John Brennan, a top intelligence adviser to Obama and the former interim head of the National Counterterrorism Center, has told Obama that he does not want to be considered for any post in the new administration:
Brennan wrote in a Nov. 25 letter to Obama that he did not want to be a distraction. [...] Obama’s advisers had grown increasingly concerned in recent days over online blogs that accused Brennan of condoning harsh interrogation tactics on terror suspects, including waterboarding, which critics call torture.
My question to Obama is: knowing his murky relationship to the policies of torture under the Bush administration, wouldn’t it have been better for you to remove John Brennan, publicly, from consideration? I understand that Brennan is Obama’s top intelligence adviser. However, an administration whose express policy it is to prohibit and condemn torture should probably remove from consideration anyone involved in the upper-tier management of Bush’s counterterrorism agencies.
This is not to say that John Brennan was definitely involved in the Bush administration’s most nefarious activities. Indeed, it seems that he was removed from consideration for higher posts in the Bush administration precisely because of reservations about their programs. But his previously unclear responses to questions about torture are worrisome, and the fact that he did not resign makes it unclear how committed he was to protesting these tactics, knowing full well what was happening. As such, if only to keep appearances maximally consistent with official policy, he should probably have never been considered in the first place.
One of the great, unacknowledged benefits of the ‘08 presidential race was that if either major party candidate had won, the policy of torture in the name of the United States would end.
I don’t think Obama would have selected Brennan anyway, but it’s nice to know he’s no longer on the radar anyway.
I don’t know how I feel about waterboarding, but I certainly appreciate your position on the subject, ConnScript. But it is important to keep in mind that we do not have a “policy of torture in the name of the United States.” Our policy is, in fact, the complete opposite.
That said, I realize the Bush administration was not a strong advocate of the country’s official policy. At the same time, this administration didn’t invent waterboarding or harsh interrogation, and I think it would be naive for any of us to seriously believe that the election of Barack Obama will lead to an end to those things those things you refer to as torture.
Maybe you feel otherwise, but I think the only thing that will change with Obama is what comes out of his mouth in front of cameras, not what happens behind closed doors in the Middle East.
And so this doesn’t come across as a knock on Obama, I would think the same thing about John McCain.
I disagree, Jack. I think the private policy of the administration will be a change. Whether or not the Jack Bauers of the CIA follow through with the change is another matter, but the administration will not condone torture. As you suggest, torture has probably occurred behind close doors a lot longer than we would like to think, but oversight by the administration above the offending parties hasn’t. The fact that torture has happened doesn’t mean the administration has to provide legal cover for this sort of activity. And indeed, administrations, up until Bush, haven’t. If an intelligence officer wants to use harsh interrogation techniques, it ought to be known to him, and I think probably will be known to him under Obama, that there will be no legal protection and there will be harsh consequences. We won’t see under Obama, as there was under Bush, a room full of top administration officials discussing in great detail what acts of torture are permissible.
I agree with most of what you said.
But I still don’t think this will stop anything. Torture will retreat back into the dark corner it lived in before the media got wind of it. It will exist in a place where legal repercussions are a fringe threat when there is an occasional intelligence leak.
My gut instinct is that aside from his public position on torture, Obama will earn a reputation for being a hawk – though not in the same vein as Bush.
Right. I would add this to what you said – I think having torture exist in a dark corner is much preferable to broadcasting around the world that the United States is a country that permits torture. While you’re correct that torture isn’t the official policy of the United States, it was definitely a de facto policy of the United States, and everybody knows it. When we’ve pushed it back under the rock whence it came, it will at least signal to the world – and to our intelligence community – that we are not a nation that condones torture. That to me is a quite a shift from a culture in which it is understood that top officials in the United States will look the other way when you’re being waterboarded.
Good call Aqueous and Jack, you are correct about certain information gathering techniques being continued even under the Obama Administration. We’ll have to continue certain techniques that are not pleasant and have foreign allies that do the real dirty work while our intel people stand by. People that are hell bent on our nations total destruction aren’t to just give up intel by being asked nicely and this should definitley be an area of low media access.
joseph