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April 29, 2012 6:53 PM

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The CIA "torture memo"

By: 60 Minutes Overtime Staff
Topics: Overtime Original

Whether you approve of former CIA officer Jose Rodriguez or not, there's no denying his confidence and his complete faith that what he did was the right thing. And, whether you call them "enhanced interrogation techniques" or torture, it's important to remember when this all came about: in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States.

Lesley Stahl's two-part piece on Rodriguez provides fascinating insight into the mindset of a high-ranking CIA officer. At Overtime, we wanted to explore in greater detail the specifics of the interrogation methods that the CIA used on the suspected al Qaeda detainees. Waterboarding had certainly been in the news when the August 1, 2002 Justice Department memo first was released. But, what about the nine other methods? We sat down with the producer of the piece, Rich Bonin and his associate producer Kathy Liu to go over the details, at once fascinating and a little macabre.

Watch the piece and tell us what you think. Is this torture? Do you approve or disapprove of what the CIA was allowed to do? Did President Obama do the right thing or not when he shut the program down?

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by MarkSteves May 10, 2012 4:44 AM EDT

So Israel was a bully Goliath and Germany, whose people were widely compliant in the atrocities of the 3rd Reich were innocents and giving up Silesia was unjust in your view? I think in you quest for this ideal world you probably lost site of the big picture. Maybe you could at least admit in your mission to find fairer living conditons for nations, that the Islamic world is on a much shakier footing than the US or even Portugal, and undoubtably Israel, and a symptom of this inequality shows up repeatedly in the anger and hostility that forever spews from these lands... you might find some instruction in this satirical , but sadly revealing YouTube video that came to me just the other day

http://dotsub.com/media/b5ee5ada-5b37-4b0b-9916-e0896337ec4b/embed/eng

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by MarkSteves May 10, 2012 4:57 AM EDT: Sorry for this out of context post here..it was meant as a reply to an ongoing dialog with artcampbell

by ffftrrdrddrydry May 6, 2012 1:26 AM EDT

cbs news is the only company in the world who made money on torture.
you may need to bulk up on palmolive.

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by docker13 May 6, 2012 2:16 PM EDT: how totally stupid, without programs and people such as Leslie Stall and 60 minutes where would the ethics of America be? I also think that what is completely missing in so many of these responses is that although many people may not really object to moderate torture IF THEY KNEW WITHOUT THE SLIGHTEST DOUBT THAT THEY HAD THE PERPETRATOR OF THE CRIME. But the fact is so many innocent people were tortured, thousands of families destroyed and ruined and the term "collateral damage" doesn't even begin to address the nature of the true horror that was going on. People where paid considerable sums of cash to point out "terrorists" which at minimum was a conflict of interest (I need the money and this is a great 'get even' with someone I don't like). This is all so deeply flawed and to have a sociopath such as Rodriguez running this sham catapults this whole thing into the realm of insanity.

by drward May 5, 2012 11:56 PM EDT

The Leslie Stahl interview was disgustingly biased. The constant liberal slant to everything 60 Minutes covers is why I seldom watch 60 Minutes or CBS.

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by jgug1 May 7, 2012 8:14 AM EDT: REALLY drward??? Let me tell you something: I was born in December of 1940. I became sentient around 1950. From that time forward until 2004, it NEVER OCCURRED TO ME THAT THE PRESIDENT AND THE VICE PREDSIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE GREATEST NATION IN THE WORLD, WOULD PERPETRATE TORTURE...... Your response to THIS program is that 60 Minutes is liberally biased?????? GET OUT OF MY COUNTRY.


by suzleboeuf May 5, 2012 1:19 PM EDT: Torture is big business and somehow people have been chosen by Nazi type perps to become torture victims of bio-electro warfare. We have a petition I ask that people sign to support victims of energy-based technologies, cointelpro and chemical attacks. ** http://signon.org/sign/stop-harmful-energy-based ** People are reporting being surveilled by drones, being tortured in their homes by forms of energy they don't understand, and others are finding radio frequency energy emanating from their bodies by RF meters, videotaping this and circulating these videos. I believe that this is all a continuing development of torture techniques to be used on prisoners and political figures. We have not been told the truth, not the whole truth by any means. The U.S. has a long history of involuntary human experimentation and we find out decades later what happened. Victims are dismissed by being labeled "mentally ill" and society is conditioned to excuse away all complaints by victims as if they were schizophrenic, but symptoms of severe mental illness and other medical issues as well as a variety of torture can be created by directed energy and some kind of neuro-scanning and control. Corporations make big money off of war. Our policy on torture is run by a Nazi mentality. This is against what the U.S. should be about. I have posted more information at http://www.cfasw.net; Reply to this comment

by donna_5 May 4, 2012 4:31 PM EDT

Leslie is another Jane Fonda. Her disgusting facial expressions during this interview told where she stands. I have lost all respect for 60 Minutes. How quickly people forget the horror and the chance for further attacks. Rodriguez did exactly what needed to be done. I would like to offer him my thanks for being there when we needed him.
Maybe the whiners can be the next victims.

