One nasty morning Comrade Stalin discovered that his favorite pipe was
missing. Naturally, he called in his henchman, Lavrenti Beria, and
instructed him to find the pipe. A few hours later, Stalin found it in
his desk and called off the search. "But, Comrade Stalin," stammered
Beria, "five suspects have already confessed to stealing it."
This joke, whispered among those who trusted each other when I was a
kid in Moscow in the 1950s, is perhaps the best contribution I can make
to the current argument in Washington about legislation banning torture
and inhumane treatment of suspected terrorists captured abroad. Now
that President Bush has made a public show of endorsing Sen. John
McCain's amendment, it would seem that the debate is ending. But that
the debate occurred at all, and that prominent figures are willing to entertain the idea, is perplexing
and alarming to me. I have seen what happens to a society that becomes
enamored of such methods in its quest for greater security; it takes
more than words and political compromise to beat back the impulse.
This
is a new debate for Americans, but there is no need for you to reinvent
the wheel. Most nations can provide you with volumes on the subject.
Indeed, with the exception of the Black Death, torture is the oldest
scourge on our planet (hence there are so many conventions against it).
Every Russian czar after Peter the Great solemnly abolished torture
upon being enthroned, and every time his successor had to abolish it
all over again. These czars were hardly bleeding-heart liberals, but
long experience in the use of these "interrogation" practices in Russia
had taught them that once condoned, torture will destroy their security
apparatus. They understood that torture is the professional disease of
any investigative machinery.
Apart from sheer frustration and
other adrenaline-related emotions, investigators and detectives in hot
pursuit have enormous temptation to use force to break the will of
their prey because they believe that, metaphorically speaking, they
have a "ticking bomb" case on their hands. But, much as a good hunter
trains his hounds to bring the game to him rather than eating it, a
good ruler has to restrain his henchmen from devouring the prey lest he
be left empty-handed. Investigation is a subtle process, requiring
patience and fine analytical ability, as well as a skill in cultivating
one's sources. When torture is condoned, these rare talented people
leave the service, having been outstripped by less gifted colleagues
with their quick-fix methods, and the service itself degenerates into a
playground for sadists. Thus, in its heyday, Joseph Stalin's notorious
NKVD (the Soviet secret police) became nothing more than an army of
butchers terrorizing the whole country but incapable of solving the
simplest of crimes. And once the NKVD went into high gear, not even
Stalin could stop it at will. He finally succeeded only by turning the
fury of the NKVD against itself; he ordered his chief NKVD henchman,
Nikolai Yezhov (Beria's predecessor), to be arrested together with his
closest aides.
So, why would democratically elected leaders of
the United States ever want to legalize what a succession of Russian
monarchs strove to abolish? Why run the risk of unleashing a fury that
even Stalin had problems controlling? Why would anyone try to "improve
intelligence-gathering capability" by destroying what was left of it?
Frustration? Ineptitude? Ignorance? Or, has their friendship with a
certain former KGB lieutenant colonel, V. Putin, rubbed off on the
American leaders? I have no answer to these questions, but I do know
that if Vice President Cheney
is right and that some "cruel, inhumane or degrading" (CID) treatment
of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then
the war is lost already.
Even talking about the possibility of
using CID treatment sends wrong signals and encourages base instincts
in those who should be consistently delivered from temptation by their
superiors. As someone who has been on the receiving end of the
"treatment" under discussion, let me tell you that trying to make a
distinction between torture and CID techniques is ridiculous. Long gone
are the days when a torturer needed the nasty-looking tools displayed
in the Tower of London. A simple prison bed is deadly if you remove the
mattress and force a prisoner to sleep on the iron frame night after
night after night. Or how about the "Chekist's handshake" so widely
practiced under Stalin -- a firm squeeze of the victim's palm with a
simple pencil inserted between his fingers? Very convenient, very
simple. And how would you define leaving 2,000 inmates of a labor camp
without dental service for months on end? Is it CID not to treat an
excruciatingly painful toothache, or is it torture?
Now it
appears that sleep deprivation is "only" CID and used on Guantanamo Bay
captives. Well, congratulations, comrades! It was exactly this method
that the NKVD used to produce those spectacular confessions in Stalin's
"show trials" of the 1930s. The henchmen called it "conveyer," when a
prisoner was interrogated nonstop for a week or 10 days without a wink
of sleep. At the end, the victim would sign any confession without even
understanding what he had signed.
