CIA能否從虐囚醜聞中全身而退
As part of their basic training, American soldiers are sent on a course that simulates being captured by the enemy, where they are taught how to withstand abusive interrogations. When the CIA started rounding up suspected members of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2002, it called in two former instructors from the course to give them advice.
Reverse-engineering their insights on surviving torture, the two men recommended to the CIA a series of interrogation methods that included mock burials, standing in stress positions for long periods of time and the now infamous “waterboarding” to mimic drowning.
這兩個人逆向運用如何忍受酷刑的知識，幫CIA設計出了一系列逼供方法，包括模擬活埋，讓囚犯長時間保持痛苦姿勢，以及如今臭名昭著的“水刑”（模擬溺水的感覺）。Over the course of the next six years, the two retired Air Force psychologists became the central figures in a CIA programme that detained more than 100 suspects in secret prisons around the world, subjected many of them to torture and opened up the biggest crisis at the agency in a generation.
在接下來的6年裏，在CIA的一個在全球各祕密監獄關押了逾100名嫌犯的項目中，這兩名空軍退休心理學家扮演了核心人物的角色，讓該項目的許多嫌犯遭受了刑訊，也爲CIA帶來了二三十年來最大的一場危機。
According to a report into CIA torture released this week by the Senate intelligence committee, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were present at many of the interrogations suggesting new techniques, while they also provided reports to the agency claiming that the use of torture worked.
根據美國參議院情報委員會(Senate intelligence committee)最近發佈的一份CIA虐囚報告，詹姆斯•米切爾(James Mitchell)和布魯斯•耶森(Bruce Jessen)參加了許多次審訊並提供新的審訊手段建議，兩人還曾向CIA提供報告，稱酷刑有作用。The report contained two other extraordinary claims about the psychologists. Despite their responsibilities, neither man had “experience as an interrogator, specialised knowledge of al-Qaeda, a background in terrorism or any relevant regional, cultural or linguistic expertise”. Yet the company they formed was paid a total of $81m by the agency for its services. The CIA outsourced one of the most questionable programmes in its history to two men with questionable qualifications.
報告中還提到了關於這兩名心理學家的另外兩個不同尋常的事實。儘管責任重大，但兩人都沒有“擔任審訊官的經驗，不具備關於基地組織的專業知識，缺乏抗擊恐怖主義的背景，也沒有任何相關地區、文化或語言的專長”。儘管如此，CIA總共向兩人創辦的公司支付了8100萬美元的服務酬勞。CIA將其歷史上最具爭議的項目之一外包給了兩個資質可疑的人。With its mixture of amateurism, profit and casual brutality, the outsized role played by the two psychologists in the interrogations has become one of the most jarring symbols of the CIA’s post-9/11 torture programme which was exposed in excruciating detailby the release of the 525-page Senate report.
參議院那份長達525頁的報告詳細曝光了9/11後CIA的虐囚計劃，其中最觸目驚心的地方在於，這兩名心理學家業餘、唯利是圖、恣意殘暴，卻在CIA審訊中扮演了過重的角色。Based on internal documents, the report contains the most damning rebuke of the CIA since the early 1970s when a committee led by Senator Frank Church, who called the agency “a rogue elephant”, investigated its failed attempts to assassinate leaders, such as Fidel Castro, former Cuba president.
此次的參議院報告以CIA內部文件爲基礎，對CIA發出了自上世紀70年代初以來最猛烈的抨擊。上世紀70年代初，參議員弗蘭克•丘奇(Frank Church)領導的委員會調查了CIA一次次失敗的領導人刺殺行動，比如刺殺前古巴總統菲德爾•卡斯特羅(Fidel Castro)。丘奇當時稱CIA爲“離羣的野象”。Unlike the 1970s, the agency will probably be insulated this time from a shake-up because of the strong backing it retains from many Republican members of Congress. Prosecutions in the US of CIA officials remain unlikely.
