely justified (as when directed against the shameless torture-enabler Dick Cheney, who persists in fouling our public airwaves). Impatience, though, is a subtler problem, and it is chronic in the mass media. Indeed, it comes with the territory. There are columns to fill, commentaries to spew even when a new Administration has just begun its work and it is way too early to make definitive judgments about its policies. The worst judgments I've made as a journalist were the result of impatience. In early 1993--a moment not unlike this one--I joined the mob jumping all over the unseemly sausage-making that attended Bill Clinton's economic plan. Firmly fixated on twigs and branches--not even trees!--I missed the forest: Clinton's budget discipline led to the economic boom of the 1990s.
And so, older and marginally wiser, I'm taking the path of least crankiness in the early days of this new Administration. Sure, I'm worried that Obama isn't dealing decisively enough with the banking crisis--but, on the other hand, this is uncharted territory and maybe a cautious, case-by-case strategy will prove to be the right one. And yes, I'm worried that Obama is deferring a bit too much to the snails and toads (of both parties) in the Congress--but, on the other hand, savvy aides like Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel and congressional liaison Phil Schiliro will focus and massage the legislative packages that will be forthcoming. It is entirely possible, as this magazine surmised last week, that Obama has taken on too much, too soon. Or maybe not. The public hasn't even seen the benefits of the tax cuts that were embedded in the stimulus bill yet. The shovels are barely ready for the new infrastructure spending.
Patience requires a bit of distance, so let's stand back for a moment. Barack Obama was elected President because the governing philosophy of the last 30 years, arrant Reaganism, had proved itself bankrupt. Reaganism was distinguished by four characteristics--at least, according to its own mythology: the belief that government was "the problem" and so less of it was better, tax-cutting (for the wealthy), deregulation and an insistence on military strength as the primary projection of American authority overseas. These were, in some cases, fantasy attributes: After lowering taxes in 1981, Reagan raised them in 1982 and 1983. In many cases, especially deregulation--I'm talking about you, Lawrence Summers--Democrats were complicit in the excesses. In almost every case, a mild form of Reaganism was a plausible corrective for the Democratic excesses that had gone before. In a few cases, like Reagan's toughness toward the Soviet Union and in some forms of deregulation, it actually worked.
What Barack Obama pledged to do during the campaign--what he is trying to do now--is to change course on every one of these Reaganite assumptions. He believes that government must be part of the solution in areas like health insurance, education and energy policy. He will, eventually, restore Clinton-era levels of taxation on the wealthy. He will re-regulate the financial markets. Overseas, he has restored the primacy of diplomacy over the use or threat of military force.
Actually, Obama's foreign policy is illustrative of his overall philosophy. It is comprehensive and complicated. In the case of Pakistan, for example, it involves diplomatic suasion, economic aid, military aid and the discreet use of military force. It will not yield results overnight. It isn't as dramatic or easily judged as an invasion. It may not, in the end, prove the right course. But, as with Obama's economic policies, it will take time to assess fairly. And so, patience, please! We can feed Obama to the Limbaugh lions if he fails ... Or maybe not, should he succeed.
Over the course of too many years in this business, I have discovered that my two worst sins are anger and impatience. Anger is a double-edged sword--sometimes it is entirely justified (as when directed against the shameless torture-enabler Dick Cheney, who persists in fouling our public airwaves). Impatience, though, is a subtler problem, and it is chronic in the mass media. Indeed, it comes with the territory. There are columns to fill, commentaries to spew even when a new Administration has just begun its work and it is way too early to make definitive judgments about its policies. The worst judgments I've made as a journalist were the result of impatience. In early 1993--a moment not unlike this one--I joined the mob jumping all over the unseemly sausage-making that attended Bill Clinton's economic plan. Firmly fixated on twigs and branches--not even trees!--I missed the forest: Clinton's budget discipline led to the economic boom of the 1990s.
And so, older and marginally wiser, I'm taking the path of least crankiness in the early days of this new Administration. Sure, I'm worried that Obama isn't dealing decisively enough with the banking crisis--but, on the other hand, this is uncharted territory and maybe a cautious, case-by-case strategy will prove to be the right one. And yes, I'm worried that Obama is deferring a bit too much to the snails and toads (of both parties) in the Congress--but, on the other hand, savvy aides like Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel and congressional liaison Phil Schiliro will focus and massage the legislative packages that will be forthcoming. It is entirely possible, as this magazine surmised last week, that Obama has taken on too much, too soon. Or maybe not. The public hasn't even seen the benefits of the tax cuts that were embedded in the stimulus bill yet. The shovels are barely ready for the new infrastructure spending.
Patience requires a bit of distance, so let's stand back for a moment. Barack Obama was elected President because the governing philosophy of the last 30 years, arrant Reaganism, had proved itself bankrupt. Reaganism was distinguished by four characteristics--at least, according to its own mythology: the belief that government was "the problem" and so less of it was better, tax-cutting (for the wealthy), deregulation and an insistence on military strength as the primary projection of American authority overseas. These were, in some cases, fantasy attributes: After lowering taxes in 1981, Reagan raised them in 1982 and 1983. In many cases, especially deregulation--I'm talking about you, Lawrence Summers--Democrats were complicit in the excesses. In almost every case, a mild form of Reaganism was a plausible corrective for the Democratic excesses that had gone before. In a few cases, like Reagan's toughness toward the Soviet Union and in some forms of deregulation, it actually worked.
What Barack Obama pledged to do during the campaign--what he is trying to do now--is to change course on every one of these Reaganite assumptions. He believes that government must be part of the solution in areas like health insurance, education and energy policy. He will, eventually, restore Clinton-era levels of taxation on the wealthy. He will re-regulate the financial markets. Overseas, he has restored the primacy of diplomacy over the use or threat of military force.
Actually, Obama's foreign policy is illustrative of his overall philosophy. It is comprehensive and complicated. In the case of Pakistan, for example, it involves diplomatic suasion, economic aid, military aid and the discreet use of military force. It will not yield results overnight. It isn't as dramatic or easily judged as an invasion. It may not, in the end, prove the right course. But, as with Obama's economic policies, it will take time to assess fairly. And so, patience, please! We can feed Obama to the Limbaugh lions if he fails ... Or maybe not, should he succeed.
SECRET TOTAL 87,000 IRAQIS DEAD
AP Exclusive:
At least 87,215 Iraqis have been killed in violence since 2005, according to a previously undisclosed Iraqi government tally obtained by The Associated Press. Combined with tallies based on hospital sources and media reports since the beginning of the war and a review of available evidence by the AP, the figures show that more than 110,000 Iraqis have died in violence since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
The Health Ministry death tally, provided by a government official on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the data, counts deaths from the beginning of 2005 until Feb. 28. It excludes thousands of people who are missing and civilians who were buried in the chaos of war without official notice.
The figure includes only violent deaths — people killed in attacks such as shootings, bombings, mortar attacks and beheadings. It excludes indirect factors such as damage to infrastructure, health care and stress that caused thousands more to die.
Authoritative statistics for 2003 and 2004 do not exist. But Iraq Body Count, a private, British-based group, has tallied civilian deaths from media reports and other sources since the war's start. Combining its figures, which are corroborated by the AP's own reporting and that of other reputable sources, with the Health Ministry figures shows that more than 110,000 Iraqis have died in the war.
