Judge Judy often reminds the participants in her “courtroom,” people who tell the truth do not need to have good memories. In other words, if you are going to make up a story to plead your case, you better be consistent from moment to moment. The credibility of witnesses in criminal cases often hinges on discrepancies between what they say under oath during a trial, what they said in a discovery deposition or when questioned by law enforcement following their arrest or identified as a witness to the crime.
The nominee for CIA director Gina Haspel would have been better served during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence if she heeded Judge Judy’s advice. A major sticking point in Haspel’s confirmation was her participation in enhanced interrogation of 9/11 detainees at a black site prison in Thailand in 2002. While Haspel promised that enhanced interrogation techniques would no longer be used because they had been legislatively outlawed, several senators including Kamala Harris (CA) wanted to know whether, legal issues aside, Haspel, in hindsight, now believed some of the past actions of the CIA were immoral. Haspel refused to give a yes or no response.
Then, in the final questioning of the session, Haspel showed not only had she forgotten what she said months or years ago, her memory failed her after a matter of seconds. The following is an exchange between the nominee and Senator Jack Reed (RI) who is an ex-officio member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence by virtue of his serving as ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
REED: If one of your operations officers was captured and subjected to waterboarding or enhanced interrogation. would you consider that to be immoral since the enemy does not have legal restrictions and good trade practices as you appeared to do when you were involved previously?
HASPEL: Senator, I don’t believe the terrorists follow any guidelines or civilized norms or law. CIA follows the law.
REED: You seem to be saying you were not following civilized norms or the law or anything else when you were conducting those same kinds of activities if you’re going to use that analogy.
HASPEL: Senator, can you repeat the question?
REED: It’s very simple, you have an operations officer who has been captured and is subjected to waterboarding. I’m asking if you think that would be immoral and something that should never be done in any shape or form. Your response seems to be civilized nations don’t do it. Uncivilized nations do it. Uncivilized groups do it. A civilized nation was doing it until outlawed by this Congress.
HASPEL: Senator, I would obviously never support inhumane treatment of any CIA officer. I do not believe there is any comparison of CIA officers who are following the law and terrorists who do not follow anybody’s law.
Just so we understand, Haspel not only implied that people who use waterboarding and other torture are not only uncivilized and unlawful, they are “inhumane” (her word). So forget the United States, in 1988, became a signatory to the United National Convention Against Torture (UNCAT) and thus violated international law. Forget torture by our enemies is uncivilized but was deemed acceptable when employed by CIA operatives. Haspel made the case a 2002 memorandum from the White House legal counsel John Loo for a go-ahead to waterboard detainees authorized “inhumane” acts.
There were other things which bothered me watching the hearing. Notice how Haspel, while being questioned by both friendly and non-friendly senators, tended to look at her notes rather than the questioner. Why would she do that? Was she more interested in reminding herself what she was suppose to say rather than what she really believed? Were some of the exchanges scripted?
And when asked what she would do if the president asked her to reinstate enhanced interrogation techniques, Haspel said she could not imagine him doing that. Another memory lapse? Did she not remember Donald Trump’s comments in 2016, “I would bring back waterboarding, and I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” This is the individual who justified his violation of the Iran nuclear agreement by saying, “I always keep my promises.” When reminded of this comment, she then pivoted and told the committee she did not deal in hypotheticals.
Okay then, no hypotheticals. Ms. Haspel, would you personally support the nomination of a candidate for CIA director who refuses to say, in hindsight, actions taken by the CIA similar to those used at the Thailand black site under your supervision are unlawful and inhumane even though the nominee has used those exact words in her testimony before the committee when describing such actions by our enemies? If your answer is yes, are you saying, at some future date under the right circumstances you are okay if the CIA director reinstates enhanced interrogation techniques? If your answer is no, you seem to have just disqualified yourself.
For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP
Last December, the Washington Post published an article titled, “The surprising thing Google learned about its employees — and what it means for today’s students.” After years of hiring based on “algorithms to sort for computer science students with top grades from elite science universities,” Google asked an important question. This may be fine for hiring, but does it hold water when one looks at employee success records? Using data on promotions, awards and dismissals since its founding in 1998, Google found just the opposite.
My smartphone can visually recognize objects, comprehend speech and translate between languages. I would not call it intelligent. The only task listed in this definition which approaches mental agility is decision making. But a machine’s “brilliance” is dependent on the range and accuracy of information it has been fed by humans or has gathered from other sources fed by humans. My phone tells me that gray organism with the long facial extremity is an “elephant.” It did not come up with the term “elephant” or the name of anything else it perceives.