I know from my own experience
that interrogation is an intensely personal confrontation, a duel of
wills. It is not about revealing some secrets or making confessions, it
is about self-respect and human dignity. If I break, I will not be able
to look into a mirror. But if I don't, my interrogator will suffer
equally. Just try to control your emotions in the heat of that battle.
This is precisely why torture occurs even when it is explicitly
forbidden. Now, who is going to guarantee that even the most exact
definition of CID is observed under such circumstances?
But if we
cannot guarantee this, then how can you force your officers and your
young people in the CIA to commit acts that will scar them forever? For
scarred they will be, take my word for it.
In 1971, while in
Lefortovo prison in Moscow (the central KGB interrogation jail), I went
on a hunger strike demanding a defense lawyer of my choice (the KGB
wanted its trusted lawyer to be assigned instead). The moment was most
inconvenient for my captors because my case was due in court, and they
had no time to spare. So, to break me down, they started force-feeding
me in a very unusual manner -- through my nostrils. About a dozen
guards led me from my cell to the medical unit. There they
straitjacketed me, tied me to a bed, and sat on my legs so that I would
not jerk. The others held my shoulders and my head while a doctor was
pushing the feeding tube into my nostril.
The feeding pipe was
thick, thicker than my nostril, and would not go in. Blood came gushing
out of my nose and tears down my cheeks, but they kept pushing until
the cartilages cracked. I guess I would have screamed if I could, but I
could not with the pipe in my throat. I could breathe neither in nor
out at first; I wheezed like a drowning man -- my lungs felt ready to
burst. The doctor also seemed ready to burst into tears, but she kept
shoving the pipe farther and farther down. Only when it reached my
stomach could I resume breathing, carefully. Then she poured some slop
through a funnel into the pipe that would choke me if it came back up.
They held me down for another half-hour so that the liquid was absorbed
by my stomach and could not be vomited back, and then began to pull the
pipe out bit by bit. . . . Grrrr. There had just been time for
everything to start healing during the night when they came back in the
morning and did it all over again, for 10 days, when the guards could
stand it no longer. As it happened, it was a Sunday and no bosses were
around. They surrounded the doctor: "Hey, listen, let him drink it
straight from the bowl, let him sip it. It'll be quicker for you, too,
you silly old fool." The doctor was in tears: "Do you think I want to
go to jail because of you lot? No, I can't do that. . . . " And so they
stood over my body, cursing each other, with bloody bubbles coming out
of my nose. On the 12th day, the authorities surrendered; they had run
out of time. I had gotten my lawyer, but neither the doctor nor those
guards could ever look me in the eye again.
Today, when the White
House lawyers seem preoccupied with contriving a way to stem the flow
of possible lawsuits from former detainees, I strongly recommend that
they think about another flood of suits, from the men and women in your
armed services or the CIA agents who have been or will be engaged in
CID practices. Our rich experience in Russia has shown that many will
become alcoholics or drug addicts, violent criminals or, at the very
least, despotic and abusive fathers and mothers.
If America's
leaders want to hunt terrorists while transforming dictatorships into
democracies, they must recognize that torture, which includes CID, has
historically been an instrument of oppression -- not an instrument of
investigation or of intelligence gathering. No country needs to invent
how to "legalize" torture; the problem is rather how to stop it from
happening. If it isn't stopped, torture will destroy your nation's
important strategy to develop democracy in the Middle East. And if you
cynically outsource torture to contractors and foreign agents, how can
you possibly be surprised if an 18-year-old in the Middle East casts a
jaundiced eye toward your reform efforts there?
Finally, think
what effect your attitude has on the rest of the world, particularly in
the countries where torture is still common, such as Russia, and where
its citizens are still trying to combat it. Mr. Putin will be the first
to say: "You see, even your vaunted American democracy cannot defend
itself without resorting to torture. . . . "
Off we go, back to the caves.
Vladimir
Bukovsky, who spent nearly 12 years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and
psychiatric hospitals for nonviolent human rights activities, is the
author of several books, including "To Build a Castle" and "Judgment in
Moscow." Now 63, he has lived primarily in Cambridge, England, since
1976.
America's leaders "must recognize that torture [. . .] has historically been an instrument of oppression -- not an instrument of investigation or of intelligence gathering" -- indeed they must.
Recent Comments