“To be completely honest with you, Major, President Quaid inserted those words into my draft. I’m not quite sure what it means, either,” Harrison sighed. “Sometimes the president has difficulty fully committing himself. But that’s just my guess. Anyway, I had legal research done on that point. Here’s some guidance for your boys.”
Harrison removed another document from his briefcase. This was several pages long. Gen. Paterson flipped through it, then he frowned.
“Our interrogators are soldiers, not lawyers,” he said. “This looks like it was written for a judge.” He tossed the document onto the table. “So, what do we tell them they can and can’t do?”
“My assistant is setting up a laptop and projector in the mess hall right now,” he said. “I had a little PowerPoint presentation put together. Let me summarize it for you. First thing, the president said we can use force but we can’t torture. No big deal, right? America doesn’t torture anybody, right? We didn’t use torture before Congress banned it. We haven’t tortured anybody since that ban. The president says we won’t torture anybody in the future.”
“That’s clear enough,” Maj. Dancer said. “The team’s already had that drilled into them. No torture. Use torture during an interrogation and you’ve bought yourself a ticket to Leavenworth, right?”
“Uh, not quite right, Major,” Harrison said. “It turns out that torture, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.” He chuckled. “We aren’t the first White House team to try to define torture, of course. I—sorry, the president and I, after much thought, have decided to adopt a definition of torture with historical precedence. It was first prepared during the administration of the second President Bush. Prepared, in fact, by a man who went on to hold the same position I now hold, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. This is in my PowerPoint for your men, of course. It’s called the Bybee memo. Let me quote for you.”
Harrison scanned through the legal memo he’d taken from the table, turning pages until almost the end. “Here it is,” he said. “For an act to constitute torture, it must inflict pain that is difficult to endure. Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as major organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death. For purely mental pain or suffering to amount to torture, it must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years.”
Maj. Dancer whistled softly. “So, anything short of causing failure of a major organ is kosher, right? That’s what you’re saying? We can do anything that doesn’t leave major permanent damage, right?”
“Even more important,” Gen. Paterson interrupted, “that’s what the president is saying? That is what you are telling us?”
Harrison nodded. “President Quaid saw and approved the same PowerPoint presentation,” he said. “Between his directive and this legal memo, your men ought to be able to do their jobs. And one final note, gentlemen, in case anybody has any misgivings about this. Keep in mind that we aren’t plowing new ground with any of this. Major, these are the same operational guidelines as were used at Guantanamo, correct?”
Maj. Dancer nodded.
“I’ll let you two brief your Echo Team,” Gen. Paterson said. “And I understand you’ve brought in some specialized personnel. Let’s hope they make a difference. I’m heading back to Washington. I want results. Soon. The president’s patience is getting thin.”
Dr. Bayard was six feet two inches tall, plus another three inches of hair of some indeterminate brownish-grayish color piled in a mound on her head. She tended to pause at odd moments, mid-sentence, as if listening to a hidden earpiece for guidance.
She could not have appeared less military if she’d led a cavalry charge on a tricycle. The young Echo Team members clung to her every word as if she held the secret psychological key they’d need to open the locks behind which their subjects held their secrets. She was a “Biscuit”—head of a behavioral science consultation team, or BSCT. The young interrogators looked at each other and nodded, smiles on their faces. Biscuits were viewed among interrogators as having almost mystical powers. They were usually PhD psychologists who’d spent their careers studying means of programming animals, and people, to do and say just about anything.
Biscuits had great success at Guantanamo.
The Echo Team members were told that at least one Biscuit would be present for all interrogations. Suggestions from the Biscuit were to be followed as orders.
The first interrogation that afternoon was of a twenty-four-year-old woman who gave her name as Dvora Yaron, her rank as Segen Mishne, the equivalent of a second lieutenant, and her unit as Sayerot Mat’kal. She provided no other information to interrogators. However, her unit designation drew the attention of a National Security Agency analyst, an Israeli specialist who was assigned to aid the Echo Team.
Sayerot Mat’kal was also known as General Staff Reconnaissance Unit 269, he told the interrogator first assigned to Yaron. Unit 269 was one of Israel’s prime special forces units. The Echo Team interrogators did not believe a Sayerot officer, even a low-ranking one, could be a simple political refugee.
Dr. Bayard spent a half hour studying the report of Dvora Yaron’s first interrogation, shaking her head and making odd chucking noises as she read.
“This woman has received training in counter-interrogation techniques,” Dr. Bayard commented. “Well, we have a few techniques of our own.”
The young Israeli woman appeared cocky as she was led into the windowless interrogation cell by two US soldiers. She walked slowly, almost seductively, between the two Americans, sneaking smiles at her captors, enticing them to smile back. The cell was lit by a single fluorescent fixture. The red light of a video camera blinked from a corner of the ceiling.
The soldiers held the woman’s arms gently. She was attractive, thin as a fashion model but revealing surprising strength when they took her arms. Her face was darkly tanned. Her straight black hair was tied back into a ponytail.
She looked surprised to see Dr. Bayard in the cell with her former interrogator. The young woman’s eyes took in the stethoscope draped over Bayard’s shoulder. Instead of the plain wooden chair in which she’d been seated for her previous interrogation, a steel desk was in the room. The surface of the desk was empty except for a six-by-two-foot wooden plank.
The two soldiers who brought Yaron to the windowless interrogation cell remained in the room, together with the Echo Team interrogator and Dr. Bayard. The doctor was obviously in charge this time.
“Tape her to the board, tightly,” Dr. Bayard barked. “No need to be too gentle. Make sure she can’t slip free.”
The young woman’s eyes opened wide with the first sign of fear when the two soldiers lifted her onto her back on top of the wooden board. She tried to roll from side to side—as she’d been trained—when they wrapped two rolls of duct tape round and round her body and around the board to hold her immobile to the wooden surface. After a few attempts to flex her arms, the woman stopped struggling.
She knew what was coming. Waterboarding. A washcloth would be placed over her mouth and water would be poured on it. She would feel as if she were drowning. But she’d been trained to resist. It would only feel as if she were drowning. They would stop. She would not drown. Americans did not kill their interrogation subjects.
Dr. Bayard walked around the desk so that she was standing behind Dvora’s head. She leaned far forward, looking down at the woman, knowing that she would appear to be upside down to the frightened Israeli—one more effort at disconcerting her. She spoke softly, almost in a whisper, leaning closer to her face, six inches away.