The FBI: Last Humane Refuge in the Executive Branch

The Office of Inspector General at the Department of Justice has released A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq (May 2008). The public has access to the lengthy document here.

Unlike many Americans, FBI officers saw torture and called it for what it was: torture. Agents could brook no euphemistic language like enhanced interrogation. Scenes described by hundreds of agents in the report include “waterboarding,” “loud rock music,” “strobe lights,” “extreme temperatures,” “sleep deprivation,” desecrating the Koran, “twisting a detainee’s thumb back,” “using a female interrogator to touch or provoke a detainee in a sexual manner,” wrapping a detainee’s head in duct tape,” and “exposing a detainee to pornography” (list not all inclusive).

The FBI shows the entire executive branch does not march in lockstep. On the margin at the politicized DOJ were hundreds of agents who knew without reservation what constituted inhumane treatment. The FBI even recorded a War Crimes File for agent findings.