The False False Choice

President Obama chooses security over ideals

By Peyton R. Miller

In his widely acclaimed inaugural address, Barack Obama proclaimed the dawning of a glorious new era of idealism, insisting that Americans should “reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” Less than a month after being sworn in, the president’s own administration has demonstrated on a grand scale that American ideals, as Obama has defined them at least, are not always compatible with national security.

In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against a division of Boeing that cooperated with the federal government in the transport of five captured terror suspects to third countries, where they claim to have been tortured. The case was dismissed early last year on the grounds that, as Bush’s Justice Department argued, allowing the litigation to proceed would endanger state secrets and national security by revealing sensitive information about U.S. interrogation procedures.

The ACLU promptly appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. On February 10, 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported that, to the horror of the ACLU, Obama’s Justice Department backed the former administration’s position that the suit would jeopardize security interests.

This stance is a rather far cry from the president’s campaign rhetoric, which called for Americans to show that “we are not a country that ships prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far off countries.” To remain true to this ideal, the administration would have to have agreed that the plaintiffs deserved a fair hearing and defended itself on the grounds that the prisoners had not been mistreated or improperly detained. The adoption of an argument in favor of dispensing with civil liberties for the sake of national security by a president who claims such high moral authority is surely evidence that we may at times have to choose between our security and our ideals, assuming one of our ideals is that foreign nationals suspected of terrorism deserve the same rights as American citizens.

If the administration’s action on interrogation policy thus far is any indication, this may not be the last time we will have to make such a choice. Obama’s decisions to close Guantanamo Bay, close overseas Central Intelligence Agency detention centers, and ban unsavory interrogation techniques have been hailed in the media as a kind of Glorious Revolution with respect to the rights of suspected terrorists. Few have noticed that his executive orders contain no reference to extraordinary rendition. This practice, initiated by a directive President Clinton issued in 1995, authorized the CIA to transfer senior al-Qaeda leaders captured in foreign countries to allied governments, usually in the Middle East. Though the initial purpose of the program was simply to capture and hold harmful terrorists, most rendered prisoners since September 11 have been kept in American custody and have often been interrogated by U.S. officers.

Greg Miller of the Los Angeles Times recently cited current and former American intelligence officials who believe the rendition program may play an expanded role in the future because, in light of the abolition of many of the tactics used during the Bush administration, it is now the main tool for capturing terror suspects apart from Predator Missile strikes. Since Obama has ordered the closure of CIA detention facilities, however, it seems logical to conclude that future rendition cases will involve transfer of prisoners to foreign governments as opposed to CIA custody abroad.

As Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit, explained in testimony before a joint hearing of two subcommittees of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 2007, the extraordinary rendition program was established in an effort to get dangerous al-Qaeda leaders off the street; interrogation of the individuals “was not a priority.” This could be problematic as the Obama administration searches for a reliable means of interrogating terrorist suspects who cannot be detained on the U.S. mainland. Miller’s article explains that CIA veterans involved in the program believe it produces relatively little intelligence and is used mainly for suspects “not considered valuable enough” to be held by the CIA itself. Fortunately, the Times reports that Obama’s orders appear to preserve the CIA’s ability to detain and interrogate terrorist suspects as long as they are not held long term. Yet, despite candidate Obama’s insistence that we must not “lock people away without ever telling them why they are there,” this tactic involves the arbitrary detainment of persons convicted of no crime and interrogation by methods unknown to the public. Further, the transitory nature of CIA detainment means prisoners who must be held long term will have to be extradited to foreign governments.

Though there is scarce evidence, apart from media conjecture, to suggest genuine abuse of extraordinary rendition during the Bush administration, the secrecy of the program makes it impossible to know for sure whether or to what extent prisoners were mistreated or held without just cause. The distinct advantage to American custody of the prisoners, however, is that, when mistakes or abuses occur, our government can correct them. This is not true when prisoners are handed over to foreign governments, which tend to have lower standards than the United States for treatment of prisoners. According to an anonymous official Miller cites, the CIA “had limited influence over…how prisoners were treated, and whether they were released” after turning them over to foreign governments. In fact, Scheuer claims he would not be surprised if the treatment of these detainees in Middle Eastern prisons were “not up to U.S. standards.” Obama has expressed a desire to create a process whereby the United States can ensure that American prisoners are treated humanely abroad, but this may prove difficult to do, and he has outlined no specific plans to accomplish this in any case.

That President Obama has taken several well-publicized actions proves his commitment to human rights and civil liberties. Yet when confronted with the choice between national security and the humanitarian requirements of suspected terrorists, he has consistently chosen the former. This is laudable, but in doing so he has demonstrated the falsity of his own false choice: he has chosen the security of Americans over his own idealistic vision. We can only hope he will continue on this course.