Reply to this comment


by artcampbell1 May 4, 2012 10:10 PM EDT: As long as we continue to attack other countries we can expect to be attacked.


by jgug1 May 7, 2012 8:16 AM EDT: Ahhhh, and perhaps those who endorse this incredible, unbelievable activity, activity NO REAL AMERICAN WOULD ENDORSE, can be the next victims.

by artcampbell1 May 3, 2012 5:58 PM EDT

For Mark Steves

" it was done in self-defense" The US and the supporters of Palestinians had been exchanging blows for decades, including the founding of Israel. Massive US support for Israel throughout, attacks on US embassies in Africa and a US navy vessel, Us attack on Khartoum and caves in Afghanistan. 9/11 arguably was retaliation. It certainly should not have been a surprise except for the type of attack. 3000 people killed in 9/11. How many in the founding of Israel?

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by MarkSteves May 4, 2012 10:47 PM EDT: You made Israel the fall guy. You obviously are anti-Israel and I won't even bother to ask what your grievance there stems from, but it's usually the same misguided half truths of the history of Israel's founding or possibly some anti-semitic feelings. I really don't care. Ok so you deny it was an act of self-defense, then in your view I assume you mean it's an ongoing war. Alright, let's grant that it is. Self -defense either from a unexpected attack or ongoing war, a cowardly act against was done against non-military installations and non-combatatants were murdered. And I stand my grounds that the US had every right to find and interrogate those responsible, since as you even admit, they are after all acting as enemies in a war effort and in a war a reponsible government does everything reasonably possible to protect it's citizens.


by artcampbell1 May 5, 2012 12:50 PM EDT: For Mark Steeves

I am not anti-Israel. I am anti-Jewish for one reason only and that is the Centrality of Israel for Jews. That means that Jews are pressured to support Israel even if that is against the country in which they live.

You say I made Israel the fall guy. Who do you make the fall guy? I hope you will admit that the fighting between supporters of Israel and the supporters of Palestinians can be traced back to the founding of Israel. Regardless of the claims which Jews have on Palestine as a homeland, one must expect trouble by establishing a home for the Jews on land claimed by, surrounded by and lived on by their enemy for millennia, the Arabs.

The founding of Israel was a very emotional event and understandable at that time. But the fallout has been horrendous. The same as 9/11 - a highly emotional event.

Supporters of Israel and supporters of the Arabs must stop attacking each other.

It would seem logical for 1/40th of Texas be offered to the Jews to be a homeland.


by MarkSteves May 5, 2012 10:03 PM EDT: @artcampbell1 The oil rich Arab nations that could have easily given all the aid necessary to the Palestinian Gaza and West Bank refugees. Of course they preferred to forsake their brethren and leave them as perpetual sad dog martyrs for endless negative PR toward Israel worldwide, while Israel had to fight the terroism, wars and uprisings against an enemy that did and still does call for their destruction and that coming right on the heels of the Nazi's bent on wiping the whole Jewish people off the face of the earth. This hatred is taught regularly and openly in Muslim schools toward Jews and Israel. I defy you to find any such teaching calling for the destruction of the Muslims or their nations in Israeli schools - it's an antithesis to the whole culture. My vote for fall guy/guys therefore are the radical hate-filled Muslims ( not all Muslims ) and the terrorism they spawn.
LOL @ 1/40 of Texas - sounds kind of like making a Reservation akin to the what was forced on the Native Americans.

@


by artcampbell1 May 6, 2012 6:40 AM EDT: Mark Stevens

"coming right on the heels of the Nazi's bent on wiping the whole Jewish people off the face of the earth"

So rather than taking land from the Germans who tried to eliminate Jews, the Jews decided to take land lived on by Arabs. Little logic there. Emotion took hold. However, Jews had had problems in several lands, discriminated against in the US, Canada and UK for example, and pogroms in Russia. Where to go?

So the religious leaders took over and Israel was established in Palestine. Time has shown that this is impractical to say the least. A possible answer is to canvas the world for a home, for land where a home for the Jews could be established. The US is an obvious choice. And within the US there is Texas with land and coastline similar to what Israel now has. Israel is about 1/40the the size of Texas.

Another possibility is for Israelis to return to the lands from which they or their forefathers emigrated or to other lands and live as they have so successfully in the US and Canada among others.

The only beneficiary of the current arrangement is the arms industries.