The AP reviewed the Iraq Body Count analysis and confirmed its conclusions by sifting the data and consulting experts. The AP also interviewed experts involved with previous studies, prominent Iraq analysts and provincial and medical officials to determine that the new tally was credible.
At least 87,215 Iraqis have been killed in violence since 2005, according to a previously undisclosed Iraqi government tally obtained by The Associated Press. Combined with tallies based on hospital sources and media reports since the beginning of the war and a review of available evidence by the AP, the figures show that more than 110,000 Iraqis have died in violence since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
The Health Ministry death tally, provided by a government official on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the data, counts deaths from the beginning of 2005 until Feb. 28. It excludes thousands of people who are missing and civilians who were buried in the chaos of war without official notice.
The figure includes only violent deaths — people killed in attacks such as shootings, bombings, mortar attacks and beheadings. It excludes indirect factors such as damage to infrastructure, health care and stress that caused thousands more to die.
Authoritative statistics for 2003 and 2004 do not exist. But Iraq Body Count, a private, British-based group, has tallied civilian deaths from media reports and other sources since the war's start. Combining its figures, which are corroborated by the AP's own reporting and that of other reputable sources, with the Health Ministry figures shows that more than 110,000 Iraqis have died in the war.
The AP reviewed the Iraq Body Count analysis and confirmed its conclusions by sifting the data and consulting experts. The AP also interviewed experts involved with previous studies, prominent Iraq analysts and provincial and medical officials to determine that the new tally was credible.
BOMBS IN IRAQ KILL MORE THAN 70
Suicide bombers kill 45 in Diyala province, 28 in Baghdad, official says
Diyala bombing targets Iranian pilgrims at restaurant, security official says
Top U.S. commander denies violent incidents have increased
Report says top al Qaeda in Iraq leader captured; U.S. can't confirm
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Suicide bombers in Iraq launched two deadly attacks Thursday, killing at least 45 people in Diyala province and at least 28 in Baghdad, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said.
An attacker set off a suicide vest at a restaurant in Imam Wais, a Diyala provincial security official said. The area is about 43 miles (70 kilometers) northeast of Baquba, capital of the sprawling province that is north and east of Baghdad.
The Diyala bombing, which targeted Iranian pilgrims, also wounded 28, the Interior Ministry official said.
The Diyala security official said the pilgrims -- who had been visiting Shiite shrines -- stopped for lunch at the restaurant when the attack occurred.
Many pilgrims were among the casualties, and the restaurant collapsed after the bombing, the security official said.
In central Baghdad, a bomber clad in a suicide vest attacked a crowd of national police, killing 28 police and civilians and wounding 52. Police had been helping the Red Crescent distribute aid to displaced families in the Karrada district.
Despite the declining levels of violence in Iraq over recent months, the latest strikes reflect what appears to be a slight uptick from March to April of assaults on civilians, U.S. and Iraqi security forces, and the U.S.-backed militias called Awakening Councils or Sons of Iraq.
On Wednesday, five people in Salaheddin province were killed in a suicide bombing, and a police officer was killed in Baghdad in a hand grenade attack. Also, an American soldier died of wounds suffered while conducting a patrol in eastern Baghdad.
The violence comes as the Obama administration is working to withdraw American combat troops from the country's urban areas by June 30 and eventually remove all troops from the country by the end of 2011 in accordance with the security agreement the United States and Iraq reached last year.
However, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Raymond Odierno, told CNN on Wednesday that the Iraqi government may decide to allow boots on the ground in some urban areas past June.
Odierno said he believes troops will withdraw from volatile Baquba but noted that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will have to make a decision about Mosul -- where al Qaeda in Iraq militants have been active.
"We'll see. You know, it's still two months away, so we'll have to see what progress we're able to make, but that will be a joint assessment between us and the Iraqis," Odierno said.
Odierno said there have been a couple of high-profile violent events this month, but the number of incidents hasn't gone up. He said he is pleased with security progress.
"I don't see any trend of increased violence yet," he said. "I still want to get rid of the al Qaeda capability to conduct high-profile attacks, and we have not yet been able to completely finish that. So we still have some work ahead of us."
Odierno said he is concerned about the chances of political violence, including the spillover of tensions in the north of Iraq between Kurds and Arabs. He urged Iraqi leaders to pursue political negotiations and accommodation.
"I would still like to see political progress," Odierno said.
Thursday's attacks came on the same day Iraq's military announced the capture of a top al Qaeda in Iraq leader.
Iraq State TV, quoting a general, said Omar al-Baghdadi, head of an al Qaeda umbrella group, was seized in Baghdad during a major military operation.
The U.S. military has not yet confirmed the development. Two years ago, there were erroneous reports that al-Baghdadi had been captured and killed
*** I GET THE FEELING THE LONGER WE STAY
THE BETTER THE CHANCE THAT WE WILL NOT LEAVE EVER!
This is a MORAL & STRATEGIC blunder beyond belief!
The costs in money and lives is just mind boggling considering
WE DIDN'T HAVE TO BE THERE!! hk
Diyala bombing targets Iranian pilgrims at restaurant, security official says
Top U.S. commander denies violent incidents have increased
Report says top al Qaeda in Iraq leader captured; U.S. can't confirm
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Suicide bombers in Iraq launched two deadly attacks Thursday, killing at least 45 people in Diyala province and at least 28 in Baghdad, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said.
An attacker set off a suicide vest at a restaurant in Imam Wais, a Diyala provincial security official said. The area is about 43 miles (70 kilometers) northeast of Baquba, capital of the sprawling province that is north and east of Baghdad.
The Diyala bombing, which targeted Iranian pilgrims, also wounded 28, the Interior Ministry official said.
The Diyala security official said the pilgrims -- who had been visiting Shiite shrines -- stopped for lunch at the restaurant when the attack occurred.
Many pilgrims were among the casualties, and the restaurant collapsed after the bombing, the security official said.
In central Baghdad, a bomber clad in a suicide vest attacked a crowd of national police, killing 28 police and civilians and wounding 52. Police had been helping the Red Crescent distribute aid to displaced families in the Karrada district.
Despite the declining levels of violence in Iraq over recent months, the latest strikes reflect what appears to be a slight uptick from March to April of assaults on civilians, U.S. and Iraqi security forces, and the U.S.-backed militias called Awakening Councils or Sons of Iraq.
On Wednesday, five people in Salaheddin province were killed in a suicide bombing, and a police officer was killed in Baghdad in a hand grenade attack. Also, an American soldier died of wounds suffered while conducting a patrol in eastern Baghdad.
The violence comes as the Obama administration is working to withdraw American combat troops from the country's urban areas by June 30 and eventually remove all troops from the country by the end of 2011 in accordance with the security agreement the United States and Iraq reached last year.
However, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Raymond Odierno, told CNN on Wednesday that the Iraqi government may decide to allow boots on the ground in some urban areas past June.
Odierno said he believes troops will withdraw from volatile Baquba but noted that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will have to make a decision about Mosul -- where al Qaeda in Iraq militants have been active.
"We'll see. You know, it's still two months away, so we'll have to see what progress we're able to make, but that will be a joint assessment between us and the Iraqis," Odierno said.
