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'The Techniques Rumsfeld Was Using Were Designed to Get False Information' Janine Jackson ([link removed])


The July 9, 2021, episode ([link removed]) of CounterSpin included an archival interview with the Center for Constitutional Rights' Michael Ratner about Donald Rumsfeld. Steve Rendall originally interviewed Ratner for the December 19, 2008 ([link removed]) show. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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Report Blames Rumsfeld for Detainee Abuses

New York Times (12/11/08 ([link removed]) )

Janine Jackson: The Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report ([link removed]) in late 2008, finding former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other high officials responsible for abusive treatment of detainees in Guantánamo, Iraq and Afghanistan. But corporate media didn't exactly leap on the story, or its implications. The New York Times, for example, buried it ([link removed]) on A14.

CounterSpin spoke at the time with esteemed rights attorney Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Ratner had just published a book titled The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book ([link removed]) . He spoke ([link removed]) with CounterSpin’s Steve Rendall.

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Steve Rendall: As someone who is very familiar with this story, what do you think of the Senate Armed Services Committee report? Are you happy with its findings?

Michael Ratner: You know, when I get calls from press about it—and I got a few—they said, "Well, really what's new in it?”

And I said, “What's new in it? It's actually extraordinary." Because what happened here is 25 senators, Democrats and Republicans, Levin and McCain, said the torture program—they call it the “abuse program,” but we all know it's the torture program—is at the feet of Donald Rumsfeld and other high-level officials. And not just Guantánamo, but Iraq, Afghanistan and other places. That's incredibly significant. It's bipartisan, it’s putting it at high-level officials, it's rejecting the bad apples defense.

And it goes even farther. What's interesting, it also says the techniques that Rumsfeld was using in these places, and that other high-level officials authorized, were guaranteed, were actually designed, to get false information and false confessions ([link removed]) . They weren't even designed to get real information. So that actually is new. That is really new. And that just puts to rest any idea that this was something that worked.
The Treatment of Detainees in US Custody

House Armed Services Committee (6/17/08 ([link removed]) )

So I consider the report to be a major step forward for holding high officials accountable, and for prosecuting them.

SR: What about the fact that it wasn't big on naming names, except in the Rumsfeld case? And do you think it misses the mark by having the buck stop more or less with Rumsfeld, and not more emphasis on higher-up officials?

MR: First of all, we haven't seen the full report yet. That's classified, and it's coming out. So hopefully, some of that will be remedied by those issues. But of course, I agree with you that it looked at a particular program. And it says, in the report itself, that it was stonewalled—it doesn't use that term—by the CIA, that they didn't cooperate. And one of the worst torture programs here was the CIA secret site ([link removed]) program, headed by George Tenet, who then received the Medal of Freedom from the president after he was no longer CIA head. And they could not get the information—at least, they claimed they couldn't get it—from the CIA. And of course, that was the nastiest and dirtiest program of them all. So that was a big exception.

And of course, the other names. I mean, we know the names, and they even came out the next day, when [Vice President Dick] Cheney actually gave an interview ([link removed]) that said he was responsible for helping design, approve—he didn't call it the “torture program,” but the waterboard program—the program for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which was actually the waterboard torture program. So the report didn't say that. It actually took Cheney himself to later admit to what was essentially a felony. That was a weakness; it was really confined more or less to looking at DoD and Rumsfeld's role.
Salon: Senate report links Bush to detainee homicides; media yawns

Salon (12/15/08 ([link removed]) )

SR: On December 15, the Salon’s Glenn Greenwald pointed out ([link removed]) that rather than paying much attention to this important story, many journalists were instead filled with righteous and endless anger over embroiled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Likewise, blogger and humorist Bob Harris of BobHarris.com ([link removed]) listed several trivial stories that major media featured above news of the Senate report. What about the media's role here?

MR: Media's role here was a disaster, actually. This report—even though, as you pointed out, Steve, it had its limitations—this was the most significant report to come out of Congress on this issue of Rumsfeld and torture in the seven years that we've been torturing people. And the media, as you said, other than the Washington Post, they essentially buried it; it wasn't carried by columns; or you had to look hard for this interesting quote by Senator [Carl] Levin, who said ([link removed].) , “I want the Department of Defense and the new administration to hold accountable the individuals who are involved in this program.” That essentially means prosecuted. And that's an extraordinary statement by a senator, and it's just as if it fell on deaf ears.

