“Folks” Among Us Who Normalize Torture

“Folks” Among Us Who Normalize Torture – David Talbot SF Chronicle Feb 2 2017

I had a civil conversation with John Yoo the other day. That’s the kind of upside-down world we live in now. As an attorney in George W. Bush’s Justice Department, Yoo helped draft the notorious torture memos that gave the CIA wide license to aggressively interrogate detainees. A 2002 memo written by Yoo and fellow Office of Legal Counsel attorney Jay Bybee advised that if an “enhanced interrogation” method stopped short of “death, organ failure, or serious impairment of bodily functions,” it did not constitute torture. Which gave the CIA awfully wide leeway to water-board and abuse and debase.

Under normal circumstances, I would find it hard to restrain myself while speaking with Yoo, who — after helping unleash our government’s feral instincts — returned to his distinguished teaching post at UC Berkeley’s School of Law. After all, I published a book last year titled “American Nuremberg” by Rebecca Gordon, a University of San Francisco philosophy professor, who argued that Yoo and dozens of other Bush and Obama administration officials should stand trial for war crimes.

But during last year’s presidential campaign, Yoo seemed to emerge as a critic of Donald Trump’s chest-thumping statements about torture and his bombastic style, which he compared to that of “early Mussolini.” Trump was more eager to revive torture as some type of “punishment or revenge” rather than as a way to extract intelligence, Yoo told the press.

Perhaps Yoo had grown remorseful about his role in legally justifying torture, now that a man of Trump’s crude character has taken the reins of power. Last week, in a bizarre herky-jerky policy statement, Trump said he was letting Defense Secretary James Mattis — a critic of torture — “override” him, even though he remains convinced that torture “does work.” But while bowing to Mattis — for now — Trump also authorized the drafting of a sweeping executive order that would reopen the overseas “black sites” where the CIA conducted its darkest work.

It’s clear that with Trump’s primal instincts, he is capable of plunging our security agencies into the medieval horrors of the recent past — perhaps as soon as the next terror attack.

If I expected some deeper reflection from Yoo, considering the perilous state of our nation, I was soon disappointed. As we spoke, he insisted that his memos, which have since been rescinded, outlined the “correct” procedure on torture. And sounding his own Trumpian chord, he criticized the Obama administration for weakening the CIA by downplaying the interrogation of suspects in favor of killing them with drone strikes. “The CIA,” he said, “became politically risk-averse under Obama.” No agency official was punished for the reign of torture, Yoo admitted. “But careers were cut short and promotions denied.”

Which doesn’t seem like particularly harsh punishment, considering the barbaric and sometimes lethal treatment of CIA prisoners that was spelled out in the 2012 Senate torture report and other documents. In fact, the only CIA officer who served time was John Kiriakou — not for engaging in torture, but for blowing the whistle on it.

It was the failure to hold accountable government officials like Yoo, and those who were higher on the chain of command, that led us to the jungle morality of Trump. “Trump’s current push for torture could not be happening without the normalization of torture during the last 15 years,” Mark Danner, UC Berkeley journalism professor and author of “Torture and Truth,” told me. And that includes Obama’s failure to punish any perpetrators — or “folks,” as the former president preferred to call them: “It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.”

And so, with Obama calling torturers “real patriots,” it was a slippery slope to Trump and his new CIA director, Mike Pompeo, who feel exactly the same way, if not more so. Meanwhile, Yoo occupies the distinguished Emanuel S. Heller Chair at Boalt Hall, and Bybee sits in his black robe on the federal appeals court in San Francisco. When a country loses its ability to demand a legal reckoning for those who’ve committed high crimes, then anything is possible. Those who should be judged become the judges — or the teachers of legal ethics.

I asked Yoo what he felt when he is called a war criminal by his critics on the left. “It doesn’t bother me. I would be disappointed in them if they thought otherwise and gave up easily. I expect them to demonize their enemies. I don’t wake up at night in a cold sweat. I have no regrets.”

Like Trump, Yoo believes that torture works, despite all evidence to the contrary. Without water-boarding, we live in a less safe country — that is Yoo’s message to those who condemn him. “If liberals were honest, they would say they were all right with that.” Conservatives never see the endless U.S. state of war in the Middle East as the biggest threat to Americans’ safety.

Would Yoo consider a return to Washington if he gets a call from the Trump administration? “I’m not waiting by the phone. It would all depend on the right circumstances.”

Who knows? In today’s Washington, Yoo could be a force of restraint.