The best example of the effectiveness of the centrality of Israel for Jews is the massive support of Israel by the US. Not only powerful lobby groups but insiders such as Paul Wolfowitz. That support for Israel is certainly detrimental to the US where these people are living.

"This hatred is taught regularly and openly in Muslim schools toward Jews and Israel." The Muslims teach, the Jews take.


by MarkSteves May 6, 2012 10:12 AM EDT: @ artcampbell1
'So rather than taking land from the Germans who tried to eliminate Jews, the Jews decided to take land lived on by Arabs. Little logic there. Emotion took hold" .
Israel was not taken by the Jews but granted to them by the rightful occupiers, the Brits in the Balfour Declaration, who had won these territories from the Ottoman Empire in WW 1 - then in 1948 sanctioned by a UN resolution which the Arab world decided to make an issue of. So be it.
Jews had always considered these lands as their homeland from biblical times and were forced out by the Romans after the decimation of the 2nd Temple. A remnant of Jews, as well as Christian and Muslim Arabs continued to live there up till modern times in a loosely defined demography. There never was a Palestinian state, just a region called so by this name and many other names historically.
Wars and conquerers have historically displaced peoples and changed boundaries throughout times, including the Native Americans or the Australian Aboriginals, or the Germans that had to give up Silesia to the Poles after WW 2. It's always sad to have to move on for those displaced, but people adjust and the world at large accepts the circumstances. My " fall guys", ( although I consider them perpetrators, not scapegoats, as is traditionally the definition of a fall guy )the Arab hardliners have chosen to make this a festering issue, while Israel itself has moved on to become a modern technologically advanced state, while with all their oil monies the Arab World has kept a great deal of their people in a sad, poorly advanced welfare mentality. I'm sure besides this hatred fomented by Muslims on half-baked religious grounds, the envy they have of Israel for managing to take a parched land and developing it in to a first rate modern society in a few short decades, while many Arabs have lived under iron thumbs that has suppressed their advancing to western standards, has created even a more heightened hatredand jealousy of everything Israel or Jewish, not to mention Christian or Western.
If you prefer to coddle those who still fall back on honor killing, beheading, Sharia law that still allows amputation of hands for stealing and other medieval notions, then you too might be in league with these perps. Choose your allies wisely.


by artcampbell1 May 6, 2012 6:59 PM EDT: So we get to might is right. A time honoured tradition. I guess I hoped we had got beyond that.

A generality - Brutal dictators attack their own people while democracies attack other countries and call any damage to civilians as collateral damage. I have never been a able to tell the difference between deliberating attacking civilians and attacking a country knowing that civilians will be killed.

"while many Arabs have lived under iron thumbs that has suppressed their advancing to western standards, has created even a more heightened hatredand jealousy of everything Israel or Jewish, not to mention Christian or Western." And how much by being attacked, or their brethren being attacked by "Western" countries ?

Completely almost change of subject but it came to mind during our exchanges. Have you read :The Spirit Level"? Its authors looked at data from more than 180 countries and show that better health and social conditions are found in countries were income is less unequal. The US and Portugal, at opposite ends of the economic scale are virtually tied for last place in health and social conditions. Google The Spirit Level to get more. Sweden and Japan are on the top of the heap - low inequality and better health and social conditions. That shook this Libertarian. But the data is all there. We should strive to provide more equality. How to do that without socialism or not too much socialism. A challenge.


by artcampbell1 May 6, 2012 7:03 PM EDT: So we get to might is right. A time honoured tradition. I guess I hoped we had got beyond that.

A generality - Brutal dictators attack their own people while democracies attack other countries and call any damage to civilians as collateral damage. I have never been a able to tell the difference between deliberating attacking civilians and attacking a country knowing that civilians will be killed.

"while many Arabs have lived under iron thumbs that has suppressed their advancing to western standards, has created even a more heightened hatredand jealousy of everything Israel or Jewish, not to mention Christian or Western." And how much by being attacked, or their brethren being attacked by "Western" countries ?

Completely almost change of subject but it came to mind during our exchanges. Have you read :The Spirit Level"? Its authors looked at data from more than 180 countries and show that better health and social conditions are found in countries were income is less unequal. The US and Portugal, at opposite ends of the economic scale are virtually tied for last place in health and social conditions. Google The Spirit Level to get more. Sweden and Japan are on the top of the heap - low inequality and better health and social conditions. That shook this Libertarian. But the data is all there. We should strive to provide more equality. How to do that without socialism or not too much socialism. A challenge.


by MarkSteves May 10, 2012 4:49 AM EDT: So Israel was a bully Goliath and Germany, whose people were widely compliant in the atrocities of the 3rd Reich were innocents and giving up Silesia was unjust in your view? I think in you quest for this ideal world you probably lost site of the big picture. Maybe you could at least admit in your mission to find fairer living conditons for nations, that the Islamic world is on a much shakier footing than the US or even Portugal, and undoubtably Israel, and a symptom of this inequality shows up repeatedly in the anger and hostility that forever spews from these lands... you might find some instruction in this satirical , but sadly revealing YouTube video that came to me just the other day

http://dotsub.com/media/b5ee5ada-5b37-4b0b-9916-e0896337ec4b/embed/eng


by daniegfdgd May 3, 2012 3:12 AM EDT: interrogation videotapes --
Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, then Executive Director of the CIA, wrote in an e-mail that Rodriguez thought "the heat from destroying is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes ever got into public domain - he said that out of context they would make us look terrible; it would be 'devastating' to us."