與上世紀70年代不同，CIA這次很可能將倖免於重創，因爲它仍然得到國會中衆多共和黨議員的支持。CIA官員仍然不太可能在美國受到起訴。Yet the report will have much broader ramifications. It will deepen anti-American sentiment around the world and potentially open up former CIA officials to international prosecution. It solidifies the image of an American intelligence establishment that obeys only its own rules. And with its rich documentation from inside the CIA, it will play an important role in framing the historical narrative about the post-9/11 period and the way the American political elite lost its moral bearings amid the trauma and panic that followed the attacks.
然而，報告有更廣泛的影響。它將加深全球各地的反美情緒，還可能讓前CIA官員在國際上受到起訴。它強化了CIA作爲一個只遵循自己規則的美國情報當局的形象。此外，報告包含了豐富的CIA內部文件，在敘寫後9/11時代的歷史、和美國政治精英是如何在9/11襲擊後的創傷和恐慌中失去了道德準繩方面，它將發揮重要作用。Tim Weiner, author of a celebrated history of the CIA, points out that before 9/11, every official at the agency had a handbook that insisted it did not engage in: “torture, cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment or punishment or prolonged detention without charges or trial.”
一部講述CIA歷史的著名著作的作者蒂姆•韋納(Tim Weiner)指出，在9/11事件以前，CIA的每個官員都有一本手冊，強調CIA“不使用酷刑，以殘酷、非人道和羞辱性的方式對待或懲罰嫌犯，或在未經指控或審判的情況下長時間拘留嫌犯”。He says: “They were so afraid after 9/11 about a second attack that they essentially threw out their own rule book, which was based on 50 years of experience that torture does not work.
他說：“在9/11事件後，他們是如此擔心襲擊會再來一次，以至於他們基本上把自己的規則指南拋到了一邊，而這本指南的基礎就是一條通過50年經驗得出的結論——嚴刑逼供是不管用的。“We now find ourselves asking again: are we as Americans capable of running a secret intelligence service in an open democratic society?”
“如今我們不禁再次發問：我們美國人有沒有能力在一個開放的民主社會開展祕密情報工作？”Legal fight
“合法”之爭Five years in the works, the report was released by Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the Senate intelligence committee until the end of this year. “The CIA’s actions a decade ago are a stain on our values and on our history,” she told the Senate.
這份準備了5年的報告，是由加州民主黨議員、參議院情報委員會主席黛安娜•范斯坦(Dianne Feinstein)公佈的。她對參議院說：“10年前CIA的行爲，如今成爲我們的價值觀和歷史上的一個污點。”范斯坦的任期截至今年底。Ms Feinstein had three specific objectives with the release of the report.
范斯坦發佈這份報告有3個具體目的。First, she wanted to establish beyond doubt that the CIA did use torture. Even after a decade of revelations and after President Barack Obama acknowledged this year that “we tortured some folks”, former senior officials at the CIA insist that the interrogations did not constitute torture. Memos prepared by the justice department during the Bush administration argued that techniques such as waterboarding were legal, allowing the CIA to claim it was just following guidelines.
首先，她希望確定無疑地證明CIA確實進行了嚴刑逼供。即便10年來不斷被揭露，巴拉克•奧巴馬(Barack Obama)總統今年也承認“我們對一些人進行了刑訊”，但前CIA高層官員仍堅稱他們在審訊中沒有使用虐待手段。司法部在布什主政時期準備的備忘錄稱，水刑等手段是合法的，這使得CIA能夠宣稱它只不過是在遵循指南。The details in the report demolished such legal parsing. During one of the 83 times that he was waterboarded, Abu Zubaydah — a high-profile al-Qaeda suspect still being held at Guantánamo Bay — was “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth”. After a doctor intervened, he began passing “copious amounts of water”. Gul Rahman froze to death while being kept in a facility that CIA officials called “the dungeon”.