Odierno said there have been a couple of high-profile violent events this month, but the number of incidents hasn't gone up. He said he is pleased with security progress.
"I don't see any trend of increased violence yet," he said. "I still want to get rid of the al Qaeda capability to conduct high-profile attacks, and we have not yet been able to completely finish that. So we still have some work ahead of us."
Odierno said he is concerned about the chances of political violence, including the spillover of tensions in the north of Iraq between Kurds and Arabs. He urged Iraqi leaders to pursue political negotiations and accommodation.
"I would still like to see political progress," Odierno said.
Thursday's attacks came on the same day Iraq's military announced the capture of a top al Qaeda in Iraq leader.
Iraq State TV, quoting a general, said Omar al-Baghdadi, head of an al Qaeda umbrella group, was seized in Baghdad during a major military operation.
The U.S. military has not yet confirmed the development. Two years ago, there were erroneous reports that al-Baghdadi had been captured and killed
*** I GET THE FEELING THE LONGER WE STAY
THE BETTER THE CHANCE THAT WE WILL NOT LEAVE EVER!
This is a MORAL & STRATEGIC blunder beyond belief!
The costs in money and lives is just mind boggling considering
WE DIDN'T HAVE TO BE THERE!! hk
Poll: Americans High on Obama, Direction of US
WASHINGTON (AP) -- For the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is headed in the right direction, a sign that Barack Obama has used the first 100 days of his presidency to lift the public's mood and inspire hopes for a brighter future.
Intensely worried about their personal finances and medical expenses, Americans nonetheless appear realistic about the time Obama might need to turn things around, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. It shows most Americans consider their new president to be a strong, ethical and empathetic leader who is working to change Washington.
Nobody knows how long the honeymoon will last, but Obama has clearly transformed the yes-we-can spirit of his candidacy into a tool of governance. His ability to inspire confidence -- Obama's second book is titled ''The Audacity of Hope'' -- has thus far buffered the president against the harsh political realities of two wars, a global economic meltdown and countless domestic challenges.
''He presents a very positive outlook,'' said Cheryl Wetherington, 35, an independent voter who runs a chocolate shop in Gardner, Kan. ''He's very well-spoken and very vocal about what direction should be taken.''
But other AP-GfK findings could signal trouble for Obama as he approaches his 100th day in office, April 29:
--While there is evidence that people feel more optimistic about the economy, 65 percent said it's difficult for them and their families to get ahead. More than one-third know of a family member who recently lost a job.
--More than 90 percent of Americans consider the economy an important issue, the highest ever in AP polling.
--Nearly 80 percent believe that the rising federal debt will hurt future generations, and Obama is getting mixed reviews at best for his handling of the issue.
And yet, the percentage of Americans saying the country is headed in the right direction rose to 48 percent, up from 40 percent in February. Forty-four percent say the nation is on the wrong track.
Not since January 2004, shortly after the capture of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, has an AP survey found more ''right direction'' than ''wrong direction'' respondents.
So far, Obama has defied the odds by producing a sustained trend toward optimism. It began with his election.
But he is aware that his political prospects are directly linked to such numbers. If at the end of his term the public is no more assured that Washington is competent and accountable and that the nation is at least on the right track, his re-election prospects will be doubtful.
''I will be held accountable,'' Obama said a few weeks into his presidency. ''You know, I've got four years. ... If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition.''
The AP-GfK poll suggests that 64 percent of the public approves of Obama's job performance, down just slightly from 67 percent in February. President George W. Bush's approval ratings hovered in the high 50s after his first 100 days in office.
But Obama also has become a somewhat polarizing figure, with just 24 percent of Republicans approving of his performance -- down from 33 percent in February. Obama campaigned on a promise -- just as Bush had -- to end the party-first mind-set that breeds gridlock in Washington.
Obama is not the first president who sought to tap the deep well of American optimism -- the never-say-die spirit that Americans like to see in themselves.
Even as he briefly closed the nation's banks, Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke in the first days of his presidency of the ''confidence and courage'' needed to fix the U.S. economy. ''Together we cannot fail,'' he declared.
''When Obama came in,'' said D.T. Brown, 39, a Mount Vernon, Ill., radio show host who voted against Obama, ''it was just a breath of fresh air.''
Others said their newfound optimism had nothing to do with Obama, but rather with an era of personal responsibility they believe has come with the economic meltdown.
''I think people are beginning to turn in that direction and realize that there's not always going to be somebody to catch them when things fall down,'' said Dwight Hageman, 66, a retired welder from Newberg, Ore., who voted against Obama.
The AP-GfK Poll was conducted April 16-20 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media. It involved telephone interviews on landline and cell phones with 1,000 adults nationwide. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Intensely worried about their personal finances and medical expenses, Americans nonetheless appear realistic about the time Obama might need to turn things around, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll. It shows most Americans consider their new president to be a strong, ethical and empathetic leader who is working to change Washington.
Nobody knows how long the honeymoon will last, but Obama has clearly transformed the yes-we-can spirit of his candidacy into a tool of governance. His ability to inspire confidence -- Obama's second book is titled ''The Audacity of Hope'' -- has thus far buffered the president against the harsh political realities of two wars, a global economic meltdown and countless domestic challenges.
''He presents a very positive outlook,'' said Cheryl Wetherington, 35, an independent voter who runs a chocolate shop in Gardner, Kan. ''He's very well-spoken and very vocal about what direction should be taken.''
But other AP-GfK findings could signal trouble for Obama as he approaches his 100th day in office, April 29:
--While there is evidence that people feel more optimistic about the economy, 65 percent said it's difficult for them and their families to get ahead. More than one-third know of a family member who recently lost a job.
--More than 90 percent of Americans consider the economy an important issue, the highest ever in AP polling.
--Nearly 80 percent believe that the rising federal debt will hurt future generations, and Obama is getting mixed reviews at best for his handling of the issue.
And yet, the percentage of Americans saying the country is headed in the right direction rose to 48 percent, up from 40 percent in February. Forty-four percent say the nation is on the wrong track.
Not since January 2004, shortly after the capture of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, has an AP survey found more ''right direction'' than ''wrong direction'' respondents.
So far, Obama has defied the odds by producing a sustained trend toward optimism. It began with his election.
But he is aware that his political prospects are directly linked to such numbers. If at the end of his term the public is no more assured that Washington is competent and accountable and that the nation is at least on the right track, his re-election prospects will be doubtful.
''I will be held accountable,'' Obama said a few weeks into his presidency. ''You know, I've got four years. ... If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition.''
The AP-GfK poll suggests that 64 percent of the public approves of Obama's job performance, down just slightly from 67 percent in February. President George W. Bush's approval ratings hovered in the high 50s after his first 100 days in office.
But Obama also has become a somewhat polarizing figure, with just 24 percent of Republicans approving of his performance -- down from 33 percent in February. Obama campaigned on a promise -- just as Bush had -- to end the party-first mind-set that breeds gridlock in Washington.
Obama is not the first president who sought to tap the deep well of American optimism -- the never-say-die spirit that Americans like to see in themselves.
Even as he briefly closed the nation's banks, Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke in the first days of his presidency of the ''confidence and courage'' needed to fix the U.S. economy. ''Together we cannot fail,'' he declared.
