“He better bring his own bucket.”
This is how former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Mike Hayden responded to then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump publicly pledging to use torture against terrorism suspects, including the infamous tactic of waterboarding. Hayden is a strong advocate for the CIA’s post-9/11 program of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a variety of torture tactics, including waterboarding. However, since the CIA officers and contractors employed these techniques, executive order and law now ban their use. Does Hayden’s remark signify a long-term change in CIA attitude towards coercive interrogation techniques, or is it indicative of another lull before parts of the Agency revive the practice? …show more content…
For periods of this time, many of the interrogation tactics researched, taught, or employed constituted torture and/or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment as defined by the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). Through the 1940’s and into the 1960’s, driven by Cold War fears, a branch of the CIA conducted systematic research into the potential of mind control via drugs, mechanical means, and psychological torture. Through the rest of the Cold War, the Agency continued its experiments on a more ad-hoc basis, taught torture techniques to allies to help them squash domestic dissent, and either used or was complicit in the use of torture. After September 11, 2001, the CIA created a network of detention facilities around the globe, wherein its officers and contractors tortured and abused terrorism suspects. Since the beginning, these practices were largely hidden, both from oversight bodies (external and internal) and the public.
A pattern has emerged: When these practices are discovered, the reaction from internal CIA oversight or Congress is often swift, but just as often ineffective. Sufficiently chastened, the Agency usually dims the lights on its coercive interrogation practices until the …show more content…
When external or internal oversight actors become aware of the excesses created by the “slippery slope” nature of torture, the changes then implemented by the CIA in response are short-term fixes that do not change the organization’s culture and institutional nature. The lack of sustained internal and external accountability and, in turn, internal lesson-learning, prevents lasting and overarching institutional change, and produces a pattern wherein the organization, responding to a policy need (or perceived policy need), may return to torture and abuse to address policymakers’ requests. In this case, I will use the lack of internal oversight and accountability and the lack of external oversight and accountability as my independent variables, examining the effects these variables have on the dependent variable of whether elements of the CIA begin or return to the use of