報告用具體事實駁斥了所謂合法的說辭。被83次施以水刑的著名基地組織嫌犯阿布•祖鮑伊達(Abu Zubaydah)，在其中一次被施以水刑時，“完全沒有反應，他張着嘴，氣泡從滿是水的嘴裏冒出來”。醫生施救後，他開始吐出“大量水”。祖鮑伊達眼下仍被關押在關塔那摩灣(Guantánamo Bay)。古爾•拉赫曼(Gul Rahman)在被關押在CIA所謂的“地牢”裏時被凍死。Two detainees with broken feet were “subjected to walling, stress positions and cramped confinement”. Another with a prosthetic limb was kept in a standing position for an “extended period of time”. A detainee called Majid Khan had his lunch of hummus, pasta, nuts and raisins “puréed . . . and rectally infused”. Another was subjected to “rectal feeding” that left him with “chronic haemorrhoids, an anal fissure and symptomatic rectal prolapse”.
兩名足部骨折的囚犯“被施以牆刑(walling)、被迫保持痛苦姿勢、並被拘禁於狹小空間裏”。還有一名裝有義肢的囚犯被迫“長時間”保持站姿。一個名叫馬吉德•汗(Majid Khan)的囚犯，他午餐中的鷹嘴豆泥、意麪、堅果和葡萄乾“被攪拌成濃漿……給他灌腸”。還有一名囚犯被“直腸灌食”，使他患上了“慢性痔瘡、肛裂，並有直腸脫垂症狀”。Second, Ms Feinstein cast the CIA as an almost renegade agency that ran its torture interrogations in a slapdash manner and persistently misled the White House, Congress and the American public about what it was doing.
其次，范斯坦將CIA描繪爲一個近乎變節的機構，隨意地實施刑訊，在有關自己所作所爲的問題上持續誤導白宮、國會和美國公衆。The report is particularly harsh on Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009. In one instance in January 2009, it says Mr Hayden gave a briefing to members of then president-elect Obama’s transition team which included examples of the effectiveness of the interrogations. “The examples provided were nearly entirely inaccurate,” the report said.
報告對2006年至2009年間擔任CIA局長的邁克爾•海登(Michael Hayden)提出了格外尖銳的批評。報告稱，在2009年1月，海登有一次向當時剛剛當選總統的奧巴馬的過渡團隊成員做簡報，舉了一些例子證明審訊非常有效。報告稱：“他提供的那些例子幾乎完全不準確。”In her speech, Ms Feinstein referred to a 2007 Senate hearing called after press reports claimed that the CIA had destroyed tapes of interrogations.
在講話中，范斯坦提到了2007年的一次參議院聽證會，在那次聽證會之前，有媒體報道稱CIA已銷燬審訊過程的錄像帶。“Director Hayden said the CIA had concluded that the destruction of videotapes was acceptable because Congress had not yet requested to see them,” she said. “But, of course, the committee had not known that the videotapes existed.”
“海登局長表示，CIA認爲銷燬錄像帶的行爲是可以接受的，因爲國會當時還未要求查看錄像帶。”她說，“但當然了，委員會當時根本不知道那些錄像帶的存在。”In an interview with Politico, Mr Hayden said the report was unfair to him because most of the detainees had been held under his two predecessors and because procedures were much tighter by the time he took over.
在接受Politico採訪時，海登表示這份報告對他並不公平，因爲大多數囚犯都是在他的兩位前任任期內被關押的，當他接手時，程序已經變得嚴格得多。“I’m the dumb son of a b — who went down [to Congress] and tried to lay out this program in great detail to them,” he said. “I did not lie.” (Ms Feinstein had a different style of rebuke for the current CIA director John Brennan. While he gave a press conference on Thursday defending the agency, the 81-year-old senator took to Twitter to rebut his comments using the hashtag #ReadTheReport.
“我是個傻叉，跑到（國會去），試圖向他們詳細解釋這個項目。”他說，“我沒有撒謊。”（范斯坦對現任CIA局長約翰•布倫南(John Brennan)進行了另一種方式的抨擊。他日前召開記者招待會爲CIA辯護，而81歲的范斯坦則在Twitter上反駁他的話，並用了#請讀報告#的話題標籤。）Good cops and bad cops
好警察與壞警察It is Ms Feinstein’s third objective, to show that torture was ineffective, that has created the most political heat. She had hoped the report, with its copious footnotes from internal CIA communications, would establish as fact that torture does not work.