''When Obama came in,'' said D.T. Brown, 39, a Mount Vernon, Ill., radio show host who voted against Obama, ''it was just a breath of fresh air.''
Others said their newfound optimism had nothing to do with Obama, but rather with an era of personal responsibility they believe has come with the economic meltdown.
''I think people are beginning to turn in that direction and realize that there's not always going to be somebody to catch them when things fall down,'' said Dwight Hageman, 66, a retired welder from Newberg, Ore., who voted against Obama.
The AP-GfK Poll was conducted April 16-20 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media. It involved telephone interviews on landline and cell phones with 1,000 adults nationwide. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
DROPOUT RATES DECLINES IN SOME CITIES
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The high school dropout problem is getting better in some big cities where it's most severe, a national study found, but the overall situation remains dismal, as more than one in four kids drops out of high school nationwide.
Still, Philadelphia, Tucson, Ariz., and Kansas City, Mo., made huge gains over the past decade, boosting graduation rates by 20 percentage points or more, the study found.
In all, 13 cities saw double-digit improvement in their graduation rates, according to the study released Wednesday by America's Promise Alliance.
''I was surprised at the size of the gains in some of these cities,'' said Christopher Swanson, director of the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, which prepared the report.
''The majority of these large cities are making improvements, and that's something you wouldn't necessarily get if you've been listening to this debate recently,'' Swanson said.
Chicago, which saw its graduation rate rise more than 9 percentage points, tried an array of ideas, including new smaller schools and ninth-grade academies.
Until January, Chicago public schools had been run for the past seven years by Arne Duncan, who is now President Barack Obama's education secretary. Obama has said he wants to fix the problem of high school dropouts.
Duncan said Wednesday there is little doubt about how to fix the problem.
''I think we know many of the answers, yes, we do,'' Duncan told The Associated Press following a speech in Washington.
''There are places around the country where those numbers are going down, and not just going down one year, they're going down year after year after year,'' he said.
''In places that are struggling, there has to be a willingness to face those brutal truths and not be scared of them and acknowledge this huge sense of crisis, the devastating impact this has on children's lives and on the entire community,'' Duncan said.
Urban schools still have a long way to go. On average, only half the kids graduate in the 50 biggest cities, the report said. Those cities are home to half the country's population and are driving a national graduation rate that is estimated at 70 percent.
And while most big cities are making gains, 19 have lost ground. Las Vegas saw its graduation rates plummet 23 percentage points to 44.5 percent. The graduation rate in Wichita, Kan., dropped 18 percentage points to 54.5 percent, and in Omaha, Neb., it dropped 15 percentage points to 50 percent.
The report measures progress from 1995 to 2005, the most recent year for which comprehensive data was available from the Education Department.
For kids who don't finish high school, the future is bleak. High school dropouts are the only segment of the work force for whom income levels shrank over the past 30 years, the report said.
Only in recent years have people begun to realize how widespread and severe the dropout crisis is, said Bob Balfanz, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Balfanz has worked with America's Promise Alliance, a children's advocacy group started by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, but did not work on this report.
''Paying attention matters,'' Balfanz said. ''If there's a problem, and we react to it, at least in some cases, we'll make it better.''
Since then, Philadelphia and other cities have worked on finding ways to intervene, especially when kids are most vulnerable, in ninth grade when they start high school.
Some districts have created ninth-grade academies that offer smaller classes and help catching up in math or other subjects to ease the transition into high school.
Districts also have developed smaller schools and focused on helping kids with other problems -- homelessness, a sick relative they take care of -- to keep kids from dropping out.
Still, Philadelphia, Tucson, Ariz., and Kansas City, Mo., made huge gains over the past decade, boosting graduation rates by 20 percentage points or more, the study found.
In all, 13 cities saw double-digit improvement in their graduation rates, according to the study released Wednesday by America's Promise Alliance.
''I was surprised at the size of the gains in some of these cities,'' said Christopher Swanson, director of the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, which prepared the report.
''The majority of these large cities are making improvements, and that's something you wouldn't necessarily get if you've been listening to this debate recently,'' Swanson said.
Chicago, which saw its graduation rate rise more than 9 percentage points, tried an array of ideas, including new smaller schools and ninth-grade academies.
Until January, Chicago public schools had been run for the past seven years by Arne Duncan, who is now President Barack Obama's education secretary. Obama has said he wants to fix the problem of high school dropouts.
Duncan said Wednesday there is little doubt about how to fix the problem.
''I think we know many of the answers, yes, we do,'' Duncan told The Associated Press following a speech in Washington.
''There are places around the country where those numbers are going down, and not just going down one year, they're going down year after year after year,'' he said.
''In places that are struggling, there has to be a willingness to face those brutal truths and not be scared of them and acknowledge this huge sense of crisis, the devastating impact this has on children's lives and on the entire community,'' Duncan said.
Urban schools still have a long way to go. On average, only half the kids graduate in the 50 biggest cities, the report said. Those cities are home to half the country's population and are driving a national graduation rate that is estimated at 70 percent.
And while most big cities are making gains, 19 have lost ground. Las Vegas saw its graduation rates plummet 23 percentage points to 44.5 percent. The graduation rate in Wichita, Kan., dropped 18 percentage points to 54.5 percent, and in Omaha, Neb., it dropped 15 percentage points to 50 percent.
The report measures progress from 1995 to 2005, the most recent year for which comprehensive data was available from the Education Department.
For kids who don't finish high school, the future is bleak. High school dropouts are the only segment of the work force for whom income levels shrank over the past 30 years, the report said.
Only in recent years have people begun to realize how widespread and severe the dropout crisis is, said Bob Balfanz, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Balfanz has worked with America's Promise Alliance, a children's advocacy group started by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, but did not work on this report.
''Paying attention matters,'' Balfanz said. ''If there's a problem, and we react to it, at least in some cases, we'll make it better.''
Since then, Philadelphia and other cities have worked on finding ways to intervene, especially when kids are most vulnerable, in ninth grade when they start high school.
Some districts have created ninth-grade academies that offer smaller classes and help catching up in math or other subjects to ease the transition into high school.
Districts also have developed smaller schools and focused on helping kids with other problems -- homelessness, a sick relative they take care of -- to keep kids from dropping out.
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Swimming Without a Suit
Speaking of financial crises and how they can expose weak companies and weak countries, Warren Buffett once famously quipped that “only when the tide goes out do you find out who is not wearing a bathing suit.” So true. But what’s really unnerving is that America appears to be one of those countries that has been swimming buck naked — in more ways than one.
Credit bubbles are like the tide. They can cover up a lot of rot. In our case, the excess consumer demand and jobs created by our credit and housing bubbles have masked not only our weaknesses in manufacturing and other economic fundamentals, but something worse: how far we have fallen behind in K-12 education and how much it is now costing us. That is the conclusion I drew from a new study by the consulting firm McKinsey, entitled “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools.”
Just a quick review: In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. dominated the world in K-12 education. We also dominated economically. In the 1970s and 1980s, we still had a lead, albeit smaller, in educating our population through secondary school, and America continued to lead the world economically, albeit with other big economies, like China, closing in. Today, we have fallen behind in both per capita high school graduates and their quality. Consequences to follow.
