SALON: In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the violence at Abu Ghraib "fundamentally un-American." But the Washington Post reported Tuesday that the CIA general counsel issued a new set of interrogation rules after the Sept. 11 attacks authorizing methods that cause temporary physical or mental pain. Isn't that torture? And can we conclude from that that the torture in Iraq was officially sanctioned?
BAER: Sure, it's classical torture. Any pain, whether it's being forced to squat down or bend over, is torture. Putting a cloth over your head and pouring water over you so you choke, that's torture. I think [the CIA directive] was probably meant for the 9/11 prisoners who were taken last year, not necessarily for Iraq, but someone transferred it over to Iraq. It was so systematic that I suspect that someone higher up the line said, "Just get these people to talk."
SALON: Perhaps it's more of a wink-and-nod approach?
BAER: It looks more systematic than that. The fact they were moving prisoners around tells me that. I've been to Abu Ghraib [as an ABC News consultant after the Iraq invasion]. You can't move prisoners around there unless the commander of the prison is aware of it. If you've got an ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] visit -- and they're supposedly moving people out to abandoned buildings so they're not questioned -- then you've got to have someone other than the [military police] approving this. It's a large facility; it's a huge ground. If you take people out of their cells, handcuff them, and move them to another block, it's not something a small group of rogue M.P.'s could have done.
...SALON: What about the contractors who are allegedly involved in the abuse and at least one of the deaths. Does that surprise you? Did the CIA ever use contractors to conduct interrogations while you were at the agency?
BAER: No. The only contractors we had were people who fixed your computers and stuff. You never used a contractor to run agents or sources, interrogate, or anything like that. And there were all sorts of reasons for that. How can you trust somebody you haven't vetted? I mean, an outside company -- who knows who these people are that they're hiring?
SALON: Should Defense Secretary Rumsfeld resign over this?
BAER: I think he should, because it was systematic and there was a failure to deal with Abu Ghraib right from the beginning. He did not understand the significance [it would have] all over the Arab world.
SALON: Should the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, resign?
BAER: Come on. Here's a guy who has overseen a string of intelligence failures, from the [mistakenly bombed] Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, to the [failure to find] weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, to 9/11. And now torture? How bad does it have to get before you hold someone accountable? When contractors are sent out to torture people to death and then hide it, the place is broken.
BAER: Sure, it's classical torture. Any pain, whether it's being forced to squat down or bend over, is torture. Putting a cloth over your head and pouring water over you so you choke, that's torture. I think [the CIA directive] was probably meant for the 9/11 prisoners who were taken last year, not necessarily for Iraq, but someone transferred it over to Iraq. It was so systematic that I suspect that someone higher up the line said, "Just get these people to talk."
SALON: Perhaps it's more of a wink-and-nod approach?
BAER: It looks more systematic than that. The fact they were moving prisoners around tells me that. I've been to Abu Ghraib [as an ABC News consultant after the Iraq invasion]. You can't move prisoners around there unless the commander of the prison is aware of it. If you've got an ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] visit -- and they're supposedly moving people out to abandoned buildings so they're not questioned -- then you've got to have someone other than the [military police] approving this. It's a large facility; it's a huge ground. If you take people out of their cells, handcuff them, and move them to another block, it's not something a small group of rogue M.P.'s could have done.
...SALON: What about the contractors who are allegedly involved in the abuse and at least one of the deaths. Does that surprise you? Did the CIA ever use contractors to conduct interrogations while you were at the agency?
BAER: No. The only contractors we had were people who fixed your computers and stuff. You never used a contractor to run agents or sources, interrogate, or anything like that. And there were all sorts of reasons for that. How can you trust somebody you haven't vetted? I mean, an outside company -- who knows who these people are that they're hiring?
SALON: Should Defense Secretary Rumsfeld resign over this?
BAER: I think he should, because it was systematic and there was a failure to deal with Abu Ghraib right from the beginning. He did not understand the significance [it would have] all over the Arab world.
SALON: Should the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, resign?
BAER: Come on. Here's a guy who has overseen a string of intelligence failures, from the [mistakenly bombed] Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, to the [failure to find] weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, to 9/11. And now torture? How bad does it have to get before you hold someone accountable? When contractors are sent out to torture people to death and then hide it, the place is broken.
