Interrogations that trouble even the FBI

Tonight I got some time browse around in the collection of documents relating to US interrogations of detainees around the world that the American Civil Liberties Union has worked hard to get declassified and has recently been putting up on their website.
The ACLU’s own media presentation of the two most recent sets of these docs focused on

(1) Evidence therein that members of a military Special Ops Task Force threatened some Defense Intel Agency agents who had seen detainee abuse underway and tried to prevent the DIA people from reporting what they had see (release of 12/7/04); and
(2) Evidence that US Marines undertook mock executions of Iraqi juveniles and engaged in other forms of abuse (released 12/14/04).

Many mainstream newspapers have a done a fairly good job reporting on the ACLU revelations. But I wanted to browse around in the docs myself to get a flavor of them.
My first observation: just how much of the text of these docs was “redacted” (edited out) by the issuing agency before they were turned over to the ACLU under the ACLU’s “freedom of information” request!
My second observation: how strongly the FBI seemed to have objected to many of the interrogation techniques used by the military “under marching orders,” as one FBI officer noted, “from the Sec Def” (i.e. Rumsfeld).
When we’re talking about interrogations that trouble even the FBI, then I think we’re talking about something serious…
In addition, the most recent set of docs released (the top fifteen currently on the ACLU’s single portal to the PDF texts of the docs) concerned a group of nine US Navy medics who all deployed in Iraq with different Marines units in Feburary 2003… They came back with some tales and allegations (that got picked up by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service) about abuses they’d seen or heard about in Iraq.
That investigation led to “no further action”. But along the way there, there were several reports that individual corpsmen had experienced mental-health problems after their deployment; and in this doc, someone–name blanked out– is quoted as advising that, “all of the corpsmen have experienced some form of problem from what they observed in Iraq.”
But anyway, about the FBI…

Early May was the time when the Abu Ghraib abuses (tortures) suddenly exploded into the public consciousness with the publication of some of those truly troubling photographs from there…
This doc from the ACLU collection gives one tiny window into the way one group of people inside the FBI reacted. The doc in question contains a fully recorded email exchange involving five different messages among FBI officers. You know, the kind, where you hit “reply” to an email and your text gets fired off with the text of the message you’re replying to reproduced underneath it… So you need to read this exchange of emails from the bottom up…
Sunday May 9 at 2:31 p.m., Caproni, Valerie E. (Div09) fires off a message to three fellow-officers, including only one — Harrington, TJ (Div13)– whose name is NOT redacted. In it Caproni says:

I think I’ve heard this several times, but let me ask one more time:
Has there been any written guidance given to FBI agents in either GTMO [Gitmo] or Iraq about when they should “stand clear” b/c of the interrogation techniques being used by DOD or DHS [then, a large portion redacted].

On Monday May 10 at 4:33 a.m. (?) TJ (Tom) Harrington sent Caproni’s message on to three recipients, all like him in “Div13”. Of them only Battle, Frankie is named. Harrington added only this little message:

Please review our control files, did we produce anything on paper???

At 10:52 a.m. that Monday, an unknown Div13 sender replied to Harrington, with CCs to Battle; “Bowman, Marion E. (Div09); and another unnamed recipient, writing the following:

BAU [the FBI’s own behavioral Analysis Unit] at the request of the then (GTMO Task Force, ITOS1) wrote an EC (quite long) explaining the Bureau way of interrogation vs. DoDs methodology. Our formal guidance has always been that all personnel conduct themselves in interviews in the manner that they would in the field. [Long name redacted] along with FBI advised that the LEA (Law Enforcement Agencies) at GTMO were not in the practice of using [redaction] and were of the opinion results obtained from these interrogations were [redacted]. BAU explained [redaction] FBI has been successful for many years obtaining confessions via non-confrontational interviewing techniques.
We spoke to FBI OGC [Office of the General Counsl?] with our concerns. I also brought these matters to the attention of DOJ during detainee meetings with [two or more words redacted?] express their comments to [redaction]
…

At 9:21 a.m. that day (different time-zone perhaps?) Harrington replied to [unnamed] in Div13:

We have this information, now we are trying to go beyond. did we ever put into writing in an EC, memo, note or briefing paper to our personnel our position [two or more words redacted] that we were pursuing our traditional methods of building trust and a relationship with subjects. Tom.

This then got responded to, at 12:26 p.m. that Monday, by (presumably) the anonymous Div13 person to whom Harrington had sent it. With CCs to Frankie Battle (Div13), Arthur M. Cummings (Div13) and four other recipients ; and the subject line: “Instructions to GTMO interrogators”.
“TJ,” he or she said:

I will have to do some digging into old files [two-thirds of a line redacted]. We did advise each supervisor that went to GTMO to stay in line with bureau policy and not deviate from that. [Two-thirds of a line redacted]. Iwent to GTMO with [word redacted] early on and we discussed the effectiveness [tthree or four words redacted] with the SSA. We (BAU and ITOS1) had also met with General’s Dunlevey and Miller explaining our position (Law Enforcement techniques) vs. DoD. Both agreed the Bureau has their way of doing business and DoD has their marching orders from the Sec Def. Although the two techniques differed drastically, both Generals believed they had a job to accomplish. It was our mission to gather critical intelligence and evidence [half a line redacted] in furtherance of FBI cases. In my weekly meetings with DOJ we often discussed [word redacted] techniques and how they were not effective or producing intel that was reliable. [Four unnamed individuals from the DOJ Senior Executive Service] all from the DOJ Criminal Division attended meetings with FBI. We all agreed [word redacted] were going to be an issue in the military commission cases…
Bottom line is FBI personnel have not been involved in any methods of interrogation that deviate from our policy. The specific guidance we have given has always been no Miranda, otherwise, follow FBI/DOJ policy just as you would in your field office. Use common sense. Utilize our methods that are proven (Reed school, etc)…

In the middle of that last-cited message, the writer even writes about having a “heated exchange” with GTMO commander Gen. Geoff Miller on the subject. But I don’t have the patience to type it all out so if you want to read it, go to the original document.
Okay, so is all this merely some major FBI ass-covering, or is it more than that? It’s certainly notable that the classification level on all but the last-cited of those messages was “Sensitive but unclassified”. The last one was originally classified “SECRET//ORCON,NORFORN”, but then “secret” got crossed out.
I do think there is, in addition, good evidence of real differences in approach between the FBI and the military interrogators… Maybe the crux of that disagreement lies in the fact that the FBI people have all had extensive experience of trying to bring cases to court– so they have a good understanding of the kind of evidence that is (as noted in the last-cited message) not likely to be admissible in any judicial-type hearing.
All of which strengthens my long-held suspicions that the very fact that many of the US military’s detainees have been tortured or abused in the past very frequently makes their captors reluctant to bring them into any court or court-like setting, or to simply set them free.
So the detainees truly get caught up in a Catch-22 situation. If they’d never been tortured or other abused, it would be far easier for the US military to simply let the vast majority of them go free. But since they have been tortured/abused, they can’t so easily be freed or even brought into a court of law; and thus their often quite illegal detention perforce continues…