For instance, in the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment that measured the applied learning and problem-solving skills of 15-year-olds in 30 industrialized countries, the U.S. ranked 25th out of the 30 in math and 24th in science. That put our average youth on par with those from Portugal and the Slovak Republic, “rather than with students in countries that are more relevant competitors for service-sector and high-value jobs, like Canada, the Netherlands, Korea, and Australia,” McKinsey noted.
Actually, our fourth-graders compare well on such global tests with, say, Singapore. But our high school kids really lag, which means that “the longer American children are in school, the worse they perform compared to their international peers,” said McKinsey.
There are millions of kids who are in modern suburban schools “who don’t realize how far behind they are,” said Matt Miller, one of the authors. “They are being prepared for $12-an-hour jobs — not $40 to $50 an hour.”
It is not that we are failing across the board. There are huge numbers of exciting education innovations in America today — from new modes of teacher compensation to charter schools to school districts scattered around the country that are showing real improvements based on better methods, better principals and higher standards. The problem is that they are too scattered — leaving all kinds of achievement gaps between whites, African-Americans, Latinos and different income levels.
Using an economic model created for this study, McKinsey showed how much those gaps are costing us. Suppose, it noted, “that in the 15 years after the 1983 report ‘A Nation at Risk’ sounded the alarm about the ‘rising tide of mediocrity’ in American education,” the U.S. had lifted lagging student achievement to higher benchmarks of performance? What would have happened?
The answer, says McKinsey: If America had closed the international achievement gap between 1983 and 1998 and had raised its performance to the level of such nations as Finland and South Korea, United States G.D.P. in 2008 would have been between $1.3 trillion and $2.3 trillion higher. If we had closed the racial achievement gap and black and Latino student performance had caught up with that of white students by 1998, G.D.P. in 2008 would have been between $310 billion and $525 billion higher. If the gap between low-income students and the rest had been narrowed, G.D.P. in 2008 would have been $400 billion to $670 billion higher.
There are some hopeful signs. President Obama recognizes that we urgently need to invest the money and energy to take those schools and best practices that are working from islands of excellence to a new national norm. But we need to do it with the sense of urgency and follow-through that the economic and moral stakes demand.
With Wall Street’s decline, though, many more educated and idealistic youth want to try teaching. Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, called the other day with these statistics about college graduates signing up to join her organization to teach in some of our neediest schools next year: “Our total applications are up 40 percent. Eleven percent of all Ivy League seniors applied, 16 percent of Yale’s senior class, 15 percent of Princeton’s, 25 percent of Spellman’s and 35 percent of the African-American seniors at Harvard. In 130 colleges, between 5 and 15 percent of the senior class applied.”
Part of it, said Kopp, is a lack of jobs elsewhere. But part of it is “students responding to the call that this is a problem our generation can solve.” May it be so, because today, educationally, we are not a nation at risk. We are a nation in decline, and our nakedness is really showing.
Speaking of financial crises and how they can expose weak companies and weak countries, Warren Buffett once famously quipped that “only when the tide goes out do you find out who is not wearing a bathing suit.” So true. But what’s really unnerving is that America appears to be one of those countries that has been swimming buck naked — in more ways than one.
Credit bubbles are like the tide. They can cover up a lot of rot. In our case, the excess consumer demand and jobs created by our credit and housing bubbles have masked not only our weaknesses in manufacturing and other economic fundamentals, but something worse: how far we have fallen behind in K-12 education and how much it is now costing us. That is the conclusion I drew from a new study by the consulting firm McKinsey, entitled “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools.”
Just a quick review: In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. dominated the world in K-12 education. We also dominated economically. In the 1970s and 1980s, we still had a lead, albeit smaller, in educating our population through secondary school, and America continued to lead the world economically, albeit with other big economies, like China, closing in. Today, we have fallen behind in both per capita high school graduates and their quality. Consequences to follow.
For instance, in the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment that measured the applied learning and problem-solving skills of 15-year-olds in 30 industrialized countries, the U.S. ranked 25th out of the 30 in math and 24th in science. That put our average youth on par with those from Portugal and the Slovak Republic, “rather than with students in countries that are more relevant competitors for service-sector and high-value jobs, like Canada, the Netherlands, Korea, and Australia,” McKinsey noted.
Actually, our fourth-graders compare well on such global tests with, say, Singapore. But our high school kids really lag, which means that “the longer American children are in school, the worse they perform compared to their international peers,” said McKinsey.
There are millions of kids who are in modern suburban schools “who don’t realize how far behind they are,” said Matt Miller, one of the authors. “They are being prepared for $12-an-hour jobs — not $40 to $50 an hour.”
It is not that we are failing across the board. There are huge numbers of exciting education innovations in America today — from new modes of teacher compensation to charter schools to school districts scattered around the country that are showing real improvements based on better methods, better principals and higher standards. The problem is that they are too scattered — leaving all kinds of achievement gaps between whites, African-Americans, Latinos and different income levels.
Using an economic model created for this study, McKinsey showed how much those gaps are costing us. Suppose, it noted, “that in the 15 years after the 1983 report ‘A Nation at Risk’ sounded the alarm about the ‘rising tide of mediocrity’ in American education,” the U.S. had lifted lagging student achievement to higher benchmarks of performance? What would have happened?
The answer, says McKinsey: If America had closed the international achievement gap between 1983 and 1998 and had raised its performance to the level of such nations as Finland and South Korea, United States G.D.P. in 2008 would have been between $1.3 trillion and $2.3 trillion higher. If we had closed the racial achievement gap and black and Latino student performance had caught up with that of white students by 1998, G.D.P. in 2008 would have been between $310 billion and $525 billion higher. If the gap between low-income students and the rest had been narrowed, G.D.P. in 2008 would have been $400 billion to $670 billion higher.
There are some hopeful signs. President Obama recognizes that we urgently need to invest the money and energy to take those schools and best practices that are working from islands of excellence to a new national norm. But we need to do it with the sense of urgency and follow-through that the economic and moral stakes demand.
With Wall Street’s decline, though, many more educated and idealistic youth want to try teaching. Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, called the other day with these statistics about college graduates signing up to join her organization to teach in some of our neediest schools next year: “Our total applications are up 40 percent. Eleven percent of all Ivy League seniors applied, 16 percent of Yale’s senior class, 15 percent of Princeton’s, 25 percent of Spellman’s and 35 percent of the African-American seniors at Harvard. In 130 colleges, between 5 and 15 percent of the senior class applied.”
Part of it, said Kopp, is a lack of jobs elsewhere. But part of it is “students responding to the call that this is a problem our generation can solve.” May it be so, because today, educationally, we are not a nation at risk. We are a nation in decline, and our nakedness is really showing.
In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into Their Past Use
WASHINGTON — The program began with Central Intelligence Agency leaders in the grip of an alluring idea: They could get tough in terrorist interrogations without risking legal trouble by adopting a set of methods used on Americans during military training. How could that be torture?
In a series of high-level meetings in 2002, without a single dissent from cabinet members or lawmakers, the United States for the first time officially embraced the brutal methods of interrogation it had always condemned.
This extraordinary consensus was possible, an examination by The New York Times shows, largely because no one involved — not the top two C.I.A. officials who were pushing the program, not the senior aides to President George W. Bush, not the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees — investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate.
According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.
Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.
The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.
They did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective. Nor were most of the officials aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading C.I.A. officials to use the harsh methods had never conducted a real interrogation, or that the Justice Department lawyer most responsible for declaring the methods legal had idiosyncratic ideas that even the Bush Justice Department would later renounce.
The process was “a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm,” a former C.I.A. official said.
Today, asked how it happened, Bush administration officials are finger-pointing. Some blame the C.I.A., while some former agency officials blame the Justice Department or the White House.
Philip D. Zelikow, who worked on interrogation issues as counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2005 and 2006, said the flawed decision-making badly served Mr. Bush and the country.
“Competent staff work could have quickly canvassed relevant history, insights from the best law enforcement and military interrogators, and lessons from the painful British and Israeli experience,” Mr. Zelikow said. “Especially in a time of great stress, walking into this minefield, the president was entitled to get the most thoughtful and searching analysis our government could muster.”
After years of recriminations about torture and American values, Bush administration officials say it is easy to second-guess the decisions of 2002, when they feared that a new attack from Al Qaeda could come any moment.
If they shunned interrogation methods some thought might work, and an undetected bomb or bioweapon cost thousands of lives, where would the moral compass point today? It is a question that still haunts some officials. Others say that if they had known the full history of the interrogation methods or been able to anticipate how the issue would explode, they would have advised against using them.
This account is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former senior officials of the C.I.A., White House, Justice Department and Congress. Nearly all, citing the possibility of future investigations, shared their recollections of the internal discussions of a classified program only on condition of anonymity.
Leaked to the news media months after they were first used, the C.I.A.’s interrogation methods would darken the country’s reputation, blur the moral distinction between terrorists and the Americans who hunted them, bring broad condemnation from Western allies and become a ready-made defense for governments accused of torture. The response has only intensified since Justice Department legal memos released last week showed that two prisoners were waterboarded 266 times and that C.I.A. interrogators were ordered to waterboard one of the captives despite their belief that he had no more information to divulge.
But according to many Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and some intelligence officers who are critics of the coercive methods, the C.I.A. program would also produce an invaluable trove of information on Al Qaeda, including leads on the whereabouts of important operatives and on terror schemes discussed by Al Qaeda. Whether the same information could have been acquired using the traditional, noncoercive methods that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the military have long used is impossible to say, and former Bush administration officials say they did not have the luxury of time to develop a more patient approach, given that they had intelligence warnings of further attacks.
Michael V. Hayden, who served as C.I.A. director for the last two years of the Bush administration, devoted part of his last press briefing in January to defending the C.I.A. program. “It worked,” Mr. Hayden insisted.
“I have said to all who will listen that the agency did none of this out of enthusiasm,” he said. “It did it out of duty. It did it with the best legal advice it had.”
A Program Takes Shape
When Mr. Bush assigned the C.I.A. with the task of questioning high-level Qaeda captives in late 2001, the agency had almost no experience interrogating the kind of hostile prisoners it soon expected to hold.
It had dozens of psychiatrists, psychologists, polygraphists and operations officers who had practiced the arts of eliciting information and assessing truthfulness. Their targets, however, were not usually terrorists, but foreigners offering to spy for the United States or C.I.A. employees suspected of misdeeds.
Agency officials, led by Mr. Tenet, sought interrogation advice from other countries. And, fatefully, they contacted the military unit that runs the SERE training program, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, which gives American pilots, special operations troops and others a sample of the brutal interrogation methods they might face as prisoners of war. Mr. Tenet declined to be interviewed.
By late 2001, the agency had contracted with James E. Mitchell, a psychologist with the SERE program who had monitored many mock interrogations but had never conducted any real ones, according to colleagues. He was known for his belief that a psychological concept called “learned helplessness” was crucial to successful interrogation.
Martin Seligman, a prominent professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania who had developed the concept, said in an interview that he was puzzled by Dr. Mitchell’s notion that learned helplessness was relevant to interrogation.
“I think helplessness would make someone more dependent, less defiant and more compliant,” Dr. Seligman said, “but I do not think it would lead reliably to more truth-telling.”
Still, forceful and brainy, Dr. Mitchell, who declined to comment for this article, became a persuasive player in high-level agency discussions about the best way to interrogate Qaeda prisoners. Eventually, along with another former SERE psychologist, Bruce Jessen, Dr. Mitchell helped persuade C.I.A. officials that Qaeda members were fundamentally different from the myriad personalities the agency routinely dealt with.
“Jim believed that people of this ilk would confess for only one reason: sheer terror,” said one C.I.A. official who had discussed the matter with Dr. Mitchell.
Overwhelmed with reports of potential threats and anguished that the agency had failed to stop the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Tenet and his top aides did not probe deeply into the prescription Dr. Mitchell so confidently presented: using the SERE tactics on Qaeda prisoners.
A little research on the origin of those methods would have given reason for doubt. Government studies in the 1950s found that Chinese Communist interrogators had produced false confessions from captured American pilots not with some kind of sinister “brainwashing” but with crude tactics: shackling the Americans to force them to stand for hours, keeping them in cold cells, disrupting their sleep and limiting access to food and hygiene.
“The Communists do not look upon these assaults as ‘torture,’ ” one 1956 study concluded. “But all of them produce great discomfort, and lead to serious disturbances of many bodily processes; there is no reason to differentiate them from any other form of torture.”
Worse, the study found that under such abusive treatment, a prisoner became “malleable and suggestible, and in some instances he may confabulate.”
In late 2001, about a half-dozen SERE trainers, according to a report released Tuesday night by the Senate Armed Services Committee, began raising stark warning about plans by both the military and the C.I.A. to use the SERE methods in interrogations.
In December 2001, Lt. Col. Daniel J. Baumgartner of the Air Force, who oversaw SERE training, cautioned in one memo that physical pressure was “less reliable” than other interrogation methods, could backfire by increasing a prisoner’s resistance and would have an “intolerable public and political backlash when discovered.” But his memo went to the Defense Department, not the C.I.A.
One former senior intelligence official who played an important role in approving the interrogation methods said he had no idea of the origins and history of the SERE program when the C.I.A. started it in 2002.
“The agency was counting on the Justice Department to fully explore all the factors contributing to a judgment about legality, including the surrounding history and context,” the official said.
But it was the C.I.A. that was proposing the methods, and John Yoo, the Justice Department official who was the principal author of a secret August 2002 memorandum that authorized the interrogation program, was mostly interested in making a case that the president’s wartime powers allowed for the harsh tactics.
A Persuasive Case
After the March 28, 2002, capture in Pakistan of the Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah — the C.I.A.’s first big catch after Sept. 11 — Mr. Tenet told Ms. Rice, then the national security adviser, he wanted to discuss interrogation, several former officials said. At a series of small-group and individual briefings attended by Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Ms. Rice and Attorney General John Ashcroft, Mr. Tenet and his deputy, John McLaughlin, laid out their case.
They made a persuasive duo, former officials who heard their pitch recalled. Mr. Tenet, an extroverted former Congressional staff member, was given to forceful language about the threat from Al Qaeda, which he said might well have had operations under way involving biological, radiological or even nuclear weapons. Mr. McLaughlin, a career intelligence analyst, was low-key and cerebral, and some White House officials said they found his support for the methods reassuring.
