"Zero Dark Thirty: Torturing the Facts"

[think]

Zero Dark Thirty: Torturing the Facts
Marjorie Cohn. Professor, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Posted: 01/11/2013 12:00 pm

On January 11, eleven years to the day after George W. Bush sent the first detainees to Guantanamo, the Oscar-nominated film Zero Dark Thirty is making its national debut. Zero Dark Thirty is disturbing for two reasons. First and foremost, it leaves the viewer with the erroneous impression that torture helped the CIA find Bin Laden's hiding place in Pakistan. Secondarily, it ignores both the illegality and immorality of using torture as an interrogation tool.

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The letter explains that after a review of more than six million pages of CIA records, Feinstein and Levin made the following determination:

" The CIA did not first learn about the existence of the UBL courier from CIA detainees subjected to coercive interrogation techniques. Nor did the CIA discover the courier's identity from CIA detainees subjected to coercive techniques. No CIA detainee reported on the courier's full name or specific whereabouts, and no detainee identified the compound in which UBL was hidden. Instead, the CIA learned of the existence of the courier, his true name, and location through means unrelated to the CIA detention and interrogation program."

In a speech on the Senate floor, McCain declared,"It was not torture, or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees that got us the major leads that ultimately enabled our intelligence community to find Osama bin Laden." McCain added: "In fact, not only did the use of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' on Khalid Sheik Mohammed not provide us with the key leads on bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed; it actually produced false and misleading information."

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marjorie-cohn/zero-dark-thirty-fact-check_b_2452721.html