So it's quite a moment where the media, of course, accepted all of this for years, didn't really write about it as torture ([link removed]) , didn't ever get to the bottom. Now we have a new administration, so you're getting probably a little more strength within Congress, and maybe a little more in the media, but still not close to what really should be happening when this country has been running a torture program—and still is, in certain places—over the last seven years.

SR: Going back a few weeks ago, the New York Times had a story ([link removed]) on the state of the Guantánamo debate, in which it said that government officials have been “outmatched by human rights groups and defense lawyers, with their inflammatory accusations about torture and secret evidence.”

MR: The Times has, it's been a little rougher and better, arguably, on the editorials. I mean, we can talk about this recent one. But on the other issues, it's been a disaster; there was the quote you just read, there was an op-ed ([link removed]) the other day trying to defend renditions, and there was an earlier article ([link removed]) by [Jonathan] Mahler about asking for preventive detentions and national security courts, with nobody quoted from the other side opposing that.

They have allowed the so-called other dialog, or other debate, to really flourish. And then they reject op-eds that are quite good, well-written by people saying, “We need a prosecutor for torture, we need this, we need that,” and that doesn't get in there. But the right-wing views, or the views that say, “Well, we may not want to close Guantánamo right away. We may need to set up national security courts,” those are getting plenty of play in the New York Times, and that's pretty sad.
Michael Ratner (cc photo: Jonathan McIntosh)

Michael Ratner: "A prosecutor has to be appointed because it's open and notorious criminality at the highest levels of government." (cc photo: Jonathan McIntosh/Wikimedia)

SR: What about that recent editorial ([link removed]) in the Times? Did that sort of make up for their lack of emphasis, when the story of the report initially broke?

MR: I read it last night, as it came out, knowing that it couldn't really be doing what I really think is necessary, which is ask for a prosecution here. But in fact, you read along, and it's quite hard-hitting; talks about Rumsfeld, Cheney, the CIA, the whole business, and it actually says, “We think a prosecutor has to be appointed,” when it's rather obvious: A prosecutor has to be appointed because it's open and notorious criminality at the highest levels of government. And if you allow that to continue, what are you talking about in the future? If you don't punish it, how do you deter it in the future?

SR: Mmm-mm.

MR: And it transgresses other constitutional limitations on government if you allow it to go on. That's three-quarters of the editorial, then the last quarter says, well, it's not politically realistic—that's essentially what it says—to demand a special prosecutor. And therefore, let's look at some of these other ideas, like truth commissions and maybe having the Obama administration quietly, essentially, look at whether crimes were committed in abuse.

And that's a real lack of backbone, because it's assuming that the current situation is politically static. And even though the Times realizes that you should have a special prosecutor or a prosecutor of some sort, and that you need that, they're saying, “Let's tailor what we ask for, to what we think the Obama administration is willing to do.” So the Times starts out with this major piece. And then really it's like blowing up a balloon and then pinching it or, you know, putting a pin in and taking the air out of what was probably one of its stronger editorials.
The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld by Michael Ratner

New Press, 2008 ([link removed])

SR: Your book The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld is subtitled A Prosecution by Book. Do you think the release of this report makes it any more likely that Rumsfeld and others might be prosecuted in an actual courtroom?

MR: You know, we wrote this book with the idea that we didn't know what would ever happen in this country, that we'd ever come close to prosecutions. Things have moved very quickly in the last 10 days. We had the Senate report, we had Cheney's statement, you have the Times editorial—things are moving very rapidly. And it's no longer considered crazy and absurd to ask for Rumsfeld's prosecution in a US court. But what I would like to see happen is a lot of the groups—human rights groups and others—who've been demanding a truth commission, commission of inquiry, to just come on board and say, “We think there ought to be prosecutions.” That's the way we can get them; if you ask for something lesser, you won't get it.

SR: We've been speaking with Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights ([link removed]) and the author of The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book ([link removed]) , published this past September. Michael Ratner, thanks again for joining us today on CounterSpin.

MR: Thank you, CounterSpin, for having me.

***

Janine Jackson: That was attorney and author Michael Ratner ([link removed]) , may he rest in peace, speaking ([link removed]) with CounterSpin’s Steve Rendall in 2008.
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