引發最大政治爭議的是范斯坦的第三個目標，即證明嚴刑是無效的。她希望這份包含豐富CIA內部交流記錄的報告能夠證實一點：嚴刑是沒有用的。It includes 20 case studies of interrogations that used torture, including the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and claims that in each example the valuable intelligence was gleaned from conventional techniques rather than after the use of torture. The report also indicates false intelligence that was produced by torture, including claims that formed part of the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
報告列舉了20個使用了虐待手段的審訊案例，包括追捕奧薩馬•本•拉登(Osama bin Laden)行動。報告稱，在每一個案例中，有價值的情報都是通過常規手段（而非虐待手段）得到的。報告還指出，逼供曾逼出過假情報，在2003年美國入侵伊拉克所依據的情報中就有這類假情報。However, former CIA leaders and some Bush administration officials have taken to the airwaves in recent days to aggressively dispute this claim. In its own response, the CIA insisted that information from the interrogations played a role in the hunt for Bin Laden.
然而，前CIA領導人和布什政府的一些官員近日在電視和廣播上激烈反駁這一說法。CIA本身的反應是，堅稱從審訊中獲得的情報在追捕本•拉登行動中發揮了作用。“This program was effective in getting information that led to the capture of additional senior operatives that stopped plots that would have killed Americans,” said Michael Morell, former deputy director of the CIA. “I have no doubt about that,” he said.
“這個項目對獲取情報是有作用的，這些情報讓我們俘獲了更多高級別特工、並粉碎了一些原本會導致美國人被殺的陰謀。”CIA前副局長邁克爾•莫雷爾(Michael Morell)說，“我確信如此。”Mr Brennan tried to present a more nuanced position at his press conference, suggesting it was “unknowable” if what he called “enhanced interrogation techniques” were the reason detainees later provided useful information.
布倫南在記者招待會上試圖表達一個更模棱兩可的觀點，稱“無法確定”他所謂的“高級審訊手段”是不是嫌犯後來提供有用情報的原因。Mr Mitchell, one of the psychologists, made a similar argument in an interview with Vice News. Citing a confidentiality agreement, he refused to comment on the Senate report other than to say it was incorrect. However, he said the point of aggressive interrogation was not to produce information immediately but to make later conventional questioning easier. The goal was “a bad cop that is bad enough that the person would engage with the good cop”, he said.
兩名心理學家之一米切爾在接受Vice News採訪時發表了類似的看法。他以保密協議爲由拒絕對參議院的報告發表評論，只說這份報告是不正確的。然而，他表示，激進審訊手段的意義不在於馬上獲取情報，而在於讓後來的常規審訊變得更容易。他說，目的是製造一個“足夠壞的警察，讓這個人願意跟好警察合作”。Amid pushback from the CIA, the political waters have also been muddied by sharp criticism of Ms Feinstein from many leading Republicans. John McCain, himself a torture victim, may have spoken in favour of the report but Richard Burr, who will replace her next year as chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said that “the only motive here could be to embarrass George W Bush”.
在CIA奮起反擊的同時，許多共和黨要人也對范斯坦提出了尖銳批評，進一步攪渾了政治局勢。雖然作爲一個曾經受過刑虐之苦的人，約翰•麥凱恩(John McCain)已表態支持這份報告，但將於明年接替范斯坦擔任參議院情報委員會主席的理查德•伯爾(Richard Burr)表示，“這裏唯一的動機可能就是讓喬治•W•布什(George W. Bush)難堪”。In the short term, Ms Feinstein’s report has become another example of the partisan division in Washington. But over the long haul it will also provide a constant reminder of a dark period in modern American life.
簡而言之，范斯坦的報告已成爲華盛頓黨派分歧的又一例證。但從長遠來看，它也將持續提醒人們現代美國生活中曾存在這樣一段黑暗時期。
