(Im)Plausible Deniability

In the good old days of government hypocrisy, an overzealous bureaucrat came up with a brilliant solution to an age old paradox: How could the United States government break its own laws without getting caught? The solution was to create chains of command tenuous enough so that if a pesky, over-intrepid journalist or human rights activist caught wind of the government’s dastardly deeds, it could disclaim knowledge or responsibility for the entire mess.

The trouble is, plausible deniability just doesn’t work. From its inception as a policy in the 1950s up to today, from Watergate to Iran-Contra, the degree of control that plausible deniability requires the central government to relinquish has opened the door to abuses that, well, aren’t plausibly deniable.

That’s why the Bush Administration’s position on its semi-secret program of “extraordinary rendition,” is not only morally wrong, unconstitutional, and harmful to the United States’ already tarnished international reputation—it’s politically reckless. Rendition is a euphemism for abducting terrorism suspects without any vestige of due process and shipping them off to countries that are known to torture prisoners to obtain intelligence. By “rending” terrorism suspects to nations including Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Pakistan—each of which has been identified by the State Department as routinely employing torture in interrogation—the U.S. is absolved of any technical guilt of torture. This dubious circumvention of fundamental human rights, however, shows how the current government has taken the doctrine of plausible deniability to a new low. But the Bush administration will soon learn what history has failed to teach them: plausible deniability doesn’t work.

The veil of a reason that the Bush administration uses to justify shipping these suspects overseas is threadbare. Recently, Bob Herbet, a columnist for the New York Times, interviewed Pete Jeffries, the communications director for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, on the House’s support for Bush’s rendition program. According to Jeffries, Speaker Hastert “believes that suspected terrorists should be sent back to their home countries” because “U.S. taxpayers should not necessarily be on the hook for their judicial and incarceration costs.” Herbert was flabbergasted by the utter ignorance and moral bankruptcy that Jeffries’ response reflects, as should anyone who is reasonably informed on the issue.

The United States’ founding principles include a respect for certain fundamental, “inalienable rights.” For the office of the highest legislative authority in our government to suggest that saving money is of higher priority than protecting potentially innocent terrorism suspects from torture is absolutely appalling.

Despite undeniable first-hand accounts and evidence from former government officials, the Bush administration still refuses to confirm that the rendition program exists; whenever the subject is brought up, they repeat something to the effect that it is not the policy of the United States to hand over people to face torture or to countries where torture is likely to take place. Defending the rendition program without explicitly naming it, Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, wrote in Congressional testimony last January that he “was not aware of anyone in the executive branch authorizing any transfer of a detainee in violation of that policy.” Notice all of the qualifiers: “not aware,” “executive branch,” authorizing,” and “that policy.” A master of plausible deniability at his best.

To be fair, the CIA has internal guidelines that prohibit rendition unless the receiving country provides assurances that the suspect will not be tortured, and have assigned a nominal contingent to monitor compliance. Nevertheless, when pressed, CIA director Porter J. Goss, in Congressional testimony last month, admitted the virtual impossibility of verifying compliance in practice. “…of course once [the suspects] are out of our control, there’s only so much we can do.” Another senior government official interviewed by The New York Times said that “Nothing is 100 percent unless we’re sitting there staring at them 24 hours a day.” Apparently, these weak excuses are the best that our government can come up with in response to first-hand accounts of the innocent, brutalized victims of rendition.

If “sitting there staring at them 24 hours a day” in foreign prisons was the only way to make sure that these suspects aren’t being tortured, then that is what the United States must do; it is a moral imperative. But it’s not the only way—the entire human-rights-flouting program of “extraordinary rendition” can be shut down and suspects can be detained and interrogated in the United States. Terrorism suspects are human beings; they must be given due process and the rights accorded to every other suspect accused of a crime. The pressing need for intelligence in the war on terrorism is valid, but no matter how much valuable intelligence can be obtained by torturing suspects, this need can never be allowed to undercut basic human rights. Anything less is to dangerously neglect our nation’s founding principles.