The CIA and the Torture Controversy: Interrogation Authorities and Practices in the War on Terror

The purpose of this piece is to shed some light on the way the intelligence community operates, to describe how legal rules shape some of its most sensitive work, and to offer a perspective on the way the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA or Agency) fits into the debate about interrogation and torture. The debate is not about, and indeed cannot be about, whether our government should conduct torture. The answer to that question is and must be, by law and standards of human decency, no. As recently as March 2005, CIA Director Porter Goss reiterated the Agency’s position that it is bound by the laws banning torture and that the Agency adheres to those laws. But at a level deeper than the denials and the blanket statements, there is a difficulty that cannot be avoided. That difficulty lies not in the abstract form of the question, but in the real, on-the-ground scenarios that develop where interrogations are taking place. What can an interrogator do? When can she use deception, discomfort, fear, fatigue, punishment, physical contact, and similar tactics?