Goodby and Good Riddance
Jack Bauer may be done for good – and good riddance. The fictional character on Fox’s unfortunately popular 24 is the embodiment of the rogue Central Intelligence Agency operatives and contractors who have been willing to torture detainees at the drop of a hat.
Today’s New York Times points out that for six years, Central Intelligence Agency officers have worried that someday the tide of post-Sept. 11 opinion would turn, and their harsh treatment of prisoners from al Qaeda would be subjected to hostile scrutiny and possible criminal prosecution.
That time has come.
Congressional intelligence committees have voted in conference to ban all coercive techniques, and they have announced investigations of the destruction of the videotapes by the C.I.A. and the methods they documented.
The legal siege against the Bush administration’s counterterrorism programs goes far beyond the C.I.A., the Times reported, including lawsuits brought on behalf of hundreds of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and more than 40 challenges in court to the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program.
On ABC television this week, John C. Kiriakou, who helped lead the team that caught the Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002, said he believed waterboarding was torture and should never be used again, because “we Americans are better than that.”
The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which unsuccessfully sought charges against former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during a recent visit to France, has pledged to pursue criminal torture charges against former Bush administration officials when they travel abroad.
“The only way to restore the moral authority of our country,” said Michael Ratner, the group’s president, “is accountability.”
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