In the briefings, Mr. Tenet said that after extensive research, the agency believed that only the methods he described — which he said had been used on thousands of American trainees — could extract the details of plots from hardened Qaeda fanatics.
“It was described as a program that was safe and necessary, that would be closely monitored by medical personnel,” a former senior official recalled. “And it was very much in the context of the threat streams that were just eye-popping at the time.”
Mr. Tenet’s descriptions of each proposed interrogation method was so clinical and specific that at one briefing Mr. Ashcroft objected, saying that cabinet officials should approve broad outlines of important policies, not the fine details, according to someone present. The attorney general later complained that he thought Mr. Tenet was looking for cover in case controversy erupted, the person said.
Ms. Rice insisted that Mr. Ashcroft not just pass along the conclusions of his Office of Legal Counsel, where Mr. Yoo worked, but give his personal assurance that the methods were legal under domestic and international law. He did.
The C.I.A. then gave individual briefings to the secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and the secretary of state, Colin L. Powell. Neither objected, several former officials said.
Mr. Cheney, whose top legal adviser, David S. Addington, was closely consulting with Mr. Yoo about legal justification, strongly endorsed the program. Mr. Bush also gave his approval, though what details were shared with him is not known.
With that, the C.I.A. had the full support of the White House to begin its harshest interrogations. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have never publicly second-guessed their decision. Though some former officials expressed regret that such a momentous decision was made so quickly without vital information or robust debate, none were willing to be quoted by name.
There was one more check on intelligence programs, one designed in the 1970s to make sure independent observers kept an eye on spy agencies: Congress. The Senate and House Intelligence Committees had been created in the mid-1970s to prevent any repeat of the C.I.A. abuses unearthed by the Senate’s Church Committee.
As was common with the most secret programs, the C.I.A. chose not to brief the entire committees about the interrogation methods but only the so-called Gang of Four — the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate and House committees. The rest of the committee members would be fully briefed only in 2006.
The 2002 Gang of Four briefings left a hodgepodge of contradictory recollections that, to some Congressional staff members, reveal a dysfunctional oversight system. Without full staff support, few lawmakers are equipped to make difficult legal and policy judgments about secret programs, critics say.
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who in 2002 was the ranking Democrat on the House committee, has said in public statements that she recalls being briefed on the methods, including waterboarding. She insists, however, that the lawmakers were told only that the C.I.A. believed the methods were legal — not that they were going to be used.
By contrast, the ranking Republican on the House committee at the time, Porter J. Goss of Florida, who later served as C.I.A. director, recalls a clear message that the methods would be used.
“We were briefed, and we certainly understood what C.I.A. was doing,” Mr. Goss said in an interview. “Not only was there no objection, there was actually concern about whether the agency was doing enough.”
Senator Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, who was committee chairman in 2002, said in an interview that he did not recall ever being briefed on the methods, though government officials with access to records say all four committee leaders received multiple briefings.
Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the committee, declined to discuss the briefings.
Vicki Divoll, general counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2002 and a former C.I.A. lawyer, would have been a logical choice to advise senators on the legal status of the interrogation methods. But because of the restricted briefings, Ms. Divoll learned about them only years later from news media accounts.
Ms. Divoll, who now teaches government at the United States Naval Academy, said the interrogation issue revealed the perils of such restricted briefings.
“The very programs that are among the most risky and controversial, and that therefore should get the greatest congressional oversight,” she said, “in fact get the least.”
NY TIMES/SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI
In a series of high-level meetings in 2002, without a single dissent from cabinet members or lawmakers, the United States for the first time officially embraced the brutal methods of interrogation it had always condemned.
This extraordinary consensus was possible, an examination by The New York Times shows, largely because no one involved — not the top two C.I.A. officials who were pushing the program, not the senior aides to President George W. Bush, not the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees — investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate.
According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.
Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.
The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.
They did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective. Nor were most of the officials aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading C.I.A. officials to use the harsh methods had never conducted a real interrogation, or that the Justice Department lawyer most responsible for declaring the methods legal had idiosyncratic ideas that even the Bush Justice Department would later renounce.
The process was “a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm,” a former C.I.A. official said.
Today, asked how it happened, Bush administration officials are finger-pointing. Some blame the C.I.A., while some former agency officials blame the Justice Department or the White House.
Philip D. Zelikow, who worked on interrogation issues as counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2005 and 2006, said the flawed decision-making badly served Mr. Bush and the country.
“Competent staff work could have quickly canvassed relevant history, insights from the best law enforcement and military interrogators, and lessons from the painful British and Israeli experience,” Mr. Zelikow said. “Especially in a time of great stress, walking into this minefield, the president was entitled to get the most thoughtful and searching analysis our government could muster.”
After years of recriminations about torture and American values, Bush administration officials say it is easy to second-guess the decisions of 2002, when they feared that a new attack from Al Qaeda could come any moment.
If they shunned interrogation methods some thought might work, and an undetected bomb or bioweapon cost thousands of lives, where would the moral compass point today? It is a question that still haunts some officials. Others say that if they had known the full history of the interrogation methods or been able to anticipate how the issue would explode, they would have advised against using them.
This account is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former senior officials of the C.I.A., White House, Justice Department and Congress. Nearly all, citing the possibility of future investigations, shared their recollections of the internal discussions of a classified program only on condition of anonymity.
Leaked to the news media months after they were first used, the C.I.A.’s interrogation methods would darken the country’s reputation, blur the moral distinction between terrorists and the Americans who hunted them, bring broad condemnation from Western allies and become a ready-made defense for governments accused of torture. The response has only intensified since Justice Department legal memos released last week showed that two prisoners were waterboarded 266 times and that C.I.A. interrogators were ordered to waterboard one of the captives despite their belief that he had no more information to divulge.
But according to many Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and some intelligence officers who are critics of the coercive methods, the C.I.A. program would also produce an invaluable trove of information on Al Qaeda, including leads on the whereabouts of important operatives and on terror schemes discussed by Al Qaeda. Whether the same information could have been acquired using the traditional, noncoercive methods that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the military have long used is impossible to say, and former Bush administration officials say they did not have the luxury of time to develop a more patient approach, given that they had intelligence warnings of further attacks.
Michael V. Hayden, who served as C.I.A. director for the last two years of the Bush administration, devoted part of his last press briefing in January to defending the C.I.A. program. “It worked,” Mr. Hayden insisted.
“I have said to all who will listen that the agency did none of this out of enthusiasm,” he said. “It did it out of duty. It did it with the best legal advice it had.”
A Program Takes Shape
When Mr. Bush assigned the C.I.A. with the task of questioning high-level Qaeda captives in late 2001, the agency had almost no experience interrogating the kind of hostile prisoners it soon expected to hold.
It had dozens of psychiatrists, psychologists, polygraphists and operations officers who had practiced the arts of eliciting information and assessing truthfulness. Their targets, however, were not usually terrorists, but foreigners offering to spy for the United States or C.I.A. employees suspected of misdeeds.
Agency officials, led by Mr. Tenet, sought interrogation advice from other countries. And, fatefully, they contacted the military unit that runs the SERE training program, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, which gives American pilots, special operations troops and others a sample of the brutal interrogation methods they might face as prisoners of war. Mr. Tenet declined to be interviewed.
