Jane Mayer has fun with torture at the Free Library

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Jane Mayer has fun with torture at the Free Library

POSTED: Wednesday, July 30, 2008, 6:55 PM

Jane Mayer

The New Yorker

Before Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side and an investigative reporter at The New Yorker, discussed her book about how the highest levels of our government became chock full of torturers and what, exactly, our country could do to rectify it, she tackled perhaps a more complex mystery: how did she ever get on the Philly Fun Guide? Talking about torture, especially at the Free Library, certainly couldn't be fun.

There are, though, a couple fun facts associated with torture that could really help you lift the spirits at the next company happy hour: did you know that Canada – Canada – has the United States on a list of rogue nations that employ, as they are called, “enhanced interrogation techniques,” along with Egypt? Did you know that some top administration officials are advised not to travel to other countries because they might be arrested? Did you know that when CIA interrogators couldn’t think of any new ways to inflict pain on a suspected terrorist, they would watch Fox’s drama 24 for ideas? If there were such a thing as “sadistic government Quizzo,” Mayer would walk out with the pot money, the bonus round money, and the deed to the bar.

Instead, she wrote a book. A killer book, one that actually accomplishes what many print and online news organizations today think they accomplish, but fail miserably at: connecting the dots. Mayer shows how Vice President Cheney outright told the country he was going to torture detainees on NBC five days after 9/11: “We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies…” Mayer points out how the Bush Administration used a little-known office in the Justice Department, the Office of Legal Counsel, to upend centuries of Constitutional law with quack-level legal opinions. Mayer shows how information, bad information, retrieved from detainees under incomprehensible pain, made its way into President Bush’s speeches and Colin Powell’s case for war at the United Nations. And Mayer quotes people like a former top CIA official, who told her that after those torture tactics were used, “Ninety percent of what we got was crap.”

Though her opening comments were awkwardly read from a script -- and who can blame her, this is complex stuff – the central theme of her talk came out during the question-and-answer session: what the heck is the nation going to do about this?

Begin with the premise that Congress is, as she calls it, “spineless.” They were cowed the same way the news media and the judicial system were after 9/11: if you don’t agree with the President, you are unpatriotic. It took the other two branches of government and the Fourth Estate years to get over that.

That leaves the public. The decidedly older crowd seemed to be outraged at today’s lack of outrage. These are folks who lived though and were appalled by images of Vietnam beamed to their television sets, who watched Nixon get dismantled for white-collar crimes. Where is that today? As Mayer said, “The public has been much quieter than in Watergate -- those hearings were broadcast all day on television and people talked about it constantly.” Perhaps if Congress’ questioned Dick Cheney, or David Addington, or John Yoo while they danced with some stars, people would be more informed? “Torture is not an issue about being a Democrat or Republican, it’s an issue about American ideas,” she said. “But in shows like 24, people think that torture will somehow save you.”

The people that will save you, she said, are the heroes of this scandal. Several Justice Department attorneys, Army generals, and FBI agents, with both Democrat and Republican ideals, spoke out about torture and were ultimately silenced, fired, or, as she says, possibly threatened with bodily harm.

There was a feeling from Mayer, though, that even if she wrote another six books before Bush left office, it still wouldn’t change much right now. It’s essentially the fear that the The Dark Side won’t be used today as evidence of the president’s misgivings, but will instead be used years down the road as a key document in a graduate school thesis on America’s dark years as torturers. It’s the resignation that that it will be the history books, not a current groundswell of collective outrage, that will be left to fully judge Bush, Cheney, and the War Council. But hopefully, that won’t be the case. Already, she said, we should be looking to the next occupant of the White House as a “potential turning point,” if, that is, the next president is willing to “open the books” and give the public a better picture of what, exactly, has been happening for the past eight years.

Dr. Erich H. Loewy

Posted 2008-07-30 20:05:21

We have, I fear, a very hard time putting Bush's policies aside. Personally I think that he is a person who enjoys the thought that some poor soul receives the death penalty; there lies the difference: Bush seems to believe that it is a necessary good; at least Al Gore believed that it was a necessary evil. We have become a rogue nation, betrayed our heritage and undone many of the most important steps forward of the '60's.



The Constitution has apparently not even looked at when the writ of habeus corpus was swept aside; industry when in is deeply in the red will be bailed out by the federal government; individual's going bankrupt or small concerns going bankrupt are not bailed out as are the large conglomerates. 



The US tortures people and when more severe torture is "needed" they are outsized and flown to a country in which Torture is more acceptable. We have 25% of our workers being paid $8.50 an hour--something one cannot live on: about the same percentage of persons hungry a significant part of the year, 20% without health insurance and indeed even if persons have insurance they cannot afford the co-payments and might as well not be. It appears that there are always funds available to use in assaulting other nations or supporting industry. We have become a nation "divided within itself" and probably cannot stand.



Dr. Erich H. Loewy

Professor and Founding Chair, Bioethics (emeritus)

University of CA, Davis

ehloewy@ucdavis.edu

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