Prosecuting CIA Agents…?

Based on the very popular James Bond films, one could be forgiven for thinking that practitioners of the dark art of espionage are licensed to kill. But this is just an enduring (and endearing) myth – at least insofar as those who work for Western governments are concerned.

Indeed, nothing exposed how truly circumscribed spies are in what they can do quite like the legal jeopardy CIA agents found themselves in a few years ago for assuming that they were licensed to waterboard terror suspects. 

Mind you, waterboarding is an interrogation technique that only simulates drowning. It is non-lethal and inflicts no permanent harm. It just scares people shitless. 

This is why I was so indignant at the political and legal furor revelations about waterboarding caused. For, given the fanatical nature of Islamic terrorists, spy agencies in the West would do well to license their agents not just to waterboard, but to kill; i.e., we need more James Bonds in this war on terror, not more Eliot Nesses.

Here, for instance, is how I lambasted the political moralizing of this issue:

Most politicians who profess opposition to waterboarding are hypocrites (or hopelessly naïve – although you’d never know it based on the ferocity of their moral outrage). They are hypocrites because, among other things, they know full well that successive American governments have sanctioned far more egregious abuses of human rights by the CIA, including the assassination of foreign leaders.

(What’s wrong with waterboarding if it saves lives, The iPINIONS Journal, December 17, 2007)

This is why I was so dismayed when President Obama announced last year that his Justice Department would be investigating CIA agents who were accused of waterboarding two al-Qaeda terrorists:

Frankly, no matter what moral or legal justification Obama proffers for ordering this investigation, it reeks of political pandering to the left-wing nuts in his party. After all, no less a person than Obama himself insisted just months ago (after being fully briefed as president) that such an investigation would serve no purpose, but would have a chilling effect on CIA operatives.

(Obama to investigate the CIA, The iPINIONS Journal, August 26, 2009)

Therefore, I was somewhat heartened when the Justice Department announced yesterday that it would not be prosecuting the agents who destroyed the interrogation tapes that would have been the key evidence in any waterboarding trial.  Especially since it follows, legally, that without those tapes there can be no prosecution of the other agents who waterboarded the suspects.

Clearly, this was a clumsy, disingenuous and roundabout way of adhering to my stated principle on waterboarding.  And that the Justice Department offered no explanation for suddenly dropping these high-profile cases is testament to this fact.  Nevertheless, I commend it for finally doing the right and sensible thing.

Related commentaries:
What’s wrong with waterboarding
Obama to investigate the CIA