That says it all; Reply to this comment

by RillyKewl May 2, 2012 11:44 AM EDT

Thank you, Leslie Stahl + 60 Minutes for this absolutely chilling interview. What an horrendous admission of just how far we'd sank, in the last administration. Sad, and disgustingly shameful.

Let's get as far away from this shameful episode in our nation's history as we can. Keeping it in context though, it follows The Trail of Tears, human slavery, and not bombing the train tracks to Auschwitz.

How can we judge anyone, if we are no better?

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by MarkSteves May 2, 2012 10:20 PM EDT: I agree the US has many shameful historic sins so we come across as being hypocritical to lift ourselves too high and point the finger at so many others ... but just because of past sins this does not negate that we have an Executive that has a duty to protect Americans from threats within and from outside, in the here and now... only Pearl Harbor had the weight of 9/11 ... a Democratic president led us in to that earlier fray ... Bush might have overstepped his mandate, but it was done in self-defense which at the time a great majority of Americans were behind him and the other executive agencies ... waterboarding a few really dangerous enemies was hardly drastic given the context of the time frame it occured in ...Rodriquez acted with legal and moral authority to protect the many ..a few terrorists thugs suffered some discomfort ... this is a no brainer and I don't understand the liberal mindset to act so put out by this , other than it being a political attack , so please, enough of the phony hand wringing ... people went to work that day and had to make a choice, do I die an agonizing firey death or jump to a certain crushing death? .. try to imagine your thoughts before you hit the ground


by daniegfdgd May 3, 2012 2:25 AM EDT: To Mark steves -
Notwithstanding the moral implications, torture does not work in eliciting CORRECT information; this is irrefutable. The Americans were quite successful in extracting relevant information from their Nazi captives during WW 2.


by daniegfdgd May 3, 2012 2:26 AM EDT: Notwithstanding the moral implications, torture does not work in eliciting CORRECT information; this is irrefutable. The Americans were quite successful in extracting relevant information from their Nazi captives during WW 2 without torture.


by artcampbell1 May 3, 2012 5:55 PM EDT: For Mark Steves

" it was done in self-defense" The US and the supporteers of Palestinians had been exchanging blows for decades, including the founding of Israel. Massive US support for Israel throughout, attacks on US embassies in Africa and a US navv


by MarkSteves May 4, 2012 11:38 PM EDT: @ daniegfdgd " , torture does not work in eliciting CORRECT information; this is irrefutable" it must be nice to be so God-like ... irrefutable in my vocabulary means absolutely provable, which I'm sure you can't prove your statement... in this scenario of the waterboarding, which I stand by my opinion, was not torture, but enhanced interrogation, we are told the information gathered from the 3 waterboarded thugs led the CIA to the courier that led directly to Bin Laden ...this is not irrefutable either, but being merely mortal I can admit since I wasn't there I can't know for sure, but I prefer to believe Rodriquez and the other officials that back this


by jillblackstone May 1, 2012 6:22 PM EDT: Seriously? I'm a New York bred liberal Jewish woman, and I can't believe how stilted Leslie Stahl's interview was! This guy Rodriguez hid nothing, admitted to everything, and she belittled the entire issue by making silly comments like "are you comparing this to going to the gym?" My dog could have done a more objective interview, but still you made me want to read the book. Oh well.; Reply to this comment

by shelterman1 May 1, 2012 1:26 PM EDT

"Torquemada" Rodriguez is a psychopathic traitor. He blatantly
admitted to war crime after war crime-Leslie asked some brave questions but at the end of the day he was so revolting i found myself hoping someone from The Hague arrests this POS and soon !!

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by HabnerCrustipants May 1, 2012 11:54 PM EDT: It's much better to kill them with the drones...and, hey dont worry about any collateral damage. I dont see any hipocrisy with that. And how dare they be fed ensure ( http://ensure.com/products/ensure ). How awful that this horrible nation did that. Really?? you pull the "The Hague" card. Your lil dude Barry better be next in line cuz he's a far worse human "POS" given that he's assassignated an American, uses unfocused attacks that kill innocents. Oh, but wait, he's a "progressive"...lol what a joke

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