Later On

Unfortunately, Mr. Thiessen is dishonest. Conor Friedersdorf starts to dissect Thiessen’s response, but fairly quickly gives up: the sh*t is stacked too deep. Friedersdorf:

In National Review, former Bush Administration speechwriter Marc Thiessen responds to the review of his book written by The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer.

Mr. Thiessen writes:

Mayer declares categorically that “the Bush administration’s interrogation policies . . . yielded no appreciable intelligence benefit.”

Here is what Ms. Mayer actually said in her article:

Thiessen’s book, whose subtitle is “How the C.I.A. Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack,” offers a relentless defense of the Bush Administration’s interrogation policies, which, according to many critics, sanctioned torture and yielded no appreciable intelligence benefit.

Conclusion: When Mr. Thiessen uses ellipses be sure to check up on what he elides.

Mr. Thiessen continues:

She must not have been listening when Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, declared: “High value information came from [CIA] interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.”

This neglects to mention the other statement by Admiral Blair that appeared in the same New York Times article:

“The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means,” Admiral Blair said in a written statement issued last night. “The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”

Mr. Thiessen writes:

She must have forgotten that when she herself interviewed Leon Panetta, Obama’s CIA director, he told her, “Important information was gathered from these detainees. [The CIA program] provided information that was acted upon.”

Here is the relevant excerpt from Ms. Mayer’s article:

Dick Cheney has repeatedly claimed that “enhanced” interrogations yield results. Opponents say that torture is counterproductive. Panetta is more agnostic. He told me, “The bottom line would be this: Yes, important information was gathered from these detainees. It provided information that in fact was acted upon. Was this the only way to obtain this information? I think that will always be an open question.” But he is certain that “we did pay a price for using those methods.”

Mr. Thiessen writes:

And she must have forgotten her 2007 interview (also quoted in the Panetta article) with John Brennan (now Obama’s homeland-security advisor), in which she asked him if enhanced interrogation techniques “were necessary to keep America safe,” and he replied: “Would the U.S. be handicapped if the CIA was not, in fact, able to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities? I would say yes.”

Here’s the relevant excerpt from Ms. Mayer’s article with a bit more context:

Brennan has described himself as an internal critic of waterboarding—a position that friends, such as Emile Nakhleh, a former senior officer, confirm. Yet, in an interview with me two years ago, Brennan defended the use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques and extraordinary renditions, in which the C.I.A. abducted terror suspects around the globe and transported them to other countries to be jailed and interrogated; many of those countries had execrable human-rights records. He also questioned some people’s definition of “torture.” “I think it’s torture when I have to ride in the car with my kids and they have loud rap music on,” he said. Asked if “enhanced” interrogation techniques were necessary to keep America safe, he replied, “Would the U.S. be handicapped if the C.I.A. was not, in fact, able to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities? I would say yes.”

In other words, Mr. Brennan is advocating for “enhanced interrogation” but using that term in a way that excludes waterboarding as something that should not be done.

To summarize so far, Mr. Thiessen accuses Jane Mayer of asserting that Bush era interrogations yielded no appreciable intelligence benefit, even though she doesn’t assert that — rather, she very clearly reports, accurately, that some of Bush’s critics assert that position, never asserting it herself.

Subsequently, he purports to defend his own position about enhanced interrogation, including waterboarding, by selectively quoting people who turn out to argue that either enhanced interrogation generally, or waterboarding in particular, shouldn’t be used and do more harm than good. That he neglects to mention their words when they are contrary to his own arguments is telling.

And we’re only three short paragraphs into Mr. Thiessen’s article.

In paragraph four, Mr. Thiessen notes that various Bush Administration officials assert that the Bush era interrogation program was valuable. This is indisputably true, and in no way disproves anything in Ms. Mayer’s review. He then writes, “In her review, Mayer asks us to accept that all of these CIA directors and directors of national intelligence from both Democratic and Republican administrations are wrong, and she is right. Readers can judge for themselves.” In fact, Ms. Meyer isn’t pitting Bush era officials against herself — she is pitting their views against numerous credible sources, including intelligence experts, who she quotes at length to rebut assertions by Bush Administration officials, and who offer a different account of interrogation practices from 2001 to 2008.

There is a lot left in Mr. Thiessen’s piece. I don’t have time to assess its remaining paragraphs right now — wading through all the source material is time consuming work — but depending on whether anyone else writes persuasively about them I may return to the subject of his latest writing.

Mr. Thiessen’s tactics seem completely in tune with the GOP today, and of course the National Review editors had no problem with it at all: their standards are in keeping with the GOP’s.