Porter Goss Quotes
I know for a fact that torture is not productive. That’s not professional interrogation. We don’t do torture.
During that period some terrorists were handed over to Saudi Arabian and Egyptian authorities for interrogation. These countries had no qualms about torture. Goss never answered the question about that practice.
Porter Goss, U. S. Congressman (Republican, FL), Director, Central Intelligence Agency, Response to question about torture of prisoners and shipping them to other nations, Senate Armed Services Comitte Hearing, Quoted in Time, March 24, 2005
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
It is surprising that these ideas would come from one of the most autocratic powerful monarch in the world at the time. However there were many very liberal influences on her from Europe. This set of proposals she even sent to Voltaire to get his feedback and criticism. As late as 2006 the American President was reluctant to outlaw torture for terroristsand the Vice President actually argued for its retention as an interrogation technique. Over 300 years earlier the autocrat of Russia argued against it.
Earlier in the manual, the illegality of such techniques is stated. Later there are suggestions for the use of duress. See {597790}
Several American soldiers have been court marshalled and found guilty of illegal torture for Warterboarding prisoners to induce them to provide information. Most experts agree that intelligence received this way is highly unreliable in that victims will say anything they think the torturer wants to hear to get the torture to stop.
See {642427} for a case where the United States was accused of not living up to this treaty.
Major Fleener had been assigned to defend accused terrorists who were being held at the military prison in Guantanamo, Cuba. For several years they were held without a hearing or trial. Then the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that they had to be given a hearing or trial. A Military tribunal was selected. The methods and procedures of these hearings came under much public world-wide criticism as they did not meet the normal legal standards of most countries. Surprisingly, one of the military officers made public statements criticizing the army and the trials.
Clinton did believe that there might be a rare situation where extra judicial methods might be resorted to but he felt that those involved should be ready to take the responsibility and the consequence. He had suggested formalizing the theoretical exception, but then changed his mind as the exception would be abused.
Under torture many people will tell their interrogators what they want to hear --- accurate or not.
There were however several instances of torture being used. The administration used the term “enhanced interrogation” for waterboarding and other acts that the US has previously punished Americans for using. The George W. Bush administration actually had a team of their lawyers in the Justice Department write a memo to uniquely define torture so as not to include the torture techniques that were used as “enhanced interrogation”.
This was untrue. The CIA used several forms of torture on high value detainees. The torture was psychological and physical. Even the FBI had agents who observed CIA interrogations and complained to their supervisors. For cover, the George W. Bush administration, got 3 Justice Department Attorneys to write a secret memo defining certain types of torture as “enhanced interrogation”. Water Boarding, for which American soldiers had been court martialed and convicted for torture then became enhanced interrogation, and was used on a few terrorists. Because of the rigged Justice Department memo, the CIA claimed that they did not torture people. Another thing the CIA did was to turn over enemy to the intelligence services of third countries like Egypt, where torture was used commonly with no regard for the Geneva convention or other human rights provision. CIA agents then watched and asked questions but they claimed that they did not torture which was in some sense literally true.
Porter Johnston Goss is an American politician and government official who served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1989 until 2004, when he became the last Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and the first Director of the Central Intelligence Agency following the passage of the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, which abolished the DCI position and replaced it with the Director of National Intelligence on April 21, 2005.
