This a mixed story if there ever was one. In the last few days four CIA memos dating from 2002 and 2005 have been released to the public, largely unredacted and detailing specific methods of torture, as part of a deal whereby CIA agents who tortured detainees will not face prosecution for their actions. It is reassuring, if you can apply such a word to a situation this grotesque, to know that President Obama is committed enough to shining the light of public scrutiny on past anti-terrorist tactics to force out these documents. There was evidently a strong push from within the CIA to either withhold documents or heavily censor them, for fear of setting a precedent of revealing sensitive security information to the public.
Perhaps the most frightening element of these documents is the way the dramatically highlight the human engine of justification. We seem to posses an almost unlimited ability to create reasons for protecting or even endorsing the worst actions. I cannot help but be struck by how many harmful acts could be averted if we were all more aware of this nasty little mechanism at work in us. If only we could carry with us an alarm that started buzzing whenever we started piling up reasons to cross over the barrier between "have to" and "chose to". For now, we are stuck with our conscience, so the next time you start marshaling arguments for some nasty behavior, step back and ask yourself whether the same process that led to these memos is at work.
All four memos can be downloaded from the ACLU link below:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/olc_memos.html
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