By late 2001, the agency had contracted with James E. Mitchell, a psychologist with the SERE program who had monitored many mock interrogations but had never conducted any real ones, according to colleagues. He was known for his belief that a psychological concept called “learned helplessness” was crucial to successful interrogation.
Martin Seligman, a prominent professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania who had developed the concept, said in an interview that he was puzzled by Dr. Mitchell’s notion that learned helplessness was relevant to interrogation.
“I think helplessness would make someone more dependent, less defiant and more compliant,” Dr. Seligman said, “but I do not think it would lead reliably to more truth-telling.”
Still, forceful and brainy, Dr. Mitchell, who declined to comment for this article, became a persuasive player in high-level agency discussions about the best way to interrogate Qaeda prisoners. Eventually, along with another former SERE psychologist, Bruce Jessen, Dr. Mitchell helped persuade C.I.A. officials that Qaeda members were fundamentally different from the myriad personalities the agency routinely dealt with.
“Jim believed that people of this ilk would confess for only one reason: sheer terror,” said one C.I.A. official who had discussed the matter with Dr. Mitchell.
Overwhelmed with reports of potential threats and anguished that the agency had failed to stop the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Tenet and his top aides did not probe deeply into the prescription Dr. Mitchell so confidently presented: using the SERE tactics on Qaeda prisoners.
A little research on the origin of those methods would have given reason for doubt. Government studies in the 1950s found that Chinese Communist interrogators had produced false confessions from captured American pilots not with some kind of sinister “brainwashing” but with crude tactics: shackling the Americans to force them to stand for hours, keeping them in cold cells, disrupting their sleep and limiting access to food and hygiene.
“The Communists do not look upon these assaults as ‘torture,’ ” one 1956 study concluded. “But all of them produce great discomfort, and lead to serious disturbances of many bodily processes; there is no reason to differentiate them from any other form of torture.”
Worse, the study found that under such abusive treatment, a prisoner became “malleable and suggestible, and in some instances he may confabulate.”
In late 2001, about a half-dozen SERE trainers, according to a report released Tuesday night by the Senate Armed Services Committee, began raising stark warning about plans by both the military and the C.I.A. to use the SERE methods in interrogations.
In December 2001, Lt. Col. Daniel J. Baumgartner of the Air Force, who oversaw SERE training, cautioned in one memo that physical pressure was “less reliable” than other interrogation methods, could backfire by increasing a prisoner’s resistance and would have an “intolerable public and political backlash when discovered.” But his memo went to the Defense Department, not the C.I.A.
One former senior intelligence official who played an important role in approving the interrogation methods said he had no idea of the origins and history of the SERE program when the C.I.A. started it in 2002.
“The agency was counting on the Justice Department to fully explore all the factors contributing to a judgment about legality, including the surrounding history and context,” the official said.
But it was the C.I.A. that was proposing the methods, and John Yoo, the Justice Department official who was the principal author of a secret August 2002 memorandum that authorized the interrogation program, was mostly interested in making a case that the president’s wartime powers allowed for the harsh tactics.
A Persuasive Case
After the March 28, 2002, capture in Pakistan of the Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah — the C.I.A.’s first big catch after Sept. 11 — Mr. Tenet told Ms. Rice, then the national security adviser, he wanted to discuss interrogation, several former officials said. At a series of small-group and individual briefings attended by Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Ms. Rice and Attorney General John Ashcroft, Mr. Tenet and his deputy, John McLaughlin, laid out their case.
They made a persuasive duo, former officials who heard their pitch recalled. Mr. Tenet, an extroverted former Congressional staff member, was given to forceful language about the threat from Al Qaeda, which he said might well have had operations under way involving biological, radiological or even nuclear weapons. Mr. McLaughlin, a career intelligence analyst, was low-key and cerebral, and some White House officials said they found his support for the methods reassuring.
In the briefings, Mr. Tenet said that after extensive research, the agency believed that only the methods he described — which he said had been used on thousands of American trainees — could extract the details of plots from hardened Qaeda fanatics.
“It was described as a program that was safe and necessary, that would be closely monitored by medical personnel,” a former senior official recalled. “And it was very much in the context of the threat streams that were just eye-popping at the time.”
Mr. Tenet’s descriptions of each proposed interrogation method was so clinical and specific that at one briefing Mr. Ashcroft objected, saying that cabinet officials should approve broad outlines of important policies, not the fine details, according to someone present. The attorney general later complained that he thought Mr. Tenet was looking for cover in case controversy erupted, the person said.
Ms. Rice insisted that Mr. Ashcroft not just pass along the conclusions of his Office of Legal Counsel, where Mr. Yoo worked, but give his personal assurance that the methods were legal under domestic and international law. He did.
The C.I.A. then gave individual briefings to the secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and the secretary of state, Colin L. Powell. Neither objected, several former officials said.
Mr. Cheney, whose top legal adviser, David S. Addington, was closely consulting with Mr. Yoo about legal justification, strongly endorsed the program. Mr. Bush also gave his approval, though what details were shared with him is not known.
With that, the C.I.A. had the full support of the White House to begin its harshest interrogations. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have never publicly second-guessed their decision. Though some former officials expressed regret that such a momentous decision was made so quickly without vital information or robust debate, none were willing to be quoted by name.
There was one more check on intelligence programs, one designed in the 1970s to make sure independent observers kept an eye on spy agencies: Congress. The Senate and House Intelligence Committees had been created in the mid-1970s to prevent any repeat of the C.I.A. abuses unearthed by the Senate’s Church Committee.
As was common with the most secret programs, the C.I.A. chose not to brief the entire committees about the interrogation methods but only the so-called Gang of Four — the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate and House committees. The rest of the committee members would be fully briefed only in 2006.
The 2002 Gang of Four briefings left a hodgepodge of contradictory recollections that, to some Congressional staff members, reveal a dysfunctional oversight system. Without full staff support, few lawmakers are equipped to make difficult legal and policy judgments about secret programs, critics say.
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who in 2002 was the ranking Democrat on the House committee, has said in public statements that she recalls being briefed on the methods, including waterboarding. She insists, however, that the lawmakers were told only that the C.I.A. believed the methods were legal — not that they were going to be used.
By contrast, the ranking Republican on the House committee at the time, Porter J. Goss of Florida, who later served as C.I.A. director, recalls a clear message that the methods would be used.
“We were briefed, and we certainly understood what C.I.A. was doing,” Mr. Goss said in an interview. “Not only was there no objection, there was actually concern about whether the agency was doing enough.”
Senator Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, who was committee chairman in 2002, said in an interview that he did not recall ever being briefed on the methods, though government officials with access to records say all four committee leaders received multiple briefings.
Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the committee, declined to discuss the briefings.
Vicki Divoll, general counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2002 and a former C.I.A. lawyer, would have been a logical choice to advise senators on the legal status of the interrogation methods. But because of the restricted briefings, Ms. Divoll learned about them only years later from news media accounts.
Ms. Divoll, who now teaches government at the United States Naval Academy, said the interrogation issue revealed the perils of such restricted briefings.
“The very programs that are among the most risky and controversial, and that therefore should get the greatest congressional oversight,” she said, “in fact get the least.”
NY TIMES/SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI
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